Metaphysics - Chinese Culture Philosophy Analysis

http://www.crvp.org/book/ism/master-1.htm THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR METAPHYSICS STUDIES IN METAPHYSICS, VOLUME I PERSON AND NATURE Edited by GEORGE F. McLEAN UNIVERSITY PRESS OF AMERICA INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR METAPHYSICS EDITORIAL BOARD H.D. Lewis, President, ISM; University of London S. Sengupta, Vice President, ISM; Visva-Bharati G.F. McLean, Secretary, ISM; The Catholic University of America W.N. Clarke, Board of Directors, ISM; Fordham University THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR METAPHYSICS PRESIDENT Margaret Chatterjee, India BOARD OF DIRECTORS Masao Abe, Japan Evandro Agazzi, Italy Chung-yuan Chang, Hawaii W. Norris Clarke, USA Nicholas Lobkowicz, Germany Mihailo Markovic, Yugoslavia Mohammed Maruf, Pakistan Andre Mercier, Switzerland Ev. Moutsopoulos, Greece Joseph Nyasani, Kenya Tarcisio Padilha, Brazil W.H. Walsh, U.K. HONORARY PRESIDENTS H.D. Lewis, U.K. Ivor Leclerc, U.S.A. HONORARY VICE PRESIDENT Santosh Sengupta, India SECRETARY-TREASURER George F. McLean Washington, D.C. 20064 Tel.: 202/635-5636 TABLE OF CONTENTS Foreword: H.D. Lewis v-vi Introduction: George F. McLean vii-viii Table of Contents ix-x Prologue: Surajit Sinha xi-xii PART I: SCIENCE AND NATURE 1. Science and Metaphysics Before Nature by Evandro Agazzi 3-13 2. Does Science Coincide With Our Knowledge About Nature? by André Mercier 15-23 3. Science and Nature by Errol E. Harris 25-38 PART II: PROGRESS AND NATURE 4. Progress and Nature by Margaret Chatterjee 41-47 5. Nature as Object and as Environment: The Pragmatic Outlook by John E. Smith 49-56 6. Man, Technological Praxis and Nature in Dialectical Synthesis

by Janusz Kuczynski 57-75 7. Nature and Human Praxis in Karl Marx by Andrew N. Woznicki 77-86 8. Praxis and Nature by Satindranath Chakravarti 87-96 PART III: PERSON AND NATURE 9. Nature and Freedom by Kalidas Bhattacharyya 99-126 10. A Touch of Animism by S.C. Thakur 127-137 11. The Nature of Man as Tao by Chang Chung-yuan 139-147 12. Heidegger: The Man-Nature Problem by Thomas A. Fay 151-159 PART IV: TRANSCENDENCE AND NATURE 13. Man and Nature in Christianity and Bhuddhism by Masao Abe 161-167 14. A Characteristic of Indian Philosophies and Its Interpretations by K. K. Banerjee 169-175 15. Nature, Real and Unreal by T.M.P. Mahadevan 177-183 16. Spiritual Experience and Metaphysical Interpretation by W. Norris Clarke, S.J. 185-193 17. Causality and Creativity by Eliot Deutsch 195-210 18. Aesthetic Meaning of Nature: An Indian Approach by Bishnupada Bhattacharya 211-226 Epilogue: Santosh Sengupta 227-232 Index 233-235 INTRODUCTION GEORGE F. MCLEAN This study by the International Society for Metaphysics of the relation between man and nature is the first of three such investigations coordinated around the person and directed to its relation to nature, to society and to God. All are intended to draw upon the classical metaphysics of East and West and to extend that wisdom to man's life in this century. The particular task of this volume is, therefore, to search out the dimensions of an understanding of the physical universe sufficient to enable man to live fully and creatively in these times. The first three quarters of this century has seen a number of major attitudes towards nature. One of these has emphasized man's ability to transform nature; it is typified by the central place of the notion of human progress in the philosophies of praxis and of pragmatism. A second has been the periodically recurrent awareness of the limitations of physical resources and of the fragile character of their economic structuring. Finally, an aesthetic attitude towards nature has been expressed in concern for ecology and conservation. These attitudes, which in the past have occupied the attention of philosophers serially, today vie simultaneously for attention. Developing nations face the need rapidly to achieve material progress, often in the face of shortages and while carrying forward the basis of their classical self-understanding. Other nations face the problem of conserving resources in the face of progressively more ambiguous economic and industrial creations. Both converge in the need today for the development of metaphysical insight which will enable man to direct progress, face the limitations of the physical world and achieve a more adequate fulfillment of himself in nature. In order to bring a broad range of metaphysical capabilities to bear upon this

understanding of man's relation to nature, this series of papers was prepared and discussed intensively at the second meeting of the International Society for Metaphysics held at Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan, West Bengal. The papers reflect the various modes of stating the problem, elaborate carefully the multiple levels of contributions to its resolution and search out the ways in which these converge or are mutually illuminative. Part I takes the first step by considering one of man's major projects for appreciating nature, namely, science. The papers of E. Agazzi and A. Mercier, by noting the extension of the meaning of the physical universe beyond that articulated by the sciences, both identify the distinctive task of metaphysics and relate it positively to science. E. Harris notes the implication of the development of science for man's metaphysical conception of the universe and of his place within it. In the present century, this role has most generally been seen, not theoretically, but practically. Hence, Part II traces the contribution of this practical awareness. The papers of M. Chatterjee and J. Smith analyze and evaluate the foundation and implications of the pragmatic attitude. Those of J. Kuczynski, A. Woznicki and S. Charkravarti constitute a parallel study of the implications of the Marxian analysis of praxis for understanding man's relation to nature. A major recent concern, however, has been that the reality of the person has been seriously ignored in the increasing focus upon the transformation of the physical universe. Indeed, there may be reason to ask whether that universe itself can be understood adequately except in relation to person, knowledge and will. It is this question in its many modes of person and nature, East and West, that is studied in Part III by the papers of K. Bhattacharyya, S. Thakur, C. Chung-yuan and T. Fay. Finally, in Park IV the search for the meaning of nature and of man's life therein is carried to its ultimate metaphysical root. The articles of M. Abe, K.K. Banerjee, T.M.P. Mahadevan and W.N. Clarke search out this meaning and the nature of its discovery in the absolute and/or transcendent. In this light nature can be seen afresh as is reflected in the articles of E. Deutsch and B. Bhattacharya. Professors H.D. Lewis, Surajit C. Sinha and Santosh Sengupta, all of whom aided in initiating the study, have graciously embellished it with a Foreword, Prologue and Epilogue, respectively. To them and to the authors of the papers whose wisdom and scholarship this volume reflects, as well as to B. Kennedy and A.M. McLean for their work in preparing the manuscript, the International Society for Metaphysics expresses sincere thanks. PROLOGUE SURAJIT SINHA On this campus one of the greatest minds in human history was engaged in creative experiments towards defining the ultimate goals of human existence. Rabindranath Tagore's life-long pursuit was to seek and establish harmony with nature in the thoughts and action. It is indeed a fitting tribute to his guiding spirit that the theme of this conference is "Man and Nature." An anthropologist, accustomed to observe human behavior in a mundane and matterof-fact manner, has a feeling of diffidence in confronting philosophers. As members of a super-discipline, they monitor the theoretical concepts and methods of other specialized disciplines at a high level of abstraction. Nonetheless, philosophers do seek a feed-back from the concrete problems of various disciplines and specialists in the various fields do seek clarification of their ideas from philosophers. I would like, therefore, to suggest some problems relating to the concepts of man and nature in the evolutionary experience of the Homo Sapiens. Ethnographers the world over have attempted to record the customs of people belonging to a wide spectrum of levels and patterns. These include the primitive, isolated, self-sufficient hunters and gatherers, and also the highly industrialized urban-based modern societies. There is general agreement in an ideally constructed model of an `archaic primitive world view' in which the concept of man, nature and supernature deeply interpenetrate. The three categories are woven together in a unified moral order. In such a state of mind man

intimately cares for nature and vice-versa. Further, in such a state, the relationship between man and man is fully social. It is essentially undifferentiated, egalitarian and non-hierarchical. In contrast to the prevailing stereotypes about the primitive hunter living in perpetual scarcity, more recent thinking about the archaic primitive's conception of nature is essentially one of bounty. Marshal Sahlins has described the archaic primitive as representing "the original affluent society." At this level there is obviously little scope for developing abstract concepts clearly defining the boundaries of "man," "nature" and "supernature." Nature is not regarded as a differentiated object of art or beauty. When attention is directed to modern industrialized society, the primitive linkages between man, nature and supernature are found to be sharply broken. Man has much lesser direct sympathy and knowledge for non-human items in nature and in the supernatural sphere, but he also has less immediate kin-like feeling with other human beings. As a result he has to mediate with men, nature and the supernatural through conscious constructs. These worlds of man, nature and supernature become sources for constant intellection by the literati and specialists. In all these developments we have to assume that there is a corelation between the subjective world of man and the objective reality of the social situation and its material infrastructure. One of the perennial problems of anthropology has been to speculate and theorize on the mode of transformation from the undifferentiated primitive world view to the highly differentiated abstract modern concept of the world. It is observed that while the ideal primitive is ideally non-alienated, the ideal modern man must face tremendous pressures of alienation from his fellow beings, from nature and also from a viable socially shared construct of cosmology. One of the pursuits of modern man has been, by re-discovering the primitive, to regain the unalienated self. Such efforts have been made in the fields of art and literature, as well as in some innovations in social institutions. They always leave one, however, with the feeling that certain archaic states of mind are irretrievably lost. A very interesting problem for anthropologists, and perhaps for philosophers as well, would be to construct the transformation rules for tracing both the development from the primitive to the modern world view and for movement in the reverse direction. Concretely, Indian civilization would appear to have been able to retain the primitive world view at a high level of conscious formulation, as well as in folkways of the rural peasantry. It is not for nothing that Sir Herbert Risley described Hinduism as "animism transformed by metaphysics." In terms of more recent anthropological jargon we would label such a transformation as orthogenetic, as distinct from "heterogenetic" or "secondary" transformation in the modern world by which the linkages with the primitive core are lost. The above mode of studying the problem may have relevance to the present problem of the relation of man and nature. It suggests some of the ways people at different levels of society define, consciously and sometimes not so consciously, the position of man in the cosmic order. Most of all, however, I should like to recommend the example of the great man who lived in this village and unfailingly held the torch for the highest ideals of man with very meager material resources. Visva-Bharati Santiniketan CHAPTER I SCIENCE AND METAPHYSICS BEFORE NATURE EVANDRO AGAZZI One of the most widely accepted commonplaces of `western culture' is that science is the only proper instrument with which to `know' nature. An equally widely accepted idea is that science has acquired this exclusive right to speak about nature by progressively expelling metaphysics from the field. This is confirmed by the fact that, whenever a statement is qualified by scientists as `metaphysical' it invariably means that such a statement must be rejected as naive, incorrect and

misleading. THE EXCLUSION OF METAPHYSICS This raises the important question of whether science alone is responsible for such an attitude, or whether philosophy itself has something to do with this underestimation of metaphysics. Clearly, the most effective reasons for the crisis of the reliability of metaphysics lie within philosophy. In fact, one of the most characteristic features of contemporary western philosophy is that it has more or less explicitly given up every pretense of `knowing', leaving the entire area of knowledge to science. This does not mean that contemporary philosophy has ceased to consider itself as a `rational' activity, or that its performances show less intellectual strength, ingenuity and rigor than those of earlier philosophies. It means simply that the aims of this rational investigation are oriented towards different goals, as, for example, human actions, the existential analysis of man's situation in life, or the phenomenological description of different kinds of human activities or conditions, including investigations concerning language and inquiries about the structure of science. The intellectual attitude shared by all these philosophical positions might be qualified as `analytic', inasmuch as the task of rational inquiry is conceived to be that of `analyzing', describing, decomposing or bringing to evidence what is in a way empirically given or detectable in the different fields. In this analysis one must not `add' anything which could come from our reason and thus appear as a possible intrusion upon the genuine structure of reality. In this sense, it could be maintained that contemporary philosophy shows a general mistrust towards any `synthetic' use of our reason, i.e., towards its work of building up something by its own powers without the permanent assistance of empirical control. If such be the most general feature of philosophy in our days, it is no wonder that metaphysics appears now to be less esteemed than at most any other point in its long history, for metaphysics is structurally based upon such a synthetic use of pure reason. It is essential that it be allowed to surpass experience and proceed to constructions founded upon the `mediation of experience'. From what has been said, philosophy would appear to bear the major responsibility for the decrease in the estimation of the power of reason which led to the rejection of metaphysics. On the other hand, this fact cannot be explained in a satisfactory manner without calling upon science; in fact, metaphysics was held for such a long series of centuries to be the core of every philosophical system that one cannot reasonably believe that philosophers have changed their mind on this crucial point simply because of an internal evolution of their discipline. In reality, they were induced to modify their conception of what philosophical knowledge ought to be by the impression made upon western culture by the enormous success of scientific knowledge. This impression was so great that it radically changed the `paradigm' of knowledge itself. Certainly, Kant was correct in qualifying as a `Copernican revolution' his famous substitution of the subject for the object as the barycenter of the theory of knowledge. A still more profound revolution, however, was implied when he proposed that the main task to be fulfilled by his Critique of Pure Reason was to investigate whether metaphysics `as a science' was possible. The very fact of asking this question indicates that science--more precisely natural science as it was exemplified by Newtonian mechanics--had already become the model or paradigm of the knowledge on the basis of which the theoretical claims of metaphysics were to be judged. If this was already true with Kant, it has increasingly emerged as the standard viewpoint of the majority of philosophers during the past century, and more particularly in this century. In this way there emerged a philosophical attitude which may be outlined as follows. Science has provided the only example of a sound knowledge. It has been able to do so, not only without any need of transcending or mediating experience, but by explicitly forbidding such a mediation. It follows that philosophy, too, may hope to become a sound discourse only by discarding this mediation and, hence, by recognizing as illusory every metaphysics which adopts the mediation of

experience as its crucial instrument. SCIENCE AND THE MEDIATION OF EXPERIENCE What must now be investigated briefly is whether such reasoning is actually correct. This can be done by asking first whether the sciences really do avoid every mediation of experience. On this point, much has been done during the last decades. Contemporary philosophy of science has left far behind the basic tenets which characterized the conception of science defended by E. Mach towards the end of the past century and was advocated by logical empiricists during the first decades of our century. They claimed that in science the content of genuine knowledge is confined to empirical statements. Theoretical constructs do not state any knowledge in the proper sense because they simply result from `tautological' transformations of the empirical statements and as such cannot add any new information of their own. At best, by means of suitable logical analysis, they can be `reduced' to empirical statements. Their task, therefore, is simply pragmatic; it amounts to offering the possibility of an `economic' organization of empirical truths for the sake of their better employment in making predictions, realizing applications, etc. In principle they could be dropped without any loss of knowledge; hence, they could be eliminated from pure science as such. Historical developments in the inquiry concerning the structure of science, however, have shown how illusory were such viewpoints. Without entering here into details, it is sufficient to stress the two main results concerning empirical sciences, namely, the essential indispensability of the theoretical components and the impossibility of clearly distinguishing the empirical from the theoretical impossibility. Why did the elimination of the theoretical side prove impossible? It is not just a matter of fact, but has a deeper philosophical reason. If science were simply a pragmatic enterprise undoubtedly it could dispense with theory construction, because empirical evidence suffices for handling things. The fact that theory could not be eliminated from science is evidence that science has another task to fulfill, namely, `understanding' reality. By `understand' is meant something more than purely `ascertain', for which pure experience might perhaps be sufficient. Certainly, as a starting point the process of understanding requires that evidential data be `ascertained'. But it then proceeds by introducing further statements or hypotheses by means of which it is possible to 'give a reason' for what was already `evident'. This structure of rational understanding shows that in order to reach its goal empirical evidence is not sufficient and that nonempirical elements must be employed. This implies the following consequences: (i) science necessarily contains nonempirical concepts and statements; (ii) to reach these science needs some mediation of experience; (iii) this is due to the fact that, even in the case of science, the immediate does not appear as the original; and (iv) the process for reaching the understanding of the immediate employs two principles: experience and logos, which is a creative and synthetic use of pure reason. The four requirements just mentioned can easily be recognized as the cornerstone for the construction of a metaphysics. It can be concluded, therefore, that no objection against metaphysics can be derived from a methodological analysis of science. This conclusion may sound a bit too optimistic and hasty; an objection of the following type seems natural. It is true that science cannot help employing a mediation of experience, but the all-important point is to remain constantly within a `faithful mediation'; this means not venturing beyond any possible control of what is said during the course of this mediation. Science has always felt this duty of remaining faithful to experience as its categorical imperative. This can be seen from the fact that even the most abstract and theoretical statements must be connected with other fully empirical statements by logical and mathematical links which, though complicated, are always open to investigation. This is the deepest sense of the `principle of verification'; it cannot be circumvented, even when one is aware of the shortcomings which affected this

principle in the first stages of its too pretentious formulation. Metaphysics, on the contrary, has unfortunately forgotten this fundamental obligation, allowing itself every type of freedom in mediating experience. This is the main reason for its failure in the attempt to produce acceptable knowledge. This objection appears at first to be quite strong, but further analysis will enable one to accept the truth it contains, without it constituting a difficulty against metaphysics. The way out of the impasse is offered by the fact that we are not concerned here with a problem of `faithful mediation' proper, but rather with a question of selecting a specific thematic domain, framework of questioning, or viewpoint for inquiry, etc. A full explanation of all this would need a rather detailed analysis of the structure of scientific objectivity. The present author has developed that elsewhere, but the most relevant points of this analysis can be restated succinctly. SCIENCE AND METAPHYSICS: `THE WHOLE OF EXPERIENCE' AND THE `WHOLE' A science is never concerned with the entire domain of `reality'; rather, from this it designates its specific domain of `objects' by resorting to some `predicates' which can be thought of as representing its `viewpoint' on reality. Mechanics, for example, investigates reality only by means of predicates such as mass, length, time and force, as well as some other predicates which can be obtained from these primitive ones by means of explicit definitions; electrodynamics characterizes its objects by means of primitive predicates such as time, length, charge and other explicitly defined concepts, etc. This procedure is quite universal and can be verified in every exact science. It can be maintained, therefore, that every science characterizes its objects or determines its proper `domain of objects' by means of its specific predicates. It follows that whatever is not characterized by these predicates falls outside the competence of this science while, on the other hand, everything which can be characterized by them falls within its competence. Every such set of specific predicates determines `the whole' of physics. By adjoining to this the whole of chemistry, the whole of biology, etc., one obtains the whole of natural science. In a kind of limit considerations, by considering the complex of all possible scientific `wholes' one obtains the `whole of science', which may be considered as characterized by the totality of all possible empirically definable predicates. For this reason, we could say that the specific domain of science is 'the whole of experience.' This is because the 'objects' of science in general are built up by means of primitive empirical predicates, which fact automatically limits the competence of science to what can be described by such predicates. The `choice' of each set of primitive predicates is itself contingent. While this determines the whole of a certain science, it cannot prevent other sciences from being both different and equally legitimate `viewpoints' upon reality. The choice of such viewpoints is in fact a matter of `decision' and `interest', for no intrinsic necessity could compel one to consider a dog, e.g., from the viewpoint of mechanics rather than of biology or psychology. On the contrary, one would be perfectly right in deciding to consider the dog from all such different viewpoints, and additional ones as well. If we apply this remark to science, we must say that adopting a scientific attitude towards reality amounts to taking the decision to place oneself from the viewpoint of the `whole of experience', as we have already discussed. This decision is certainly fully legitimate. It does not, however, state a necessity, but is contingent; nor can it exclude other decisions and viewpoints from being equally legitimate. In particular, one could be interested in investigating reality from the viewpoint, not of the `whole of experience', but of the `whole' without further specification. In this case, he would not be obliged to limit himself to statements which could be traced back to experience. Such a condition is compulsory for science only because the `whole of experience' constitutes its specific domain of inquiry, but this cannot be the condition for admitting statements which are concerned with the `whole' without limitation. If now we

qualify metaphysics as the effort to investigate reality from the viewpoint of the `whole', which is different from investigating `the whole of experience,' the verification principle cannot constitute an objection because it is simply a `demarcation' criterion which circumscribes only the domain of science (i.e., the domain of the `whole of experience'). What does not fulfill this principle can be said to fall outside science, but not outside all meaningful inquiry. Something more should be noted. Not only is science unable to exclude the questioning of the `whole' as such, but there are moments when the viewpoint of the `whole' comes into play within scientific discourse itself. Each specialized field of scientific research suffers a kind of `contingency', as mentioned above. This implies the well-known characteristic of `refutability' for scientific statements: one can never be sure that nature can be described fully by means of those precise predicates which are selected in order to establish a certain domain of inquiry. Hence, one must always expect to be confronted with aspects of reality which fall outside the possibility of being treated by means of the accepted tools of inquiry. When such cases appear, one is faced with the problem of the `whole', in relation to which he must measure the inadequacy of his previous viewpoints. Speaking more generally, whenever one is concerned with the problems of the `foundations' of science--and this happens not only in the philosophy of science, but at times also in science itself--one cannot help being involved with the viewpoint of the `whole'. These clarifications make possible a clear evaluation of the philosophical position which reproaches metaphysics for neglecting in its statements the continuous control of experience. In order to be correct, that is, in order not to confuse the `contingent' choice of the viewpoint of the `whole of experience' that characterizes science with a `necessary' requirement for every meaningful discourse, those advocating that position must prove that the `whole' coincides with the `whole of experience.' Surely, there is no such proof in the entire history of philosophy, and such a claim must be held to be purely dogmatic. What is more, if such a proof were ever to be proposed it would necessarily be metaphysical, for in order to show that the `whole' coincides with the `whole of experience' one cannot help taking `the viewpoint of the whole' which means adopting a metaphysical attitude. What has been said thus far is fair not only to metaphysics, but to science, because it does not claim that science contains at least some metaphysical elements, as some philosophers today seem to maintain. In fact, when we established that science is obliged to admit mediation of experience, to accept nonempirical elements in its theoretical apparatus and to resort to a synthetic use of reason, one might have felt inclined to consider all that as a claim that these are unavoidable metaphysical components of any scientific knowledge. But this is not true because all these elements always concern the `whole of experience.' How this can happen may be exemplified quite easily. A concept like that of an electron in physics is obtained by a mediation of the empirical evidence because it is not directly observable; it is a theoretical construct and, as such, nonempirical. Despite all that, this concept should not be classified as `metaphysical' because the `predicates' through which it is characterized are still the usual predicates adopted to circumscribe the `whole of physics,' like mass, charge, etc. In this way one can see how it is possible to `mediate' experience, which means to transcend the field of immediate evidence, without leaving the `whole of experience' as a thematic domain of inquiry. On the contrary, when a metaphysician says, e.g., that God exists, he does not intend that this entity be definable through the same predicates as the usually experienced things, but, quite the contrary, that it belongs to a different `whole' with respect to the `whole of experience.' Till now we have discussed the legitimacy of holding the viewpoint of the `whole' along with the viewpoint of science and have found a sound foundation for this. We shall now proceed to see whether such a viewpoint, besides being legitimate, is somehow required. We shall see that this is actually the case.

THE NECESSITY OF METAPHYSICS Let us return, first, to the remark that science aims at `understanding' reality. To do so, it has developed a special strategy of separating our many specialized domains of inquiry and building upon them adequate theories. It is through these theories that all the different domains can be thought of as organized `wholes' and `understood' one in relation to the other. But the task of understanding reality does not seem to be exhausted by this work which renders only a certain number of partial `viewpoints'. It is quite inevitable, therefore, that an effort should be made to `interpret' the results of scientific inquiry itself and compose them in a unified perspective. We might call such a further step an effort at `understanding the understandings' or, more simply at `interpreting the explanations' given by the different sciences. In fact, the concept of `explanation' is the one commonly employed to label the process of building up scientific theories for the understanding of evidential data in the different domains of research. We could say that the attempt to understand reality requires as a first step explanations of the different aspects of reality, followed by an interpretation of all these explanations which can bring them to unity. Again, the viewpoint of the `whole' appears decisive for the task of understanding and shows the necessity of complementing the partial views science can offer. It is, on the other hand, worth noticing that the need to understand is something different from `knowledge' as such; though surely understanding must be concerned with knowledge, it also includes an appreciation or evaluation of knowledge which, as such, cannot be included within knowledge proper. In other words, we could say that understanding comes from reflecting upon known things after they have been determined in a certain way by a scientific inquiry. This reflection has the double function of conferring an intellectual `interpretation' upon them as well as that of `giving a sense' with reference to something that already has a `value' character. The philosophical notion of the `reflecting judgment', borrowed in a way from Kant, seems to be the best suited for indicating something concerned with reason rather than simply with feelings or something of the kind, which expresses a view of the whole, which engages in some kind of evaluation and, therefore, somehow involves values. Surely one is entitled to employ the name of metaphysics in order to encompass all that for, speaking historically, metaphysics has meant at least such a completely encompassing perspective, directed towards an interpretation of reality, with the purpose of proposing for it a `sense' which reflects some frame of values. This seems to us to be still a first legitimated sense in which one is entitled today to conceive a metaphysics along with the sciences. But another question arises when we consider the fact that, historically speaking, metaphysics has often presented itself as a form of `knowledge' and not simply as an `interpretation' of reality. Is it possible to maintain this claim in our time? From what was said about the point of view of the `whole' as distinguished from the viewpoint of the `whole of experience,' we can say that such a possibility cannot be denied a priori, though it is too complicated a task for the present paper to show under which conditions the project of a metaphysics as `knowledge' might be thought of as realizable. At any rate, this problem need not be solved in order to treat the question that is of interest to us here, namely, the relationships between man and nature. Can such a question be envisaged correctly with the help of scientific knowledge only, or does it also call metaphysics into play? Beyond all doubt a metaphysical consideration cannot be dispensed with, because every possible proposal about the correct way of conceiving this relationship follows from an `interpretation' of man and nature respectively, which cannot be attained by means of science alone. In fact, every scientific consideration necessarily unifies man and nature, but this happens simply because, as repeatedly noted above, every science must employ its own uniforming criteria or `viewpoints' or `specific predicates.' Though this fact is so trivial that it does not deserve special discussion, it seems to be so badly understood that we want to stress it.

If one takes the point of view, e.g., of the color red, he will relate under this viewpoint a red pencil and a red butterfly. From this particular viewpoint, that is, as `red objects', they are indistinguishable, there is a much greater difference between a red pencil and a blue pencil that between a red pencil and a red butterfly. But if one considers a butterfly and a pencil each as a `whole', surely he will put the red and the blue pencil together and consider the red butterfly as something very different. Applying this to science, every science is done by instituting uniformities and deleting differences; i.e., by introducing at least one viewpoint under which things can be considered as uniform even if they differ under many other viewpoints. If this be the cognitive procedure of science, it can be easily understood that one can scarcely expect to discover differences between man and nature by continuously applying tools of inquiry which render only uniform knowledge of the two. On the other hand, if the two terms of the relation are not conceived as distinct the very problem of their relationship becomes immediately meaningless because identity is the only relation that can hold between two indistinguishables. It follows that only a metaphysical perspective, which enables one to consider man as a `whole' and nature as another `whole' can provide the correct approach to our question. Moreover, in order to study this relationship we need a broader viewpoint; we must conceive man and nature from the viewpoint of a `whole' in which there is place for both. Such a viewpoint cannot be the rather general viewpoint of the `whole of experience' because, from a purely methodological consideration, we cannot be sure that the adoption of this viewpoint, which despite its breadth is still specialized, would not lead us to neglect differences which cannot be perceived within it. The only methodologically correct position is therefore to adopt the genuinely general viewpoint of the `whole' without specification, i.e., the authentic metaphysical viewpoint. This attitude is the only methodologically correct one because it is the only one which leaves open all the possible issues. It is possible that, as a result of inquiry, one might discover a transcendence of man with respect to nature; but it is also possible that, as a result, one might conclude that man is simply a part of nature. The second result would imply that natural sciences provide the entire basis for understanding man. In that case, the conclusion would be correct; whereas were it to be reached from natural science it would be not the result, but the presupposition of the inquiry and, as such, would beg the question. That a metaphysical consideration may be needed, can be inferred from a dichotomy in the study of man that is typical of our present civilization. On the one side, progress in biology, neurophysiology and cybernetics seems to indicate that modellings of man can proceed very far, the tools provided by the natural sciences and technology could suffice to provide an interpretation of man as a very sophisticated machine or, at least, as a product of nature with no right to claim privileged place among other natural beings. The result is a fully naturalistic doctrine of man, which conceives him very much like one of the usual `things' in the world. The strange fact is that, alongside this general conception and frequently within the intellectual circles that adopt it, we find a strong protest against the so-called `reification' of man, i.e., against the common trend to manipulate and exploit man, to treat him like a pure thing without respect for his dignity. It should be clear that the naturalistic anthropology expressed by the first point of view cannot provide a consistent ground for what is expressed by the second. If in the last analysis man has to be conceived like a machine or one of the many things in the world, there is no apparent reason for refusing to employ or treat him as one would a machine or other natural objects. In other words, because no room for values seems to be left inside science and technology proper, to react against the reification of man is to hint at the presence of some values and hence of a certain unexpressed and implicit metaphysics. It would be a great advantage to dig this out and to present it in all its explicitness. There is nothing wrong in having a metaphysics, while there may be great danger in having an unconscious dogmatic and hidden one.

Interestingly, a rather similar approach is now being developed towards nature. It begins to be perceived once again that nature is not the pure and simple collection of `objects' to which man is entitled, not only to know, but to exploit, manipulate and dispose of in a completely arbitrary and capricious manner. More and more, nature is emerging as a complex `reality' which must be considered as a `whole' and, as such, possesses intrinsic properties that cannot be disregarded without danger. It is surely not a case of returning to a personification of Nature; nevertheless, serious people speak once again of some `rights' of nature and of a certain dignity which may call for some `respect' from the side of man. In other words, the language of values, too, finds a certain place within the discourse about nature and this indicates the need for an appropriate metaphysics of nature. Such a metaphysics need not be conceived according to the old models which certainly were superceded by science. It is, however, precisely at this point that the difficulty lies: today man is conscious of the urgency of interpreting himself, nature and his position within and in relation to nature. Science can offer him a certain amount of `knowledge' for the fulfillment of this task, but, as noted above, that knowledge, though necessary, is not sufficient. Whence will man complement this knowledge in order to satisfy his need for `understanding' himself and nature--from poetry or from some vague and generic intuitions? For individual needs such solutions may at times prove useful, but they cannot be of general use. Moreover, they are weak in that they are quite unrelated to scientific achievements, while what is needed are interpretations of man and nature which take scientific information into account, explain it and include it within a `whole' which gives it a sense. If these are the requirements for a modern understanding of man and nature, it is practically impossible to avoid the conclusion that such an understanding can be offered only by a rational investigation which is in agreement with science without being confined within its accepted limits. It is the specific task of philosophy to provide such a rational inquiry; more specifically, it is the task of a philosophy which does not consider itself restricted to a simply `analytic' attitude. This constitutes an appeal for a metaphysics that is rigorous, rational and cautious, but also effective and courageous. University of Genoa Genoa, Italy CHAPTER II DOES SCIENCE COINCIDE WITH OUR KNOWLEDGE ABOUT NATURE? ANDRE MERCIER The question of this study is: Does Science coincide with our knowledge about nature? Our reasonable answer might be that we do not know the answer, for, to answer the question, we would need to possess a precise definition of science and a sufficiently encompassing knowledge of Nature to be able to see whether, under the present circumstances, the coincidence of the two is realized with a satisfactory approximation. Even this would not help much, however, for who guarantees that Science will always satisfy the definition adopted and that we do not lack an extensive body of knowledge of Nature concerning which at present we have no idea whatsoever and which may possibly escape completely the scientific enterprise. History, on the one hand, may help us by suggesting some sort of evaluation, even of extrapolation. It is a fact that at one time philosophia naturalis signified what is meant by science today, that it had quite universal pretentions and that its precise subject-matter1 was Nature. Even if it is true that in its time Newton's Principia did no more than explain the dynamics of inanimate point masses under the assumption that all their interactions were transmitted by forces, the Principia became the paradigm of what was to be the ever more encompassing science of Nature, viz., Physics. Science, insofar as it has developed in the tradition derived from physics, is therefore often seen as the only kind of knowledge we can have of Nature, no other knowledge in that field being considered authentic.

Probably most scientists today would say so. On the other hand, the word Nature is somehow assumed to cover the Greek phusis, or at least the Latin natura rerum. Since res is the origin of the words real and reality, physics would have somehow to cover reality as the totality of existent things and of their classes and classes of classes. Their knowledge must then be some sort of intelligible, ordered and rational explanation of the `nature' of these qua existing things, i.e., the nature of reality. Now, the extent to which simple words can be understood is in a way unlimited. Under no circumstance can we limit it to anything fixed and final, for, apart from the fact that no living language allows itself to be restricted in that way, the very purpose of knowledge as the act of cognition is to extend its workings to ever larger frames. Hence, Science cannot be just one printed book or any number of books containing a finite number of propositions about a specific kind of thing. Therefore, we should rather try to determine the `nature of reality' and compare it with the `kind of knowledge' Science represents before we restate the original question and try to answer it. When we say `nature of reality,' we do not use the word nature as if it were written with a capital N, that is, as a system of existent beings or an object susceptible of inner and outer relations. We use it instead as a lasting property, a necessary attribute, an essence. Thus, the same word sometimes takes on the meaning of existence, as in capital `Nature', and sometimes of an essence, in spite of the Aristotelian opposition between these terms. One is nearly tempted to forge a monstrum and ask, what is the `nature' of that `Nature'? Either this does not make sense, as it does not make sense to ask what is the elephant of an elephant; or if it does, in contrast to elephant, it must encompass enough to make it coincide with its nature. The question is not one of analyzing the language we use, but of understanding what we believe to be implied by that which is covered by a word used throughout the ages with a concealed but deeply felt meaning. Its definition cannot be made explicit, nor can it be made implicit in the sense of Hilbert. The word nature is not a concept within a limited, hopefully axiomatizable system of science, but a notion. A notion is always deeply felt to correspond to a basic constituent of the totality of Being of which, however, no exact picture can be delivered. Time is another example of a notion, and it is well-known that neither Augustine nor any contemporary has succeeded in telling what it is. Nature, then, is that which coincides with its own nature. The German language has a good word which cannot be translated into English or French: der Inbegriff. Nature, we might say, is the Inbergriff of all the natures of things. So, in a way, it is nothing but reality, i.e., the Inbergriff of the nature of things. I do not think that any one thing could be omitted by such a notion. Why should it? There is no sufficient reason to exclude anything from nature, unless it has `no nature.' The question arises, therefore: Are there `things', which do not have a nature? The answer to that is, I believe: either No, if you confine yourself to existence; or Yes, if you take beings into account which do not need to exist in order to be. Rather than attempt to oppose essence and existence then, we ask, what is the difference between being and existence? This appears to be a more modern mode of inquiry. To my mind, the difference is that existent beings are beings in time, within time if you will, whereas beings qua beings need not be within time. I would exclude mathematical beings and `beings of reason' (êtres de raison) which are not in time and whose being is not ontic, but at most ideal and fictitious. What else remains which is ontic without being temporal? Either nothing, if all things have been already counted among the natural things, or an infinite and capital Being usually called God. There could not be several gods, for each would have to be distinguished from the others by specific natures; this is excluded, since it would make a thing out of each of them. There is nothing, then, apart from God which is not part of Nature. Those who

cannot `believe' in God are materialists--they might also be called `naturalists'. The word `believe' here is not endowed with a specific religious connotation, but it does indicate a notable difference between knowledge about things and belief in God. It might be remarked there is no knowledge of God in the sense of knowledge about Nature, unless God becomes incarnated. But that belief does not concern us here, it concerns religion. Marxists usually term idealists all who are not dialectical materialists. This classification into two groups is one of the fundamental errors of Marxism today, for some--and I would personally claim to be among them--are neither Marxist nor idealist. Another error of Marxism is the pretension that all authentic apprehension of the natural things, i.e., of everything, has to be scientific. The scientific approach, however, is not the only one available. Certainly, anyone is entitled to restrict the word `knowledge' to `scientific knowledge'. But to declare then that there is no other would be a vicious circle. One should first understand what he wishes to signify by saying that he knows, and secondly find out in what the scientific approach consists. Then he can see whether they coincide. As to knowledge, I have repeatedly written that it must be understood as an act performed by the human subject with the purpose of (re-)establishing a relation between his self and the being of things of which he becomes aware. At the beginning of his existence man is spiritually--or mentally if you prefer--isolated from the things around him and even from himself as a thing. This state of isolation becomes increasingly intolerable as one's awareness of it increases. Sometimes, in an attitude of contemplation, it leads the individual to abolish the need of establishing individual links between his self and the other individual things in their multiplicity and their diversity. This can happen very early in life as in the case, for example, of Ramana Maharshi, or later on in life after the isolation has been overcome by other means. The contemplative attitude is a perfectly authentic modality of knowledge which, however, is not scientific. Surely, everyone will agree not to call it scientific, whereas not all acknowledge it to be authentic. Conversely, some consider it the only authentic one and scientific knowledge to be an illusion. There is then a kind of knowledge which is not scientific, not objective; moreover, it does not establish a link with Nature since its procedure is precisely to evade the diverse nature of things in order to contemplate the divine, which is not Nature. At this point, one might be tempted to conclude that if there is a kind of knowledge which is neither science nor knowledge of Nature, then Science coincides with the knowledge about Nature. The fallacy in this conclusion is immediately evident: from having found one alternative mode of cognition it does not follow that there are no other modes. Indeed, if on the one hand there is within the contemplative attitude or modality only that one mode called mystic, there are alternative modes to science within the other modality which proceeds by judgment. An example brings this vividly to mind. Imagine a valley covered by grass, trees and other vegetation. Considered as a whole the valley appears green. A geographer could produce a map of the valley indicating its green-ness by some conventional sign and using different signs to distinguish grass from trees and other kinds of vegetation. He could even paint or print them in various shades of green to objectively reproduce the shades of the various species. As a scientist the geographer would measure the areas covered by woods and grass, put the towns in their right positions on the map and so on. Some twenty-five years ago, however, the Welsh poet Llewellyn wrote a book which he entitled How Green Was My Valley. His readers recognized a valley and got to love it as much, though quite differently, than if they had known it from the map. The book was not a piece of science, it was a work of art. When Rabindranath Tagore founded his School at Santiniketan, he knew that one can teach by poetry, music and the arts and that this can aid children to mature as well as teaching by physics and the sciences. He knew also that poetry and the arts yield an understanding of the things surrounding us which is as excellent,

trusty and valuable as the objective approach typical of science. The valleys and towns, trees and blades, stars and atoms are things of nature and in Nature. I can approach them objectively, i.e., as objects to be counted and measured, cut or analyzed by chemistry, spectroscopy, or another science. I can write protocol notes about my findings, by induction I can propose laws about their behavior, and I can deduce from these laws what these objects presumably would do under such and such hypothetical conditions. I can even verify by experiment whether my deductions coincide with their actual behavior when they are placed in a situation described by the said hypotheses. This is the way science works; it is always done objectively. Blaise Pascal taught how to do it exactly by doing it himself in proving the possibility of the vacuum outside the terrestrial atmosphere: a typical saying about the nature of things. Nevertheless, there remains one difficulty. The scientific reconstruction of the workings of Nature may be very accurate, but it is never totally or `absolutely' accurate; its accuracy is valid only within the limits of an approximation. The approximation is due to the fact that, though we approach Nature, we never possess it. A scientific description is to Nature what a glove is to the hand or clothes are to bodies. The scientific enterprise looks like the attempt at possessing the body, at raping Nature as if she were a maiden; but the rape never succeeds, though scientists naively often believe that it does. Here, for the second time I am using the term `believe'. There is a belief in science which is akin to the belief in a god in religion. The religious belief implies both confidence and awe, both of which lead to a devotion towards the capital Being recognized. The scientific belief implies a comparable feeling and the certainty that something, rather than nothing, is there inside the clothes. It is like a hand being within the glove or, better, bodies within the clothes as they are called in Newtonian dynamics. These bodies are believed to look exactly like the inside of the clothes, like the `contents' of the laws, although nobody has ever possessed such a body totally and absolutely. The scientist is confident that Nature consists of such bodies, and each time he finds that he has too grossly conceived some sort of body he replaces the image by a more elaborate one. Thus, he declared the larger bodies to be composed of elements, calling them too soon atoms, for these in their turn must be declared to be composed of particles, which in turn yield to subparticles, etc., without end. Yet, in spite of this never-ending replacement of gross entities by finer ones, he still believes in the existence of things or of a Nature as the real content of his successive speculations, which he calls theories involving laws. Only the philosophers, especially the logicians, could be so mean as to say that perhaps the laws have no such content and that perhaps the words of scientists concern nothing but pure constructs. When I was a young student, it was the fashion among many philosophers of science to say this. But Max Planck dissented and claimed unshaken that no scientist can fail to believe in the real existence of the things in Nature. Let us return now to How Green Was My Valley. The arts are very similar to the sciences. Certainly, there is the fundamental difference between physics and music, biology and painting, metaphysics and poetry inasmuch as the sciences are objective, while the arts are subjective. Indeed, the former abstract from the concrete and establish theories from facts, whereas the latter produce concrete realizations from ideas. Nevertheless, just as the former theories and laws are but approximations of an assumed real content, for the latter concrete works of art are but approximate representations of ideas conceived. These ideas are always ideas about things and their inter-relatedness, even though on the whole-especially in modern art--concrete works may not photographically or phonographically resemble objects as seen by the eyes or heard by the ears. An idea is always an idea of . . . or about . . .; therefore it implies the relationship of the properties of beings among themselves. Hence the creative artist experiences them as feelings; his attempts to concretize them are the forms taken by his subjective judgments and may be more or less adequate to the idea

itself. The degree of adequation of a work of art to the conceived idea is similar to the degree of approximation of the theory to the assumed content. These two enterprises, art and science, are one and the same as apprehensions of the existence of things, while contrasting one to the other in their modes of judgment. On account of this sameness, both science and art apprehend Nature, for both deal with the reality of things and show how they are and behave as we experience them. In art, however, Nature is made comprehensible subjectively, whereas science makes it comprehensible objectively. This conclusion is a very important step in answering the original question: Does science coincide with our knowledge about Nature? The answer is definitely No, since there is at least one field comparable to science in size and originality which is part of our knowledge of Nature and differs from science as a mode, viz., art. There is a particular problem concerning poetry. This is often considered apart from the `other' arts, though it is an artistic activity. Is there on the objective plane an activity which similarly stands apart from the sciences and is yet a `science'? There is; it is metaphysics. Here, significantly, metaphysics should not be understood as meaning philosophy itself. Rather, it is the kind of ontological research that is concerned with the apprehension and comprehension of being notwithstanding their temporal existence. This requires a procedure for transcending the temporal nature of things. Hence, in that sense, metaphysics is not a study of Nature, for Nature is the Inbegriff of the natures of things qua things in their temporal existence--here the phrase `temporal existence' is a sort of pleonasm, since the existence is always temporal. Thus metaphysics, though objective by the nature of its judgments, is not a science proper since it judges on the basis of an experience of beings without attending to time, whereas the sciences proper judge on the basis of an experience of things as within time. I would not object to saying that metaphysics does not deal with Nature. If it is to make sense, however, it must be related to the sciences proper in the way just described. Thus, metaphysics assumes Nature in order to be able to abstract from it by leading its existence back to a timeless being: that is its ontological concern. Metaphysics is the knowledge of the ontic, but not of the existential. The same applies, mutatis mutandis, to poetry which is also concerned with the timelessness of beings; it starts from ideas of timeless beings and works them out in words. Poetry lacks the concreteness of works of the arts, though of course the print or voice are very concrete. With metaphysics, it preserves an element of abstractedness which keeps its works from being pieces of the natural world. The corresponding experience of the ontic world with which they deal by poetry and metaphysics is, if not alien to, yet different from the experience of natural things which pertains to the sciences or the arts proper. This does not mean that works of the arts other than poetry change in time. They may involve time as in music, dance, mobile and the like, but they do so in a way meant to suspend time as the support of existence, for if a thing is to be the representation of an idea it must be in a sense devoid of time since every idea is outside time. Also science yields laws and systems of laws whose mere validity, that is, whose noncontradictoriness and adequateness to reality, make them devoid of time, even though they describe the temporal behavior or real existence of the things. `Poetry and the arts' is thus a phrase analogous to `metaphysics and the sciences'. This gives by analogy a statute to metaphysics which is in a way much clearer than many vague representations of the work of metaphysics and protects it from the attacks of positivists and others on the plane of objective research. We could say, on the one hand, that, if we want to define Nature in its mere relation to the scientific or objective approach, Nature is the assumed existing contents of the laws and theories of science which are themselves timeless on the basis of their abstract validity. Hence, to abstract means to abstract from time as well as from concreteness. On the other hand, Nature in its relation to art and

the subjective approach is reality manifested through the concretization of ideas felt as valid. This concretization also takes account of the character of timelessness, although the works themselves become and appear as endowed with temporality in order to embody the nature of existent beings. This raises the question: Are Science as the objective mode and Art as the subjective one the only apprehensions and comprehensions of Nature? One who would prefer to limit the use of the word Nature to the assumed existing contents of scientific laws only, rather than extend it to the reality manifested in art, would of course close the debate and answer: Certainly not, since to his mind the extension to art already exceeds the commonsense of reasonable vocabulary. Since, however, science and art pertain to the same final matter called Nature--which could be said to be an `object-matter' in the one case and a `subject-matter' in the other2--it is reasonable to ask whether that is the end of the apprehension of Nature or not. To that question, the answer is: No, for there is indeed a form of the interrelation between subject and object which is neither realized in the things called works of art nor idealized in the systems of laws called theories. It consists of the usages and manners according to which subjects and objects interact. When subjects and objects are both human beings and interact, these manners in their organized totality are called morals. It is commonly believed-and this is the fourth use of the word--that they result from a conscious reciprocity on the side of both partners. However there is no difference of principle between these human morals and, say, the ways in which a master acts towards his dog or horse and in which these animals behave by reaction. There is similarity also to the ways a stonebreaker prepares the pavement of a causeway, since the stones have to be chosen and broken in a `manner' suited to the purpose and they split according to both their nature and the stroke of the hammer. In their interaction subject and object are mannerly, i.e., morally interrelated. It is generally believed that there is a choice of good manners, preferable to all other choices and adequate to the nature of these subjects and objects in their relatedness. This indicates that morals is also a mode of apprehension of Nature, for natural things are involved in it in their existence or, more properly, a coexistence resulting from the desire of the subject to establish a link with the object different from the objective and from the subjective modes. There, too, there is a meaningful pursuit or research carried on without the temporality of that coexistence. That pursuit, however, must take place without the existence of two different partners, else it could not escape the timeliness (as opportune temporality) of their coexistence. Therefore, the `metaphysical' analogue in morals is the morals of the person, where the subject is in interaction with his own self and which--unaware of any particular timeliness--can only be displayed in the mirror of the unchanging capital Being. As in poetry and in metaphysics, the natured-ness of the relation between subject and object evanesces. In regular morals which implies community, i.e., the particular concerned coexistence of beings, however, a Nature is thought to support the morals. Otherwise, why should the manners be chosen as they are, even if each choice cannot be better than an assumed good choice for the partnership to be successful (the quality of the good being weighed by the success of the choice)? Thus, all judgments of value--whether of truth in science, of beauty in art or of the good in morals--concern a Nature which is believed to be there as a reason of the activity and a source of experience. Though grounded in the empirical order, values would not be understandable without the theoretical, the ideal, or the ethical. If there were no such Nature, why should we act at all? All would be mere convention and hence arbitrariness; no pragmatic relation between the mind and reality could exist and be understood. In other words: Nature is what keeps activity from being arbitrary. Hence, if we hold that our judgments are not arbitrary, we must believe that a Nature is there to be approached as nearly as possible, that Nature is one and as comprehensive as possible. It is also comprehensible, however, for if our knowledge is not

exercised on a vacuum--which would constitute an illusion--then it is exercised on Nature. Science is one royal way to grasp Nature, but it is not identical with our knowledge about Nature. Institut des Sciences Exactes Berne, Switzerland NOTES 1. I would prefer to say: object-matter. See below. 2. See footnote 1, above. CHAPTER III SCIENCE AND NATURE ERROL E. HARRIS THE IDEA OF NATURE AND ITS DEVELOPMENT Science is the effort to think systematically about the world as we experience it, and the results of that thinking. Apart from such systematic thinking no conception of Nature would be entertained. The idea of Nature is the concomitant of science for it is the idea of the world as a single structure of interrelated bodies and events determined by uniform and universal laws, the indispensable presupposition of scientific thinking. A view of the world as a fortuitous collection of spirits and their arbitrary behaviour is not an idea of Nature, nor even of a world created, sustained and manipulated by a single god. Rather, the idea of Nature is that of a self-sustaining, self-activated world, producing its own phenomena according to its own intrinsic laws of activity. This is the necessary presupposition of science, because the aim of science is rational explanation. This is possible only if the phenomena to be explained are determined by principles which are regular, universal and intrinsic to a unitary and coherent system. Accordingly we find the idea of Nature emerging in the West concurrently with the scientific thinking of the early Ionian philosophers from Thales onward. First, the nature of things or what determined their mutual disposition and behaviour was conceived as the stuff of which they were made; the unitary, systematic relationships among them was preserved by regarding this substance as fundamentally one and pervasive. All things were held to be water, or all air, or fire; their diversity was explained as the differentiation of the one fundamental stuff or nature according to a single principle of change such as rarefaction and condensation. Hence, the idea of Nature was extended to the general way in which things are constructed, interrelated and mutually affected. Scientific treatises were those `on the nature of things', and they explored precisely these features of the contents of the experienced world. Finally, the world as a whole, as a system of interrelated entities governed by universal laws, came to be thought of as a single, individual Nature, which was frequently personified and conceived as ubiquitous, omnicompetent and all-inclusive. To the Greeks, Nature was one vast, living, self-moving, sentient and conscious organism in which human and other living beings were localized centers of the pervasive soul-substance. In the last resort, this soul-substance was identical with, and the pure form of, that ultimate stuff or nature of which all things were made. The lesser souls, whether of gods, man, or animals, were differentiated by varying degrees of adulteration of the original stuff by its own less appropriate forms. The problem for the Greeks, both metaphysical and practical, was how the human soul could purify itself and become wholly reidentified with the universal substance. The birth of modern science in the 16th century produced an entirely new conception of Nature. The cause and the stages of the revolution are familiar and can be passed over here. Only the final result need be mentioned. With the development of the notions of gravity and inertia, Nature came to be viewed as an aggregation of bodies which moved under the influence of mechanical forces dependent solely upon their mass and position. Nature was thus seen as a vast machine.

As is well-known, this conception involved a cleavage between the machine as the total aggregate of material existence and the conscious mind, whether of God as its putative creator or of man as the subject of scientific knowledge. Various attitudes toward Nature arise out of the dichotomy so created. Nature is first the object of human knowledge, set over against the knowing mind as an alien other to be observed from without. Next, as science succeeds in discovering natural laws, Nature becomes an opponent to be conquered and controlled, a combination of force to be subdued and domesticated in order to serve the purposes of man. Subsequently it becomes apparent that Nature in the service of man has limitations, that resources of matter and energy can become exhausted or so modified that man's purposes may be defeated by the very technology he employs to serve them. Supervening upon these attitudes toward Nature, however, a third conception has arisen which complicates more radically the relation between Nature and man. This new view emerged with the conception, in the mid-nineteenth century, of the idea of evolution. Henceforth Nature could not be regarded simply as a machine, but was conceived as a process of continuous development. Laws of mechanics are reciprocal and reversible, but an evolutionary process is unidirectional and progressive. Further, under this conception of Nature, man is recognized as a product of evolution and his knowledge as the outcome of biological development. His relation to Nature now comes to be envisaged in terms of that between organism and environment. The effect of this modification was not immediate or total, although its implications were revolutionary. Environment, at least in the first instance, was still regarded as external and set in opposition to the organism which mast adapt itself to alien conditions in order to survive. Man's adaptation follows upon that of lower species, which involves the development of sensibility, senseorgans for distance reception and cognitive apparatus. His capacity to know and to act intelligently, his conquest and control of Nature, his social and technical advance, are thus seen as aspects of his adaptation to environment. So conceived, social progress, though very different in character and in principle from biological evolution, appears as an extension of the same process. Yet, as it proceeds, the development of human social organization with its accompanying technical advances reacts upon and bedevils biological adaptations. Species are decimated, energy sources are tapped and drained, the ambient life-giving envelopes of atmosphere and sea are polluted and the balance of Nature is upset. With the advance of biological science and the study of ecology it has become apparent that the idea of adaptation of organism to environment was a misconception, for the environment is not static, nor is it a mere external setting for indwelling life. Evolutionary change involves the environment equally with the living thing. The two constitute a single organic whole, an open system in dynamic equilibrium. Modification of, and `control' over, the environment, therefore, becomes less a means than a menace to human survival; the exploitation of Nature becomes more inimical than advantageous. Voices are then raised advocating conservation, which involves a conflict between the demands of technical progress already made and those of environmental preservation. In some sense the demand is for a reversal of the evolutionary process, which runs counter to the very conception of evolution itself. The use of technology to mitigate the ravages of technology is severely limited. The preservation of resources can be effected by new techniques only at the expense of other resources. Pollution of atmosphere and water can be limited by new devices but not eliminated. If population can be controlled, consumption may be limited, but the demand for progress and `development' will still persist. The evolutionary process cannot be arrested, nor is it obvious that the results would be beneficial if social progress could be reversed. The idea of Nature hitherto engendered by science seems, in its effects on practice, to have led men into an impasse or a labyrinth. To escape from this man needs a new guiding-thread in the form of a new conception of Nature and of his own place in it. Is there any evidence that contemporary science gives any promise of such a change? I think there is.

ORGANIC WHOLENESS The conception of Nature as an evolutionary process, while remaining valid and fundamental, is in certain respects only provisional and transitional in modern science. Its adoption formed a bridge between mechanism and organism, providing for the emergence of the latter from the former; but it also served as a means of reducing the organic to the merely mechanistic. The dominant and characterizing feature of living things is their capacity for auturgic self-maintenance. This propensity has never been wholly explicable; in the last century it was attributed by some thinkers to a mysterious vitalistic principle or entelechy. This perpetuated the cleavage between the animate and the inanimate and ran counter to the principle of evolution which requires that the process of change from the inorganic to the organic and organismic be conceived as continuous. The Darwinian version of evolution which is the most prevalent and best attested, alleges as the `mechanism' of the process nothing beyond chance mutation and natural selection, excluding any vitalistic principle, teleological influence or orthogenesis. Evolution, in consequence, comes to be regarded as a series of random changes in physico-chemical processes, leading by some form of natural selection to more and more complex forms from which have emerged the numerous diverse species of living things. The speculation that life has evolved from the non-living is, accordingly, accompanied by the conception of living processes as no more than highly complex chemico-physical activity. Reductionism became and retains the ideal of scientific explanation. Such reductionism is the counterpart of the technology which seeks to manipulate the processes fundamental to life and ecology. What this approach overlooks, though inevitably it must and tacitly always does assume it, is the integral, poly-phasic coherence of the organism and the consequent forms of its self-maintenance through growth, regeneration and reproduction. Without the dynamic coherence of living entities there could be no evolution and nothing to evolve. Adaptation is meaningless except on the presupposition of a systematically unified and self-maintaining organic whole which maintains itself precisely by means of such adaptation. Without selfreproduction mutation is equally meaningless; apart from organic integrity, selective advantage is an inapplicable concept. Organismic wholeness is thus the indispensable presupposition of evolution. Even the most radically physicalistic of biologists, Jacques Monod, has declared the fundamental distinguishing characteristic of life to be `teleonomy', the quasipurposive determination to systematic wholeness. In essence `teleonomy' is the dominance of constitutive parts, functions and processes by the structure or the total organic system. This factor, whatever it is, maintains or increases negative entropy in the ordered whole by mutual adjustment of its constituents, both among themselves and to environmental variations. The mechanistic and the Darwinian conceptions of Nature both involve some form of antithesis between the purely physical and the animate. In the former it is a stark dichotomy between matter and mind, in the latter it is the persistent contrast of organism to environment. The thorough-going organismic conception of the biosphere recognizes the unity and systematic interconnection of organism and its ambient world. It is not merely that the organism itself is an open system which, in constant commerce with its surroundings, exchanges matter and energy in continuous flow. There is also a symbiosis among contiguous organisms forming a biocoenosis, limits to which can be set only relatively. In the final analysis, therefore, the whole biosphere is a single organic whole. Nor can we stop here, for the description of the earth as a series of envelopes, lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and so forth, is valid only for limited purposes. These, along with the biosphere, are intimately interdependent and the whole earth must be taken as a single organic unity. Lewis Thomas, giving expression to this idea which is perhaps the most recent development in the concept of Nature, writes: I have been trying to think of the earth as a kind of organism, but it is no go. I cannot think of it in this way. It is too big, too complex, with too many working

parts lacking visible connections. . . . If not like an organism, what is it like, what is it most like? Then, satisfactorily for the moment, it came to me: it is most like a single cell.1 He returns repeatedly to this theme: Jorge Borges, in a recent bestiary of mythical creatures, notes that the idea of round beasts was imagined by many speculative minds, and Johannes Kepler once argued that the earth itself is such a being. ln this immense organism, chemical signals might serve the function of global hormones, keeping balance and symmetry in the operation of various interrelated working parts, informing tissues in the vegetation of the Alps about the state of eels in the Saragossa Sea, by long, interminable relays of interconnected messages between all kinds of other creatures.2 As seen from the moon: "Aloft, floating free beneath the moist, gleaming membrane of bright blue sky, is the rising earth. . . . It has the organized, selfcontained look of a live creature, full of information, marvelously skilled in handling the sun." The atmosphere is conceived as a membrance "able to catch energy and hold it, storing precisely the needed amount and releasing it in measured shares."3 Not even the earth taken as a self-contained unit, however, is separable from what lies beyond its atmospheric skin. It is integrally dependent on the stream of solar energy and inextricably involved with the whole solar system. Then comes the cosmological physicist to assure us that no terrestrial phenomenon is isolable from its interrelations with the rest of the universe in both galactic and extragalactic space. The outcome is a conception of Nature as a single, individual totality, organismic throughout, in which distinctions are always relative; partial elements are always determined in their individual form and detailed behaviour by the over-arching pattern of the totality. DIALECTICAL PROGRESSION It is not simply that the idea of Nature in the advance of science has come full circle and returned to that entertained by the Greeks. In some sense this has occurred, but the new conception is much more elaborate and sophisticated than the original one; it is rather a combination and reconciliation of the two opposite notions of mechanism and organism. The earlier mechanism rested on Newtonian physics, which has today given place to Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. Physics, in our time, has ceased to be mechanistic and has even adopted a conception of matter which is itself non-materialistic. Contemporary physics is as teleonomic in principle as contemporary biology. It is by the whole structure of the physical world that its details are determined. The curvature of space-time dictates the laws of gravitation and electro-dynamics and fixes the fundamental physical constants. The enfoldment of space manifests itself as energy, wave systems suffuse the whole of space, and the superposition of waves appears as material particles. The structure of energy fields determines the interlocking of particles in the atom; in turn, their mutual disposition determines the form of the molecule and its chemical valency. From these again arise the artistry of crystalline forms; no hiatus is found between them and those aperiodic crystals which are the foundation of the chemical cycles of living metabolism. Each level provides the basis of that which succeeds, yet on every level the characteristic properties of the appropriate entities depend upon their total structure. They are `co-operative properties', impossible for less complex entities. Atoms have properties impossible for free electrons; molecules evince chemical affinities which are dependent solely upon the pattern of combination of their constituent atoms and are not characteristic of any atom in isolation. This is especially true of the macromolecules involved in the activities of living matter, which are not feasible at the inorganic level. It is the structure of each whole that determines its propensities; and structure is always whole, for it is not what it is unless structurally complete. We find, in consequence, that throughout the entire scale of natural forms, wholes predominate over and

determine their parts. `Totum in toto et totum in qualibet parte' is true at every stage. Consequently the cosmic organism, while it is one and indivisible, is at the same time a range of developing phases which can be represented and can display themselves as an evolutionary scale. The totality is constituted by the scale of its internal forms; each level is in some sense self-contained and all-pervasive. Yet, each gives rise to the next higher level by virtue of the potentiality infused in it by the immanent principle of the totality of which it is no more than a phase. This is an idea of Nature, not merely as an all-embracing living animal, but as a dynamic organismic system, comprising a continuous range of wholes on levels of progressively increasing complexity and integration. They are wholes in mutually dialectical relation, so that the entire system manifests itself as an evolutionary progression. The dialectical relation is complex, for the wholes which it relates are each, in one aspect, self-contained and self-dependent, and, in another, mutually implicated and inseparably interrelated. Essentially the relation is serial, each whole being a fuller and more adequate realization of the systematic principle governing the entire series. Thus, each is related to its predecessors as their fulfillment, requiring and incorporating the prior forms while actualizing potentialities of which they were incapable. For this reason, while the subsequent involves the antecedent, it also supersedes and, in some sense, negates its forebears. Each whole, then, is a grade or developmental stage within the total series, but also a distinct relatively self-subsistent phase standing in contrast and opposition to its neighbors. Yet, because this opposition is resolved in the next higher phase which preserves the contrast while superseding it, the entire series remains continuous and coherent. MAN'S RELATION TO NATURE The relation of man to nature has now to be understood in the light of this dialectical conception. Human personality, developing within social structures peculiar to its appropriate level in the scale, is integral to the whole. On the other hand, as one level distinct from others, it confronts the prior phases as other and opposed. This is only one aspect of its relation to them, however, for they are also its forebears and progenitors in which the potentiality of its emergence is instant. What man sees as Nature is his own self in becoming; but more than this, it is the very matrix from which his very being is contrived and the soil out of which he is nourished. It is not that man has power to exploit Nature, rather, man is molded and engendered by Nature. This, however, is not as physical entities are determined by mechanical forces, but as a higher phase of integral totality determines and specifies itself within the matrix of preexistent levels of being. Three major metaphysical questions arise out of this conception of man and Nature. The first concerns the individuality and self-identity of man as a person, the degree of his self-sufficiency and freedom. How far is his identity submerged and overwhelmed in such a conception? If, prima facie. it may seem to be fatally subordinated to an all-absorbing totality, two considerations forbid any such conclusion. Apart from man's thought and self-reflective consciousness there would be no idea of Nature. It is his own self-determining and free thought that makes him aware of his world and his relation to it. Hence, whatever idea of Nature science generates, it is man's own science, his own construction, his own judgement of the world and the self-made interpretation of his own experience. It cannot, therefore, be wholly subordinated to, and submerged within, the totality conceived as Nature. Further, this reflection is not in conflict with that conception itself, for it concerns a totality which is self-generating in a scale of forms each of which is more self-complete and self-maintaining than its predecessors. The human mind supervenes at a relatively highly-developed stage; accordingly, it represents a high degree of self-sufficiency, integrity and selfdetermination. The second major question is that of the ultimate character of the totality. Is

it, as a whole, a consciousness self-aware of its own identity? Or is it a mere schema correlating its diverse phases as we have conceived them? The latter is hardly plausible and is not consistent with the conception of a scale of concretely existing phases. In the first place, far from being a mere schema, the totality must be seen as a continuum of interwoven forms; secondly, among these forms human personality is one of the more highly developed, though in obvious ways incomplete and limited. Whatever transcends human consciousness can hardly be something more abstract, more diffuse and less integrally whole. The implications which follow upon this reflection demand to be worked out in detail. From these two questions a third follows naturally. How does human life and purpose relate to the totality in which it is integral? What sort of selfdetermining conduct on the part of mankind is most appropriate to the conception of Nature above outlined? The aspiration to conquer and control Nature is now revealed as arrogant folly, liable to lead, as seems probable in our own day, to self-destruction. Man must somehow see himself as the instrument of Nature's own purposes, which his science must divine and follow. If we are to live successfully, satisfactorily and virtuously, perhaps in a new and more significant sense we shall have to revive the ancient exhortation to live according to Nature. That does not mean, however, that we must revert to what is primitive. It implies, rather, that when Nature is adequately understood the general direction of evolution will be seen more clearly, and human action and policy can then be properly aligned and assimilated to it. Though these three questions are fundamentally metaphysical, they have consequences for ethics, social theory and technology. None of them is wholly new, but each requires reconsideration and must be reformulated in the light of a new conception of Nature. Nor are they wholly separable, for the answer to any one is implied in, and implies, the answer to each of the others. They are questions too large and difficult to receive in a single paper the treatment they deserve. Hence, I shall not attempt to do more than indicate how I, myself, might approach the answers to them. The Freedom and Individuality of Man If wholes are indivisible and teleonomic and in all cases determine the nature and behaviour of their parts, and if the parts are thus reduced to integrants or moments within their wholes with no really independent existence, would men not be reduced to mere puppets whose strings are manipulated by alien hands? Nature as the whole to which they belong imposes its laws upon them. Does it make any difference whether they are mechanical in the old classical sense of that word, or organismic according to the new view of Nature suggested in this paper? It does, indeed, for the totality is not just organic, but dialectical and issues in a whole on a level superior to organism. The organic is superseded and sublated in the psychical and epistemic. Consciousness and intelligence supervene upon organism and the higher phase, not the lower, is the dominant determining factor. Nature conceived as one vast organism is not a stupendous protozoon or an allpervasive slime mould. The more the totality under consideration is advanced in the dialectical series, the more fully and distinctly it is articulated. Though its elements are inseparable, they are nevertheless distinct; and the more highly developed the whole, the more completely it will be differentiated. Even at the organic level we find, not just one vast organism, but innumerable, exquisitely variegated and diversified organisms organically interrelated. At any superorganic stage, therefore, we should have a totality differentiated into individuals each of which is more than merely organic. This is precisely what we do find. In the higher animals (at least) organism supports and burgeons into conscious mentality; at the human level intelligence reaches the pitch at which social co-operation and theoretical reflection are possible. Only here does the capacity develop to frame an idea of Nature, itself testimony to a high degree of self-consciousness and all that this implies. In spite of what might be considered undesirable mystical associations, it would not be inappropriate to call this the spiritual level of the dialectical sequence.

If we review the entire course of that sequence, as the scale advances we observe a continuous increase in the self-sufficiency and self-determination of the elements at each successive stage; this applies equally to the differentiations and to the totality. Therefore, at the spiritual level the elements should be spiritual, that is, self-conscious, intelligent beings capable of a high degree of self-direction and self-determination. Their interrelations will be equally spiritual, or what we more ordinarily call social; and the totality of which they are members will be a community. What we are outlining here is nothing less than the condition of individuality and freedom. Freedom is not, despite frequent misconception, an indeterminate capacity to do all and sundry according to the unpredictable and unaccountable caprice of the agent. Unregulable caprice is not freedom, but insanity. On the other hand, external determination equally precludes freedom. Intelligently directed action, however, is self-determined, because intelligent thinking is neither more nor less than the self-specification in conscious thought of a universal principle. Deliberate action, which depends on such self-determined consciousness, is the only sort of action which is really free, and only an intelligent being is capable of it. Now such capability supervenes only at levels of development subsequent to organicism. It is at the super-organic level, which is both dependent on and regulative of the organic reactions that subserve it, that the capacity for thought and action emerges. (Below this there can be no free individuality; hence, to call that independent would be a mistake. lt is independent neither of its organic matrix nor of the social whole that it both generates and sustains, and which it nevertheless requires for its own efflorescence.) The totality characteristic of this superorganic level, therefore, is a spiritual whole, approached through a social order and determined by rational self-awareness. It is thus a self-differentiating whole; it actualizes itself through and in selfconscious, rational individuals, just as analogously the organic totality specifies itself in and as determinate organisms. The analogy, moreover, is more than mere accidental similarity, for the self-conscious individuals are themselves organisms; in them organism realizes its potentialities. Obviously there is far more to be said about this matter. The essential nature, the process of development and the structure of an intelligent self-consciousness as well as its social character give ample scope for further development. Here, I wish only to indicate the groundlessness of a possible objection to the idea of Nature that I have adumbrated, namely, that it would submerge and obliterate human personality. That this is not the case becomes apparent when one reflects that free activity, understood as self-determined, is characteristic of all levels of natural process. It is only under the influence of the older, Newtonian physics that we tend to think of mechanical action as crassly determined. But contemporary physics is, as I have maintained, teleonomic; and whatever is a whole determining its own elements is self-determined and to that extent free. Organic activity is a still higher degree of freedom. Metabolism is the self-regulating process of the organic system; it has been described by Hans Jonas as the first realization of freedom. So we go up the scale: physiological processes are homeostatic, that is to say, self-regulating; they constitute the next degree of freedom. Instinctive behaviour is a grade higher, and then intelligent conduct. It is the new conception of Nature that preserves the conditions of human freedom, rather than destroys them. It is more compatible with human personality than any of the prior conceptions of Nature. The Ultimate Character of the Universal Whole Development of the last topic naturally leads to reflection upon the second question raised for discussion. Is the universal totality merely a logical schema? Is it a spatio-temporal or a taxonomic structure? Or is it at once all these and more besides, namely, a living, self-conscious, spiritual being? Of course, the first two descriptions must be readily admitted, but they cannot be exhaustive. No

dialectical system such as I have posited can be limited to a mere logical schema or even to an evolutionary series extended in space and time. The dialectical relations require that the prior phases be retained, sublated in their successors, even though they are superseded by them. Equally, the only complete and full reality which the prior phases enjoy is the realized actuality of their potentialities in the higher forms. Without these the more primitive cannot even exist because it is the immanence of the ultimate totality which brings them into being and makes them what they are. Our best and in the last resort perhaps our only clue to the nature of this ultimate reality is the highest stage with which we are acquainted. That, we have seen, is the self-conscious, personal and interpersonal. Can the existent universe as a whole be conceived as a being of this kind? The answer, of course, is implicitly given in religion, which postulates a supreme being of the kind required. But that is not a complete or a distinct answer, because the question remains how we are to conceive the Deity. Not only do different religions give us different conceptions, but none of them is in itself clearly intelligible, for all are veiled in imagery or described in figurative language. No doubt that is unavoidable when finite minds seek to comprehend the infinite, but the metaphysician must strive to penetrate the obscurity, to interpret the metaphors and to give the imagery meaning. What we have so far maintained is that the universe is one single, indivisible whole, that it is self-specifying, self-differentiating and proliferating as a continuous scale of inter-dependent forms dialectically related. Each form is itself a whole, self-differentiated in its own way and according to the principle operative at its own level. The later is superior to the earlier, inclusive of all that precedes and the fruition of prior potentialities. Each successively is a more articulate, more fully integrated and more self-determinately whole than its predecessors. Accordingly, the whole gamut is sublated and summed up in the final form, the extended series of its phases being not only compatible with, but necessary to its all-encompassing unity. If we have been correct thus far, it should follow that the highest form hitherto experienced, human mentality, is the closest analogy to the ultimate nature of the absolute whole. In that case, it must involve something like, yet somehow transcending, self-conscious personality. It must involve and yet transcend some form of organized community. It must be at once a physical, organic, intelligent, moral and spiritual whole, of which we (with all that is implicated in our nature) are integral members. So regarded, Nature cannot be limited to what we discover through the physical and biological sciences. We must add to these the social, psychological and philosophical sciences, and must reflect upon the combined results of them all, if we are to arrive at an adequate metaphysical conception. Nature can no longer be thought of as the merely physical, devoid of all psychical and conscious elements, that is, as the sort of abstraction by which it was represented in the nineteenth century. Far from excluding man and his mind, far from standing over against and opposing humanity as something to be subdued and exploited, nature and mind are to be seen as one; matter and mind are fused into a single reality, as body and mind form one person. Once again, the implications of all this demand further development than the scope of this paper will permit. But if we cannot now go further, what I have already said may give some indication of the answer to our third question: How does human life and purpose relate to the totality in which it is integral? Man's Relation to Universal Nature From the position set out it would seem to follow that the relation between man and Nature must be sought at the upper end rather than in the lower or middle strata of the scale. The whole, in its ultimate character, is of the nature of mind involved in and involving the interpersonal relations of a community. That again presupposes and sublates the biological and the physical. In relation to the whole, mankind must be seen as a single community, a kingdom of ends, the

undivided interest of which is to maintain the integrity of the world that it inhabits. That maintenance is a responsibility for man; hence, his relation to Nature is ethical, rather than simply biological or technical. The conception we need is that of a spiritual community of persons, mutually responsible for the welfare of all and for the material basis on which that depends. Nature must be pictured as man's Garden of Eden of which he is the latest product, the latest species generated in the process of its self-evolution. As its intelligent progeny, he has the responsibility of keeping it fertile, healthy and beautiful; he must be its cultivator not its exploiter. His is a moral responsibility at once to Nature and to his fellows, that is, to the ultimate totality. Therefore, it can be fulfilled only in a spirit of unreserved self-giving if it is to be fulfilled adequately. It must not be simply a duty imposed but, in a consciousness of identity with the whole, a service freely rendered. In the final outcome, it must be the tendence of a spiritual Heimat in which the human spirit finds itself because, man and Nature being one, what is done to Nature is ipso facto done to mankind. Northwestern University Evanston, Illinois, USA NOTES 1. The Lives of a Cell (New York: Viking Press, 1974). p. 5. 2. Ibid., p. 41. 3. Ibid., p. 145. 4. Cf. The Phenomenon of Life (New York: Dell, 1966). CHAPTER IV PROGRESS AND NATURE MARGARET CHATTERJEE Certain preliminary considerations attend any attempt to deal philosophically with the subject: Man and Nature. I mention only a few. Progress is very much a nineteenth century concept, related to the expanding economies of the Victorian era. Twentieth century thinkers operate more with the concept of development which, in all conscience, is equally controversial. In a sense, therefore, we appear to be concerned with an historical exercise for the concept of progress arose more in the context of the discussion of history or social change than in connection with the concept of nature as such. Presumably, the juxtaposition `progress and nature' raises questions about man's place in nature and his ability to change it. The pragmatic outlook is built into that of the twentieth century to such an extent that to dig a hard-core philosophical structure out of all this is by no means an easy task. This is especially so considering the fact that the basic philosophical arguments are to be found in pragmatist writings about truth and meaning, rather than about more metaphysical questions concerning the relation of man to the cosmos. PROGRESS Let us return to the nineteenth century concept of progress for some clarifications. The notion of biological free competition implied in Darwin's theory of evolution paralleled free competition in economics. The extraordinary optimism of the Victorians led them to believe that this free-for-all would result in progress. Due to historical factors, it did so happen that certain countries did emerge first in the industrial race, but an interesting question can be raised in this regard. Theism has traditionally been a massive base for a cosmic optimism which civilizations with a cyclical conception of history have not shared. For all its apparent secularity the nineteenth century concept of progress was still buttressed by the doctrine of the "invisible hand." British writers never succeeded in being as secular as the leaders of the French Enlightenment. The philosophical radicals, like their brothers in spirit, the pragmatists, believed in piecemeal engineering, especially of the kind that could be spearheaded by legislatures. For both, metaphysics was subordinate to the realities of political and economic life; indeed, they were wise enough to see these as conflated in what they called `political economy'.

There was, however, a metaphysical inconsistency about the concept of progress which no less a person than Bury, author of The Idea of Progress, pointed out in no uncertain terms. It is the inconsistency between the premise of flux and the postulation of an end or objective: "In escaping from the illusion of finality, is it legitimate to except that dogma itself?"1 In other words, in addition to a self-congratulatory awareness of whence we have come, is it not necessary to have an idea of whither we were going? If not, wherein could we speak of progress? Yet, to have such an idea would surely reintroduce the very eschatological element from which we were trying to free ourselves. Tennyson's far-off divine event towards which the whole creation moved needed to be given some body. I am suggesting rather obliquely that shorn of an eschatology the concept of progress wears rather thin. Earlier thinkers had relied, if not on an out-and-out theodicy, then on sketching out of some sort of Utopia against which we could match our piecemeal efforts. Karl Marx is perhaps the first major nineteenth century thinker to confess his lack of faith in Utopias, in spite of appearances to the contrary, and to leave the content of his millennial hopes quite open as being merely a classless society once the state had withered away. JAMES AND PRAGMATISM Oddly enough, both British liberal writers and Hegelians of the Right in the nineteenth century tended in their theorizings about progress to glorify what was historically actual. Pragmatists, on the contrary, were fully men of the twentieth century in being free of this particular brand of euphoria. They were free of any simple-minded belief in the onward and upward march of history, of apocalyptic hopes, and of doctrinaire beliefs in the perfectibility of man or the possibility of collective redemption. Much of the pragmatist approach was compatible with conservatism, at least in its piecemeal tinkering that was not reckoned to shake the foundations. The pragmatist understanding of progress need not raise the hackles of an Oakeshott or an Isaiah Berlin. Pragmatism stands for a secularized occasionalism where man essays to `change reality' and takes full responsibility for the `secondary nature', that is, the whole apparatus of the culture of cities, which he has himself made. The benevolent etatisme of the welfare state, whether of the capitalist or socialist variety, can claim the pragmatist scriptures as its own. Failures of engineering can presumably be corrected and power structures be geared to an endless remedial task which in detail, of course, varies from time to time and country to country. For the metaphysical underpinning of all this let us turn first to William James. Peirce had spoken of an element of pure chance or spontaneity operative in the world, but that does not make us either nature's prisoners or nature's playthings. For William James, too, it is the surd element in things that gives man his opportunity. The world is loose-jointed enough (plastic enough, in Schiller's phrase) to make room for engineering activity. James poses the following question in his book Pragmatism: "The really vital question for us all is, What is this world going to be? What is life eventually to make of itself?" Like Bergson, whom he admired, he believed in the creativity of man, his vitality, rather than his intellectuality. Both James and Dewey share a preference for bios over logos, reacting against the abstractions and verbalisms of some of their predecessors. The implications of this in pragmatist thought should not be underestimated. To look on theories as instruments rather than as answers is to refuse to submit to the authority of the concept, the definition. In a sense, they overstate their case. In some respects, however, the pragmatists paradoxically resemble the idealists, for example, in their belief in the dynamism of thought and in their common rejection of the realist position that experience makes no difference to the facts. But William James is clear on the point that a block universe of an absolutist kind would make all human efforts nugatory. If reality is in the making, man's role in bringing about progress is vindicated. What, then, is to be said of nature? James speaks of "the world's possibilities"2 and of the act as the turning place where these are worked out. The analysis of possibility here is not as stringent as one would wish. Presumably there is some

kind of congruence between the possibilities in man and the possibilities in things, and as a result of their commerce nature can be transformed. James advocates meliorism, but does not identify a genuine metaphysical warrant for assuming that human intervention will be for the better. Nature is not an intractable factor on which man imposes his beneficent purposes.3 To assume that these purposes are necessarily good would surely be to fall into the ranks of the tender-minded. The world, James admits, is "multitudinous beyond imagination, tangled, muddy, painful and perplexed." The meliorist does not claim to set everything right, but that by his act he can "create the world's salvation." The theist may detect here a pelagian element. Some further metaphysical grounds need uncovering at this point. In his Preface to Essays in Radical Empiricism,4 Perry stresses that for William James there is no disjunction between consciousness and physical nature. The well-known phrase `mind and its place in nature' would therefore have no meaning in James' view. In The Principles of Psychology5 James writes that "it is the essence of all consciousness to instigate movement of some sort." This neutral monist framework no doubt accommodates free creative activity, in the sense of free continuous change from within as opposed to discontinuous transition. But a theory of change is not the same as a theory of progress, nor is a model of growth such as we find in Schiller for growth can be in unsatisfactory directions. Satisfactoriness is a notion which begs the question in pragmatist writings. A universe which is only `strung-along'6 may be a universe in which man cannot fulfil his destiny, but only drift in a sea of contingencies. The concept of destiny is perhaps foreign to pragmatist thought, though it seems to presuppose a belief in the fundamental goodness of man and to share Gibbon's faith that `barbarism' has been left behind. DEWEY AND PROGRESS For explicit reference to progress one must turn to John Dewey rather than to James. In his treatment of inquiry Dewey develops James' instrumentalism as a form of adjustment between an organism and its environment. He attempts to give a logical basis for progress in the individual as well as in society. Hitherto, he grants, progress has been technical rather than moral but it is through the experimental study of nature that progress is to be made. Science and technology are "transactions in which man and nature work together."7 In common with many nineteenth century thinkers Dewey is fascinated by the future. The future is to be successfully `invaded', and this is to be done through intelligence. As in the case of William James, in Dewey also non-dualist metaphysic renders redundant talk of intervention or interaction. In Experience and Nature Dewey observed: "Fidelity to the nature to which we belong, as parts however weak, demands that we cherish our desires and ideals till we have converted them into intelligence, revised them in terms of the ways and means which nature makes possible. . . . Nature induces and partially sustains meanings and goods, and at critical junctures withdraws assistance and flouts its own creatures."8 This indicates a homogeneous universe within which the human element is at work by a kind of connivance of powers. "Supernatural synthesis" is "unnecessary" according to Dewey. Reflective morality is a situational matter, where situation is defined in terms of interaction between objectives and internal conditions. Writing of Bacon, Locke and Newton, Hoffding said that they were inspired "by a fervent faith in intelligence, progress and humanity." This is no less true of the pragmatists. When pressed on the content or qualia of progress Dewey offers the ideals of personality, friendship and the democratic way of life. It is Homo faber who brings about progress, but there is no inevitability about it for human needs and acts are vastly diverse. For this reason Dewey does not enthuse over the utilitarian idea of a "fixed and single end lying beyond the diversity of human needs and acts." In keeping with a metaphysic of openness he would rather eschew talk of ends. "Acquisition of skill, possession of knowledge, attainment of culture are not ends: they are marks of growth and means to its continuity." More explicitly, "growing or the continuous reconstruction of experience, is the only end."9 This view of progress is quite free of eschatology. In a sense he is more

free of the linear interpretation of progress than were the nineteenth century thinkers, for he recognizes that there can be progress in some sectors while it is absent in others. Progress is a "retail job, to be contracted for the executed in sections." Yet, intelligence is not to be divorced from aspiration; without apology reconstruction can be inspired by hope. As to the content of moral progress, Dewey finds it in increasingly rational and social conduct and the conscious pursuit of the same. His thinking, along with that of James and Bergson in a different style, is sufficiently based in biology to stress the link between our conception of morality and human needs. DEVELOPMENT AND CRITIQUE All this sounds frankly naturalistic. In many ways the pragmatists' manner of looking at the relation between man and nature, their understanding of progress in terms of growth, is the philosophic source of the twentieth century concept of development. Even the current prophets of doom who speak in terms of the limits of growth would claim that their view was pragmatically justified. Likewise, both the advocates of planning and those who favor the operation of market forces can claim that the pragmatists are on their side. No doubt the founding fathers of the pragmatist movement could hardly be expected to foresee the dangers of the almost unlimited power that states, corporations, etc., have come to possess; or the powerlessness of the dispossessed, the wretched of the earth; or the backlash of a despoiled nature ruthlessly exploited by man. Pragmatism as such does not provide guidelines of the kind found, for example, in the work of Simone Weil or Albert Camus. `Welfare' and `growth' are terms which need analysis, and their content does not remain unchanged from culture to culture or period to period. A nemesis can overtake those who exploit nature irreverently no less than those who in mythic times challenged the gods. If we have learned anything in this century it is this: that progress in one sphere can be accompanied by retrogression in others. The pragmatist view of progress is closely linked to belief in the potency for good of science and technology. It is, however, cosmic impiety, in Russell's telling phrase, that leads to all the ecological problems with which we are familiar today. Workableness provides no criterion for adjudication in situations where there are many workable alternatives. Progress in this century is notoriously uneven and in some societies has been achieved at the cost of eliminating indigenous tribal and aboriginal communities. Those who have become disillusioned with life in advanced industrial societies turn their back on `progress' and seek a new life in communes in out-of-the-way places; they opt to jump off the bandwagon. Though the pragmatists were not ipso facto committed to the rejection of cultural diversity, as a matter of historical fact they had no doubts about the benefits of industrial civilization. There are a number of rather more philosophical objections. Although pragmatism was not associated with any theory of gradualism or inevitability, as a social philosophy it neglected the role of conflict and crisis in bringing about social change. Metaphysical commitment to pluralism led the pragmatists to stress atomism and individualism, which in turn made them rather less than sensitive to institutional blocks to progress. The major intractabilities which perpetuate poverty, injustice and a host of other ills are human; one does not need to adopt any particular philosophical concept of human nature to see that this is the case. The pragmatist understanding of progress made much of the concept of control, but tended to ignore the dangers of being controlled. The hazards which attend the manipulability of men are seen not only in the horrors of the thirties on the Continent, but in the consumer societies of the seventies. Pragmatism, in fact, lacks an overall framework. Even improvisation, too, if it is well done requires a theme. The pragmatist affirms that the doors of possibility are not shut, but a metaphysic of pluralism alone cannot guarantee this. An open society tries to do so, but no ostensibly open society has as yet been able to guarantee justice for its weaker sections or satisfy the minimum needs of all its citizens. For this we need perhaps, not only a theory of transition such as

pragmatism provides, but some sense of horizon which a purely naturalistic view of the relation of man and nature may not be able to provide. University of Delhi New Delhi, India NOTES l. John B. Bury, The Idea of Progress (New York: Dover, 1932), p. 352. 2. William James, Pragmatism (New York: New American Library, 1965), p. 282. 3. We carve out everything . . . to suit our own purposes." Ibid., p. 253. 4. Ralph Barton Perry, Preface to Essays in Radical Empiricism (New York: Longman's, Green & Co., 1912), p. xi. 5. (New York: Holt, 1907), p. 551. 6. William James, A Pluralistic Universe (London: Longman's Green & Co., 1912), p. 128. 7. (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1946), p. 26. 8. (New York: Dover, 1929), pp. 420-421. 9. (Boston: Beacon, 1957), p. 185. CHAPTER V NATURE AS OBJECT AND AS ENVIRONMENT THE PRAGMATIC OUTLOOK JOHN E. SMITH In the pragmatic outlook on Nature there is an unmistakable duality and tension which points, on the one hand, to a basic problem and, on the other, holds out some possibility of a resolution. This duality manifests itself in the two faces assigned to Nature by those who first articulated the position. In one face, Nature is object to be known and subjected to control through the development of scientific knowledge and its application in all the forms of modern technology. This conception was enhanced by the dynamic and instrumental theory of intelligence or technical reason which received its fullest expression in the philosophy of Dewey. In its other face, Nature is environment or the natural habitat of man, an ecological system which is supportive of human existence. It is not simply hostile in the sense made popular by the well-known phrase of the poet, "Nature, red in tooth and claw." The conception of Nature as environment was derived from the doctrine of evolution and from the emphasis placed by the Pragmatists on the lifesciences. The tendency of these thinkers to stress the continuity between man and Nature in their attempts to overcome what they regarded as the excesses of idealism, led them to regard man as at home in Nature, rather than as an inhabitant of an alien world. The present crisis, environmental and ecological, stems from a somewhat desperate realization that there is a tension, even a contradiction, between these two conceptions. Nature understood merely as an object of control has resulted not only in the conception of a denatured Nature, but also in all those actual exploitations and pollutions of natural resources--rivers, forests, landscapes-which threaten the very existence of Nature as environment. The problem as it now appears is whether and how Nature can be recovered as environment. The solution to this problem turns on the question of whether man can maintain some rational control of his ability to control nature? If this cannot be done, Nature as object will overcome Nature as environment. The quality of our life will surely decline or, worse still, our very survival will be endangered. Ultimately, much depends on the possibility that the same belief in the intimate connection between thought and purpose, which first gave rise to the instrumental and pragmatic conception of reason, can be invoked to criticize and to reorient the use of reason to purposes other than amassing profits through the ruthless exploitation of Nature. In short, the purposes or values expressed through all forms of technology must themselves be subject to more ultimate values which concern the being and quality of human life. At the present time there seems to be a tendency to question the long-accepted belief that the problems created by the technological use of reason will, in time, be resolved by a further application of

that same reason. NATURE AS OBJECT To better understand our present predicament, it will be useful to explain more fully the way in which the two faces of Nature have developed within the framework of the pragmatic outlook. In doing this, we can also set forth the Pragmatist's conception of experience and consider its relation to Nature. I shall suggest that the esthetic and valuational dimension, which in this view belongs essentially to experience. contains resources for the redirection of the instrumental intelligence. For the classical empiricists experience was basically a domain of sheer, sensible fact serving as a touchstone for science. In contrast, the Pragmatists understood experience as the multi-faceted product of the interaction between man as the language and sign using animal and Nature; it was a product shot through with relations and meaning, with value and importance. For them experience is the substance of both individual and social life, rather than being primarily material viewed from a distance by a spectator whose principle aim is theoretical knowledge. In accordance with the pragmatic outlook thought appears, above all else, as a human activity exercised under specific circumstances and for specific purposes. lt is not, on this account, to be taken as "subjective" or as a mere bodily function as some critics have alleged. The aim of the Pragmatists was to see thought in existence, as actually functioning in ongoing human life and experience. Contrary to much that has been said and with the possible exception of James, these thinkers did not believe that thought had to sacrifice its autonomy in order to perform its function. Peirce's emphasis on formal logic and the logic of science, together with Dewey's concern for controlled inquiry testify to their interest in preserving what Peirce called logical self-control. At the same time, however, they were suspicious of "pure" thought standing apart from all relation to human purposes and aims. Thinking is always to some purpose, ranging from a purely theoretical aim at one end of the spectrum such as solving a fifth degree equation, to the practical aim of repairing a broken instrument. In both cases, thought stands under the constraint of an end and is meant to accomplish something. The future is the all-important mode of time because, unlike the past, it is still open to the shaping power of the human will. The interests of the Pragmatists in science, it is true, led them to concentrate on the behavior of the things in Nature with the ultimate aim of anticipating, imitating and controlling that behavior in order to satisfy human needs and wants. It was this interest which established the crucial connection between theoretical science and technology. As I shall suggest, the aim of controlling Nature came to assume such dominant importance that other aims, including the purposes behind the control of Nature, were often thrust into the background. Frequently this was done in the vague hope that all would turn out well in "the long run." We now know that this hope was illusory; controlling Nature cannot by itself be a final end because that control itself has consequences which manifest themselves throughout the entire fabric of human life. It was no accident that the Pragmatists understood in dynamic terms the meaning of ideas, principles and theories concerning both Nature and social life. The natures of things, the predicates through which we describe and explain them, do not denote purely static and fixed characteristics; on the contrary, their meaning was understood in terms of the way the objects possessing these characteristics will behave under certain circumstances. To know that something is hard, soluble, dangerous or edible is to know what it will do in interaction with other things and human beings. Thus, the reactions of things provide man with the clues he needs to identify them, and at the same time enable him to prepare appropriate responses to their presence. Nature then becomes a vast network of more or less regular patterns of action and reaction, but insofar as it is subject to such control as is within the compass of human knowledge and ingenuity, Nature has, so to speak, no interiority or autonomy of its own. One of the principal reasons why technology or the science of control

developed so rapidly and with such scope on the American scene is found in the continuity of so-called "pure" science and all forms of engineering. When theoretical knowledge is itself understood as the result of the activity of controlled research and that knowledge represents a grasp of the dynamic behavior of the things studied, then the gap closes between knowing, on the one side, and doing or making, on the other. There is, however, a price to be paid for such a development no matter how great its contribution to the fulfillment of urgent human needs, economic, medical or nutritional, etc. This price is the denaturing of Nature as can be seen at once by comparing the classical conception of Physis with that of Nature as the sheer object of the engineering will. Physis was nature alive and filled with norms by which a sound specimen could be distinguished from a deficient or deformed one. It was pregnant with value in the form of processes of growth and creativity. Above all, Phvsis represented a natural habitat in which man could rejoice at the sights, the sounds, the colors, the glory and wonder of all living things. Unhappily, from the standpoint of instrumental reason and the motive to overcome Nature through the creation of an artificial environment, this living and vibrant Nature is banished, a victim of machines and commerce. NATURE AS ENVIRONMENT As was pointed out previously, however, Nature as object represents but one face of the pragmatic view of Nature. There is also Nature as environment, as the scene for the unfolding of man's experience. Though undoubtedly overshadowed and obscured, it is important to be aware of the presence of this second face because it can contribute to the creation of the climate of opinion necessary to deal effectively with the contemporary ecological crisis. Viewing the natural order from the vantage point of evolutionary doctrine, the Pragmatists were led to three basic conclusions concerning Nature and man's place therein. There was, first, an appreciation of Nature in its concreteness as natural habitat, with a tenure of its own in the total scheme of things; second, a strong emphasis on the continuity of man with Nature; and, third, a conception of experience as the "third term" between man and Nature, an emerging system of meaning, habit and value which is at the same time the very substance of human culture. 1. Study of Nature as a vast system of real kinds and evolving forms afforded a new appreciation of the extent to which Nature is supportive of life, including that of man, rather than merely the scene of the elimination of the supposedly unfit. This supportive capacity of Nature was described with force and precision in a well-known book from the earlier decades of this century, The Fitness of the Environment by Lawrence Henderson. There, Nature is shown to have its own structures and spatio-temporal regimen as distinct from any imposition by man of his patterns of control through technology and culture. Henderson dramatized the delicate balance of the organic and inorganic conditions in the cosmic order which make possible human life and its continued development. The Pragmatists, too, understood this autonomy of Nature coupled with man's dependence on it. However much they stressed the precariousness of life vis a vis the natural order and hence the need to control that order, they had due respect for its integrity as the matrix of all living things. As a result, they believed that Nature is more than an object to be totally transformed by human will; it is also a qualitative order with which man must cooperate if he is to survive. The key to that cooperation is reliable knowledge of the workings of natural processes. 2. Closely connected with the foregoing is the belief in the continuity of man and Nature. This continuity was not construed in terms of identity, implying a reduction of man to lower and simpler forms of life. Stressing, as they did, the distinctive character of consciousness, intelligence and purpose, the Pragmatists could not consistently have regarded all three as mere appearance or as evanescent manifestations of some underlying matter. In their insistence on continuity, the Pragmatists were calling attention to the fact of man as a natural creature with roots in the earth. For them continuity also implied the openness of Nature to the human mind, as evidence against the doctrine that man is in a totally alien

universe or that he is encapsulated in a subjective tissue of experience which prevents him from reaching the so-called "external world." All communication between human selves takes place through the medium of Nature; Dewey, especially, included relationships with Nature along with social interactions. In Human Nature and Conduct Dewey wrote: Infinite relationships of man with his fellows and with nature already exist. The ideal means . . . a sense of these encompassing continuities with their infinite reach. This meaning even now attaches to present activities because they are set in a whole to which they belong and which belongs to them.1 Implicit here is a rich conception of Nature as the encompassing whole, enbracing the total life of man. This is far removed from the view of Nature as object which dominates the thought of the physical scientists and the engineers. 3. A unique and not always recognized feature of the pragmatic outlook was the development of a new conception of experience. This was not based, as in the classical view, on a passive spectator who merely observes the data of sense. Its foundation was rather a dynamic interaction between a living, organic being equipped with language and intelligence and whatever presents itself to be encountered or engaged. Experience, in this sense, is the realization of that previously mentioned continuity with Nature. Experience is not a distinct subject matter such as the content of the senses in contrast to thought; rather, it is the meaningful and significant result of the engagement between Nature and man. Neither is experience confined to content. Whatever there is, from stones to hopes and fears, can be encountered in some mode and to some degree. Experience, however, embraces contexts or meaning dimensions in such a way that one and the same object can be apprehended or experienced in many contexts. A single tree, for example, will appear to the botanist as a representative of a species, to the lumberman as so many board feet of timber, and to the poet as the force of Nature manifested in the destiny of the acorn to become an oak. These varying contexts are not to be regarded as merely subjective additions made by the human mind. On the contrary, they are rooted in Nature inasmuch as it is the tree which has the capacity, through its own structure, to figure significantly in the diverse meaning patterns. It is these patterns which are realized in experience in virtue of being encountered by the subject of experience who is able to apprehend them. Among the dimensions of experience one which is both outstanding and of special importance for our problem is the aesthetic dimension. This embraces both the realization of value or significance in human life and an apprehension of the reality experienced in its own terms as valuable in itself. Thus conceived, the esthetic represents the transcendence of the instrumental intelligence since it is quite illegitimate within the compass of esthetic perception to regard what is thus experienced as a means to a further end. Such perception has a finality about it and represents our appreciation of whatever is encountered for itself in its own quality and value. Esthetic perception posts a "No Trespassing" sign in Nature and at the same time reveals the limits of technological reason, for if there are no final goods and values then even instrumental values lose their point and purpose. It is as if one had at his disposal all possible ingenious means for overcoming obstacles and attaining goals, but had no clear idea of which ultimate ends to strive for. From Know-How to Nowhere, the alarming but accurate title of a recent book on technology in America, nicely expresses our current predicament. It can be resolved only if Nature has a status of finality in itself which takes man beyond Nature as object, and even as environment, because Nature can be destroyed in its environmental capacity unless it and the experience which it engenders possess intrinsic value standing beyond the reach of instrumental intelligence. Let us attempt to understand more clearly the nature of the esthetic dimension by considering Dewey's account of what he called "having an experience." In contrast to philosophers who have tended to speak of experience in an unrestricted sense, Dewey was interested in the unity of individual experiences had and identified as such. To have an experience is to have moved through a course of events to some form of consummation. It may be the solution of a problem, playing a game, writing

a book or enjoying a meal. In all these, there is a sense of fulfillment and completion such that the experience stands out as a significant whole, pervaded by a dominant quality. Thus we say, "That was a terrifying, poignant, sad, etc. experience"; its value for our lives resides precisely in this quality which is borne in upon us by the experience as a whole. It was Dewey's contention that no experience has significant unity unless it has such aesthetic quality. A passing stream of impressions or a succession of colors or sounds do not by themselves constitute an experience because they lack the pervasive quality which would identify them as that particular experience. By contrast, the experience of having arrived at one's destination after undergoing some harrowing events is an experience suffused with the quality of relief or of anxiety overcome. The entire sequence of happenings is taken together in one whole of meaning. In asking where we are to go for an account of such experience, Dewey replied: to drama or fiction. Its nature and import can be expressed only by art, because there is a unity of experience which can be expressed only as an experience.2 Within the interaction between Nature and man the emergence of what has value and intrinsic worth sheds light on both experience and Nature. Nature is disclosed in its esthetic capacity as a reality surpassing the status of object and even of environment; as such, it has a claim on man as a responsible being. Experience, moreover, without the pervasive qualities which punctuate it would be either an inchoate mass of events or an endless series of happenings registering themselves on the consciousness of a being for whom they have no more meaning than the passing scene has for a camera recording it on film. The aesthetic, then, is a touchstone of significance and provides a standard in accordance with which to judge the limits of the instrumental intelligence. Reducing Nature to the status of object means setting aside all limits to technological control. This results in that total exploitation which in turn, destroys Nature as environment. The recovery of Nature as the supportive habitat of human life is impossible without imposing limits to man's control. It is the esthetic dimension which marks out those limits and points the way to a more rational control of the engineering will itself. Whether, in fact, the balance can be redressed is not a question to be settled here. What is important to understand, however, is that the very pragmatic outlook which provided the basic rationale for technology is not without resources for directing that technology towards human goals. Yale University New Haven, Conn. NOTES l. John Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct (New York: Modern Library, 1930), pp. 33031. 2. John Dewey, Art as Experience (Capricorn: New York: G. P. Putnam & Sons, 1958), p. 43. CHAPTER VI MAN, TECHNOLOGICAL PRAXIS AND NATURE IN DIALECTICAL SYNTHESIS JANUSZ KUCZYNSKI Hegel and Faure considered architecture to be the art by which dynamic and vigorous societies initiate the development of civilization. In a similar manner, philosophy can be called `the architecture of culture'. This term refers to the most general and comprehensive intellectual construction summing up in an integrated form the principles and the achievements of science, arts, technology, material production, politics and, indeed, of almost every human physical and intellectual endeavor. Thus conceived, philosophy proves to be, not only a mere point of departure for the development of civilization, but its epitome. To put it more clearly, as a synthesis it is also a point of departure, for it both lays foundations and creates upon them the intellectual construction of the future. Some syntheses, such as those of resignation or of historical decline, may simply bring an end to

something. These demonstrate the unacceptability of Nietsche's conviction that decadence, because devoid of the power to generalize, is doomed to cultivate mere details. The role of stoicism, for example, was but that of summing up, while Augustinianism ushered in a new epoch. Descartes seems to have adumbrated right from the start a sweeping outline of the architectonics of modern individualism and rationalism. Hegel perceived the value of his own philosophy in completing and crowning the development of mankind. Marx and his disciples have a full awareness of summing up and continuing past achievements, while at the same time throwing open completely new horizons. In comparing philosophies with architecture we had in mind naturally only those philosophies which perhaps deserve the name (for, obviously, not all have been included in the above), that is, those capable of mastering the world intellectually and thus capable also of working out syntheses. THE RISK AND THE NEED FOR SYNTHESIS The need for synthesis is perhaps more urgent today than ever before, in order both to master the world by imposing an intellectual order on reality and to discover the main features of the epoch precisely through synthesis. Thus, the goal is to detect the guiding principles and thereby to establish one's own place in the reality of culture and humanized matter. The very tendency which Gabriel Marcel called the ontological hunger for being finds its superficial, yet distinct, expression in the hunger for synthesis; hence, it is also a quest for roots or for a fulcrum. Synthesis becomes a kind of a priori for subsequent development, the basis for further, including analytical, investigation. It should yield that insight which Bergson sought through his intuition, namely, the idea and penetration of the world which is subsequently exploited by a host of analyses devoted to particular and narrow fragments. A summarizing synthesis seems but a report on the stage of knowledge achieved thus far, while an open synthesis, a projecting one, can be compared to a map whose contours are merely outlined and is meant to be filled in and complemented through subsequent investigations. Synthesis, therefore, is a form which integrates sciences, arts, politics, and so forth; it signifies a comprehension, attainable perhaps first of all through philosophy, of the essence of culture, the network of its typical tendencies and the foundations of a view of the world. As this comprehension is achieved through diverse forms of social consciousness and the principles of practical1 activity it has cultural, historical praxis and anthropological significance. Thus, synthesis makes possible the functioning and development of culture rather than its vegetation and decay. The main concern of this paper is to attempt an assessment of one of the most brilliant and comprehensive syntheses, that advanced by Henri Van Lier in his book entitled The New Age.2 It is a significant essay presenting an intellectually inspiring and invigorating integration of technology, science, art and ethics, viewed in the perspective of an all-embracing, philosophical vision of culture. It is one of the most symptomatic expressions of the quest for ideological and philosophical orientation to be found in contemporary Western thought. Further, it is a synthesis of a special kind, for it is worked out as if the march is simultaneously "in progress" and at the crossroads. To put it more forcefully, in its political aspect the work defends individualism and cosmopolitism, while in its totality it expresses technocratic leanings despite certain pro-democratic declarations in the chapter devoted to art. That is, the author's unificatory aspirations were powerful enough to lead him to the theory of convergence tacitly assumed as the obvious premise or generalization of the contemporary state of civilization. While the above would suggest that the book is written from a standpoint trenchantly inimical to socialism, it is, in fact, not so. In a certain sense, it is even pro-socialistic, since in attempting to strike a balance at the crossroads the author directs his far-reaching philosophical insight all the more clearly toward the socialist world and particularly towards the socialist vision of the world. Here, in my opinion two

types of convergence theorists are of interest: those who would have socialism become similar to capitalism and those who believe that capitalism must come to resemble socialism and give rise to a single civilization and cultural formation without recourse to social revolution. As Van Lier appears to belong to the latter group he is one of the most interesting witnesses of the ideological transformations occurring within bourgeois culture and an exponent of its boldest, most sincere and unbiased explorations. His individualism constitutes man's defence against reification and the anonymity of mass culture. His cosmopolitism protests nationalistic and certain chauvinistic movements, as well as the particularisms stemming in part from the growing disparity between the development of single countries and even of various parts of the capitalist world. His technocratism is not directed against man, but expresses his belief in the beneficial and omnipotent power of technology for delivering this world and securing its further development and prosperity. The philosophical stratum of the book evidently yields to Marxism. It is worthy of note that this is observable more in the actual solutions proposed than in its declarations. This pertains, above all, to epistemology and ontology. The author's theory of society and its development conceives the productive power in a onesided manner. While basically acknowledging its prominent role, he absolutizes the role of technology and underrates the role of the relations of production which are crucial from the socio-economic point of view. Hence, there are such paradoxes as: convergence along with an almost Marxist theory of culture and civilization; technocratism hand-in-hand with declarations about a world freed from alienation; individualism alongside dreams of the community of mankind. Obvious contradictions and incompatibilities follow: the statement that "there is nothing intermediate between an expert and an ignoramus"3 is followed by a thesis about the "public participating in the creative process" and the statement that "contemporary art is democratic in a very deep sense, which signifies something more than cheapness and the ability to duplicate the standard."4 Nevertheless, rather than dwell on errors, our interest lies in his efforts towards a synthesis using dialectics as its axis. It is my intention, therefore, to rectify this peculiarly dialectical synthesis through the polemical argumentation in the subsequent parts of this paper. Transcending the limits of polemics, I shall attempt to formulate counter-propositions against the background of the kind of philosophizing which is under analysis. THE STATIC VERSUS THE DYNAMIC MACHINE: IMITATION OF NATURE VERSUS STRUGGLE WITH NATURE The point of departure for Van Lier in his analysis is technology conceived in close relation with culture and, indeed, as its foundation. The three phases or aspects of the machine revealed in its historical development lead to basically divergent types of culture and equally divergent philosophies. The static machine seems best suited to mechanistic and sentient materialism: it passively imitates nature of which it is a fragmentary appendage. "The mechanic machine was but an extension of either the human body or the natural forces: watermills, windmills even pumps and the mechanical press took advantage of water and the wind, using them according to their natural capacity and efficacy, without attempting any transformation and on the spot."5 With the advent of the dynamic machine around 1800, The machine ceased to be an innocent means of relieving man's labor and securing him decent conditions for everyday existence; it became rather an instrument with boundless power, capable of satisfying equally boundless needs. The transition from Newcomen's machine to that of Watt may be regarded as the symbol of this basic change. In Newcomen's machine steam pushed out the piston which had been pressed in by the natural pressure, that is, the weight of the air. We were still in the world of windmills and watermills. Completely reversing the problem, Watt used steam to press in and develop the momentum. Since its pressure can be increased indefinitely, power became capable of unlimited growth. In this manner the propelling ability passed from nature to man and energetism such as will be

later developed by thermo- and electrodynamics was born. Thus the machine, which in its origins did not arouse the anxiety of the humanists, suddenly became a source of new morality, almost of a new religion, of efficacy, quantity, efficiency and progress.6 The dynamic machine, therefore, broke away from man and nature. The locomotive, the furnace, the electric turbine or the internal combustion engine not only become separated from the laborer, what is more, they unleash natural forces and transform one of these into another: mechanical to electrical to chemical. The concept of energy and the principle of its conservation are discovered in relation to the capacity of these machines to transfer energy from place to place independently of its source. Hence, the feeling expressed by those who witness these processes . . . cannot be included in the culture and the systems of sanctified values which knew and related among themselves only man, nature and certain objects. Compared with the semi-artificial instruments of old, the dynamic machine represents perfect artificiality and constitutes a separate as well as singular realm. . . . It becomes the means of the means. It inaugurates the realm of pure means, equally distinct from man and nature and equally uncanny; some even say: monstrous as the realm of pure artificiality.7 As we interpret it, the dynamic maachine seems at one and the same time best suited to the classical German activistic idealism and the French and English positivism. It is both a peculiar product and a substantiation or perfect image of these differing intellectual and cultural trends. On the one hand, it expresses the attitude of unlimited activism imposed on nature and society from outside, while also representing in itself the perfect order of the mechanical world, of inexorable facts, laws and systems independent of man. It embodies both the menace and the hope of the great era of the middle class: its brutal power and total alienation and, simultaneously, the hope of an unlimited mastery over the world of nature and man. All in all, Van Lier refrains from assessing the social consequences attendant upon the advent of the dynamic machine. He merely quotes among others the arguments adduced by its enthusiasts, the American technocrats of the 20th century: You will argue that the advent of the dynamic machine liquidated the shortage of goods and, hence, of privileges and social classes. Actually, it is quite the contrary: as we have clearly demonstrated it brings about a new class division into producers, technicians and executors, the very division being more alienating than hitherto.8 One further quality of dynamic machines must be taken into account since it is significant to the problems under analysis here. This is the fact that these machines are abstract. "Abstractness is nothing other than stereotyped recurrence and succession which acquired a purely numerical character through acceleration. . . . Abstractness means information directed to itself which screens the world instead of revealing it."9 Bergson's critique of positivistic civilization converges with this critique of the dynamic machine as obscuring the world. Information directed to itself and having no `deeper' contact with being evinces a tendency towards a peculiar inner multiplication while an overflow of information places a screen, as it were, between consciousness and things; it is by force of this phenomenon that it can be called passive. It is passive not because it causes drowsiness, but because the activity which it stimulates concerns principally the substitutes of reality, images, sounds, words, imaginings which are apt to evolve into delusions.10 Without being explicit the author leads us to the conclusion that the dynamic machine is a typical expression of the dominating culture of the 19th century with its mixture of idealistic and positivistic tendencies. Fortunately, we can attempt to be more consistent. Are the interrelations warranted which he suggests between technology or, more precisely, the form of the machine and the style of culture in itself and unmediated by the socio-economic system? While being a rhetorical question it possesses a certain inspirational value unrecognized by the prevalent Marxist line of argumentation. A comprehensive view would conceive the machine

rather as a product of the economico-socio-intellectual culture; consequently, it is philosophy which gives birth to the machine rather than the other way around. The word "rather" implies that the multilayer structure of social life and the mutual interrelations of its elements virtually exclude any alternate major relation. THE DIALECTICAL MACHINE: TOWARDS UNITY WITH NATURE This influence contributes to historical augmentation: the dialectical machine is a result of the development and qualitative transformations of the dynamic machine in much the same manner as the latter continued the static machine, despite considerable differences. Since, however, the author did not furnish an explicit qualification we must reconstruct his line of reasoning in subordination to our polemical presentation, juxtaposing it with our counter-proposals and supplementing it with our revisions. The dialectical machine of which the atomic pile and computer are examples, is correlated in time with the second industrial revolution. Whereas the machine of the 19th century, being analytical, linear and sequential, appeared totally abstract and deserved all the indictment which for ages were lodged against abstractness, our contemporary machine . . . betrays enough synergy to make its concreteness prominent, thus resulting in a far-reaching modification of its cultural significance. . . . The concrete mentality was finally introduced in the definition of cybernetics worked out by Norbert Weiner's team in 1948 for information machines and . . . in 1958 for dynamic machines.11 What exactly is synergy, which is so crucial for the dynamic machines. Within the internal combustion engine there obtains a marked antagonism between compression and explosion stemming from the fact that under the impact of compression the explosion can be transformed into a detonation. In contrast, compression within the Diesel engine is both the source and the result of explosion, which reduces to a bare minimum the antagonism between the two. It can increase itself and the power of the explosion simultaneously."12 Possibly this phenomenon can be discerned all the more clearly in the operation of the jet-propelled engine which, together with the aeroplane, becomes a significant example of the attempt to make machines resemble living organisms, of the synergy of function and surroundings, and of an almost ideal cooperation of the machine with the environment. Already the consequences of the dialectical machine for culture are clear. The dynamic machine was opposed to life, thereby generating chaos and pernicious socio-cultural consequences. The dialectical machine, on the other hand, accomplishes a reconciliation of mechanism with the life environment and develops some features of a living creature. Thus, the age-old idea of organicity seems to recur, this time in the concrete, bringing "a preponderance of the whole over its part, wherein a part ceases to exist as a mechanism and becomes an organ."13 The synergy of the machine and nature seems observable in modern aerodynamic solutions: the automobile takes advantage of the resistance of air to increase its cohesion, special projections of the synchronous propellers direct the stream of air under the aeroplane's wings to increase its carrying capacity. . . . we bear witness to a great reconciliation, active this time, which occurs on the basis of mutual conditioning and thanks to which the "associated environment," to use Simondon's term, is taking shape. The water surrounding Guimbal's turbine, the air surrounding the bolids or that which is found between the wings and the propeller of the Breguet 941 aeroplane no longer belong to the machine; nor are they simply the forces of nature: together with the machine they constitute the intermediary reality. Once this type of reality has a chance of getting somewhat disseminated, of becoming more spectacular . . . its cultural significance, that is, its ability to substitute for the older and more static nature, will become obvious.14 The term "intermediary reality" ought to be kept in mind as it will constitute the axis in the analysis for the philosophically significant conception presented in the following parts of the paper. The dialectical machine is distinguished by

various synergies that lead to the following two significant concepts: that of concreteness and that of dialectical network. The abstract machine to the extent to which its functions were separated easily lent itself to explanation or reparation and was adapted to performing various tasks. The concrete machine, however, introduced a new world, more powerful and more flexible in its totality in comparison with the world of the past.15 In its full extent synergy is synonymous with the organic relationships between mechanical elements; . . . it implies dialectical relations between machine and nature, between matter and form. . . . The recent machine inaugurates a new technological and cultural vision of reality.16 In our interpretation, which at the same time attempts to furnish the missing links in Van Lier's argumentation, concreteness is dialectical since it both continues and transcends the abstractness of the old type within the new machine. We can perceive here an analogy to, or even the inspiration of, the Marxist theory of cognition: from the initial, existing and empirical concrete, through abstraction, generalization and theory, towards the concrete of creative practice, that is, the creation of a new reality. The concreteness of the dialectical machine implies a complexity of structure which re-enacts the imitation of the concreteness of nature on a qualitatively different level; thus, the product of technology becomes a replica of the dialectics of nature. Naturally, the above statement breeds a number of new problems. This imitation also existed before, but the previous machines were exterior to nature, both qualitatively and quantitatively. Whereas the static machine was appended to nature and the dynamic machine was opposed to nature, the new machine, owing to its concreteness, attempts to place itself inside nature through the intermediary reality mentioned above, that is, through synergy and the entire dialectical network. It marks a dialectical leap into new behaviour and new mentality. Paradoxically enough, the problem of industry destroying nature may be a symptom of this process of getting located inside nature; it is simply one phase of the difficulties of adaptation. Having already ventured such an optimistic diagnosis, we have full right to anticipate that the development, not of the machine, but of dialectical technology (the whole network of plants uniting metallurgical, chemical and agrotechnical solutions with advanced socialistic relations) will bring about a specific "naturalization" of technology, a fuller imitation of nature and a veritable synergy. In the course of argumentation pursued by Van Lier this becomes inextricably related to another component of the dialectics of the machine, that is, with network: It is no longer the machine that is the fundamental echnological conception but the network, a synergic aggregate of synergic machines. . . . The dialectical network is of horizontal tension. It has numerous loops and focuses. Its order is no longer hierarchic but functional, as that of the organs of the human body, which are interdependent and control one another within the self-regulation system of the whole organism. Initiative is transferred from one point to another depending on the exigencies of the moment.17 Both concreteness and the network are inextricably connected with the idea of reversibility. The concrete epoch, totally engrossed as it is in the idea of reversibility, attempts where it can, and particularly in relation to the internal combustion engine, to substitute the scheme: raw material = product + by-product, for the scheme: raw material = product + refuse. In a way it is forced to do this with respect to atomic energy, whose remnants are pernicious in the extreme.18 The above example of the idea of reversibility does not seem to be sufficiently apposite. The issue can be grasped more tangibly with respect to information machines and the use of cybernetics in the development of technology and modern culture in general. In this case feedback can be considered a concretization of the constitutive principle of dialectics, quite in tune with the tendencies evinced by the most recent philosophical output.

THE RELATION BETWEEN THE SOCIO-PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM AND TECHNOLOGY Van Lier's conception, which in the foregoing interpretation has been systematized, specified and supplemented, is both inspiring and significant. It subjects technology to a specific philosophical scrutiny, laying emphasis on the dialectical character of its present stage of development. This attitude yields a deeper understanding both of technology itself, and of its impact on the development of society, its mentality and culture. Further elaboration of this point is an urgent task for philosophers, engineers and inventors in particular. Dialectics of this kind contribute to fruitful humanistic interpretations and may aid in research and design work. Thus, adoption of the idea of the dialectic network should consistently result in concrete and practical cooperation between engineers and philosophers, between naturalists and humanists in general. The value of this conception is found also in what that it presupposes as obvious, mainly that handling dialectics itself is a serious, novel and fresh manner. Van Lier does not rest content with schematically opposing dialectics to metaphysics, indeed he never uses the latter term. Rather, he concretizes the general approach by opposing dialectic vision and activity not only to the static, but with equal emphasis to the dynamic and the abstract approach. Inventiveness and boldness in the use of language enriches the conceptual stock at the disposal of dialectics by such terms as concreteness, network and synergy of the first and second degree. His application of crucial terms: "dialectics" and "machine" is especially interesting. Frequently, the author does not attempt to introduce any arrangement or any order into the flux of his thoughts. Thus, the book possesses all the values, together with all the shortcomings, of an essay and perhaps of the famous French "light" style. For these reasons the above presentation is bound to transcend the limits set by purely interpretative activity and at certain points elaborate and supplement the author's vision. The point at issue here is not the dialectical theory of the machine but the dialectical machine. Van Lier may not have been aware of the significance of this term: through it contact is established, no longer with a dialectical theory, but with a man-created reality which, though artificially produced, is dialectical. I propose to formulate the point with more caution, and the restriction seems quite evident: namely, that the dialectical machine is but the preliminary stage of a process in which technological reality is becoming dialectical. A fully dialectical technological network will be a phenomenon so significant and revolutionary in its nature that its full-fledged development may correspond to the communist civilization alone. Is this dialectics attained solely through imitating nature? The concept of intermediary reality refers us to quite another set of problems. Suffice it to say here that with the concrete machine, synergically linked with the entire network, the degree of imitation of nature allows us to refer to the dialectics of nature as "existing" in the products of technology. Hence, it is possible to conceive of reproducing the dialectical processes in the artificial products created by human beings. Much to our surprise, however, the conception analyzed above seems to pertain rather to the simplest laws of dialectics, chiefly to the principle of universal interrelatedness, the principle of transformation of quantity into quality and, partially, to the principle of negation of the negation. These principles or laws can be correlated with such terms as synergy, network, concreteness, transformation of the forms of energy, energy and matter and even information and energy. That, however, which is most crucial and profound in the theories of dialectics elaborated hitherto, namely, the laws of unity and the conception of the struggle of the opposites, is not to be found there; simultaneously, the sphere of problems delimited by Van Lier together with the manner of interpretation clearly point in that direction. It might be ventured that in a way the static and the dynamic machines function above all on the basis of alienation from and antagonism towards nature. The dynamic machine constitutes a result of a pragmatic establishment and

petrification of a discovered discrepancy or contradiction "freezing" its opposed poles, as it were. This state has its corresponding consequences which find expression in an unmitigated, absolute, that is, precisely antinomic and metaphysical opposition between nature and culture. Naturally, the man who introduced this antinomy into the European mentality, Jean Jacques Rousseau, lived at the time when the transition from the static to the dynamic machine was just occurring (the boundaries between these two technologies are here delimited with ample tolerance). Subsequently, the triumphant progress of the dynamic machine was paralleled by the drastically growing discrepancy between nature and culture, observable both in the numerous theoretical and philosophical conceptions as well as in the realities of the contemporary world, especially the world of dynamism, brutality and total alienation of technology from the natural and social environment. The dialectical machine, on the other hand, seems to take its place in the very center of the tensions between nature and culture, uniting the two poles of the same human reality which we prefer to qualify by the classical term: praxis. It is at this point that technology acquires greater veracity: it is no longer the veracity of imitating a separated fragment of reality, but that of cohering to the very essence of the inner processes of reality. It is a matter of "getting fitted in'' the schemes of nature, through synergy and the all-embracing interrelations obtaining within the dialectical network. Furthermore, due to its growing concreteness and complexity, the machine constitutes a miniature replica of the world. This can be predicated of the great industrial-information-cultural networks, of computers, spaceships and atomic power plants. As I have frequently taken the liberty of transcending the boundaries set by the author's explicit argumentation, I would venture one step further: on the grounds of HegelianBradleyan language we could even refer here to imitating the absolute, precisely in its complexity and concreteness. Couched in more modest terms, the dialectical machine will be considered a step towards the absolute, man's actual and most powerful instrument in his incessant and hitherto futile attempt at deification. This is due to the peculiar location of this machine at the "very heart" of nature, as if in the center of a contradiction. To be sure, earlier machines, together with the majority of preceding cultures and philosophies, absolutized contradictions or incompatibilities in a special way. Through their partial solutions they were able to use a fraction of the tensions or energy they themselves represented and, moreover, wasted most of it due to their very low performance index and great amount of refuse. In the domain of its cultural counterpart this found expression, for example, in absolutizing certain fragments of reality, in viewing reality by different philosophies each time as if from a different vantage point. All this was done in full confidence that these fragmentary and superficial opinions revealed the absolute truth. Recall how many philosophers regarded their own conceptions as "Copernican revolutions" or turning points: Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Comte, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Bergson and most others. Manifestly, in the domain of culture waste was equally great inasmuch as the possibilities afforded by energy of thought, truth and ingeniousness were concerned. The dialectical machine, on the other hand, affords a location within the contradiction itself; rather it makes it possible to take full advantage of the contradiction and frequently at the preliminary phase: for example, the development from atomic energy to nuclear energy. It domesticates the tensions without annihilating them. To be concise, previously the dynamic machine killed nature whereas the dialectical machine coexists with nature which it has managed to domesticate. The difference between Henri Van Lier's position and my own consists in the fact that I consider the dialectical machines of the present to be but infants of a new species. Hence, caution is indicated in assessing the present, with the main bulk of any optimism being directed to the future. I locate the principle upon which nature is to be domesticated much more clearly within the entire dialectical network, in the essence of the oncoming culture.

Confronted with the alarming facts of the destruction of rivers, woods and fields, and in view of the more intensely manifested cultural pessimism in contemporary civilization, all this may seem a mere fantasy. The reply is quite simple: this is nothing other than a classical operation of the dynamic machine, specifically of the dynamic industrial-cultural network. The consequences of the destructive activity of this dynamism were so pernicious in the most industrialized countries of the world, that as early as the Roosevelt administration there appeared organized attempts at remedying the situation. These were rooted in common sense and the instinct of selfpreservation; partially at least they were an integral part of political and economic needs. The care taken of the Tennessee river basin furnished the most spectacular example. Within general political structures such activity supplies a humanitarian alibi for the governments of quite a few capitalist countries. Nevertheless, one cannot deny them their significance and their beneficial consequences. Recently, the struggle to purify the river Thames and the war waged against smog in London proved quite encouraging in their results. Against this background the scandals concerning water pollution acquire more significance. As can be gauged from the foregoing, developing a dialectical network is no simple matter, both technologically and economically. Nevertheless, it is an absolute necessity and in the conditions of socialism it ought to be approached with manifest care and energy, and in full awareness of the possible negative consequences. Public opinion would seem to be sufficiently mature to accept a new hierarchy of values on condition that synergy or even a specific symbiosis of the new man with nature were not so much reinstated as constructed anew. University of Warsaw Warsaw, Poland NOTES 1. ln thc course of the present paper I shall confine myself to presenting only one kind of praxis, that is technological praxis. Cf. the classification of types of praxis in Louis Althusser and Etienne Balbor, Lire de Capital (Paris: Libraire Francois Maspero, 1968). However, while approving of Althusser's striving to clarify Marxist thought, I decidedly oppose his sui generis neodogmatism, which finds expression, among others in radical theses on "breaking off" with tradition (rupture or coupure epistemologique), supposedly achieved by Marx. Thus, I reject the ahistoricism and ahumanism of this French Communist (Cf., e.g., the reasoning in Chapter V entitled "Marxism Is Not Historicism"). 2. Henri Van Lier, Le Nouvel Age (2nd ed.; Paris: Casterman, 1964). In dialectical perspective, I will adopt as a significant point of reference a part of the terminololy and problematics of this inspiring and topical work. Nevertheless, the present article expresses my own proposals and critique of some of its tendencies. 3. Ibid., p. 199. "Point de milieu entre l'expert et l'ignare." 4. Ibid., p. 202, 203. "Artiste et public ouvriers" and "L'art contemporain est démocratique en un sens tres profond, qui va beaucoup plus loin que le bon marche et la multiplicabilite des standards." In a slightly earlier work, Les arts de l'espace (Paris: Casterman, 1960). p. 10, Van Lier wrote: L'art n'est donc plus lie aux loisiers d'une caste. En prenant conscience de son serieux, il s'est democratise, comme en temoignent la mentalite de ses createurs et l'extension vertigineuse de son public. Il ne s'oppose plus au travail, ni meme a la technique. Il participe a la recherche commune, sur un autre plan." This confirms the aforementioned perspective of a dialectical synthesis of opening, possible only as an intellectual correlate of a synthesized or unified society, that is, mankind understood as a community. The path towards this synthesis leads through democracy and socialism. Art, perhaps because of the present invincible animosity of many philosophies becomes, to an even greater degree than philosophy, an intellectual factor in integrating and synthesizing qualities. Similarly, the scientific and technological revolution is a material factor unifying mankind, while the socialist revolution and, above all, the construction of developed socialist societies is a political factor.

5. Ibid., p. 29. "la machine mecanique . . . prolongeait le corps humain et les forces naturelles: moulins, voiliers, captaient l'eau et le vent selon leurs débit propre, les mettaient en oeuvre sans travestissement, les utilisaient sur place." It is significant that in this era of machines which copy nature and thus express a technical praxis of submission there arises as a generalization of this praxis an observant materialism akin to the one in the Enlightenment period. But it is also significant that even in that period a philosophical generalization of the socio-political praxis brought forth a poignant consciousness of the counterposing of man and the world, expressed most profoundly by Rousseau in a counterposing of culture and nature. I wrote more broadly on the counterposition of nature and culture while discussing the works of B. Baczko in my book Porzadek nadchodzacego swiata (The Arrangement of the Oncoming World; Warsaw: Ksiazka i Wiedza, 1964), pp. 208-218. 6. Ibid., p. 25. "Elle cesse d'être un moyen innocent d'alléger quelque peu les tâches humaines et d'assurer, vaille que vaille, une subsistance au jour le jour, pour apparaître comme un instrument de puissance indéfinie destiné à satisfaire des besoins également indéfinis. On peut prendre pour signal de cette mutation le passage de la machine de Newcomen à celle de Watt. Dans la Newcomen, la vapeur avait pour effet de repousser le piston, alors poussé par la pression atmosphérique: le travail dépendait de celui, fatalement limité, d'une force naturelle, le poids de l'air; nous étions toujours dans le monde du moulin à vent et à eau. Watt retourne de problème: dorènavant, c'est la vaoeur qui poussera, assument le temps moteur, et comme on peut accroitre indéfiniment sa pression, la ouissance elle aussi sera indéfiniment "multipliable. Ainsi les commandes passent de la nature à l'homme: l'énergétisme, tel que le developperont la thermodynamique et bientôt l'electrodynamique, est né. . . . Et la machine, qui depuis ses origines n'avait guère alerté les hommes de culture, se prit à inspirer une morale et presque une religion: celle de l'efficacité, de la quantité, du rendement, du progrès." Let us add that it is also the source of a new philosophy of pragmatism. There exists yet another aspect of those "philosophies of praxis," which appear in this way not only from dynamic technology, but above all from a class or ideological need to compete with the only authentic philosophy of praxis, i.e., Marxism. The article by Rudiger Bubner; "Eine Renaissance der praktischen Philosophie," Philosophische Rundschau, XXII (1975), 1-34, can serve as an example of such an ideological manoeuvre. 7. Ibid., p. 30. "La locomotive, le haut fourneau, la turbine électrique et le moteur à explosion, non seulement s'isolent de l'ouvrier mais au lieu d'épouser les forces naturelles, ils les attisent de toutes les manières; ils les transmuent d'une forme dans une autre--mécanique, thermique, électrique, chimique--et c'est même à ce propos que sera découvert le concept d'énergie et le principe de sa conservation: ils le transportent en tous lieux sans rappel de leur origine. D'où le sentiment, exprimé par les temoins, de se trouver devant un nouvel être qui . . . restait inassimilable par la culture et les systèmes de valeurs consacrés, puisqu'on n'y connaissait que l'homme, la nature et quelques objets les reliant. Après les engins d'autrefois, semi-artificiels, la machine énergétique est un artifice consommé, formant un règne à part, insolite. . . . Elle est un moyen de moyen. Elle m'augure le régne du pur moyen, aussi distinct de l'homme et de la nature, aussi insolite--d'aucuns diront: monstrueux--que le régne du pur artifice. Max Weber, Die protestantische Ethik und der `Geist' des Kapitalismus absolutizes in a classical manner the ideal or religious aspect of the entire historical process, just as Van Lier in the above-mentioned reflections absolutizes an opposite asnect of the same process, i.e., technology. I use the concept of absolutization in the meaning which became commonly known in Marxist methodology after the exoression used by V. I. Lenin in The Philosophical Notebooks (Warsaw: Ksiaaka i wiedza, 1956), pp. 335-39. "From the point of view of primitive, vulgar and metaphysical materialism, philosophical idealism is merely nonsense. On the contrary, from the point of view of dialectical materialism, philosophical idealism is a one-sided, exaggerated, sickly growth (uberschwengliches) or

distension (Dietzgen) of but one of the slight aspects at the margin of cognition into the absolute, detached from matter and nature and transformed into a diety." Cf. its chapter "W sprawie dialektyki" (Concerning Dialectics). 8. Ibid., p. 33. "La machine énergétique comporte la suppression de la rareté et par là des privilèges et des classes sociales? Nous venons de voir au contraire qu'elle implique une nouvelle division en classes--celles de l'homme d'affaires, du technicien, de l'exécutant--plus aliénante que l'ancienne. D'où que nous la prenions, nous sommes au rouet." 9. Ibid., p. 35. "Abstraction que la répétition et la succession stéréotypées rendues purement numériques par l'effet de l'accélération. . . . Abstraction que l'information tournant sur elle-même et faisant écran au monde au lieu de le révéler." 10. Ibid., p. 34. "L'information proliférante fait écran entre l'esprit et les choses, et c'est d'ailleurs en ce sens qu'elle est passive; non qu'elle provoquerait la somnolence, mais l'activité qu'elle suscite s'adresse principalement a des substituts de réalité, images, sons, mots, phantasmes, qui ont tôt fait de devenir fantômes." This criticism of abstractionism expresses one of the aspects of dialectical thought presented by Hegel as well as by Marx and Lenin which must be especially stressed in our perspective of the striving towards the concrete. However, while corresponding to the concept of the concrete in the dialectics of Hegel and in Marxism, they are counterposed in a synthetic presentation. Hence, only authentic Marxian and Leninist dialectics open a realistic possibility of overcoming the concrete of matter, nature and society in a new unity. This is achieved through a humanistic creationism, directed against both theocentric creationism and a dogmatic Marxism which at times is simply Neo-Hegelianism. I wrote about this problem more broadly in an article entitled: "The Two Unities of Creationism: Hegel as an Object of Negation," Studia Filozoficzne, XII (1974), and in my recent book, Homo Creator (Warsaw: Ksiazka i Wiedza, 1976), pp. 7-40. I have developed more extensive discussions of Christian thought on this topic in many other works, among them Zvc i filozofowac (To Live and Philosophize; Warsaw: Ksiazka i Wiedza, 1969) and an article presenting a philosophical criticism as well as an evaluation of the possibility of socio-cultural cooperation between Christians and Marxists entitled: "The Marxist-Christian Dialogue," Dialectics and Humanism. The Polish Philosophical Quarterly, II (1974), 117-132. 11. Ibid.. pp. 37-38. "Tandis que la machine du XIXe siècle, encore analytique, linéaire, juxtaposée, paraissait globalement abstraite, et méritait tous les reproches qui se sont depuis toujours attachés a l'abstraction la nôtre . . . découvre assez de synergies pour que la concrètude y passe a l'avant-plan, entraînant une modification profonde de son sens culturel. . . . La mentalité concrète se campe définitivement dans la définition de la cybernétique par l'équipe de Norbert Weiner, en 1948, pour les machines d'information, . . . en 1958, pour les machines d'énergie." 12. Ibid., p. 41. "Alors que dans le moteur à explosion il y a antagonisme marqué entre la compression et la déflagration, puisque celle-ci sous l'effet de la pression risque de se transformer en détonation, dans le Diesel, la compression étant la source de la déflagration réduit 1'antagonisme entre elle et son effet qui la provooue en retour; elle pourra s'augmenter en l'augmaentant." More precisely, this is a synergy of the second degree. 13. Ibid., p. 43. "Une prévalence du tout sur la partie, ou la partie cesse d'être un rouage pour devenir un organe." Seemingly, this is again a copying of nature, but in reality the machine begins to infiltrate it and become a part of nature. Technical praxis enters nature as if from the interior, utilizing and at the same time intensifying its forces. When Marx stated in the "Capital," that science is becoming a direct productive force he saw precisely and in an unusually farreaching manner this problem of the transition from thought (science) to activity, to praxis that creates a new world. Contrary to, among others, Althusser, and the theory of an "old" and "young" Marx and contrary to a dogmatic-scientistic

orientation of some Marxists, this thesis profoundly corresponds to the famous words from the "Economic-philosophical Manuscripts": "Communism . . . as full naturalism = Humanism, as a Full humanism = naturalism; it forms a true solution of the conflict between man and nature and between man and man." (Warsaw: Ksiazka i Wiedza, 1958), p. 94. 14 Ibid., pp. 43-44. "Un léger recouvrement des hélices synchrones permet de diriger uniformément sur les ailes le débit de l'air accéléré de manière a augmenter la portance. . . . Une réconciliation s'opère mais active, à base de causalites reciproques, et qui fait naître ce que Simondon appelle un "milieu associe." L'eau autour de la turbine Guimbal, l'air autour du bolide ou entre l'hélice et l'aile du Bréguet 941 ne sont pas machine; ils ne sont non plus simple nature; ils formant avec la machine une réalité médiane. Ce type de réalité n'aura qu'à prendre plus d'amoleur, à devenir plus spectaculaire . . . pour que son incidence culturelle, l'estompement de l'ancienne nature immuable, saute aux yeux." 15. Ibid., p. 46. "La machine abstraite, dans la mesure où elle separait les fonctions, se prêtait bien a l'explication, était aisément réparable et se montrait a des roles très divers. Mais la machine concrète introduit un monde nouveau qui dans son ensemble est plus souple que l'ancien. "We wish to pursue the subject further in the direction of the main problem of our paper. The concrete dialectical machine is a means of creation and, simultaneously, a symbol of a new nature, not only, as Van Lier has it, of the old world. Similarly, Howard L. Parsons does not go beyond this borderline, although he writes about "the reconstruction of nature" in his work Man, East and West: Essays in East-West Philosophy (Amsterdam: B.R. Gruner, 1975), p. 105. That is why in the perspective of a Marxist humanistic creationism, we are concerned not only with copying and maintaining nature, but also with the creation of new nature through a scientific and technical revolution. To this one must add the maintenance of continuity between the value of the old and new nature, keeping in view that great synthesis which was inaugurated among others by the following words of Marx: "Consistent naturalism or humanism differs from idealism as well as from materialism while being at the same time the truth which unites them both. At the same time, we perceive that only naturalism is able to understand the act of universal history." (Economic-philosophical manuscripts. ed. cit., p. 148). 16. Ibid., p. 47. "La synergie prise dans toute son extension est synonyme de rapports organiques entre les parties machiniques . . . suggère des rapports dialectiques entre machine et nature, matière et forme . . . la machine récente introduise une nouvelle vue technique et culturelle de choses." 17. Ibid.. pp. 55-56. "Le concept technique fondamental n'est plus la machine mais le reseau, ensemble synergique de machines synergiques. . . . Le reseau dialectique est a tension horizontale. Il ya des noeuds, des foyers multiples. Son ordre n'est plus hiérarchique, mais fonctionnel, comme celui qui régne entre les organes d'un corps, où chacun dépend des autres et les commande, dans une autorégulation de l'ensemble. Selon les moments et les urgences, l'initiative vient tantôt d'un point tantôt d'un autre." The dialectical network of machines is here a technical and technocratic correlate of the socialist idea of united mankind. The network itself must be "embodied" in a network of new social relations, in order to be truly universal, profoundly transform the world and establish a new reality. 18. Both manifestos of the "Club of Rome" include, from our point of view, a basic omission: neither the arrest nor the partial directing of development can save the world. What is needed is: (a) a basic acceleration of development through a scientific and technical revolution, including a power such as atomic power for peaceful purposes, and a biological (humanistic, genetic, truly "green") revolution. (Bodo Manstein, "Der Mensch ein Zerstörer der naturlichen Ordnung?" in Was ist das der Mensch? Beitrage zur einer modernen Anthropologie [Munich: Piper Verlag, 1968], pp. 69-79 wrote on the necessity of a "biological dialectics" [der biologischen Dialektik] and the mounting of the "barricades of the biological

revolution" in order to arrest the process of devastation of the environment and to save nature. Though a pessimist, in this evaluation of the situation he calls for the use of the revolutionary instruments of science to save nature; revolution is thus seen as serving a sui generis conservatism!); and (b) linking of this development to an equalizing social development which leads towards a new and true community of man with mankind, technology and nature. CHAPTER VII NATURE AND HUMAN PRAXIS IN KARL MARX ANDREW N. WOZNICKI The student of Marxism faces from the beginning, not only a multitude of interpretations, but also a variety of forms of Marxist philosophy, especially in regard to the problematics of socio-political taxeology.1 Moreover, this proliferation of interpretations has led to a wide variety of contemporary sociopolitical movements. Although Marx was preoccupied mainly with the practical realization of his socio-political doctrine in accordance with his premise that "the philosophers have only interpreted the world in different ways; the point is to change it,"2 nevertheless, he was aware of the need to develop an appropriate philosophical anthropology of the social reality as well. In this paper my principal concern will be to develop the question of human praxis in Marx's socio-political taxeology by unfolding the main philosophical principles of his theoretical doctrine on nature and man. In addition I will attempt to scrutinize critically the proposition of Professor J. Kuczynski's paper as to the practical application of Marxist socio-political philosophy to the present time by evaluating human praxis in respect to one kind of praxis, i.e., technological praxis. In this I will attempt to play a constructive role as advocatus diaboli, for as it has been observed rightly: "Far from being exhausted, Marxism is still very young, almost in its infancy: it has scarcely begun to develop. It remains, therefore, the philosophy of our time. We cannot go beyond it because we have not gone beyond the circumstances which engendered it."3 In applying Marxist philosophical principles to the vital problematics of contemporary technological praxis, Professor Kuczynski's approach consists mainly in an historicist and humanist evaluation of philosophy as the basic "architecture of culture," that is, of all human activities. This raises the question of the justification for the mutual relationship between philosophy and culture. Are the two really distinct one from the other? If they are, is this distinction one of kind or of degrees? In other words, is the priority of philosophy in any order of human praxis justifiable in Marxism? In dealing with the relationship of the twofold human praxis, Professor Kuczynski refers to an historical experience of Western man and the variety of philosophical systems, while focusing upon that of Karl Marx, as "fully aware of summing up and continuing past achievements while opening new horizons." His search for a new "dialectical synthesis" of human activity as exercised today in technological praxis is centered upon three principles of Marxist socio-political taxeology, namely: 1. the dialectical tension between the static and dynamic forces of technological progress according to the priority of being over consciousness; 2. the dialectical development between quantitative and qualitative transformation of technological praxis according to the "synergetic modifications" of material productivity and human creativity; and 3. the dialectical resolution of contradictions between being and becoming according to the proletarian and revolutionary socio-political activity as evidenced in "the communist civilization alone." This paper will critically evaluate the philosophical presuppositions and possible implications of Marx's doctrine on human praxis according to the above-mentioned threefold philosophical principles. THE PRINCIPLE OF PRIORITY OF BEING OVER CONSCIOUSNESS Marx bases his socio-political taxeology on a two-fold motive power of human

praxis, namely "use-value" and "exchange-value." A critical scrutiny of the Marxian socio-political taxeology, however, manifests a dialectical shift between the two, namely, from materiality and individuality of human praxis to sociability and division of labor in production, on the one hand, and from the proletarian and economic system of values to political and revolutionary activities, on the other. This dialectical shift within Marxist sociopolitical taxeology necessitates an analysis of the problematics of the nature of the motive power of human praxis. Marx bases the motive power for the socio-political dialectical movement between "use-value" and "exchange-value" on the priority of being over consciousness. In other words, he maintains that there is neither an individual nor a social consciousness of men which could be a determining factor of any economic production system; it is rather the very opposite, namely, human praxis is determined by production. To be more specific let us recall the fact that although Marx did not reduce human social praxis entirely to economic forces, he certainly considered the economic value system to be the predominant force. In arguing this, he insisted that his doctrine of a two-fold value system in economy was discovered by his observation of development "during the period of manufacture."4 He also attempts to prove his doctrine of human praxis historically, especially by relating it to the teaching of Plato and Aristotle. Referring to Plato's theory of human material production Marx said: This standpoint of use-value alone is taken by Plato, who treats the division of labor as the foundation on which the division of society into classes is based. . . . . Plato's Republic, insofar as the division of labor is treated in it as the formative principle of the State, is merely the Athenian idealization of the Egyptian caste system.5 Referring to the doctrine of Aristotle, he admits that "in the form of commodity values all labor is expressed as equivalent to human labor, and consequently is labor of equal worth."6 With this view of the Aristotelean doctrine of economic and social systems, Marx ascribes to Aristotle a discrepancy between his doctrine of the equality of values in material production and the factual or existing inequality of men in the social stratification of the Athenian State. Marx's sole explanation of this is that Aristotle was prevented from discovering it because of "the historical limitation of the society in which he lived . . . ."7 However, Marx's presupposition of the priority of being over human consciousness seems to contradict this explanation of the discrepancy in the Aristotelean economic and social doctrine. This suggests some possible ambiguity in the Marxist notion of praxis: does it mean economic force only, or does it signify any kind of human activity which could determine material production as such? If the former, then the case of Aristotle is merely an accident and is explained by Marx on the basis of historical circumstances; if the latter, then one must admit that there is no necessary priority of being over human praxis. The only alternative would be to presuppose that there is a specific dialectical "leap" between the quantity of material production or exchange-value, and the quality of human consciousness or use-value, but in either case the relation between being (economy) and human praxis (consciousness) must be proven rather than taken for granted. Moreover, even were we to agree with Marx that there is priority of being over consciousness, and accept in principle the Marxist philosophical presupposition that human praxis is determined by material production, this priority could not have an ontological but only a dialectical character, that is, it could not be purely in the objective reality of material production, but must be also intertwined somehow with the human non-material element of man's consciousness. In other words, human praxis understood as man's consciousness, in order to be determined by the economic well-being of human social praxis as the antithesis of material production, would have to have a self-contained reality which differs ontologically from pure materiality. The materialistic triads of the historical development of human praxis would never be completed in an ultimate synthesis by a final dissolution of the socioproductive contradictions between different economic and political systems which, according to Marxist anthropology, is to take place

in "communism." This self-developing and self-destructing power of human praxis and material production requires an essential and real distinction between being and consciousness, that is, that somehow and in some form there be a real distinction between matter and spirit. Consequently, neither idealistic nor materialistic interpretations could logically claim to be the whole and complete truth. THE PRINCIPLE OF MATERIAL PRODUCTIVITY AND HUMAN CREATIVITY According to Marx, the main failure of any traditional materialistic philosophy is that reality (Gegenstand) has been "conceived only in the form of objects of observation but not as human sense activity, not as practical activity, not subjectively."8 As a result, all previous variants of materialism neglected the human reality which manifests itself in man's activity. It is also the conviction of Marx that his own socio-political philosophy does recognize the subjective element as the main motive power of human activity in shaping man's consciousness which is based on both material productivity and human creativity. Thus, referring to the division of labor, Marx holds that there is a real division between material productivity and human creativity. In his German Ideology he says: The division of labor only becomes a real division from the moment when the distinction between material and mental labor appears. From this moment, consciousness can really imagine that it is something other than consciousness of existing practice, that is, really conceiving something without conceiving something real; from now on consciousness is in a position to emancipate itself from the world and to proceed to the formation of `pure' theory, philosophy, ethics, etc.9 In view of this text it should be evident that for Marx the real division of material productivity and human creativity involves contradictions in which their natures continue to co-exist. Continuing his analysis of the nature of "the distinction between material and mental labor," Marx says that: Even if the theory (i.e., `pure' theory), theology, philosophy, ethics, etc., comes into contradiction with existing conditions, this can only occur as a result of the fact that the existing social relations have come into contradiction with the existing forces of production.10 Moreover, although Marx attributes to human praxis some immateriality of its own, noting that "it is quite immaterial what consciousness starts to do on its own,"11 nevertheless, ontologically speaking, there is no real distinction between material productivity and human creativity. In other words, to distinguish between material production and human creativity on the one hand, and within the division of labor regardless of the actual system on the other, is merely dialectical; it consists in the self-resolving motive power of many different contradictions of which one element becomes a condition for another. This raises the question of whether this dialectical self-resolving power of contradictory elements is truly real, whether, for instance, it is found in the very nature of motion which according to Marx is the mode of existence of matter, or whether it is only intentionally real and found within "mental labor," for instance, in any planning of productive forces by the existing social organizations. If the former, then there is again no real distinction between material productivity and human creativity, because the dialectical self-resolving power of contradictions contained in any social system would be determined by material forces as such; if the latter, then ontologically speaking neither production system would be privileged because there would be unlimited possibilities of controlling the material forces in any production system by "mental labor." Turning to the division of labor which depends on both material and mental elements, Marx insists that there are three main factors in the dialectical resolutions of all contradictions existing in any taxeological system. They are: "the forces of production, the condition of society, and consciousness."12 Referring to these factors Marx adds that they can and must come into contradiction with one another, because the divisions of

labor imply the possibility, indeed the fact, that intellectual and material activity--enjoyment and labor, production and consumption--devolve on different individuals and that the only possibility of their not coming into contradiction lies in the abolition, in its turn, of the division of labor.13 The interdependency of material productivity and human creativity resolves the seeming contradiction between economic equality in the division of labor and social inequality in the aforementioned reference to Aristotle. Further, Marx's understanding of praxis as both material and mental value enables him to explain the dialectical interreaction in the process of any system of division of labor. In other words, the dialectical interreaction between material and mental elements leads to the establishment of various relationships between the value of products and social reality: Thus, when men bring the products of their labor into relation with each other as values, it is not because they see in these articles the mere material receptacles of homogeneous human labor. Quite the contrary. Whenever by an exchange men equate as values their different products, by that very act they also equate as human labor the different kinds of labor dependent upon them. They are not aware of this, but they do it.14 Thus, the distinction between material productivity and human creativity, as well as the very nature of the dialectical interrelationship among material and mental activities leads Marx to the conclusion that there is a unilateral and hierarchical relationship between value systems. To quote Marx himself: Value, therefore, does not carry a label describing what it is. It is a value, rather, that converts every product of labor into a social hieroglyph. Later on, men try to decipher the hieroglyph, to penetrate the secret of their own social products, for to stamp an object of utility as a value is just as much a social product as it is language. The recent discovery, that the products of labor, so far as they are values, are but material expressions of the human labor spent in their production, marks indeed an epoch in the history of the development of the human race, but does not by any means dissipate the mist through which the social character of labor appears as an objective character of the products themselves. Thus, despite this discovery what is true only for this particular form of production (commodity production), namely, that the specific social character of the labor of independent producers consists in the equivalence of every kind of labor, as human labor, and that it assumes in the product the form of value--this fact appears to those caught up in their relationship of commodity production as the final truth. In the same way, the scientific analysis of air into its component elements left the atmosphere as an experienced physical object unchanged.15 This priority of the material praxis over the human praxis brings us to the third and final principle of Marx's social taxeology according to which the relationship between material productivity and human creativity is both proletarian in nature and revolutionary in character. THE PRINCIPLE OF BEING AND BECOMING In his Theses on Feuerbach, Marx enumerates the follow-ing characteristics of human praxis: human sense activity, practical activity, real sense activity, human activity, objective activity, revolutionary activity, practical activity, "thissidedness" of his (man's) thinking in practice, practical revolutionary practice, revolutionary practice, revolutionized in practice.16 In this sketchy summary, human praxis is described in both an objective and a subjective manner. The "objective" element of human praxis points to the very nature of material things through which human praxis can constitute itself as relating its own self to the outer self according to the actual conditions of material production. The "subjective" element of human praxis contains factors in man's activity which constitute its own selfhood, through which material production is found in the process of becoming. In other words, human praxis consists in a specific dialectical tension between being and becoming, necessity and contingency, things and human activities. This raises the question: Is the fundamental motive power of

human praxis objective or subjective? To answer this question one must analyze Marx's understanding of praxis as a principle of being and becoming. In the order of being, praxis is conceived as something which is done, can be done or has the readiness to be done. (This is similar to the Heideggerian notion of praxis as Vorhandensein and Zuhandensein.) In the objective sense praxis is expressed in the form of a result obtained by man's activities and presents itself linguistically as a noun, namely as `deed' and `product.' Praxis, however, understood as a `deed' or `product' presupposes a subject which makes praxis to be praxis. In Theorien uber den Mehrwert Marx says: Man himself is the basis of his material production, as of all production which he accomplishes. All circumstances, therefore, which affect man, the subject of production, have a greater or lesser influence upon all his functions and activities as the creator of material wealth, of commodities.17 Man, then, is the creator of material wealth and, as such, the main motive power transforming things. "In this sense, it can truly be asserted that all human relations and functions, however and wherever they manifest themselves, influence material production and have a more or less determining effect upon it."18 In the order of becoming then, praxis is the very condition of developing the productive forces of things by the human creative activity which is contained in the process as such and reveals itself linguistically as a verb: `to act' or `to work'. Consequently, in the dialectical tension between being and becoming, the praxis of nature is interrelated with that of human activity. In human praxis, however, Marx emphasizes that in this interrelationship which takes place between the objective and subjective elements of material productivity and human creativity there is not always a proper and just order of distribution of material goods among men. According to him, this social maladjustment consists in the fact that the `surplus-values' are not equally distributed between the owner and the producers. In this respect, Engels sees Marx making "two great discoveries": "the materialist conception of history and the revelation of the secret of capitalist production through surplus value."18 The main purpose of Marxist taxeology consists in rooting out the social injustice found in economic systems. The contemporary socio-political situation is characterized by a new division of labor between the owners of material goods and the producers of commodities. In fact, the new economic and human reality manifested in mutual interreaction and correlation indicates that human social praxis is proletarian in nature and revolutionary in character. Social praxis is proletarian because there is in capitalism an unequal division of the social product between the workers and the owner, since all `surplus-value' is captured by the owners of the material goods. Political praxis has, on the other hand, a revolutionary character because, due to his refusal to share the `surplus-values,' social inequality will never by voluntarily eliminated by the capitalist. The reason is that: Political economy, which as an independent science first sprang into being during the period of manufacture, views the social division of labor only from the standpoint of manufacture, and sees in it only the means for producing more commodities with a given quantity of labor, and consequently, of cheapening commodities and speeding up the accumulation of capital.20 However the final question arises: Why must human social praxis have a proletarian and revolutionary character? Does it have any compulsion to accept these postulates as absolute and ontologically necessary in ultimately resolving social injustice in the contemporary world? Unfortunately, neither Marx nor his followers could prove the ontological necessity of holding the proletarian and revolutionary postulates. Several non-Marxist thinkers, however, insist that the Marxist sociopolitical taxeology is arbitrary, and that the postulates for the proletarian and revolutionary activities include both a circulum vitiosi and a petitio principi. I would conclude this paper with three critical observations on these postulates, one from a Marxist and two from non-Marxist socio-political philosophers: Svetozar Stojanovic from the Corcula-Group of the Yugoslav philosophers and editor

of the Journal, Praxis, formulated a new `categorical imperative' for his fellow thinkers and compatriots: Act in such a way that you neither consider your own human dignity nor that of your fellowmen available as means for revolutionary purposes.21 Narcyz Lubnicki, the Polish logician and methodologist from the Maria Sklodowska University in Lublin, charges that the proletarian characterization of sociopolitical change involves a circulum vitiosum and petitio principi. The thesis of class character contains the error of a circular argument as well as assuming what needs to be proved; this thes1s is presupposed proved, disregarding the fact that it demands independent warrant. Apart from the influence of the physical and social environment on the mentality of the investigator of that environment, a sincere intention objectively to analyze a given problem will certainly lead to less falsification of the result of the inquiry than would a conscious class conditioning or racial political tendency.22 A leading praxeologist, Tadeusz Kotarbinski, voices the opinion that praxis is not necessarily revolutionary, but can also be based on positive cooperation. In his Traktat o Dobrej Robocie, Kotarbinski distinguishes two sorts of relationships in human praxeology, a positive one, which could lead to coexistence of different and at times radically opposed systems of values, and a negative one involving conflict. By the very nature of human praxis the latter is not the only possible way of overcoming the tension existing between values systems, if good will can be postulated. Human action, then, is not necessarily based on Emmanuel Lasker's Machology, but can also be dealt with in detente. University of San Francisco San Francisco, California NOTES 1. By the term `taxeology' the author understands a science of arrangement (from Greek: taxis). 2. Theses on Feuerbach, in: Marx-Engels Gesamtausqabe (MEGA). 1, 5, p. 535. (The English trans. of T.B. Bottomore in Karl Marx, Selected Writings in Sociology and Social Philosophy [New York: McGraw-Hill, 1956] will be followed and compared throughout). 3. Jean Paul Sartre, Search for a Method (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1963), p. 30. 4. Capital, in: Volksausgabe (VA), 1, p. 383. 5. Ibid., p. 386. 6. Ibid., p. 65. 7. Ibid. 8. Theses on Feuerbach, MEGA, 1, 5, p. 533. 9. MEGA. 1, 5, p. 21. lO. Ibid. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid. 14. Capital, VA, 1, p. 79. 15. Ibid., pp. 79-80. 16. MEGA. 1, 5. 17. Vol. 1, pp. 388-9, ed. by Karl Kautsky, 1905-1910. 18. Ibid. 19. Anti-Duhrino, MEGA, p. 9. 20. Capital, VA, 1, p. 383. 21. Cf. G. Petrovic, "What is Freedom?," Praxis, IV (1965), pp. 419-432. 22. Teoria poznania materializmu dialektycznego (Lublin: Uniwersytetu Marie Curie-Sklodowskiej, 1946), p. 125. CHAPTER VIII PRAXIS AND NATURE SATINDRANATH CHAKRAVARTI PRAXIS The roots of the philosophy of praxis can be traced to the Hegelian system itself.

The young Hegelians. Arnold Ruge, Bruno Bauer, Moses Hess and others, were fascinated by the term and some gave it a new meaning by stressing the connection between it and the social sphere. In an essay written in 1943, Ruge says this about Hegelian philosophy: Nowhere has the theoretical emancipation been so thoroughly carried out as in Germany. The birth of real, practical freedom is in the transition of its demands to the masses. The demand is only a symptom of the fact that theory has been welldigested and has been successful in its breakthrough into existence. The ultimate end of theoretical emancipation is practical emancipation. But `praxis', on the other hand, is nothing else than the movement of the mass in the spirit of theory. It was Feuerbach, however, who brought out the connection between matter and the content of a political movement, and identified praxis with the material forces inherent in the masses. In a letter to Ruge, dated 1843, he wrote: What is theory, what is practice? Wherein lies their difference? Theoretical is that which is hidden in my head only, practical is that which is spooking in many heads. What unites many heads creates a mass, extends itself and this finds its place in the world. If it is possible to create a new organ for the new principle, then this is praxis, which should never be missed. While the new and revolutionary relationship between theory and practice was shaped by the young Hegelians, it was Marx who introduced a concrete historical content into this relationship. His early writings reveal that, from one standpoint, a synthesizer attempting to combine the view that `philosophy is its own time apprehended in thought' with the notion that ascribes to philosophy a constructive role in shaping human development. In 1842, Marx wrote: But philosophers do not grow like mushrooms, out of the earth; they are the outgrowth of their period, their nation, whose most subtle, delicate and invisible juice abounds in the philosophical ideas. The same spirit that constructs the philosophical system in the mind of the philosopher builds the railways with the hands of the trade. Philosophy does not reside outside the world just as the mind does not reside outside man, just because it is not located in his belly. Marx takes his point of departure from the Hegelian view that philosophy is always related to historical actuality. He points out, however, that the philosophical medium itself severs the link between reality and its philosophical reflection, causing the illusion that the object of philosophy is philosophy itself. The result is a merely contemplative attitude which has no object and which endangers all philosophical speculation. Philosophy is reduced to a mere ineffectual fluttering of wings in the air; its translation into an objective language, that is, language relating to objects or praxis is thereby rendered ineffective. Marx holds that only the unity of theory and practice transfers man from an objectless world into the sphere of objective activity. He wrote, therefore, in 1842: As every true philosophy is the quintessence of its age, the time must come about when philosophy will get in touch with the real world of its time and establish a reciprocal relationship with it not only internally, through its content, but also externally, through its phenomenal manifestation as well. Then philosophy will cease to be just a system among systems, but will turn to be a philosophy in general, confronting the world. To understand the Marxian concept of praxis, one has to understand the specific nature of Marx's materialism or naturalism. Praxis, to Marx, is both cognitive and social. He had a more or less organized system of beliefs as to the nature of reality and the nature of man. Marx was a materialist. He believed: (a) in the primacy of matter, a term which denotes the totality of material objects and not the substratum of all the changes which take place in the world; (b) that the existence of mind without matter is a figment of the imagination; (c) the rule of the laws of nature; and (d) the independent existence of the external world. Yet, while materialism constituted Marx's general frame of reference, Marxian materialism rejects mechanistic materialism and evolves a novel anthropological

conception of nature. In Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 and The German Ideology, Marx rejects as untenable the theory of knowledge of the British empiricists, the French materialists and Feuerbach. These philosophers held (a) that man is a product of circumstances and upbringing, (b) that the human mind is a passive recipient of sensations, and (c) that perception is a mere effect produced in the senses by external stimuli. However, Marx points out that the causal theory of perception cannot explain the simplest act of cognition, not to speak of its explaining the vast range of human experience; nor can it account for the social change and evolution of man. He is convinced that idealists, especially Hegel, are correct in emphasizing the contribution and role of the 'subject' in the process of cognition; this conviction finds expression in his First and Third Thesis on Feuerbach. He recognizes that it is idealism that develops the "active side" of cognition, although idealism does not know real "sensuous activity as such." Marx believes that Hegel is wrong, however, when he conceives the mind as an autonomous activity independent of and undetermined by its material and social environment, pointing out that Hegel regards this environment as posited by the mind's own creativity. By introducing the concept of "praxis" and giving it a new dimension, Marx first of all tries to rehabilitate the world of sense and restores the "practical sensuous" in knowledge. The human world has been created by men and women in the course of their history, starting from an original nature, but this nature when received by us has already been transformed by human practice and the efforts of men, through tools, language, concepts and signs. The enormous scope of praxis in human creation can be perceived by all with eyes to see, for human labor encompasses landscapes, cities, objects of common use and even artistic creations. The sensuous leads us to the concept of praxis and this concept, in turn, upholds the richness of the sensuous. Praxis can be studied at different levels: as the base or foundation, i.e., as productive forces, techniques, organization of labor; as structures, i.e., as institutions and ideologies. Lefebvre studies praxis under another schema, namely, the repetitive, the innovating and, between these two extremes, the mimetic. In 18th Brumaire. Marx refers to historical acts which imitate the past and borrow their customs, gestures and words from famous models. This following of models is mimetic praxis; occasionally it may create without knowing how or why, but more often it imitates without creating. In repetitive praxis, the same gestures, the same acts are performed again and again within determined circles. In innovating or inventive praxis, activity is directed both toward knowledge and culture, or ideology, and toward the field of politics. Political action condenses all partial changes in a total phenomenon; when this happens we have what is called "revolution." Revolution embraces society as a whole and transforms the mode of production, property relations, ideas and institutions, in short, the entire way of life. We might add that revolutionary praxis introduces intelligibility into social relations. Lefebvre says, Thanks to it, thought and feeling are once again brought into accord with the productive forces (the base), social forms into accord with their contents. Here, again, we encounter the fundamental idea of going beyond a given historical stage, of progressing to a higher stage. It creates intelligibility as living reason in the heads of men and as rationality in social relations. MARX'S CONCEPT OF NATURE Marx, the journalist, historian, social scientist, economist and knight of classstruggle, is recognized today as one of the foremost thinkers to have made their impact on history. But Marx, the philosopher, is anathema even today in academic circles. Though he was a blunt-spoken philosopher and did not elaborate a systematic philosophy in the manner of Hegel, that does not suffice to explain why he is not recognized as having had a definite conception of nature, man and society. Of late, the central importance of Marx's concept of nature in the formulation of historical materialism is gradually receiving more attention.

Traditionally the tendency has been to counterpose an abstract concept of man with an abstract concept of nature. Marxism cuts across this tendency and shows how the development of industry and science mediates between historical man and external nature. This mediation may result either in their eventual reconciliation or in their mutual destruction. Marx's concept of nature has to be understood in its socio-historical character. He considers nature to be "the primary source of all instruments and objects of labor," seeing nature from the beginning in relation to human activity. Every statement about nature, whether of a speculative, epistemological or scientific kind, according to Marx, already presupposes social practice, that is, the ensemble of man's technologico-economic modes of appropriation. One is inclined to observe that the sensuous world and finite men in their social milieu are the only digits taken into account by Marx. There exist for him only "man and his labor on the one side, nature and its materials on the other." On the basis of the objective logic of the human work-situation, however, Marx attempts to comprehend the other areas of life as well. "Technology discloses man's mode of dealing with nature, the process of production by which he sustains his life, and thereby also lays bare the mode of formation of his social relations, and of the mental conceptions that flow from them." Nature interested Marx mainly as a constituent element of human practice. This is his position in the 1844 Manuscripts. "Nature, taken abstractly, for itself, rigidly separated from man, is nothing for man." Nature in itself, in its pristine purity and unworked is economically valueless; it has a purely potential value which awaits its realization. In Grundisse, Marx writes the material of nature alone insofar as no human labor is embodied in it, insofar as it is mere material and exists independently of human labor, has no value, since value only embodied labor . . . ." Passages in The Holy Family reveal that Marx was conducting a battle on three fronts. He criticizes Spinoza's concept of substance, that is, that nature exists "in itself" without human intervention or mediation. He criticizes also Fichte's Self-consciousness, that is, the concept of the `Subject' with capital `S', and he criticizes the ascription of independence to consciousness and its functions in relation to nature. Marx emphasizes that the mediating subject is not simply "Spirit," but man as a productive force. Finally, he points out that the Hegelian Absolute, while uniting substance and subject, has not been concretely and historically established but only "metaphysically travestied." Marx writes: In Hegel there are three elements, Spinoza's substance, Fichte's Selfconsciousness and the necessarily contradictory Hegelian unity of both, the Absolute Spirit. The first element is metaphysically travestied nature severed from man; the second is the metaphysically travestied spirit severed from nature; the third is the metaphysically travestied unity of real man and the real human race. Marx's emphasis in such passages is that Nature cannot be separated from man, that man and the accomplishments of his spirit cannot be separated from nature, and that even man's capacity for thought and reasoning is a product of nature and history. True, Marx accepts that the sensuous world, nature, is not "a thing given direct from all eternity" and remaining ever the same. It is the product of industry and the state of society. At the same time, however, he accepts that this society-mediated world is a "natural world," historically anterior to all human societies. Marx does not concede the point that because of "social mediation" the priority of external nature is assailed and the laws of nature cease to be objective. Two points emerge from Marx's concept of nature. First, material reality is from the beginning socially mediated. Second, matter as such is an abstraction and is present only in definite modes of existence. Marx would not pose abstractly the question of a pre-human and pre-social existence of nature, for each presupposes a definite stage of the theoretical and practical appropriation of nature. He admitted no absolute division between nature and society and precisely because of

this did not accept any fundamental methodological distinction between the natural and historical sciences. He wrote in The German Ideology: We know only a single science, the science of history. History can be contemplated from two sides, it can be divided into the history of nature and the history of mankind. However, the two sides are not to be divided off; as long as men exist the history of nature and the history of men are mutually conditioned. In criticizing Bruno Bauer, Marx said, nature and history are "not two separate `things'." Men always have before them a historical nature and a natural history." The novelty of Marx's view is that, on the one hand, he does not accept the feasibility of an "intellectual history" investigating a purely immanent succession of ideas. On the other hand, he rejects the concept of nature, historically unmodified, which is supposed to exist as an "object" of naturalscientific knowledge. According to him, the historical practice of men, their activity, is the increasingly effective connecting link between the two apparently separate areas of reality. The 1844 Manuscripts envisage, as a result of the reconciliation of nature and history through practice under Communism, a fusion of natural science and historical science, that is, the science of man. "Natural science will one day incorporate the science of man, just as the science of man will incorporate natural science; there will be a single science." Marx did not deny that matter has its own laws and its own movement. What he sought to emphasize is the truth that matter's laws of motion can only be recognized and suitably applied by men through the agency of mediating practice. The laws of nature exist independently of, and outside, the consciousness and will of men. Man, Marx holds, can only become certain of their operation through the forms provided by their labor processes. While, in a sense, the laws of nature are thus "independent," they are also socially determined. Marx, therefore, writes to Kugelmann: "It is absolutely impossible to transcend the laws of nature. What can change in historically different circumstances is only the form in which these laws express themselves." Nature cannot be wished away; its power cannot be broken entirely; but it can be ruled in accordance with its own laws. Though society also faces the same laws of nature, its socio-historical structure determines the manner in which men are subjected to these laws, their mode and field of application, and the degree and extent to which they can be understood and made socially useful. PRAXIS AND NATURE: THE MODE OF REFLECTION Does knowledge consist exclusively of the passive imitation of objective structures; can it be conceived in the manner of mirror-reflection? Marx would say that `nature' is a human world and `man' an active, dynamic, tool-making agent. In the course of history man's organized intervention into natural processes becomes more comprehensive, with the consequence that nature appears to be made rather than given. Marx would not, therefore, subscribe to the `passive-imitation theory' of knowledge, though there are writers who want to emphasize that he adhered to a `reflection theory' of knowledge. But can one speak at all of a `theory of knowledge' in Marx? For him, the culmination of epistemology is the philosophy of world history. Traditionally, the process of knowledge is described as a relation between the `subject' and the `object' which is, as it were, eternally fixed. Classical German Philosophy, however, had arrived at the theory of the `unity of theory and practice', and this was accepted by Marx. Therefore, Marx believed that theoretical reflections should correspond to the different forms of human praxis, that is, his struggle with nature. Since the subject and object of knowledge are inseparable, he argued, the cognitive consciousness is a form of social consciousness; it should not, then, be viewed in isolation from psychology and human history. The cultivation of the five senses is also the work of all previous history. Marx developed a kind of genealogy of conceptual thought, the essence of which is that consciousness is not a fixed datum but springs from history and is subject to historical change. He wrote: For the doctrinaire professor man's relation to nature is from the beginning not

practical, i.e., based on action, but theoretical. Man stands in relation with the objects of the external world as the means to satisfy his needs. But men do not begin by standing `in this theoretical relation with the objects of the external world'. Like all animals they begin by eating, drinking, etc., i.e., they do not stand in any relation, but are engaged in activity, appropriate certain objects of the external world by means of their actions, and in this way satisfy their needs (i.e., they begin with production). As a result of the repetition of this process it is imprinted in their minds that objects are capable of "satisfying" the `needs' of men. Men and animals also learn to distinguish `theoretically' the external objects which serve to satisfy their needs from all other objects. At a certain level of later development, with the growth and multiplication of men's needs and the types of action required to satisfy these needs, they gave names to whole classes of these objects, already distinguished from other objects on the basis of experience. That was a necessary process, since in the process of production, i.e., the process of appropriation of objects, men are in a continuous working relationship with each other and with individual objects, and also immediately become involved in conflict with other men over these objects. Yet this denomination is only the conceptual expression of something which repeated action has converted into experience, namely, that fact that for men, who already live in certain social bounds (this assumption follows necessarily from the existence of language), certain external objects serve to satisfy their needs. Marx's emphasis here is that man's relation to nature is neither an abstractly fixed datum, nor initially theoretical and reflective, but always practical and transforming. Production comes with sensuous needs and all those human functions which transcend the immediacy of the given develop with production. Nature appears at first to be a chaotic mass of materials. From repeated intercourse with nature, common to men and animals alike, there emerges an initial classification of natural objects according as they produce pleasure or pain. The theoretical achievement at this level is undoubtedly elementary. True, structures are established and objects with pleasurable associations are isolated from others. But assignment of names to different objects with a view to exercising control over them corresponds to the economically more advanced, and hence more organized, human group and the contradictions emerging in it. Despite his materialism Marx did not see in "concepts" naively realistic impressions of the objects themselves, but reflections of the historically mediated relations of men to those objects. From the above, it follows that a formal analysis of consciousness or cognition, or knowledge about knowledge, isolated from problems of fact and content is not possible. Also, the problem of knowledge, if it truly exists by itself, cannot be separated from a whole ensemble of more or less well-defined historical conditions. There cannot be any problem of knowledge until the concrete, practical functions of knowledge have been exercised. This exercise does not occur by chance or in itself, but in the situation which gives it its form. One is inclined to observe, after Marx, that practice has already accomplished the mediation of subject and object; only later does it become the theme of reflection. Marx was a `realist' inasmuch as he considered that any productive activity presupposed "natural material" existing independently of men. He was at the same time not a `naive realist', in that for him, men did not persist in the contemplation of the immediate but continuously transformed it within the framework of nature's laws. Praxis or labor destroys things as immediate, but restores them as mediate; filtered through human practice, a thing-in-itself becomes a thing-for-us. It may be noticed that Marx did not accept the rigid dualism of the epistemological position which had dominated modern European thought since Descartes. German philosophy, no doubt, tried to overcome this dualism, but only on a speculative basis. Marx did the same on a materialist basis. In the 1844 Manuscripts Marx wrote: It is only in the social context that subjectivism and objectivism, spiritualism and materialism, activity and passivity, cease to be antinomies and thus cease to

exist as such antinomies. The resolution of theoretical contradictions is possible only through practical means, only through the practical energy of man. In Marx's materialism nature and society are mutually mediated within nature, i.e., reality as a whole. The social subject, through which all objectivity is filtered, is only a space-time-determined component of this objectivity, and it is social practice that unites the moments of knowledge and mediates the transition from one to the other. The theory of knowledge as reflection where consciousness and its object are placed in opposition to each other cannot, therefore, be ascribed to Marx. By accepting the constitutive role of praxis for the object, Marx rejected the aforementioned theory. The objective world is no more in itself to be reflected, it is largely a social-historical product. Alfred Schmidt, therefore, is correct in saying: Consciousness always enters as an active spirit into the reality reproduced by it. It is the task of knowledge not to capitulate before reality, which stands around men like a stone wall. Knowledge by revivifying the human historical processes which have been submerged in the established facts, proves that reality is produced by men and hence can be changed by them; practice, as the most important concept of knowledge, changes into the concept of political action. In summary: Marx, it seems, understood the development of man's conceptual apparatus as an effort aimed at a continually more exact reproduction of a humanized external world which has its own objective laws. According to him, human cognition, though incapable of absolutely and finally mastering its object, approaches it in a constant and progressive evolution. Human cognition, moreover, reproduces ever more faithfully (and this is in the ideal order) the structures and patterns of the external world which are themselves outside human thought. For Marx, knowledge is a social construction and the categories are constructional tools. Calcutta, India CHAPTER IX NATURE AND FREEDOM KALIDAS BHATTACHARYYA NATURE VS. FREEDOM The Notion of Nature The term `Nature' stands for the totality of contents that are natural. By `natural' is meant whatever is in space and/or time and is causally determined by some or all other such spatial-temporal contents. Of natural contents, the physical are in time and space, whereas the mental are in time only. Whenever some mental contents appear to be also in space, as for example in the case of images, either this is due to a misreading of the corresponding introspection or the space in question, never able to be pinpointed as statically there, is only a function of time. Mere space and time, however, are not sufficient criteria for designating something as natural. Primarily, whatever is natural is understood by that very fact to be real also. Illusory contents, though spatial and temporal, are not normally understood to belong to Nature; their space, if not their time also,1 is often held to be illusory. At least in our understanding, the reality of the natural content is its causal determination by other such contents. True, these other contents too must be real in their turn, but that reality, again, has to be understood in the same way. As everyone knows, questions about the causal determination of Nature as such would all be illegitimate for one who is wholly immersed in it; ex hypothesi a first cause, if any, would be beyond Nature. That there is causal determination in2 Nature implies, if this not be stating the same thing over again, that every natural content is believed to be derivable, inductively or deductively, from its determinants. One might ask further concerning the status of a class of phenomena which, though accreditedly "natural," are not yet as determinate, that is, as precisely foreseeable as are the movements of gross matter, namely, what is the status of the behaviors of living creatures and, especially, human actions which are said to

be self-consciously free. Does not the picture get very complicated when we are told that infra-atomic material behaviors are indeterminate throughout? Are all these behaviors to be excluded from Nature? We contend that actions which are specifically human and said to be free are in an important sense outside Nature, but that the other two classes of phenomena are still natural. Behaviors of living creatures, including those of man insofar as he is living, may not be as determinate as the behaviors of gross matter, but that does not disqualify them for all causal determination. Life phenomena may not be as mechanical as movements of gross matter, but neither are they, like human actions, self-consciously free. They are not self-conscious at all, and hence not free like human actions. Similarly the indeterminacy of infra-atomic behaviors falls short of freedom. Actions which are self-consciously free begin with resisting Nature.3 We shall see later in what precise sense this is so. There is no question of such resistance, however, on the part of life-behaviors. The word `life' is used here in a wide sense covering those mental phenomena which are not self-conscious, that is, conscious of transcending or going against Nature, resisting its pressure, howsoever slightly. In other words, 'life' includes all mechanical bodily and mental behaviors. If life-behaviors that are not free are nonetheless called indeterminate, this is because they are not always, and in every respect, as determinate as movements of dead masses of matter. Given certain conditions, how such matter will behave can be calculated beforehand with all precision and in every detail. It is not so with life-behavior and one might ask why dead physical movements4 alone should be called determinate and held in such exaggerated esteem that any movement falling even a little short of it risks flat non-recognition? Life-behaviors are still determinate. First, as manifest, they are dead physicals through and through, subject to all the laws of physical determination. Secondly and more to our purpose, there is at least a pervasive systematic correlation between living behaviors in one series and avowedly physical movements in another series, so that if there is a relation of determination among the items of the second series one may reasonably postulate some such determination in the first series as well, though that determination is weaker inasmuch as it is not directly tractable. In fact, we instinctively depend upon such postulation in our day-to-day dealings with living behaviors and self-consciously use it when we study them. It is at the basis of all logic of probability and is not very different from normal inductive procedures. The Notion of Freedom We have just seen that of the three classes of behaviors which appear to be indeterminate lifebehaviors are not really so. In spite of all appearance to the contrary they are determinate, though in a way different from movements of dead physical masses. We have also claimed that human actions which are selfconsciously free are, so far, really exempt from causal determination and in that respect outside Nature. This claim will be substantiated in the present section. The exact character of the indeterminacy of infra-atomic physical behaviors will be taken up in the next section. Human actions differ considerably from both life-behaviors and gross physical movements. Intrinsically, they are unforeseeable and beyond statistical expectation. Though man often behaves predictably, most of these predictable behaviors are not characteristically human. Being a living creature man must behave to a considerable degree like other living creatures, whether in order to care for his sheer biological needs or under mechanical social pressures which for most men are little more than herd-instinct. Where, at a higher and distinctively human level he appears to behave mechanically, this is because once having freely chosen to act according to some norm he forms a habit of acting that way. These are determinate behaviors, but what is characteristically human is his selfconscious free acts. We add--and this is central--that with regard to one's mechanical behavior there

is no way of knowing that our calculated expectations of what one will do under given conditions will not be betrayed. This is no empty possibility and indeed we are often betrayed in this manner. True, once this happens it can always be shown that what one did was after all determined by a more subtle (natural) phenomenon that escaped our notice when we made the calculations. Nevertheless, the obstinate counter-possibility continues, now pushed back a little by saying that he might not have succumbed to that antecedent determinant. This `might not have' is no empty possibility. In the case of behaviors which are sheerly physical and may also be living we never speak of such contingency except metaphorically. In the case of man, however, we not only speak of it, and at times seriously, but the possibility of not succumbing is abundantly actualized in the explicit form of non-attachment. This `non-attachment' is self-conscious withdrawal from a particular desire or aversion which is otherwise compelling. Man qua man often consciously refuses to succumb to external or internal pressure, whether or not he succumbs immediately afterwards to another such pressure. By practice he may learn in this way to resist succumbing to a large number of such pressures, if not ultimately to all of them. Refusal to succumb to a pressure may not be causally determined by attachment to another pressure; it may well be only conscious refusal. Admittedly, it is difficult to understand how one can withstand causal determination. How can one defy laws of matter and life? Our reply is (i) that insofar as man is a physical and living thing he is strictly subject to these laws, but (ii) that he is more than this and insofar as he is more he is above causal determination. Having a living body with a mechanical mind, every man, qua bodily and mechanically mental, is subject to the laws of matter and life. Thus far he is like any animal of lower origin and there is no question of resisting causal determination. But man claims and feels that he is more; it is precisely here that his distinctive humanity lies. This something more is his self-conscious freedom.5 Initially it was evident in a negative form as non-attachment. Positively and at a more reflective level it is manifest as a drive toward something opposed to Nature or as just a drive in the opposite direction, in which case its negativity and positivity may be said to alternate. Non-attachment--better, detachment--is not a `natural' phenomenon which could be treated successfully in empirical psychology. It is not to be classed with other mechanical mental behaviors as though, while not yet accounted for on a naturalistic line, it is yet believed to be manageable in that manner. Rather, it constitutes the limit of all naturalistic treatment, a gap in the mechanistic account of mind, much as are individual idiosyncrasies in etiology. Individual idiosyncrasies can no doubt be managed to an extent by statistical computation, but subtler idiosyncrasies crop up afresh every time. Similarly here, however much and in whatever line a mechanistic account is sought for this detachment, e.g., as being statistically correlated to such and such circumstances or within such and such limits, fresh detachment appears every time at the frontier. One becomes fully conscious of this detachment only when it has the substantial strength to resist a considerable quantum of natural pressure. Short of that it also enters one's consciousness, however imperfectly, though in speaking it one may exaggerate. Such exaggeration is so common that mechanical mental behavior which happened only as a natural effect tends to be spoken of in terms of `I did it', as though even here the `I' is standing detached. In such cases the `I did' is clearly a misstatement of the actual state of affairs and due entirely to the simple and of itself innocuous fact that an unreflective I-feeling accompanies every psychic behavior mechanically mental or otherwise. In fact, nothing could be psychic6 if it were not accompanied by some I-consciousness; what accompanies the mechanical mental is only a simple I-feeling. Detachment proper begins at a higher level, though it may have its own sub-levels of clarity. To the lowest of such sub-levels belong actions which involve choice from among different causes or motives, instinctive choice being the lowest. To another, much higher up, belongs the choice not to submit to any such cause. When one chooses among different

motives all but the chosen one must have been resisted. This resistance to one motive, followed by submission to another, could be detected through retrospection by the agent himself. At higher levels, however, one is fully conscious of resistance, that is, detachment from the beginning, and not only in retrospect. To be once in conscious possession of detachment, however, does not mean that there will be no relapse or subsequent animal-like submission to Nature. People do often relapse in that way, but often, too, in the spirit of detachment they reason to the motive or pressure to which they appear to submit. This enables them to act freely upon the motive. It often happens, of course, that the whole reasoning is but a post facto rationalization of what has really been a case of blatant submission. The minimum that freedom requires is non-submission that is detachment. To continue in detachment does not mean that one has ceased to act. Detachment is only the negative aspect of freedom, which is exercised positively in three ways. First, in full consciousness one may tend toward a trans-natural ideal which, as distinguished from the natural mental, may be called `spiritual'. Secondly, it may be that the whole thing is just the sheer drive and not directed toward any definite ideal. This is a sort of dallying with negation itself; it is a perpetual, though contentless, spiritual life. Thirdly, with full consciousness of detachment one may yet return to Nature, this time not to submit to it in the least, but to lord it over,7 or act up to it. More on these three positive forms later. Detachment, we have said above, is the negative aspect of freedom that is transnatural. Strictly speaking, it is much less than that. It is just negation, a vacuum pure and simple, a hole in Nature itself; it is a negation that is still `natural'. As such, naturalistic psychology may treat it as a subject-matter in its own domain of inquiry, though it must treat it throughout as negation. The moment, one understands it as something positive it has passed out of Nature. The erstwhile `natural' negation is then found face to face with trans-natural freedom which for so long had been peering through the `hole'. Detachment is really the point where Nature and the trans-natural meet. Naturalistic psychology has gone on describing and even accounting for the subtleties of this detachment, believing all the while that it is tackling `freedom' What it has really done is either to confuse at every step the natural with the trans-natural or to describe and explain different folds of a type of negation, the type being determined by its place vis-a-vis the other positive `naturals' with which it has been dealing. Infra-atomic Behaviors Indeterminate and Yet Natural In the last two sections we have examined two kinds of behaviors, those of living creatures qua living and of man qua man. We have shown that the former, though apparently indeterminate, are not really so; they are, therefore, `natural'. In contrast, the other kind of behaviors, those viz. of man qua man and which alone have the right to be called `act' are free in the sense of being intrinsically capable of opposing Nature. They are, therefore, outside Nature; though as we have seen, they may yet operate as within that very Nature, freely acting up to it or even dominating it. Distinct from both these kinds of behavior are those in the infra-atomic world which are indeterminate and yet physical through and through, in their case there being no question of life, consciousness or self-consciousness. Infra-atomic indeterminacy is neither freedom nor organic-mental. As such there could be only three alternative ways of tackling it. a. The indeterminacy in question may be understood as only apparent, provisional or privative. We may go on seeking the missing factor that could make it determinate under the over-all idea that all that is `natural' is determinate. b. The second way would be to hold that the behaviors of infra-atomic particles are, in the last analysis, really indeterminate. This would be based, not only on the fact that micro-physicists have failed to find determinacy here in spite of their best efforts, but also on a logical impossibility, viz., in this field the measurer inevitably becomes entangled in the measurement. As these infra-atomic

particles, with all they involve in this field, constitute the basic reality of Nature, we have to hold further that all macro behaviors must be interpreted in their terms, that is, in the language of the Quantum Theory as average behaviors of masses of those particles. Or, if the particles themselves are reduced to indeterminate behaviors, our procedure would be to take the macro behaviors as average masses of the basic indeterminate behaviors. Whichever way we proceed, the whole idea is that as infra-atomic behaviors alone are genuine and original, all determinate macro behaviors have, at least at the first step of deduction, to be derived from them through calculations of probability. Once, however, the firstlevel macro behaviors are so derived, the more gross behaviors may be calculated from them through ordinary classical mathematics. c. The third alternative would be to proceed in just the opposite manner, taking macro determinacy as ontologically basic and understanding micro indeterminacy somehow in its terms, except that it be not understood only as privation. Of these three alternatives the first can be discounted immediately. Not only has no missing factor that could supply determinacy yet been found, we are told that it cannot be found as that would involve the logical impossibility spoken of above, viz., the measurer becomes entangled in measurement. The second alternative is indeed the order of the day. But there is a snag. Infraatomic indeterminacy could be taken as original and absolute if only it were of the same nature as the freedom we find in human action. Only then could we start from it and understand other behaviors in its terms. We have already seen, however, that this is not so. It could also be an original starting point if, as is the current view of many scientists, the subject matter of theoretical physics were not the actual world we live in but only the concept `world' which is said to be all mathematics while the solid items of our world are only terminal symbols as it were. As long, however, as we are talking of our actual concrete world we must discount the possibility of starting from any physical indeterminacy and deriving the concrete world through any manner of calculation. Over-intellectualistic science, concerned solely with abstract models and logical calculation, misses all experimental touch with the concrete world. Presupposing experience, it neither faces it squarely nor explores the delicate empirical relations. Naively content with broad accepted empirical features, it boasts of the empirical success of its models and calculations, not knowing that Nature responds only when their feats are congenial. When Nature flouts them they turn to other models and calculations, treating her all the while as a slave rather than as a cooperating friend. This is why in logic there is so much difficulty and confusion regarding induction. The entire Nature could be formally modelized if only the model contained `holes', corresponding to perception and induction, through which solid, concrete Nature could at least peer. The logic of probability is only a step in that line, but it is grossly inadequate because all the types of 'holes' have not been taken into account. Thus, we are left with the third alternative stated above, viz., to take macro determinacy as the exemplar and understand micro indeterminacy in its language. If permissible, it would be treated as lacking determination till now. Failing that, it would be treated as a merely logical presupposition, seeing that, although presupposed, it cannot be spoken of except as presupposed and therefore as manageable by itself. In this it differs from ontological presuppositions which, though epistemologically presupposed, need not be spoken of as presupposed. Infraatomic indeterminacy is, therefore, not ontologically original; it is no distinctive being from which determinacy could be entirely derived. It recalls a similar problem in contemporary philosophy, viz., that of the subsistent vs. the existent. If subsistents must be presupposed for an existent, this is only an epistemological necessity, which in no way implies that the subsistent is an ontological prius. The subsistent cannot be defined except as what is presupposed in such and such manner by the existent, and the manner, too, is understood to obtain in the existent world. It is the same with micro-indeterminism vs. macrodeterminism.

Nature as Spatial-temporal and Causally Determined Thus far, we have been considering causal determination as a necessary mark of Nature. As for its spatial and temporal character, this has never been seriously challenged except in seeking clarification of the notions of space and time involved. Sometimes the common sense notions of space and time have been replaced by those which, we are told, are scientific. That is, the replacement is in the interest of theoretical physics, which has been constituted as the paradigm of science and which, as already said, has sought to replace our actual world by the concept `world' of mathematics. With that world, however, we are not concerned. Hence, our definition of Nature as the totality of contents that are in space and/or time and are causally determined stands. When empiricists insist that the real must be empirical, that is, perceivable or observable, what they mean is that the real must be `natural', that it must not go beyond Nature. In effect, then, they define 'natural' as what is perceivable. If by that they mean that the natural is that which is, was or will be perceived psychologically, this would be an obviously inadequate definition. Science with its sole concern for Nature speaks of many things which are psychologically unperceivable, and modern empiricists are conscious of that. They understand by 'perceivable' what can be logically worked out of perceived data; Nature, according to them, consists as much of such logical constructions as of the perceived data. Our definition of Nature as spatial-temporal and causally determined does not differ from this. It states the same thing but attempts to clarify the language, for all logical passage from given perceptual data is possible only through space, time and causal determination, in whatever language these three are understood. We add that the logical character of the perceptual data, too, is that they are in space and/or time and causally determined. Further, abstract logico-mathematical determination (derivability) is not as divorced from these three as is commonly supposed. All depends on how the three are sought to be understood: whether as they obtain in our concrete actual world or as they are conceptualized in the interest of the concept `world'. Even in the latter case it depends on how the concept is formed: whether as empirically abstracted from the concrete actual world or as a pre-constructed model with which to tackle the actual world. We have deliberately kept out of account all talks of preconstructed models as we are not quite sure of their locus standi. There is still another point before passing to the next section. Are chance phenomena to be included in Nature or not? All depends on whether they contradict, that is, resist determination or not. As a matter of procedure, they are not taken as contradicting determination and normally an attempt is made to explain every chance phenomenon in terms of causal determination. It is only when such explanation fails, in spite of all honest attempt, that we leave it as being thus far intractable. Neither of the contingencies met with in human freedom and infra-atomic indeterminacy obtains. If nevertheless we tackle it with the logic of probability, this is because that is the only logic at our disposal for making anything out of chance phenomena. The logic of probability can be used in treating any phenomenon, determined or chanced, but that does not make it the only indispensable logic for all cases. It is doubtful, too, that this logic is sui generis, entirely independent, even at its base, on the normal logic of complete determination. FREEDOM OF MAN Every Man's Own Nature Three quarters of man's being is immersed in Nature and is thus far subject to causal determination. He has a physical body which, apart from life, is a dead mass or matter, of which every piece, like the total mass, behaves in the same manner as any piece of matter. This is abundantly evident when a man dies and his body is left behind, cold and lifeless. As long, however, as he is living, this mass, without contradicting the way in which it would behave in a dead physical condition, behaves overwhelmingly as a living body. None of the purely physical movements and tendencies are suppressed, but the entire physical body is now in a

wider field of activity and purely physical tendencies are newly oriented. Parts of the dead mass or body, when left to themselves, behave in relation to one another and to outside matter exactly as does any piece of dead matter. As belonging to the body, however, they behave additionally in a new way, which movements are called living. There is no paradox here. In the purely physical field, too, molecular and translatory movements are distinguished. Further, there is no life without some form of consciousness. This is evident in the behaviors of most of the common species of living beings. If there be any doubt regarding the lowest levels of life, neither is there any assurance that they do not have consciousness. All animal behaviors, including those of man, can indeed be interpreted in purely physiological, or even in simply physical, terms. This is not so of freedom recognized as freedom, and it may well be that this is excluded because it is eminently conscious. Nevertheless, quite many of the lower forms of behavior, too, are conscious, though not eminently so. At least many of our human behaviors which are not free are conscious to some degree, and, sophisticated though we are, we commonly believe that higher animals, too, are conscious of many of their behaviors. Furthermore, untutored common sense takes all living behaviors as conscious in that way. Hence, there is no logical impossibility for all living behaviors to be conscious, howsoever imperfect may be that consciousness. It is true that if all living behaviors, except of course those which are free, could be interpreted in purely physiological or physical terms, logical parsimony would require that they should not be taken as conscious. But the law of parsimony, one must not forget, is valid only where one is concerned with a theory, not with what are given as facts. In our present case, however, it is given to untutored common sense that all living behaviors are conscious. Whatever is thus given and not contradicted by reason must be accepted, for that is precisely what is meant by `datum'. That all living behaviors of man and lower species are conscious does not, however, mean that they are held as objects by some non-objective consciousness which man and these species possess or that they are consciously generated as in voluntary action. That happens only when consciousness is explicit. All that we claim here is that some form of consciousness accompanies these behaviors, which consciousness is of different degrees of explicitness in the various types of living behaviors. Only when consciousness has the form of freedom does it show itself explicitly, only then is it felt as something other than those living behaviors. In all other cases it merely accompanies them without distinguishing itself; it accompanies them so closely, indeed, that the behaviors themselves appear to be conscious. This feeling, too, one must remember, is never8 different from the consciousness that is said to be felt. There is no consciousness that does not feel itself, and if consciousness is of different degrees of explicitness, so, too, is the feeling. If then every life-behavior is conscious, there is no great ontological difference between what is called living body and mind, provided by `mind' is meant a unitary system of mechanical or causally determined mental, i.e., conscious, behaviors. Every such mental behavior is also a bodily9 behavior; and the more refined the mental behavior, such as thought, imagination and will, the more hidden from view is the corresponding bodily one. The bodily behavior should not be taken as a cause of the mental, nor vice versa, for ontologically they are one and the same and differ only inasmuch as they are considered from two different points of view. There is some slight additional difference: while every mental behavior is determined by some antecedent mental behavior in the same mind,10 a bodily behavior is determined as much by antecedent bodily behavior in the same body as in another body. As they involve increasingly subtle bodily behaviors mental behaviors are higher in the scale of refinement. At the lowest level there are the organic sensations, always with somatic over-tones. In appropriate orders of refinement are the more specific sensations, the higher probably involving unexplicit remainders, the

unconscious dispositions and traces of the lower, both bodily and mental. Why they are progressively more specific probably depends upon the life-needs of the translatory movements of the body, including the corresponding mental movements. Mental behaviors above the level of sensation depend successively more upon the unexplicit remainders or `traces', the most unexplicit of which are being required for those mental behaviors said to depend upon thought. Though `said to depend upon thought', they do not in fact so depend. When, for example, perception, as distinguished fromsensation, is said to depend on thought, definitely no thought is operative there in the way in which it operates at the level of thinking. It is only said to operate there, because at that level perception somehow involves the subtle dispositions and traces which at the higher level make thinking possible. These dispositions and traces are required in two different ways at the two levels. At the level of perception they get entangled, tied or fused with given matters, which they refuse to do at the level of thinking. Dispositions and traces maturing into thinking take up matters softly, tackling them from outside as it were, whereas in perception they mature only so far as they impregnate sense-matters. Assuming that they are active, dispositions and traces, understood as mental, are those behaviors of which we have not even the type of feeling we have of the lowest bodily-mental movements spoken of above, though we cannot say we have no feeling at all of them. With a little practice many can be felt indistinctly as forces welling up from within, though never as what they might actually be or how they might behave. Even some of the dispositions and traces which lie more deeply hidden in our mind can be felt through greater practice, though only vicariously and indistinctly, as when we somehow feel that the forms in which they are trying to emerge in consciousness are false and yet not wholly cut off. If one can delve so deeply into the so-called unconscious, we can well imagine that with continued practice we could go still deeper. The mental behaviors we have described so far are all mechanical that is, causally determined. They range from organic sensations at the lowest, through more or less distinctly felt traces, to mechanical thought at the highest, with each type possessing distinctive affective tones distributed along a similar line. Thus far, we have been treating the cognitive side of the mind. Correspondingly, there are conative behaviors, all mechanical at the level of mind and distributed in the same order, each with an appropriate affective tone. So far as the mechanical mind is concerned, its affective side is always an overtone and never substantive. The whole picture will alter, however, in the next section, when this entire mental region, along with its corresponding system of bodily behaviors, is looked at from the point of view of freedom. The body of each man, as a unitary system of all his lifebehaviors, along with his mechanical mind constitute his 'own nature'; henceforward, this will be called human nature (with a small `n'). This is the field reserved for him not only in which to live but also through which to communicate with the world outside and its other similar natures. The communication is twofold, both receiving and communicating. Through his own nature he collects information about Nature-through body alone when the information is relatively simple and also through mind when it is complicated. Equally, he reacts on Nature, changing and rearranging it according to ideas that develop in the mind, this change or rearrangement of Nature and the growth of ideas being mechanical till now. Since we have already said that his mechanical mind and his so-called physical body are basically one and the same thing, viz., his living body, we can say now that his nature is this living body understood to be as much mechanically mental as physical. This living body is the medium or means through which he is in twofold correspondence with Nature. The living body is not only the medium for all mechanical knowledge of Nature and mechanical reaction on it, it is equally so for all knowledge and action in as much as it is free. Free knowledge of Nature is knowing it as it truly is; free action modifies it in the light of that knowledge. Indeed, the living body,

including mechanical mind, is in a way more important for freedom than for any mechanical behavior, whether cognitive or conative. While every creature as instinctively uses its body as a means for communicating with Nature as it uses anything, for his free knowledge and action man uses his body not only consciously but with an awareness that it alone is the primary means. Insofar as he uses it self-consciously he can study and manipulate it, both for its own sake and as a means for its assessment and improvement. Free man, in other words, is directly concerned with his body; his freedom finds scope primarily and chiefly in his body, which is his own nature, and only through this in outside Nature. Thus, for free man the body that is consciously used as a means is no mere part of Nature. To effect any change in outside Nature he has first to introduce an appropriate change or new movement in this body which is his own nature. Obviously, that movement is not entirely Nature's own; at some point it has originated freely and literally out of nothing, and insofar seems to have violated Nature's law. If he had no body, no such question of violation would arise. Yet from another point of view, with all his body and freedom he cannot alter the laws of Nature; being in the world, he has to move according to these laws of matter and motion. How could he then perform that impossible feat of originating new movement? The reply lies in the exact relation of man's own nature to Nature. His own nature or body-mind complex is no mere part of Nature; itself a microcosm, a tiny duplicate of the entire Nature, it constitutes a whole world of its own, a Leibnitzian monad. Viewed that way, it is not a part of Nature, for no part can possibly represent the whole; it is a full empire for each man, with all the offices and rules of management that are found in Nature. In another way, too, it is a part of that Nature. Varying the Leibnitzian conception to suit our purpose, we may liken individual men's own natures to States that form a healthy federation, and that federation itself to Nature as a whole. From the point of view of strictly determined mechanical Nature each man's own nature, equally determined in every detail, is only one part among others; only as a matter of accident is it attached to a particular man. From another point of view, however, viz., insofar as he is a free man, each man's nature is his. It is what he has earned, as it were, or carved out of Nature in order that it may be managed by him, though with all the help he can get from that Nature. It is what he has taken over from Nature in order that it may be brought in line with his genuine freedom, bettered and perfected. There lurks, indeed, a possibility always that he may succumb, as unfortunately he often does, to Nature's determination and thus turn his possession into an animal's den. Still worse, retaining some shadow of freedom and consciously utilizing it, he may turn his empire into a veritable hell. This is a possibility he faces. Different Functions of Freedom We have shown in the previous section that three quarters of man's being are immersed in Nature and how, in this way, he behaves like any animal. The remaining fourth quarter is his freedom. It is a `quarter' only from the point of view of Nature; in itself, it constitutes an expansive field capable of engulfing the whole of Nature. It can do this either by seeking to rearrange the details of Nature in order that freedom might prevail or, not satisfied with mechanical acquiescence, by trying to understand Nature through questions, challenges and experiments, filtering through reason what Nature offers mechanically. Reason, as will presently be shown, is a function of freedom. Ordinarily, we talk of freedom only in the context of conation; we commonly hold it to be freedom of will. Once it is remembered, however, that freedom is primarily what resists natural determination there is no reason why it should not also be cognitive and, in an important sense to be clarified later, affective, as we find in art and religious love and devotion. The type of freedom we discussed in the section The notion of freedom was freedom of will. There we showed that a large part of our conative life is in the field of Nature and determined through and through; nearly the whole of conations which are usually called free can be shown to be determined by factors that could not be

detected by the person concerned. Nevertheless, we have insisted that actions which are distinctively human always involve choice, which must start with some form of detachment. Detachment, in its turn, is a form of resistance to Nature, incipient or pronounced. This detachment is at the root of all morality: an action is primarily moral precisely insofar as it resists some `natural' motive, personal or even social. Among `natural' behaviors some may be better than others, and the `natural' principle which determines this comparative goodness may legitimately be called Good. Morality, however, is something different from Good; something other than `natural' Good in our active, individual or social life is valued equally, if not more. That `something other' is detachment, conscious disinterestedness, utter unselfishness. So far, however, we have characterized morality only negatively and, though some mystics value this negation more than anything else,1 there is also a positive side. In the section on The notion of freedom we saw that the positive aspect can be understood in two ways. It can be understood as a trans-natural progressive movement upward for an increasingly close communion with some distant ideal. Alternatively, it can be seen as a movement downward to the world of Nature, with full conscious detachment or unselfishness manipulating things proximately in the interest of all individuals, among whom the agent is but one, but ultimately in the interest of reason. Reason is not exclusively a cognitive affair. Primarily it is the principle of objectivity; when any mental affair is brought to that level of consciousness and molded according to its requirements it is acceptable to all individual persons, provided they also exercise reason to some extent. Though each mental behavior is private to the individual to whom it belongs, when it is brought to the level of reason, i.e., rationalized, it becomes acceptable or at least communicable to others. Thus rationalized it is no less, and perhaps more, communicable than perception. Communication is possible only at the two extreme levels of mentality. At the lowest level, perception is immediately communicable because the object perceived as over there is a common thing for all who perceive it. Higher mental behaviors become increasingly private. They, too, get communicated, however, when brought to the highest level where reason supervenes and takes them up. Such objectification is possible because reason is a common property of all minds.12 Even perceptions could be communicated in that way, in which case, however, rational communication would be only a clarification or secondhand confirmation of the direct communicability or objectivity it possessed. Though reason is a common property of all minds, this does not mean that all minds possess similar reasons, for that would make mental behaviors incommunicable. They would be similar without anyone knowing that they are so and, therefore, would remain as private as before. Communication, and thereby objectification, is impossible without some identity of contents. Perception, for example, can be communicated only because there is outside an identical object to which all the percipients might refer. Rationalization, too, can be understood as referring to a perceivable object. The distance is so great, however, that the object, being almost on the vanishing point, is of no tangible use. Reason, on the other hand, has its own method of communication by means of which it objectifies in an altogether different manner which is normally called `logic', but in special cases may be logic's cousins. The object of this objectification is not only nonperceptual experience but, if need be, perceptions also. Here, the objectification of an experience means asserting its content as real.13 Dressed in reason any mental process can be communicated in this new fashion. In this case, the identity required by communication is the identity of reason itself, for there can be no perceivable object here and all mental affairs are private. Is not reason itself, however, a mental affair and as such private? It is, but it is distinguished from other mental affairs by being at the upper limit of mentality and hence, quite novel. A similar situation obtains at the lower limit, for both limits are meeting places of the mental with an identity outside mind. At the lower limit the outside identity is the object, called `percept', every

percept being as much mental perception as it is content outside mind. At the upper limit it is reason that transcends mind. This outside reason is the identity different from the similarity of different reasons of different minds. Whether this identical reason has to be grasped or realized as being outside mind is another question,14 quite as much as is whether the percept has to be grasped as outside perception or as the thing which is said to be perceived. This outside identical reason is not necessarily logic. It is logic only insofar as mental behaviors are cognitive, seeking to present the world as it truly is. So long, on the other hand, as mental behaviors are conative, i.e., concerned with what we do, this outside reason, which shall henceforth be called Reason, tells us what we ought to do. This cannot be established by logic, which tells us only what is truly there, though this is not entirely independent of the ought-to-do, nor vice versa. Ought-to-do is primarily a conative realization of Reason or a bringing into being in the world of Nature of what I am as above the level of mind, that is, as above individuality. It is the bringing into being on the level of Nature of the identical I, super-ego or essential spirit, which is equally present in all individual minds though not equally sensed by all as that which must be so brought into being. In a way, then, even at this primary stage there is some dependence on the cognition of what I truly am. This cognition is not yet cognitive possession, however, but only a sort of sensing what I truly am from a distance. Over and above this initial dependence of morality on cognition, there is a different and more solid dependence. What I sense I truly am seeks to be made real in the midst of concrete natural situations and to be given concrete shapes commensurate with those situations. This requires that the situations be correctly, i.e., rationally, cognized. Though in a different way, cognitive reason, too, must depend on conative reason which is morality, for to know anything properly we must cleanse our mind of all egocentricity and this is a moral act. Exactly how what I truly am is freely realized or concretized step by step into shapes commensurate with different orders of `natural' situations--the so-called logic of morality--has not often been studied systematically. The process is similar to that in the cognitive field. Different stages of moral concretization are likely to correspond to cognitive stages, from transnatural cum mental reason, through different forms of traces and dispositions, to imagination, memory, immediate awareness of absence, perception and serially to different forms of sensation down to the organic. Normally, of course, the study of cognition, as of conation, must begin, not from the top, but from the lowest which is readily at hand. Slowly, the study moves upward and uncovers regarding each higher stage both the way in which its activity is involved in the lower and how it behaves as uninvolved. Even there, though, once we detect the trans-natural Reason as freedom-in-itself and grasp it with any degree of conviction, we can begin anew from the top and see how it operates freely at and through the lower stages. Nonetheless, it must be recognized that we are faced with an almost insoluble problem, whether we begin from the lowest in terms of the unfolding of freedom or from the highest in terms of the stages of free self-concretizations. In either case, we have not shown whether or how the natural mental and bodily behaviors as such come out of that freedom. Nor have we shown whether man's own nature stands there in its own right, faced only by freedom which, as negative resists it, and as positive in the present cases is concretized, through stages, into forms which look very much like those natural contents. In any case, such concretization after resistance is not a form of succumbing, which would result rather in private behaviors centering round individual egos. The concretization in question, quite as much as the parallel cognitive movement, consists rather in freely constructing behaviors through the use of those traces which were responsible for `natural' behaviors, thus making the constructed behaviors look quite `natural' though actually they are not so. Whether and how far this account is tenable depends on two considerations: first, whether and how far freedom, once grasped, can succumb to traces, seeing that once

freedom is attained the `natural' individual and, therefore, the traces he carries have ceased to exist; and second, whether and how far there could be any such traces for freedom to fall upon and become bound to, seeing that a child is not born with such traces. One possible reply to the first consideration is that since the freedom in question is grasped by one who is still alive his mechanical mind and body, and therefore the traces also, continue to exist as actively as before. This reply is not satisfactory because one cannot grasp freedom till these traces are rendered inactive. True, they are not rendered inactive all at once: the grasp of freedom and the inactivization of traces progress together. Still this implies that with the complete grasp of freedom there is no question of return to Nature. All depends, however, on what is meant by `return' here: it is impossible to succumb once again to Nature, but what prevents a free return? A similar imperfect solution has sometimes been offered for the second consideration above. It has been said that every child is born with traces accumulated in his previous life. But if this is understood as an empirical, naturalistic account, it is highly controversial. It is not that the two replies are altogether nonsense,15 but that they do not solve the problem raised. They are naturalistic attempts to solve problems which cannot be solved naturalistically, for the relation between Nature and freedom is trans-natural. From this point of view, modern phenomenologists fare better. They hold that freedom in its negative aspect is conscious resistance to or withdrawal from Nature, and in the process consciously getting installed in or recovering itself. They call this `bracketing Nature'. At the same time they hold that in its downward--or in their language `forward'--movement it "intends" that Nature progressively or, as withdrawing, regressively--through all its a priori strands. The two processes, negative withdrawal16 and positive intention, are in effect one and the same, constituting two moments of one and the same process: insofar as X is withdrawn from, it is "intended" phenomenologically. This is exactly what we have meant by `free construction'. Phenomenologists hold in effect that man constructs the pure strands of his own nature freely and, through them, of Nature outside. Even this phenomenological account is inadequate, however, for it fails to explain how freedom could construct all the perceivable details either of one's own nature or of Nature outside. Nature, whether with small `n' or capital `N', cannot be constructed in such full detail except through free construction out of itself of traces. This would be possible only if one could consciously withdraw even from traces, and this could be done only if, even in `natural' life, one could be conscious of such traces. In section one above, we have shown how that could be done: whatever is consciously apprehended can be consciously withdrawn from, and whatever can be consciously withdrawn from can be freely constructed. Reason and Norms Up to now, we have treated reason as the only tangible form of freedom, as much in the practical as in the theoretical field. Reason is freedom because, in both fields, it enables us to detach ourselves from various `natural' pressures whether of physical nature and physiological needs, of instincts, emotions and passions and even of mechanical social norms. These factors, which normally are `natural' determinants, grow into pressure as soon as they act upon the living body, including mind, that is, the mind-body complex. In so acting they, in effect, cater to the `natural' needs of the individual ego by way of desire and aversion or, in the theoretical field, by way of mistaking belief for knowledge. In both the theoretical and the practical fields, Reason frees man from these `natural' needs. In the theoretical field physical and physiological pressures are epitomized in the claim of perception to be the only reliable avenue of knowledge. Theoretical reason frees us of this claim; by doubting and questioning perception it prohibits one from accepting the perceptual verdict until it is rationalized. There is no question of rejecting perception wholesale for, after all, we are creatures of

Nature. Perception must be accepted to the extent that it is tested by reason and rejected to the extent that it is distorted by the blind use of freedom, viz., through its unconscious identification with egoistic instincts, emotions and passions. Of themselves, instincts, emotions and passions are not unholy; they are made so by our egoistic attachment to them quite as much as to other things of Nature. There is, however, this difference: our attachment to these through our own natures generates `traces' which facilitate further involvement, and so on increasingly. Similarly in the field of conation reason aims to free us from `natural' pressures of various kinds. Instinctive and other biologically needed actions are not taken as final but are questioned and tested by reason, as are actions prompted by various emotions, passions and desires. As in the theoretical field, none of these `natural' forces are intrinsically unholy, but are made so through our egoistic attachment to them. Often, too, this attachment and the `traces' generated therefrom work in a vicious circle continually to strengthen each other until reason supervenes. In both the theoretical and practical fields, Nature is to be accepted only insofar as it stands the test of reason. In the theoretical field this testing is by logical principles, while in the practical field it is by another set of principles appropriate to that field; in both, however, the fundamental principle is the same: detachment from the ego. This entails a sort of universalization, translating `natural' pressures, through one's freedom, into forms that are acceptable to all. As in the theoretical field the universalized forms are progressively concrete theorems as they concern increasingly concrete situations, so in the practical field they are progressively more concrete social norms. Social norms themselves very often constitute a kind of pressure, but only when one tends toward succumbing to them as to pressures from outside. This happens even in the case of logical principles and theorems when, for example, a child learns mathematics or in cases where the common person is overawed by Science. Social norms, like different theorems, are to be understood as developing through conscious rationalization of our behaviors in different sets of contexts. Conscious rationalization, we have seen, is trans-natural Reason operating appropriately in different, and increasingly concrete contexts. Such rationalization is effected by wise men in the societies concerned; this seems to happen unconsciously because of habits formed by those wise men or even by people at large. A wholly naturalistic account of social norms or of logical principles and theorems is not feasible here.17 In this light, neither logical nor social norms are pressures of any sort, except insofar as, not having been traced to their rational origin, they are taken merely as impositions. Initially, indeed, they often are imposed, but those which are accepted gladly or as right are those which are those which are traceable or believed to be traceable to Reason. The above has been said from the phenomenological point of view. There is another attitude, however, in which norms that are consciously understood as coming from outside may yet be gladly accepted and even submitted to. Norms of conduct and exegesis laid down in orthodox religions are accepted in this way by many in faith. Faith is here the saving feature which softens the aggression of norms by generating genuine respect for them and for their promulgators. Faith here is a good enough substitute for the phenomenological experience of freedom, i.e., reason, in that it is as much distant from mechanical pressure as that experience and yet is human throughout. This aspect will not be treated here. What we have tried to show in this section is that, in our concrete life in the midst of Nature, Reason that is freedom realizes itself in behaving according to norms and that the norms themselves are traceable to it. Reason as such is transnatural, howsoever it operates as and through progressively concrete norms. Although the norms themselves have always to be rationalized, this is not required of Reason. It stands self-validated; logical principles need not be derived logically. The minimum that is needed everywhere, and what in effect constitutes

the very life of rationalization, is the elimination of egocentricity, of which another name is communicability. This is why even in perception it is immediately accepted without any rational test so long as I am sure that it has been vitiated by no personal equation. Even where I find that what I am now perceiving, whether or not I have cleansed my mind of unholy egocentricity, is being perceived by others present exactly as I am perceiving it, no rationalization is required, it being presupposed that we are sure that nothing of physical Nature has unauthorizedly intervened. Any demand for rationalization would appear forced in both cases, especially if this were a mystic experience which one might have at times in all clear conscience and with full knowledge that there is no vitiating factor. The same thing is true of conation. Where a norm according to which I act is accepted unquestioningly by all in my society, there is no need rationally to justify it, unless, of course, the entire social structure is questioned by some other competing or wider social structure. Equally unchallenged by reason should be whatever my `clean conscience' dictates, especially the rare mystic ordinances that one's `holy' mind receives. What we have said so far on freedom and norms in theoretical and practical fields is true mutatis mutandis of freedom and norms in the aesthetic field and its religious equivalent, viz., the field of faith, love and devotion. Freedom and Nature Once Again The entire mental life, beginning with sensuous perception and rising to mechanical thought, belongs to Nature and constitutes one's own nature. Each stage, as we have seen, can also be consciously experienced in the phenomenological attitude, first as freedom intending it a priori in broad outline and then more concretely, as that freedom intending the content. This is accomplished through conscious or half-conscious manipulation of `traces'. `Intention' means positing something out of itself and apprehending this as posited rather than as already there in its own right, though not denying also that they somehow coincide. This is what in epistemology is called `construction', and in ethics `making a new situation' or `re-arrangement'. All this is but another way of saying that when what is already there as `natural' is consciously apprehended from within oneself, this consciousness is produced neither by it nor is it mere consciousness, rather it is a forward-looking and self-generated mode of that consciousness itself, in which the mode is not altogether divorced from the `natural' content. If the mode were as natural as that content, even if of a new order, the two would have to be taken in an angelic attitude as entitatively different and yet coinciding. Since consciousness18 and its modes, are had, not as `natural', but as free, there are two self-sufficient alternatives. We could proceed in the way of free consciousness and understand everything of the so-called Nature as its free mode. We could equally proceed as absolute naturalists and understand both consciousness itself and its modes as `natural', even if of a special type. The difficulty with this form of naturalism, however, is that at some point one must recognize an ambivalent character moving in Nature without being one of its permanent citizens. Consciousness which doubts, questions, rearranges and rationalizes Nature is as much a part of Nature as one which views it as a whole and seeks to manage it from that total point of view. This strange character, which moves in Nature but must be recognized as free, has been dealt with in previous sections only in the form called reason. It has other forms as well. It includes whatever is phenomenologically capable of dissociating itself from the `natural' or, where it remains in Nature, freely intends the content it withdraws from as a form of freedom. In that manner, all reflective consciousness, which is the prerogative of man, is free. This means that, much like thought, it is possible to turn into free phenomenological processes moral will, aesthesia, faith, religious love and devotion, and even lower forms of mentalities down to perception, whether in the cognitive, conative, aesthetic or religious dimension. As the phenomenological

prius of all that is Nature, Freedom is not Reason only; Reason is merely the form of freedom that corresponds to thought or reason, though it may have jurisdiction over a large number of mental behaviors. Freedom as reflection, that is, as pure consciousness, which is self-evident and self-certifying corresponds to, and comprehends, every form of mental behavior. To a naturalist studying Nature, including his own nature, this Freedom is only `shown', for in that type of study an examination of Freedom is not only not an obligation but an impossibility. One may choose, however, to be a phenomenologist and then would study this Freedom through all its modes and nuances. Whether there could or could not be a general Freedom common to different forms of freedom is not a difficult problem for the phenomenologist. Phenomenologically, every man is conscious that he is a unity as his naturalistic behaviors also `show'. This is the so-called unitary Freedom which, in its experienced unity, ramifies into different forms, modes, nuances, etc. If this sounds mythical, one must not forget that the complete picture is discovered through systematic regressive detachment, every step of which exhibits in abundant light the corresponding `intention'. No phenomenological experience is possible at any step unless one has learned to detach himself from the form of bondage of his egocentric nature peculiar to that stage. We have seen that at the highest stage of nature, viz., at that of reason,19 the phenomenologist must detach himself from the last form of aggressive ego, that is, he must see that what he knows or does20 is not for himself alone but for everyone who has the eyes to see. At this point, however, there is no total denial of ego; what is denied is the aggressive ego that speaks only for itself, or at most for those who hang onto it. At this stage Freedom consists in being impartial to everyone including oneself. We have just seen that Freedom which refuses to be bound to nature is experienced as a unity. Two factors explain this: First, when the last stage of nature has been transcended and the ego has ceased to be aggressive, the unity of Freedom obviously cannot be that of the aggressive ego; second, because at this stage it concerns all possible ego its unity must be that of all egos. Here, as with the transcended aggressive ego, these other souls are no longer aggressively individual. The grand unity to which Freedom is ultimately to belong must, therefore, be the unity of all trans-natural pure souls. In other words, it ultimately belongs to a Grand Soul which is related to the individual pure souls in the same way that any unity stands related to its elements. In its original status, Freedom is said to be outside Nature. This transcendence of nature must be properly understood. It is not spatial or temporal because Nature comprehends all space and time. `Outside space or time' should mean simply not being in space or time. The whole of space is not in space nor is the whole of time in time. What, therefore, is not in space or time may well be in the whole of space or of time, or in both, each considered merely as a whole, for property may be predicated of a whole in two different ways: either of the whole as a whole, or of any or every element of its elements. The two ways of predication are mutually exclusive except that predication concerning any or every such element sometimes, though only nominally, appears as predication concerning the whole. Freedom, thus, may be outside the whole space and the whole time, each considered as a whole, without being outside any of their parts, even the most remote. Further Consideration of the Relation Between Freedom and Nature The relation between Freedom and Nature may be understood in two broad ways. In the first, Freedom wholly transcends Nature and constitutes non-spatial-temporal region which is wholly its own; it is a metaphysical region of non-spatialtemporal eternal truths. In the second, Freedom is autonomous in itself and yet operates within Nature. It is not bound by the conditions of that Nature as are all `natural' contents, but freely views these contents as they should be, that is, in themselves and apart from distortion by individual predilections. Equally as conative freedom it rearranges them as they ought to be so that no one reaps the benefit only for himself and for his confreres.

In which of the two ways freedom should be understood can never be decided once and for all. The way in which freedom should move cannot be determined by anything else, for its movement is also free; freedom is but free movement. The two broad ways stated above are, therefore, absolute alternatives. The first alternative is for transcending Nature, including one's own nature, altogether and living a life of pure Freedom. This would be a sort of filtered spiritual life, which need not be a mere mass of homogeneous indefinitude, bright though that may be. The mystics who claim they have lived this transcendent life often describe it as consisting of different stages of progress and exhibiting at each stage all sorts of subtleties and nuances, though some, it is true, have claimed that their experience when they transcended Nature was from the beginning a single, indivisible, self-luminous mass. In either case, that beyond which one cannot go is the Divine or the Absolute and nowhere in transcendent spiritual life is there any one-for-all cleavage between subjective experience and the object experienced as we have it in `natural' life. Some testify that there is no cleavage at all, but that the truth is found in every experience. Others hold that there is some cleavage, but that it operates in the very bosom of a unity, the unity being either of the experience itself or of the object experienced, each being alternatively an adjective of the other. Those theists who appear to insist on clear cleavage hold, at the same time, that between the experience at that stage and the object experienced there is a sort of communion qualitatively different from any in `natural' life. In all the cases, however, it is some sort of relationship of the Absolute with itself. Let us ask now if there are similar conative moments in spiritual life? There are none if conation, as we find it in nature, can operate only through mental and bodily movements, for at this level there is neither mind nor body. Some mystics have, therefore, held that transcendent spiritual life is non-conative. Others, however, have claimed that at the spiritual level, quite as much as cognition can dispense with object which is indispensable at the level of Nature, conation, too, can dispense with bodily and mental movements which were absolutely necessary for it at the level of Nature. At the transcendent level of spirit, it is but that spirit narcissistically turning upon itself with a view to accelerating, or even decelerating as the case may be, its spiritual progress. One element of this spiritual experience supplicates another that stands ahead and represses or reorients itself insofar as it stands behind or, as the case may be, plays with the advance element and whatever remains behind in an attitude of equality. Here, we need only add that every stage of such spiritual life, be it cognitive or conative, has a ring of joy and, in rare cases, a type of suffering which on the path of spiritual progress one may turn as a lever. This would constitute a kind of spiritual life which is love, devotion, surrender or even fear. Thus far, we have been considering transcendent freedom; the other type of freedom is immanent, and has two broad sub-types. It is either transcendent-and-immanent or merely immanent. `Transcendent-and-immanent freedom' means that one has first experienced freedom as transcendent, wholly in itself and apart from everything that is `natural'. Then, not satisfied with sheer eternals and not finding anything wrong with Nature as such, for Nature goes wrong only as man misconstrues and misuses it, he returns to that Nature. In this case, free of all `natural' interest, he views Nature as it truly is, reorganizing it as he should, namely, according to the principles of freedom, in order that he attain the fullness of spiritual life and others, too, are uplifted to proper vision and action. There is also another kind of transcendent-and-immanent freedom according to which spiritual experience is not first attained, followed by one's turning to Nature. Instead, freedom is realized, but only as possibly autonomous, that is, as capable of having a life of its own apart from Nature without ever actually having it so. It is similar to universals which cannot be had apart from the corresponding particulars though these latter may have to be understood as organized according to that universal. Or it is like a moral precept which never has an ontological being of its own, but is considered as that according to which our actions have to

be determined or considered, in other words, as only functionally rather than entitatively autonomous. To these transcendentalists freedom is only functionally autonomous, which means that its relevance lies only in organizing Nature in accordance with itself, not in seeking a special being of its own. All the being it has is that of Nature which it reshapes. No doubt its realization is autonomous, but this is merely a function which never actually goes beyond Nature. There is another way of understanding freedom, different from all those we have described so far and of momentous importance for man today. This is the view of freedom as wholly immanent in Nature. In no acceptable sense of the term does it transcend Nature, of which it constitutes only a new dimension. It is never apart from Nature nor has it even functional autonomy as though it were somehow superior and expected Nature to obey its orders. In status it is rather subordinate to Nature, which carries it all through the story of evolution as its own driving principle. Progressively in its ever-increasing explicitness it is shown as constituting the depth-dimension of Nature, whose main objective is to rearrange itself in such a way that, not only does this depth-dimension stand out as explicitly as possible, but it is then permitted to react on its own initiative and rearrange that very nature so as to make itself increasingly explicit. It does this with a speed never found before. The whole process is thus `natural', and freedom at its maximum explicitness is only Nature itself at its best. With the emergence of man at the last stage of Nature's evolution, for the first time this freedom-depth stands out explicitly. Through progressive correction of Nature's aberrations--which either constitute its unaccountable dark side or which, once man emerges, are created by freedom itself experimentally going awry--this freedom as the depth-dimension of Nature asserts itself more and more distinctly and speedily. Throughout, the ideal of Nature is the establishment of the best form of human society which, itself `natural', realizes that `natural' freedom at its highest. As noted above, there is nothing to determine which of these different ways of understanding freedom is right and which is wrong. Each offers a self-sufficient account of man and his status vis-a-vis Nature. Possibly there is no external criterion. Any such criterion would have to be rational, existential or pragmatic, anthropological, etc. But reason itself is a form of freedom. Hence, just as by means of reason one cannot justify reason itself, neither can one determine how freedom shows itself. Further, such criteria as rational, pragmatic and anthropological are relevant only for the study of `natural' behaviors vis-a-vis one another. In studying the behavior of Nature as a whole, it is really a question either of assuming or not assuming a new attitude. The question is whether to continue in a naturalistic attitude, assume a new one, viz., the attitude of freedom, or somehow combine the two. The choice is final, in the sense of existential. The only further consideration is whether the particular attitude assumed accounts for all that can be accounted for. But in none of these attitudes need everything be accounted for because the choice of any one attitude has already taken as data many things which for other attitudes are problems. Data, obviously, differ from choice to choice. Visva-Bharati University Santiniketan, India NOTES 1. When a man sleeping for an hour dreams a seven days' dream that seven-day time is illusory. 2. This is in contrast to "of." 3. Though in an enlightening or ennobling attitude it may also return to Nature and comprehend it anew. 4. This is not true at the infra-atomic level. 5. As freedom is, by definition, self-conscious we need not append this adjective except where we distinguish it from other forms of indeterminate behavior. Nor need we be particular about whether we should call it self-conscious or conscious. The choice of either or none does not change the meaning which is always clear.

6. Later on we shall show how it accompanies the sub-conscious and the unconscious of psycho-analysis, and even what is called pre-conscious. 7. Freedom is only the modus operandi of the activity called `lording over', or just another name for that activity. To call it a cause of that activity would be as meaningless as to say that an empty pocket is one which is full of emptiness. 8. This is true except where consciousness transcends the individual person round which it normally centers. More of this impersonal consciousness later. 9. `Bodily behavior' in the present context has always to be understood as living bodily behavior. l0. Where a behavior of mind appears to determine causally one in my mind, or vice versa, this, we shall see, is a function of freedom, not causal determination; this is so with regard to any of my mental behaviors appearing to determine causally a behavior of my body. 11. For these mystics, the negation in question is not a `hole' in Nature, nor such holes somehow connected with one another as holes. It is the region where the natural and the trans-natural meet. Even as negation, this region is alternatively natural and trans-natural, though even as trans-natural it is nothing more than negation. 12. Shortly it will be shown that reason is as much mental as trans-mental. 13. The apologetic view that logic and its cousins are only analytic languagesystems, exaggerates the distinction between perception and reason. Reason may not assert a perceivable content; but, first, it cannot be said that it never does so, and secondly, no language-system, unless it is deliberately artificial, is merely analytic. 14. We shall soon turn to this. 15. The two replies are not only not nonsense, but, from another point of view, perhaps the best possible solutions. If the problem of the relation between Nature and trans-natural freedom is not a naturalistic problem because one term of the relation is not `natural', neither is it a trans-natural problem because the other term is not trans-natural. One might, therefore, choose to proceed to offer a naturalistic account, however inadequate that may be. From this point of view, the two replies are quite intelligible. 16. This withdrawal is a form of negative trans-naturality mentioned in footnote 11, p. 22. 17. Out of question here. Whether, and how far, it is possible from some other angle of vision we shall see in a later section. 18. By this time it must have become clear to the reader that the terms `freedom', and `consciousness' are on!y different names for one and the same transnaturality, which is often more generally called `spirit'. Reason, as will presently be shown, is only one form of freedom. 19. This is true not only of reason, but equally of aesthesis and faith. 20. In a similar manner, this is true of his art and religious love and devotion. CHAPTER X A TOUCH OF ANIMISM S. C. THAKUR THE SEMANTIC PREAMBLE Since in an obvious and fundamental sense man is a part of nature, and a very small one at that, any conjunction or disjunction of `man' and `nature' would seem to involve a category-mistake. We do not speak of `the legs, the arms and the body' nor of `apples, oranges and fruits'. It is evident, therefore, that in talking about `Man and Nature' we are using `nature' not in this first but in what is regarded as its second primary sense, namely, that in which `nature' denotes everything excluding man and his creations. It is in this sense that man's creations are termed `artificial' as against the other objects and processes of nature which are considered natural. This use of the word is very simply a matter of convention; to quibble about it would be idle, if not mischievous. Nevertheless, it is interesting to note that only men create things. A bird's nest, a spider's web or a beaver's dam, though

very complex and sometimes beautifully pieces of work, are still considered natural: these do not seem to deserve the distinction of being set apart from the rest of nature. The temptation to regard this convention as nothing but a product of human chauvinism may be hard to resist. We shall return to the role of this chauvinism later. At the moment, however, let us reflect briefly on some of the other factors that provide the foundations of this convention. One reason why we set ourselves and our artifacts apart from the rest of nature is simply that we are interested in discovering the secrets of nature for ourselves and in understanding our relations with them. The beaver's or, for that matter, Humpty Dumpty's picture of the world may be very interesting, but it can have only an academic interest for us. Our primary and pragmatic interest must lie in our picture of the world revealed to us through our own concepts, theories, judgments and meanings. One does not have to be a rabid instrumentalist to accept that there is no getting away from this. The primacy of the human perspective in our talk about and dealings with nature is not just a methodological convenience, though it certainly is that, too; it is a `constitutional' and practical necessity. Without dwelling on this theme for too long, let us look at one other very important and obvious point of contrast between ourselves and the rest of nature. While the beaver's or the spider's works may be complex and admirably beautiful, they are all the same results of instinctive action rather than of conscious thought and planning. Only humans have the gift (or the burden?) of rational thought and, therefore, the power of abstraction and the ability to visualize and adopt distant goals, to have ideas and ideologies and, above all, the concepts of right, wrong, good and evil. These observations, while commonplace in a certain way, bring us to what, in the long run, must be the only genuine sense in which humans constitute a world of their own: the world of values. As far as we can tell, there is no other species in nature which shares this world, apart, that is, from fairies, angels and science-fiction visitors from other planets. It is not difficult to see that while in the world of facts we are on a par with the rest of nature since we obey its laws, in the world of values we are sovereigns. This, as we shall see later, is a mixed blessing. There is little doubt, however, that but for this peculiarity there would have been no question of our getting together to discuss and evaluate what we have, or should have, done to nature or how we must regard her in future. Having thus argued that the second sense of `nature' is well-grounded, I must hasten to add that the first sense is no less so. In fact, the latter needs no arguing. That we are creatures of nature and must in most basic ways submit to its dictates, is so painfully obvious that even the contemplation of doing otherwise verges on stupidity, if not lunacy. Yet, it is neither often nor strongly enough emphasized, particularly in the West, that we are part of nature, that we have no destiny independent of nature. This theme is left to be sung feebly and intermittently by poets, mystics, aesthetes as well as by drop-outs, freaks and fringe-cults of various sorts. I believe that a proper appreciation of this sense will have important consequences for our attitudes towards, and interactions with, nature. A QUESTION OF COMPETENCE As I leave the relatively secure shores of semantic observations, my confidence seems to ebb decidedly. What can a philosopher have to say on either man or nature that could be of interest or value to anyone? Partly as a result of our choice, but largely no doubt due to the phenomenal progress of the sciences, we may have been condemned into uttering mere inanities on subjects that have been rapidly appropriated by the various areas of science. At least, that is how things look. Even if we decide to recast our role and start philosophizing on substantive issues, as presumably some would wish to do, there is a danger that we may fail to carry conviction for, as philosophers, we do not have first-hand knowledge of all the facts relating to either man or nature. That task rests with biologists, psychologists, physicists, ecologists and other `experts'. The philosopher can, however, take courage from at least two features of the

situation. One is that the experts are not all agreed on what the facts are, much less on their wider significance. For example, some scientists--mainly, though not exclusively, ecologists--tell us that our destruction and despoilment of nature and our heedless disruption of its processes have reached such crisis proportions that unless we radically alter our attitudes and ways, not only the survival of our own species is in peril, but possibly that of all living organisms. This view, however, is dismissed as alarmist by other scientists who have what the authors of The Homeless Mind call `the engineering mentality'.1 They believe in the infinite malleability of nature as well as in the limitless ingenuity of man, particularly their own kind, to solve any problems that we may have created for ourselves--and some do accept grudgingly that there may be problems! These are only two, albeit the two main, sets of scientific opinion on the subject; both have their supporters, though certainly not in equal measure, outside their own ranks. Whatever the truth of these claims, the issues involved are so vital and of such immediate relevance that not even a thoughtful man-inthe-street, far less a philosopher, can afford to be indifferent. To wait until the facts are beyond dispute may well mean waiting forever and might constitute dereliction of duty as a human being, for even a casual acquaintance with the arguments in the debate makes it abundantly clear that the so-called facts are so heavily laden with questions of priorities, goals and values that it would be wrong, and dangerous, to leave the choice of these to scientists, economists or bureaucrats. Each man must decide for himself; and the philosopher surely is at least as well-qualified to do so as any ordinary man. The issue of values is the other reason why a philosopher's opinions, if wellreasoned, may be of special interest; indeed, we may ourselves be the `experts' here, if only because there are no others to claim the mantle. The facts in the dispute between opposing groups of scientists are heavily laden with questions of value and when it comes to the world of values man is quite independent of nature. What we should make of those facts, how we must regard nature, what attitudes are appropriate--these are important questions of value on which the philosopher, more than anyone else, can and should have a say for, as far as I can tell, there is no recognized science of values. THE CRISIS Having given my reason for doing so, I proceed to declare my position in the dispute concerning man and nature. I am firmly on the side of the `alarmists', or ecologists, to use a non-pejorative name. Let us refer to the opposition in the dispute as the `engineers'. It is my opinion that the ecologists' assessment of the contemporary situation and of the future prospects for man is substantially correct. As one of their well-known documents, A Blueprint For Survival, declares, The principal defect of the industrial way of life with its ethos of expansion is that it is not sustainable. Its termination within the lifetime of someone born today is inevitable--unless it continues to be sustained for a while longer by an entrenched minority at the cost of imposing great suffering on the rest of mankind. We can be certain, however, that sooner or later it will end (only the precise time and circumstances are in doubt), and that it will do so in one of two ways: either against our will, in a succession of famines, epidemics, social crises and wars; or because we want it to--because we wish to create a society which will not impose hardship and cruelty upon our children--in a succession of thoughtful, humane and measured changes.2 Rhetoric aside, the main conclusions of this document are, I believe, sound and well-supported by scientific, sociological and statistical data. As it would be pointless and painful to reiterate the details of a published and readily available document, I will refer only briefly to some of the important factors that have brought the crisis upon us. The most obnoxious of these, of course, is the notorious fact that the human population of the world is staggeringly large and growing at an alarming rate. According to the Blueprint, the world population in 1972 was 3,600 million and increasing at the rate of 2 per cent or 72 million per year. The rate of population growth in the so-called `developed' countries was

between 0.5 and 1.0 per cent, and in the `developing' countries between 2 and 3 per cent per year. This means that even if the world's population stabilizes by the year 2000, which is not at all certain, the earth will then have to support a population of 15.5 billion. Equally damaging, if not more so, is the ever-increasing per capita use of energy and raw materials. The main culprits here are the advanced industrial societies which, with one-third of the human population, account for nearly 80 percent of the energy and raw material consumption. Since their current level of consumption is so inordinately high, even as small an annual growth as that of 4 per cent results in mammoth demands on the world's total resources. Taken together, these two facts lead to one simple conclusion. The world cannot cope with this continued increase in ecological demand. By ecological demands is meant a summation of all man's demands on the environment, such as the extraction of resources and the return of wastes. Needless to say, if the ecological demand grows exponentially, as seems to be the case, it will be quite simply impossible to meet. These two factors, combined with widespread individual ignorance and avarice, are causing large-scale disruption of ecosystems, failure of food supplies and exhaustion of resources, and thereby threatening chaos and the collapse of society. This is strong language indeed, but the situation demands nothing less. Even Passmore, in his thorough and erudite, though somewhat complacent work, Man's Responsibility for Nature,3 admits the immensity of the problems. The ecological problems of pollution, conservation, preservation and multiplication are, he accepts, serious enough. But his general optimism, I fear, reflects what I earlier called the engineering mentality: given the infinite ingenuity of our scientists and the solid base of Western institutions, every problem can be solved; it is but a matter of time. Mary Midgley's disappointment at Passmore's failure to convey the real urgency of this situation in which time may be running out is wellfounded. She is absolutely right: the situation does call `for Heaven's cherubim horsed upon the sightless couriers of the air, to blow the horrid deed in every eye, that tears may drown the wind',4 and not for Passmore's attitude, `Send for the fire brigade . . . they are far more efficient than you imagine. Keep calm.'5 RENOUNCING THE `ROGUES' The situation leaves no room for complacency; as the quotation from the Blueprint declared, the present state of affairs must end. The only question is: shall we let that happen `against our will, in a succession of famines, epidemics, social crises and wars' or through `a succession of thoughtful, humane and measured changes'?6 The answer is, of course, the latter. But what changes are required? Since the malaise is deep, pervasive and has many facets, clearly many things will have to be done in a planned and orderly way; some, at least, will have to be radical. In this short paper I can mention only some of the changes which appear to be required and treat one or two in relative detail. The need to curb and stabilize world population without delay is, of course, the first step to be taken. This seems to be generally well-recognized. Efforts are being made to bring it about speedily, though success is still limited to small pockets of the world. What has not been so well-recognized, perhaps, is that the rocketing ecological demand is a direct outcome of our industrial-technological way of life, ably supported by the philosophy of progress now defined as economic growth. The other change that must be made, therefore, is the emphatic renunciation of both of these. The former, besides creating, nurturing and multiplying ecological demand, creates in society widespread depression, alienation, anomie and compartmentalization of life. All are components of what Berger, Berger and Kellner have called the state of homelessness in modern, affluent societies. The industrial-technological revolution may have been one of the best things that happened to mankind, but it appears to have outlived its utility. In this case, the inevitable stock-taking that occurs after every revolution seems to show that the price paid for ushering in the industrial era may have been too high. However, this huge and complex machinery neither can nor ought to be stopped

overnight. That would be neither reasonable nor humane. Caution and discrimination are needed, sorting out problems of production from those of distribution and both from the lack of moderation. To take but one example, the United States of America cannot be said to have a problem of production; what it needs is a more equitable distribution of the abundance it already enjoys, coupled with moderation in demand. This is also the case, in varying degrees, for most of the affluent nations whose need is not to step up industrial activity. On the contrary, they need to de-industrialize and rationalize their social structure and life-style in the light of what is already known about the deleterious social effects of the urbanized, industrialized way of life. Neither does the solution to the problems of the developing, poorer countries lie in the industrial-technologicalbureaucratic complex. Problems of production and of equitable distribution to keep their rapidly growing populations reasonably well-fed do exist and I intend to discuss later how their problems could be approached. Any attempt to renounce the industrial-technological way of life, however, is doomed to failure unless it is preceded or accompanied by the rejection of the underlying philosophy which regards growth as a value. It takes little reflection to see that growth, except in a specified context, is not a value at all. Were one's eighteen-year-old son to be only four feet tall, he might be justified in worrying about his growth and consulting a physician. But were one's eighty-yearold grandfather to remain at five feet eight inches, his height throughout his adult life, it would be foolish to give this another thought. Likewise, if after five years one's willow tree is only a few inches high, something may need to be done, but not so if a dwarf plant is at that height after only a few weeks. Growth can be a value only in certain contexts, in the light of certain norms and possibilities. The philosophy of economic growth seems to be misconceived and dangerous insofar as it is advocated for its own sake alone. Generally, this is done irrespective of any context of genuine need and in the face of the awesome fact that the world's resources will not permit it much longer. Consuming and throwing away ever-increasing amounts of various goods is a product of greed and faulty education, not of need and deprivation. The Club of Rome has already argued powerfully against the desirability and feasibility of further economic growth. The expressed hope that a rapidly growing society will create some large surplus of goods to be shared by all sections of that society is a delusion. The most affluent societies still have large pockets of relative poverty; in most of them a small percentage own the bulk of the land's resources. Their problems are political and philosophical, not those of economic growth. PEOPLE-ORIENTED INDUSTRY AND SENSITIVE TECHNOLOGY The above argument against any further expansion of the industrial way of life, with all its attendant problems and perils. raises the question: How are the developing, poorer countries to raise their standards of living or even feed their populations, if not with the aid of industry and technology? In answer one must, first of all, distinguish between the industrial-technological way of life and the use of industry and technology. Renouncing the former does not, to my mind, entail the rejection of a judicious and careful use of industry and technology of a limited size and for limited purposes. Adopting the former involves a blind, slavish imitation and importation of a life-style that is foreign to the culture and genius of most developing countries. But that is not the case with every use of industry and technology; some sort of traditional and small-scale use of which has been part of almost every stable, viable community. A reasonable enlargement and modification of such indigenous industry and technology, where necessary to cope with new demands, will not threaten the stability of a society by exposing it to the ills of the centralized, urbanized monoculture which the logic of industrial society creates and encourages. For example, since the most pressing problem for the developing countries is the control of their exploding populations and since prayer alone will not stop children from being born, they must ensure an adequate supply of various contraceptive devices. These should not be produced in one or two large, heavily

automated industrial complexes, however. That would require an additional infrastructure for storage, transport and distribution; it would also limit the employment opportunities created. Would it not be possible to create a chain of small factories, distributed as evenly as possible around the whole country, each supplying the needs of its neighboring community? Given the will, the same could be done for steel, cement, fertilizers and other essential goods. This sort of distribution of small-scale production centers would provide jobs locally, instead of sending every job seeker off to the big cities. The worker would still remain part of the society to which he is accustomed, instead of becoming an anonymous, unwilling and uncooperative citizen of a metropolis. This way of doing things would mark a radical departure from the centralization implicit in the industrial way of life. The aim of such a decentralized society would be the attainment of self-sufficiency for every basic unit of its population, e.g., the village. This has been ably argued by Schumacher in the book, Small is Beautiful,7 and, of course, by Gandhi in many of his writings. Recently, it has been widely recognized, though not often enough in the corridors of power, that the introduction of heavy industry and highly sophisticated, capital-intensive technology into developing countries has a very disruptive, almost counter-productive effect on the indigenous population. Consequently, much has been written on what sort of technology would be appropriate. The suggestions have included `Intermediate Technology', `Appropriate Technology', `Alternative Technology' and `Low Impact Technology'. All of them share certain features, notably the need to avoid unnecessary disruption of nature and natural and ecological processes; all of them can be applied outside the developing world. There are, however, certain differences among them, if only of emphasis. For example, intermediate and appropriate technologies emphasize a change from capital-intensive to labor-intensive technology. While they take into account the natural resources of a given region, their primary stress is on the creation of jobs for people. Low impact or alternative technologies, on the other hand, are mainly concerned with minimizing the impact of technology on the environment. Hence, they involve the use of such energy sources as solar, wind and tidal power. These types of technology, however, are less likely to create greater employment opportunities, which is a central concern of intermediate technology. There is need for a technology which can combine the significant features of both these types of technology. The creation of jobs as well as the preservation of the environment are equally important, especially in the developing world. This new kind of technology could perhaps be called sensitive technology and would be sensitive to: (i) the ecological balance of a given region, and not unduly disruptive of the `food chain' in the region; (ii) the needs of the people in that region, and conducive to the goal of selfsufficiency for the region; (iii) the pattern of distribution of natural resources in the region, and committed to the use, as far as possible, of local raw materials and forms of energy. In short, the technology must be sensitive and responsive to nature, including man. Such technology cannot be a simple tool of production, it must also have aesthetic properties. It will not aim at controlling or exploiting, but rather at `encouraging' nature to provide for man what he must have for care-free and reasonably comfortable living. While this must be done, because man's basic needs can only be met in and through nature, man must also learn to minimize his need for goods. A PLEA FOR PARTNERSHIP These suggested changes are radical and far-reaching; they cannot be effected overnight or without tremendous effort. Their successful implementation will depend upon a massive program of education, or re-education, at all levels. This must create and foster in people a deep and continuing awareness of the interrelatedness and interdependence of all things and processes in nature. Here

again, there is a huge obstacle to be overcome: the well-entrenched Western attitude that nature is a wild beast to be tamed, overcome, controlled and exploited at will. This human chauvinism, the attitude that nature is for human control and exploitation springs directly from the reigning Western philosophy. It holds that nature was created for man's use; that at best it is to be cajoled into subservience, at worst it is to be pillaged and raped according to human needs and passions. The industrial-technological way of life may or may not have been born out of this philosophy, but surely it could not have prospered without it. Though Passmore may be right in maintaining that in the Western tradition there have been other models of the relationship between man and nature such as stewardship, the most dominant trend has been that of control and mastery over nature.8 The insensitivity in this respect of some of the greatest minds in history is fairly evident. The notion of stewardship, too, is plainly chauvinistic; it suggests that we are superior to the rest of nature, so should look after it. Even a grudging acceptance that man, by his folly, has brought himself and nature to near ruin suggests a search for better models for the relationship between man and nature. In the first sense, wherein man is an integral part of nature, the whole idea of control or mastery seems quite absurd. This can be illustrated by the following allegory from a child's reader. Noting that the stomach was inactive, the more active members of the human organism, the arms, the legs, the mouth, the eyes, etc., decided to teach the lazy stomach a lesson by going on strike. The arms would not accept anything, the legs would not move in the direction of food, the mouth stopped chewing and the eyes stopped seeing and giving the relevant information. It is not hard to imagine the consequence: the striking members soon realized that, without food going into the stomach they no longer had the energy to continue on strike. They had learned their lesson and, with the apologies to the lazy stomach went back to their respective chores. The apparently inert stomach was crucial to their own health. To the question of whether man can have a duty to nature this story gives an unambiguous answer. As a part of nature, cooperation with, and care for nature are quite obviously his duties; he can fail to discharge them only at his peril. Does the second sense of `nature' also admit the model of cooperation or partnership between man and nature? I think it does. In the Sankhya system of Indian philosophy purusa and prakrti which can be translated without too much distortion as man and nature, are likened to two men, one lame and the other blind, whose mutual cooperation is a prerequisite for the evolution of nature. The lame man (man, in our context) needs the energy, activity, resources of the blind man (nature, in our context). The latter, in turn, is helpless without the sight or consciousness of the former. In an outbreak of fire, let us say, the lame man rides on the shoulders of the blind man; the latter does the walking, the former the pointing, and thus both are saved. Whatever the appropriateness of this analogy, in the metaphysical perplexities of the Sankhya system--and I have my doubts on that count--it seems particularly apt for our purposes. Nature is rightly seen, I think, as blind, that is, as without rationality. But a blind man is a man all the same; he is sensitive and would retaliate if not treated properly. Ecology leaves us in no doubt that nature is an extremely intricate and sensitive nexus of means and ends. The slightest tampering with it is `noticed' and acted upon. Does it matter if it does not look intelligent or sensitive all over? Do our hair and nails look intelligent, sensitive, or even useful? Nature is `intelligent' in its own way, as a system; and we certainly need it for our life, our actions, our creations. But does nature `need' us? After all, any partnership worthy of the name must be based on reciprocal need and, if possible, love. The answer, though contrary to the dictates of our chauvinism and therefore difficult, must be affirmative. Nature would be poorer without man for no other species can write poetry, create music, embellish or enrich nature with its art and sculpture or even have science. That is the positive side. Looked at negatively, the simple truth is that we must be partners. That nature can destroy us, we have known all along. Now we also know that, thanks to such discoveries as

the nuclear bombs and germs we can hatch, we can destroy it too. There can be no better prudential motive for a partnership than the knowledge that both parties are capable of destroying each other. This, I suppose, is `animism'. Passmore notwithstanding, we do need a new (or is it very old?) morality, philosophy or attitude towards nature. The above analogy does seem to hold. But even if the suggestion that nature is intelligent or sensitive were materially false, we would, for our own good, have to adopt a methodological animism; we would have to behave as if nature were intelligent. A `touch of animism' could hurt no one, and could do us a lot of good. There is no need to worship; an attitude of simply caring should be sufficient and salutary. University of Surrey Guildford, Surrey, England NOTES 1. P. L. Berger; B. Berger; and H. Kellner, The Homeless Mind (New York: Pelican Books, Penguin, 1974), p. 13. 2. "A Blueprint for Survival, The Ecologist (1972), II, 2. 3. John Passmore, Man's Responsibility for Nature (New York: Scribner, 1974). 4. Mary Midgley, Review of Passmore's Man's Responsibility for Nature in Philosophy (1975), L, 108. 5. Ibid, p. 107. 6. Tbe Ecologist. op. cit. 7. E.F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful (New York: Harper and Row, 1975). 8. Passmore, op. cit., Chapters 1 and 2, pp. 3-40. CHAPTER XI THE NATURE OF MAN AS TAO CHANG CHUNG YUAN According to Chinese Taoist philosophy the highest attainment of man is the identity of man himself with the reality of things. This identity is not a concept of mediation nor a rational synthesis of the subjectivity of man and the objectivity of things. It is the direct, spontaneous, unimpeded, mutual solution which takes place in the absolute moment. Identity, here, is no longer a principle or a statement about identity. It is, as Professor Martin Heidegger says, and as I noted previously, "a spring into the essential origin of identity."1 This "essential origin of identity" is conceived by Taoist philosophers as the real nature of man. In our daily life we are constantly drawing distinctions between things. There is movement and quiescence, high and low, life and death, yin and yang, and so forth. These polarities are infinite in number. Taoist philosophers traditionally ask in what way are these opposites related and whether there is any possibility of unity within their diversity. To answer these questions, Lao Tzu in his work, Tao Te Ching. says the following: When beauty is universally affirmed as beauty, therein is ugliness. When goodness is universally affirmed as goodness, therein is evil.2 This idea of mutual opposition also has been pointed out by Hegel: "In every distinguishing situation each pole is for itself that which it is; it also is not for itself what it is, but only in contrasting relation to that which it is not." "Position and opposition contain both their mutual affirmation and negation. Each finds itself in its opposed other."3 This "opposed other" formulated by a thing itself, is maintained also by Lao Tzu, who says: Being and Non-being are mutually posited in their emergence. Difficult and easy are mutually posited in their contemporaries. Long and short are mutually posited in their positions. . . .4 Although the dialectics of Hegel and Lao Tzu seem to be one and the same, the goals of the two dialectic processes are different. In The Central Philosophy of Buddhism, T.R.V. Murti says that the movement of Hegel's dialectic is a passage from a lower concept with lesser content to a higher concept with a greater content. It begins with the idea of pure Being which has least content and culminates in the idea of the concrete absolute which is "the most comprehensive

unity of all."5 In Lao Tzu's dialectic there is no elevating movement towards the fixed goal of a comprehensive, rational absolute. Rather, there is a further step which Professor Kitaro Nishida, a leading philosopher of Japan, calls "the selfidentity of contradiction."6 In "the self-identity of contradiction," the opposites: Being and Non-being or beauty and ugliness are mutually identified within themselves and not in any higher synthesis. Thus, there is no progression toward an absolute beyond all contradictions, but contradiction exists simultaneously with identity. Nishida illustrates this in his work Fundamental Problems of Philosophy: At the depth of life there is something which is both negation-qua-affirmation and affirmation-qua-negation. We usually think that something to be physical matter, but mere physical matter can only have the significance of negation in opposition to life. If we understand the ground of life to an ultimate point in such a sense, we must conceive that there is an absolute affirmation-qua-negation and absolute negation-qua-affirmation in the very depth of life.7 This absolute affirmation-qua-negation indicates the simultaneous occurrence of difference and identity. In the second chapter of "Identity of all things," in the work of the 4th century B.C. philosopher Chuang Tzu, we have: Construction is destruction. Destruction is construction.8 Between construction and destruction there is a difference, but simultaneously construction and destruction are identified. This This idea is further developed in the philosophy of Chou Tun Yi, the pioneer of Neo-Confucianist philosophy of the 11th Century. When moving it is without quiescence and when quiescent there is no movement, such are material things. When moving yet it has no movement, when quiescent, it yet has no quiescence, such is the spiritual reality. But movement which thus lacks movement and quiescence which thus lacks quiescence does not mean non-movement or non-quiescence. For whereas material things do not interpenetrate one another, spiritual reality is the most wonderful of all things.9 Therefore to see movement as movement, and quiescence as quiescence is to see the one-sided aspect of nature. But when we see movement in quiescence and quiescence in movement, this is to see the deeper nature of things. The deeper level of nature is not limited to the identity of opposites; it also applies to the transitional process of affirmation and negation within the polarities, which is a continuous sequence of continuity and discontinuity. As Nishida says, the world of reality contains self-negation within itself. It is the world of reality which both affirms and negates itself, and it is this true world which contains the continuity of discontinuity. In Chapter 18 of his work, Chuang Tzu applied this idea of dialectic transition to a rough sketch of a theory of biological evolution. He points out that there is a constant transition in the origin of living things from the germ to plants, from plants to animal creatures, with man finally emerging. Whether this is any real scientific contribution to the theory of evolution need not be discussed here. The illustration does indicate, however, an awareness of the development of living things in nature through the constant dialectic process of affirmation and negation. Thus the real world is the constant continuity of discontinuity. The dialectic process of constant interaction of continuity and discontinuity was originally conceived by Lao Tzu as a creative one. As he says in Chapter 42 of the Tao Te Ching: From the Tao, One is created; From the One, Two; From the Two, Three; From the Three, ten thousand things.10 The numbers used here are simply to indicate the creative process of affirmation and negation or the continuity of discontinuity. To see creativity result from the dialectic process of affirmation-negation is to see nature in action, says Lao Tzu.

For Taoists, nothing in nature exists isolated by itself. Rather, all things are interdependent. Thus, no phenomenon in nature can be truly understood by separating it from other things. However, the interaction of these things as we have pointed out previously is not limited to polar entities. Taoists also apply their organic concept of unity and multiplicity, or oneness, to all things. In Chapter 25 of the work of Chuang Tzu, it states: "When we point to see different parts of the horse's body, we don't really have a horse. But when we conceive the integration of all parts of the body, then we have a horse in front of us."11 This organic concept of unity illustrates the formation of the whole through the interrelation of all the parts, that is, discordant parts unite to form an harmonious whole. When all the parts unify themselves into an organic whole, each part breaks through its shell and interfuses with every other part, each identifies itself with every other one. Thus, one is in many and many are in one. ln this way, all particularities dissolve into one and all the parts of the whole disappear into every other part of the whole. Each individual merges into every other individual; it is through this unity in multiplicity that the interfusion and identification of each individuality senses its function in the creation of the whole. This idea has been illustrated by Lao Tzu in Chapter 11 of his book. Thirty spokes joined at the hub From their non-being arises the function of the wheel. Lumps of clay are shaped into a vessel From their non-being arise the function of the vessel.12 The wheel is the unity of the spokes, and the vessel is the the unity of the clay. In Lao Tzu's sense, the wheel can function as a wheel due to the organic relationships among the spokes. ln other words, the interfusion and identification of the parts create a functioning wheel, a whole. The Taoists, however, did not stop there. Although they applied this organic concept to the construction of things, they also went a step further and entered into a realm of the pre-ontological experience through a dialectic negation. As Chuang Tzu once said: Heaven and earth and 1 live together, And therein all things and I are one.13 This oneness is the product of his pre-ontological experience, which is invisible and unfathomable. This invisible and unfathomable oneness is called the realm of the great infinite. Here there is neither space nor time. It is, in fact, the realm of non-being, which is absolutely free from limitations and distinctions. We have Chuang Tzu's own description of the realm of non-being: Being is without dwelling place, continuity is without duration. Being without dwelling place is space, continuity without duration is time. There is birth, there is death. There is issuing forth, there is entering in. That through which one passes in and out without seeing its form--that is the Gate of Heaven. The Gate of Heaven is non-being. All things spring from non-being.14 Non-being is the highest unity of all things. In Heidegger's expression this is 'the Being of beings in its unconcealedness and concealment."15 This Being of beings is in the Eastern sense Non-being which is the invisible and unfathomable absolute reality of all potentialities and possibilities of the universe. Therefore, Lao Tzu calls it great, which means infinite, boundless and immeasurable. When we think of this immeasurableness, it gives us some sort of insight into the timelessness of time and the spacelessness of space. It is the absolute moment which opens the secret to the existence of all things, and frees us from previous rational conditioning and limitations. When Lao Tzu called Tao the mother of all things, he referred to the realm of non-being as the primordial source of every beginning, the ultimate reality from which all birth issues forth. Thus Heidegger says in his essay "What is Metaphysics": "We assert: `Nothing' is more original than the Not and negation."16 However, this primordial non-being cannot be conceived of as one-sided. Its highest affirmation is both absolute negation and absolute affirmation. It is both non-being and being, and, as such, is self-determining both as particularity-qua-

universality and as universality-qua-particularity. This basic concept of Taoist philosophy can be illustrated by the notion of creativity and sympathy. When all the potentialities of the absolute realm of non-being or infinity penetrate into every diversity, one embraces all particularities and enters into each. Such a process indicates the great creativity. On the other hand, when all the potentialities of every diversity unite into one, each particularity embraces all the other particularities, together penetrating into the realm of non-being. This process indicates the activity of the great sympathy. From the point of view of sympathy, we see Tao as the synthesis of infinite possibilities and potentialities. This is the unity of particularities or multiplicities. From the viewpoint of creativity, we see Tao as a radiative dispersion into the infinite multiplicities and particularities. Thus, creativity goes in the opposite direction from sympathy. In short, "sympathy moves from all to one, creativity moves from one to all. Without sympathy there is no ground for fulfillment of potentialities to support creativity. Without creativity there is no means of actually revealing sympathy."17 Since sympathy and creativity move hand in hand, each represents an aspect of the process between one and all, which is the fundamental phenomenon of Taoist organic philosophy. The metaphysical structure of this sympathy is revealed in the realm of absolute reality in which everything breaks through the shell of itself and interfuses with every other thing. All the multiplicities and diversities of the universe interpenetrate with one another and enter into the realm of absolute reality. ln the Taoist ideal community, man makes no artificial effort toward morality, but his self is merged with other selves and all other selves are, in turn, merged into his self. Neither the individual nor the group is consciously aware of, or purposefully directed toward, this. Chuang Tzu's description of this manner of living appears in Chapter 12 of his work: They loved one another without knowing that to do so was benevolence. They were sincere without knowing that this was loyalty. They kept their promises without knowing that to do so was to be in good faith. Thus, their actions left no trace and we have no record of their affairs.18 What Chuang Tzu means by "no trace" is an explanation of the character of identification in the realm of non-being. Men in the realm of non-being maintained their original nature. As he says further: In the days of perfect nature, men were quiet in their movements and serene in their looks. They lived together with birds and beasts without distinctions of kind. There was no difference between the gentleman and the common man. Being equally without knowledge, nothing came between them.19 This world of perfect nature is a world of free interfusion and unification among men and between men and all things. Between all multiplicities and diversities there existed no boundaries, men could work with men and all could share spontaneously. Each identified with others and all lived together as one. Man lived an innocent and primitive life, yet there was no conceit nor selfishness. In this simplicity and purity we see the free movement of the real nature of man. We cannot expect this in a world of artificial morality and intellectuality, full of distinctions and differentiations. Only in the world of absolute free identity does there exist the great sympathy, the universal force of nature which holds together man and all things. When we regard the realm of non-being as the pre-ontological basis for the fulfillment of the great sympathy, it is to see Tao as the interfusion and identification of infinite potentialities and possibilities. Thus, the realm of non-being serves as the unification of multiplicities and diversities. However, when we approach Tao from the reverse direction, we see Tao as having penetrated into infinite multiplicity and into the manifold diversities of existence. Thus, it is the dispersion of potentialities and possibilities from universality to particularity, and fulfillment of the process of the great creativity. In the process of creativity each particularity reveals the potentiality of all universalities. Chuang Tzu illustrates the idea for us accordingly:

Those who rely upon the arc, the line, compass, and the square to make correct forms injure the natural construction of things. Those who use cords to bind and glue, to piece together, interfere with the natural characteristics of things. . . . There is an ultimate reality in things. Things in their ultimate reality are curved without the help of arc, straight without lines, round without compasses, and rectangular without right angles.20 When inner reflection takes place, it fulfills the process of manifesting ultimate reality in nature. The process is direct, immediate, and spontaneous. The curve simply reflects its curves, the line its straightness. The flower blooms in the Spring and the moon at night shines upon the lake. To see unity within multiplicity is to see infinite potentialities manifested in each particularity. This insight is the Taoist contribution to the understanding of creativity. Chuang Tzu gives us an illustration of this idea in his example of the centipede. From the relative point of view, the insect, of course, does have its hundred or so different legs. But from a higher point of view, there is a unity of multiplicity. The coordinated movement of all the legs is a manifestation of unity. From this unity we see the centipede as a whole creature. All has penetrated into one and the movement of all, the legs, is an interpenetration of the one into all. Lao Tzu says: Obtaining the One, Heaven was made clear. Obtaining the One, Earth was made stable. Obtaining the One, the Gods were made spiritual. Obtaining the One, the valley was made full. Obtaining the One, all things lived and grew.21 The One which is possessed by Heaven, Earth, the Gods and all things is the same One, the Tao. In other words, they all embrace the same One, the Tao; and the same One, the Tao, embraces and pervades them all. What is this Tao? According to James Legge, the first English writer who endeavored to give a distinct account of Taoism was Archdeacon Hardwick, while he held the office of Christian Advocate in the University of Cambridge. He thought that "the center of the system founded by Lao Tzu had been awarded to some energy or power resembling the `Nature' of modern speculation."22 However, according to tradition we often contrast nature with man. Nature in one sense is conquered by man and in another sense conquers man. The dichotomy of nature and man implies their opposition (and mutual destructiveness). Yet, according to Taoist philosophy, while separating himself from nature, man is identified with nature. Instead of considering man objectively in opposition to nature, the Taoist task is to make man retreat into himself and see what he finds in the depths of his being. Thus, the problem of nature is to search for the truth within man himself. In Chuang Tzu's expression it is the return to p'o or the uncarved block. He says: "It is because they had the quality of the uncarved block that they did not lose their original nature." In this uncarved simplicity we see the free movement of nature."23 In the remote past in China there was an old poem which may serve to illustrate this: When the sun rises I work in the field. When the sun sets I have my rest. I dig a well and I drink. I till the soil and I eat. What has the imperial power to do with me?24 The author of this poem is unknown, but things with him are just as natural as the water murmuring in the stream and the wind passing through the trees. His experience of pure objectivity is pure subjectivity; they are totally identified. As Nishida says: To experience means to know events precisely as they are. It means to cast away completely one's own inner workings, and to know in accordance with events. Since people usually include some thought when speaking of experience, the word `pure' is here used to signify a condition of true experience itself without adding the least thought or reflection. . . . Thus pure experience is synonymous with direct

experience.52 This kind of direct experience may be related to a traditional Chinese Buddhist saying: Do not think of good, do not think of evil, when no thoughts arise, let me see your primary face.26 This primary face indicates the mind before the emergence of the dichotomy of good and evil. It is pure subjectivity, free from the duality of active and passive. It is called the "original mind" by Chinese Buddhists and Neo-Confucianists. When one is aware of one's original mind, one sees one's own nature, or in Chinese: ming hsin chien hsing. To be aware of one's original mind and to see one's own nature has been the task pursued by Chinese philosophers for more than a thousand years. Hui-neng, the sixth patriarch of Ch'an Buddhism, once said: The person who sees into his own true nature is free when he stands as well as when he does not stand. He is free both in going and coming. There is nothing which retards him, nothing which hinders him. Responding to the situation he acts accordingly, responding to the words, he answers accordingly. He expresses himself taking on all forms, but he is never removed from his self-nature. . . . That is called seeing into one's true nature.27 What has been said by Hui-neng, that we are to see the nature of man through selfidentity and contradiction, also is, as I have pointed out in this lecture, the real essence of Taoist philosophy. University of Hawaii Honolulu, Hawaii NOTES * The essence of Tao was first discussed by Lao Tzu (6th century B.C., China), in the Tao Te Ching or Canon of the Way and its Attainment. This ancient Chinese script was first introducedto the Western world in 1788. This was in the form of a Latin translation which was brought to the Royal Society in London. In 1816, when Hegel lectured on the History of Eastern Philosophy he mentioned that he himself had seen the text of the Tao Te Ching in Vienna. According to him the meaning of Tao `is nothing, emptiness, the altogether undetermined, the abstract universal, and this is called Tao or Reason . . . it is the highest existence, all determinations are abolished, and by the merely abstract Being nothing has been expressed excepting this new negation only in an affirmative form.' (Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Vol. I, p. 124, translated by E.S. Haldane) Hegel's interpretation of the meaning of Tao was based upon the Western philosophical tradition, according to which Tao is Reason or abstract Being. In this paper the interpretation of Tao is different from that of Hegel. This paper is a further development of the meaning of Tao which was originally presented at the International Congress of Philosophy in Venice and later expounded in my works, Creativity and Taoism and Tao: A New Way of Thinking, both of which are published by Harper and Row. 1. Martin Heidegger, Identity and Difference (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), p. 40. 2. Chung yuan Chang, Tao: A New Way of Thinking (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), p. 7. 3. G. Hegel, Encyclopedia of Philosophy, trans. by G.E. Mueller (New York: Philosophical Library, 1959), p. 118. 4. Chang, Tao, p. 7. 5. T. Murti, The Central Philosophy of Buddhism (London: G. Allen & Unwin, Ltd., 1970), p. 302. 6. Kitaro Nishida, A Study of Good, trans. by V.H. Viglielmo (Japan: Printing Bureau Japanese Govt., 1960), p. iii. 7. Kitaro Nishida, Fundamental Problems of Philosophy, trans. by David Dilworth (Tokyo: Sophia Univ., 1970), p. 204. 8. The Works of Chuang Tzu, Chuan 2. 9. Chou Tun Yi, Explanation of the Diagram of the Supreme Ultimate. 10. Chang, Tao, p. 118.

11. The Works of Chuang Tzu, Chuan 25. 12. Chang, Tao, p. 35. 13. The Works of Chuang Tzu, Chuan 2. 14. Ibid., Chuan 23. See also C.Y. Chang, Creativity and Taoism (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), p. 35. 15. M. Heidegger, On Time and Being (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), p. 79. 16. M. Heidegger, Existence and Being (Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1949), p. 331. 17. Chang, Creativity, p. 77. 18. The Works of Chuang Tzu, Chuan 12. 19. Ibid., Chuan 9. 20. Ibid., Chuan 8. 21. Chang, Tao, p. 109. 22. James Legge, The Texts of Taoism (New York: Julian Press, 1959), p. 59. 23. The Works of Chuang Tzu, Chuan 9. 24. Chang, Creativity, pp. 171-72. 25. Nishida, A Study of Good, p. 1. 26. Hui-neng, The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch. 27. Ibid. CHAPTER XII HEIDEGGER: THE MAN-NATURE PROBLEMATIC THOMAS A. FAY The formulation of the problematic as `Man and Nature' would appear to rest upon some very large assumptions; hence, care must be taken lest it prejudice the question. Various suggestions have been made towards a more adequate formulation. Professor Chen noted four different senses in which nature has historically been understood; Professor Deutsch suggested that `Man-Nature' (hyphenated) might be more adequate; Professor Smith spoke of `Man in Nature'; and Professor Parsons, `Nature standing over against man'. As a way of reflecting on this galaxy of problems, I shall take as my point of departure the phenomenological perspectives of man as they appear in the thought of Martin Heidegger, and this for two reasons. First, whether we agree with it and find it stimulating to our own reflections as even Wittgenstein did,1 or regard it as nonsense as did Carnap,2 it represents one of the most powerful analyses of man-in-the-world which has emerged from twentieth century thought. My second reason for choosing Heidegger is that, of Western thinkers, his thought represents one of the most promising starting points for dialogue with the East. For example, his analysis of das Nichts, the Nothing, is very close to the Buddhist conception of emptiness as well as to the Taoist concept of non-Being, so excellently explored in the paper of Professor Chang. The problem on which we are reflecting then, is man and nature and we are using Heidegger's thought as the heuristic device with which to probe it. Now Heidegger, for his part, would attempt to cut completely across the lines which allow this to become a problem at all. He attempts to do this by the phenomenological analysis of man which was undertaken especially in Sein und Zeit.3 The result which this phenomenological analysis of man yielded was to disclose man as Dasein, that is, the `There of Being' and also as in-der-Welt-Sein, to-be-in-the-world. In terms of our problematic of man and world these two notions have consequences of the very greatest importance. But why should this be so? The basic thrust of Heidegger's thought, at least since Sein und Zeit, has been an implacable struggle against the subject-object dichotomy introduced by Descartes,4 from whose time man has been regarded as a subject.5 Descartes had sought for an indubitable foundation upon which to erect his philosophic structure, the fundamentum inconcussum veritatis,6 which he located in the cogito-sum. As a consequence man was conceived purely from the perspective of subjectivity; he was primarily a res cogitans7 or thinking thing who, as subject, stands apart from a world now composed of objects which are his diametric opposites, res extensae.8 Heidegger has been locked in a struggle against the conception of man.9 No remedy such as humanism or a revamped anthropology applied to man ab extra can adequately

ameliorate the situation of contemporary man. For this, he must so conceive of himself and his relationship to his world that he will find an appropriate dwelling place.11 Heidegger attempts to re-think the nature of man12 from the standpoint of his involvement in Being. `The essence (Wesen) and the manner of human being (Menschseins) can only be determined from the essence (Wesen) of Being.'13 To characterize this involvement he chose the term Da-sein, the `There' of Being, the scene of disclosure, openness to Being.14 To break away from the Cartesian tradition which had split man off from his world, he also designated man as being-in-the-world, in-der-Welt-sein.15 According to Heidegger, the Greek definition of man as rational animal16 is not incorrect, but is totally inadequate. The Greeks . . . in the pre-philosophic as well as in the philosophic Dasein interpretation defined the essence of man as zoon logon exon. The later interpretation of this definition of man in the sense of rational animal, rational living being, is indeed not false, but it covers up the phenomenal foundation from which this definition of Dasein is taken.17 It defines man in terms of animalitas rather than by the prerogative which is uniquely his, his comprehension of being. `The characteristic feature of the Dasein which man is, is determined through the comprehension of Being.'18 It is this comprehension of Being (Seinsverstandnis) which constitutes Dasein's ontological structure. `The comprehension of Being, in which we always antecedently move, belongs in the final analysis to the essential constitution of Dasein itself.'19 This is the foundation of all further knowledge.20 Even the most casual dealings with beings must somehow presuppose that we have grasped what Being is, else we would not know that they are. We move always within an antecedent comprehension of Being. . . . We do not know what Being means. But already when we ask, `What is "Being",' we hold ourselves within a comprehension of the `is', although we cannot conceptually fix what `is' means.21 This first comprehension of Being, however, is vague and undermined;22 it is not grasped by a concept.23 Somehow man has a pre-ontological comprehension of Being24 which, though vague, is still an indisputable fact.25 It is implied in every statement, even in every word we utter.26 It is not, however, for all of its primordiality, grasped in a clear concept; if it were so grasped, it would then be a being, rather than Being itself.27 In addition to being nonconceptual and prelogical (pre-ontological), the truth of Being thus comprehended is also prepredicative,28 that is, it must first have been achieved before any judgments or propositions can be formulated.29 Every assertion, then, from the standpoint of ontological priority is strictly speaking, derivative.30 Thus, the proposition with which logic is concerned may be one seat of truth, but it is certainly not the only one or even the most basic.31 But could one not object that in all of this insistence on a pre-logical, preconceptual grasp of Being in order to interpret Being Heidegger has been flagrantly guilty of the logical fallacy of the circulus vitiosus, that he presupposes a knowledge of what he is attempting to explain.32 He anticipates this objection33 and concedes that in an existential analytic the circular movement can never be avoided34 for the very good reason that the ontological structure of Dasein itself is circular. The `circular' character of understanding belongs to the structure of sense and this phenomenon is rooted in the existential continuation of Dasein, in understanding which interprets. A being, which as to-be-in-the-world, is concerned with its own Being, has an ontologically circular structure.35 Because of its very structure, or to be more precise forestructure,36 Dasein is in its ontological constitution, a radical capacity for Being. `Comprehension, according to its existential sense, is Dasein's capacity for Being. . . .'37 The circularity, far from being an imperfection, is the very essence of Dasein's radical capacity to comprehend Being.38 In the final analysis Dasein's grasp of Being is an irreducible fact, but certainly not a gratuitous assumption.39

What Heidegger is attempting to do here is to overcome the scission of subject and object, of man from world; thus he conceives of man as existing in a profound unity with the truth of Being.40 Being is not to be reduced to a product of his reason (Vorstelhung), or produced by his activity as a subject. `Comprehension of Being, as here understood, never means that man, as a subject, possesses representation.'41 Dasein's nature is to stand in the truth of Being, to be a field of openness for the clearing of Being. `Comprehension of Being means to say that man according to his essence stands in the openness of the project of Being.'42 Being addresses a command which is an evocation43 to authentic thought, to which Dasein responds, or with which he enters into dialogue. `From ancient times in our history thought has meant: to respond (entsprechen) to the hail (Geheiss) of Being. . . .'44 This is not thought in the sense of a calculation of possible ways of manipulating objects,45 but rather a letting be of Being, as allowing of Being to reveal itself.46 Being needs its Da if it is to be illumined in such a way that it can appear. But man is pressed into such a manner of being (ein solches Dasein), cast into the need of such Being, because the overpowering as such, in order to appear as prevailing needs a place of openness. The essence (Wesen) of human being (Menschseins) only reveals itself to us when it is understood from the standpoint of this need which is the need of Being itself.47 Dasein is needed by Being in order that the voice which Being speaks48 and which Dasein alone can comprehend be expressed and heard in authentic language which will hold it in openness.49 Being deputizes Dasein to work, especially through authentic thought and solicitude for language, on the building of a world that will be a suitable dwelling place for human beings. This dwelling place which man needs is a place in which he can exist. It is a clearing, an open place; and since he is an `ex-isting' being it is a clearing where Being can manifest itself. But Dasein is, as it were, `co-sent' (Beschickten) with Being. Being clears a place for itself through Da-sein. Da-sein is the `there' or the field where, and by which, Being is `dis-closed'. Dasein is, then, Being's deputy (Beschickten), in that Dasein helps bring to pass a clearing for Being. All of these notions are expressed in the very rich text which follows. As the deputies co-sent (Beschickten) by Being in the destining of Being (Geschick des Seins) we stand, and indeed according to our essence (Wesen), in the clearing of Being. But we do not just stand around idly with no claim on us in this clearing; rather we stand in it as ones claimed by the Being of being. As standers in the clearing of Being we are deputies of Being (Beschickten) set into a space freed for temporal activity (Zeit-Spiel-Raum). This means: we are needed in this field (Spielraum) and for it, needed to build and cultivate the clearing of Being, and this is to be understood in the manifold sense of: to preserve in trust.50 It is, then, Dasein's nature to stand in the truth of Being and by `co-responding' to the voice of Being to help to bring to pass the truth of Being which is held in the openness of its disclosure by language. Hence, language is the only appropriate abode for man, wherein as an existing being, i.e., a being who can grasp Being in its truth, he may dwell. `Rather language is the house of Being and only by dwelling in language can man ex-ist (eksistinert) since in caring for the truth of Being he also belongs to it.'51 Being sends itself to Dasein, and in sending itself clears52 and sets in order the place of its clearing.53 But for the clearing to be such it requires a being who can perceive the light of the clearing, protect and care for it; following Heidegger's own metaphor, it stands in need of forest guardians (Waldhuter).54 According to his conception, man is not the despot, but the shepherd, of Being.55 He is claimed56 and needed to Being: `The essence of man is assigned to the truth, because the truth needs man.'57 Without Being's sending itself and clearing for itself a place of manifestation, there would be no revelation of truth, language, or history. Without a being uniquely open to the reception of Being's sending of itself, capable of being

attuned to its silent voice and, have grasped it, of holding it in openness in language,58 there would also be no revelation, language or history. Being and Dasein stand in need of each other.59 Still in the sending of itself, in the revelation of itself as truth, the initiative is always Being's.60 In this conception it can be seen that man has a unique dignity. He is not one entity among many, albeit different from the animal in virtue of his power of ratio. Rather he alone of all beings is open to Being, is the place where the truth of Being is revealed,61 and can comprehend Being in its truth. `If the comprehension of Being did not come to pass man could not be the being which he is, even though he were fitted out with other powers, however wonderful.'62 Thus, he no longer views his relationship to Being, to language, to thought, to the world in terms of so many instruments of exploitation.63 From this perspective he is the guardian of Being's clearing,64 rather than a despotic and sometimes capricious master. He has, to use Heidegger's expression, gained the poverty of the shepherd.65 In conclusion, the phenomenological analysis of man which Heidegger has undertaken, which resulted in his conceiving of man as Dasein and in-der-Weltsein, is most helpful to the Man-Nature problematic with which we are concerned. By these two related insights Heidegger attempts not only to bind man and nature so closely together that the `and' in `Man and Nature' becomes superfluous, but to undercut completely the position which makes possible the development of the problem. St. John's University New York, USA NOTES 1. On this point see the very interesting remarks of Wittgenstein in Friedrich Waismann: Wittgenstein und der Wiener Kreis, ed. B.F. McGuinness (Oxford: Blackwell, 1967), pp. 68-69. 2. For what is perhaps the best known of Carnap's criticisms of Heidegger see especially his article in Erkenntnis, II (1932), pp. 219-241. 3. The following editions of Heidegger's works and symbols will be used. Sein und Zeit (8th ed.; Tubingen, Niemeyer, 1957), SZ. Holzwege (3rd ed.; Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1957), HW. Einfulrung in die Metaphysik (2nd ed.; Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1958), EM. Uber den Humanismus (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1947), HB. Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik (2nd ed.; Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1951), KM. Vom Wesen der Wahrheit (3rd ed.; Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1954), WW. Was ist Metaphysik (7th ed.; Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1949), WM. Identitat und Differenz (Pfullingen: Neske, 1957), ID. Vorträge und Aufsätze (Pfullingen: Neske, 1954), VA Der Satz vom Grund (2nd ed.; Bern: Franke, 1953), SG. Was heisst Denken (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1961), WD. 4. Johannes Hollenbach, S.J., Sein und Gewissen (Baden-Baden: Grimm, 1954), p. 22. See especially the excellent study by Paul Ricoeur on the meaning and scope of Heidegger's critique of subject-ism in the essay, "The Critique of Subjectivity and the Cogito in the Philosophy of Heidegger," in Heidegger and the Quest for Truth, ed. with Introduction by Manfred Frings (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1968), pp. 62-75. 5. SZ, pp. 22, 45-46; HW, pp. 91-92. Cf. also William Richardson, S.J., "Kant and the Later Heidegger," Phenomenology in America (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1967), p. 132. 6. SZ pp. 24. 7. SZ, pp. 24, 25. 8. SZ, pp. 66, 89-101. 9. William Richardson, Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1963), p. 59, note. Cf. also Werner Marx, "Heidegger's New Conception of Philosophy: The Second Phase of Existentialism," Social Research, XXII (1955), 451-474. 10. Heidegger makes this point clear in a lecture given during the winter semester 1937-38. The fundamental perspective from which man must be viewed is in his

relation to Being. This is contained in his letter to Richardson, Though Phenomenology . . . , p. xxi. 11. HB, p. 19. 12. SZ, pp. 196-197. 13. The translations are my own. I have provided the German text for comparison and this has also allowed me to handle the translation more freely, rendering what seemed to me to be the best sense of the text. `Das Wesen und die Weise des Menschseins kann sich dann aber nur aus dem Wesen des Seins bestimmen.' (EM, p. 106). 14. SZ, p. 12; HB, pp. 15, 24, 35. 15. SZ, pp. 63-89, 102-130, 350-367. 16. SZ, p. 25. 17. `die Griechen . . . in der vorphilosophischen sowohl wie in der philosophischen Daseinsauslegung das Wesen des Menchen bestimmten als zoon logonexom. Die spatere Auslegung dieser Definition des Menschen in Sinne von animal phanomenalen Boden, dem diese Definition des Daseins entnommen ist.' SZ, p. 165. Cf. also SZ, p. 48; HB, pp. 12, 13, 19, 21-22; VA pp. 72-74, 91, 94-95; SG, pp. 79, 126, 210; WD, pp. 24-28, 30, 66, 95-96; ID, p. 24; HW, pp. 60-61; EM, pp. 108, 134. 18. `Der Grundzug des Daseins, das der Mensch ist, wird durch das Seinsverstandnis bestimmt.' SG, p. 146. 19. `Seinsverstandnis, in dem wir uns immer schon bewegen, und das am Ende zur Wesensverfassung des Deseins selbst gehort,' SZ, p. 8 (Heidegger's emphasis). 20. SZ, p. 333. 21. "Wir bewegen uns immer schon in einen Seinsverstandnis. . . . Wir wissen nicht, was `Sein' besagt. Aber schon wenn wir fragen: `was ist `Sein?" halten wir uns in einem Verstandnis des `ist' ohne dass wir begrifflich fixieren konnten, was das "ist" bedeutet.' SZ, p. 5; see especially SZ, pp. 6, 7, 51, 152; KM. pp. 204, 205. 22. SZ, p. 5. 23. SZ, pp. 4, 8, 315. 24. SZ, p. 197; see also SZ, pp. 15, 150, 196, 197, 314. 25. `Dieses durchschnittliche und vage Seinsverstandnis ist ein Faktum.' SZ, p. 5 (Heidegger's emphasis). 26. SZ, pp. 6-7; EM, p. 62; KM, p. 205. See also Fridolin Wiplinger, Wahrheit und Geschichtlichkeit (Freiburg/Munchen: Alber, 1961), p. 151. 27. SZ, pp. 4, 5, 6; EM, p. 67. 28. SZ, p. 359. 29. SZ, p. 157; WG, pp. 12-12. 30. SZ, pp. 153-154. See also WW, pp. 12, 15, 16, 17, 25. 31. SZ, pp. 32-34, 153-160, 213-219, 223-326; WW, pp. 11-12; WG, pp. 11-15; N, II, pp. 74-75. 32. SZ, p. 152. 33. SZ, pp. 5, 7, 152, 153, 314. 34. SZ, p. 315. 35. `Der "Zirkel" im Verstehen gehort zur Struktur des Sinnes, welches Phanomen in der existensialen Verfassung des Daseins, im auslegenden Verstehen verwurzelt ist. Sciendes, dem es als In-der-Welt-sein um Sein selbst geht, hat eine ontologische Zirkelstruktur.' SZ, p. 153. Cf. also Albert Chapelle, L'Ontologie phenomenologique de Heidegger (Paris: Editions Universitaire, 1962), pp. 132-133, 151-152; Hans Georg Gadamer, `Vom Zirkel des Verstehena', Martin Heidegger zum Siebzigsten Geburtstag (Pfullingen: Neske, 1959), pp. 24-34. 36. SZ, pp. 152-153. 37. `Verstehen seinem existenzialen Sinn nach das Seinskonnen des Daseins ist. . . .' SZ, p. 153. 38. SZ, pp. 12, 314, 315, 337. 39. SZ, p. 5. 40. EM, p. 89.

41. `Seinsverstandnis meint hier niemals, der Mensch besitze als Subjekt eine subjektive Vorstellung vom Sein und Dieses, das Sein, sei eine blosse Vorstellung.' SG, p. 146. 42. `Seinsverstandnis besagt dass der Mensch seinem Wesen nach im Offenen des Entworfes des Seins steht. . . .' SG, p. 146. 43. Following the very suggestive translation of the word `heissen' by Richardson, Through Phenomenology. . . . SG, p. 596. 44. `Von altersher besagt unserer Geschichte Denken so viel wie: dem Geheiss des Seins entsprechen. . . .' SG, p. 147. 45. G, pp. 14-15; WM, pp. 47-48. 46. WW, pp. 14, 15, 18; VA, p. 211; WD, p. 123. 47. "Der Mensch is aber in ein solches Da-sein genotigt, in die Not solchen Seins geworfen, well das Uberwaltigende als ein solches, um waltend zu erschcinen, die Statte der Offenheit fur es braucht. Von dieser durch das Sein selbst ernotigten Not her verstanden, eroffinet sich uns erst das Wesen des Menschseins." EM, p. 124. 48. N, II, p. 484. Cf. also WM, p. 50; WP, p. 36. 49. HH, p. 29. 50. `Als die im Geschick des Seins vom Sein Beschickten stehen wir, und zwar unserem Wesen mach, in einer Lichtung des Seins. Aber wir stehen in dieser Lichtung keineswegs unangesprochen herum, sondern stehen im inr als die vom Sein des Seienden in dessen Anspruch Genommenen. Wir sind als die in der Lichtung des Seins Stehenden die Beschickten, die in den Zeit-Spiel-Raum Eingernaumten. Dies sagt: Wir sind die in diesem Spielraum und fur ihn Gehrauchten, gebraucht, an det Lichtung des Seins zu bauen und zu bilden, im weiten vielfaltigen Sinne: sie zu verwahren.' SG, p. 146. 51. `Vielmehr ist die Sprache das Haus des Seins, darin wohend der Mensch eksistiert, indem er der Wahrheit des seins, sie hutend, gehort.' HB, pp. 21-22; cf. also HH, pp. 19, 25. 52. HB, p. 25; WM,pp. 14-15. 53. "Sein schickt sich dem Menschen zu, idem es lichtend dem Seienden als solchem einen Zeit-Spiel-Raum einraunt." SG, p. 129. On the meaning of Being's sending itself and clearing a place for itself see SG, pp. 108-109: 'Dem "schicken" besagt ursprunglich: bereiten, ordnen, jegliches dorthin bringen, wohin es gehort, daher auch einraumen und einweisen; ein Haus, eine Kammer beschicken heisst: in der rechten Ordnung, eingeraunt und aufgeraumt halten.' 54. HW, Prologue. 55. `Der Mensch ist nicht der Herr des Seienden. Der Mensch ist der Hirt des Seins.' HB, p. 29. 56. N, II, p. 484. 57. `Das Menschenwesen ist der Wahrheit ubereignet, weil die Wahrheit den Menschen braucht.' G. p. 65. 58. HW, pp. 60-61. 59. G, p. 65. 60. HB, p. 19. Cf. also Ingeborg Koza, Das Problem des Grundes in Heidegger's Auseinandersetzung mit Kant (Ratingen bei Dusseldorf: Henn, 1967), pp. 24-25. 61. WM, p. 14. Cf. also HB, p. 20; ED, p. 23. 62. `Geschanhe das Verstehen von Sein nicht, der Mensch vermochte als das Seiende, das er ist, nie zu sein, und ware er auch mit noch so wunderbaren Vermogen ausgestattet.' KM, p. 205. 63. HD, p. 35; WM, p. 49; G, pp. 19-20. Cf. also The Later Heidegger and Theology, ed. James Robinson and John Cobb (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), pp. 20, 29. 64. WD, 85. Cf. also EM, p. 108. 65. HB, p. 29.1. CHAPTER XIII MAN AND NATURE IN CHRISTIANITY AND BUDDHISM MASAO ABE

MAN, NATURE AND `NATURALNESS' `Has man as man and the finitude of man in its positive aspect ever been taken seriously into consideration by Buddhist scholars? The extension of shujo (sentient being-hood) to man, animals and even to everything, as it is found in Dogen, makes this doubtful.'1 This question raised by Hans Waldenfels leads us to an examination of the problem of `man and nature' in Buddhism and of the Buddhist idea of `Naturalness' or jinen. In the Buddhist way of salvation it is true that man is not simply or exclusively taken as `man'. Man is rather taken as a member of the class of `sentient beings' or `living beings' and further, as clearly seen in Dogen, even as belonging among `beings', living and non-living. This presents a striking contrast to Christianity in which salvation is almost exclusively focused on man as `man'. In Christianity it is taught that man alone, unlike other creatures, was created in the imago dei and thereby he alone can respond to the Word of God. The fall and redemption of nature takes place through and with that of man. This homocentric nature of Christian salvation is inseparably connected with Christian personalism in which God is believed to reveal himself as personal and in which man's encounter with God in terms of the I-Thou relationship is essential. In Buddhism, however, there is no exact equivalent of this homocentrism and personalism of the Christian sort. The problem of birth and death is regarded in Buddhism as the most fundamental problem for human existence and its solution is the primary concern in Buddhist salvation. However, birth-death (shoji) is not necessarily taken up as a problem merely within the `human' dimension. It is rather dealt with as a generation-extinction (shometsu) problem within the total `living' dimension. This indicates the Buddhist conviction that, without transcending the generation-extinction nature common to all living beings, man's birth-death problem cannot be basically solved. Thus, it is in a non-homocentric dimension, the dimension common to all living beings, that the Buddhist ideas both of birth-and-death, i.e., samsara and emancipation from birth-and-death, i.e., nirvana, are to be grasped. Further, by going beyond the `living' dimension to that of `being', Buddhism develops its non-homocentric nature to its utmost limits. This dimension of `beings', including both living and non-living beings, is no longer only that of generation-extinction but of appearance-disappearance (kimetsu) or being-nonbeing (umu). The `living' dimension, though transhomocentric, is of a `life-centric' nature that excludes non-living beings. The `being' dimension, however, embraces everything in the universe, transcending even the wider-than-human `life-centric' horizons. Thus, the `being' dimension is limitless, beyond any sort of `centrism', and is most radical precisely in terms of its non-homocentric nature. It is this most radical non-homocentric and cosmological dimension that provides the genuine basis for man's salvation in Buddhism.2 According to Buddhism man's samsara, i.e., succession births and deaths, is understood to be inescapable and irremediable unless one transcends homocentrism and bases his existence on the cosmological foundation. In other words, not by doing away with the birth-death nature peculiar to man nor by doing away with the generation-extinction nature common to all living beings, but only by doing away with the appearance-disappearance nature, i.e., the being-nonbeing nature common to everything, can man's birth-and-death problem be properly and completely solved. Herein one can see a profound realization of that transitoriness which is common to man and to all other beings, living or non-living. This realization, when profoundly grasped, entails a strong sense of solidarity between man and nature. The story of a monk who, looking at the fall of a withered leaf from a tree, awakened to the transiency of the total universe, including himself, and entered the priesthood, bespeaks the compelling power of such a realization. When transiency, as such, is fully realized and is thereby transcended in the depths of one's own existence, then the boundless dimension of jinen or `Naturalness', is which both man and nature are equally enlightened and respectively disclose themselves in their original nature, is opened up for him.

It is for this reason that referring to such familiar Buddhism phrases as `All the trees and herbs, and lands attain Buddhahood' and `Mountains and rivers and the earth all disclose their dharma-kaya (their essential Buddhahood),' I wrote earlier: `Indeed, unless all the trees and herbs and lands attain Buddhahood together with me, I shall not have attained Buddhahaood in the true sense of the world.'3 Here, the non-homocentric, cosmological emphasis of Buddhism is very conspicuous. The non-homocentric nature of Buddhism and its idea of jinen, however, do not imply, as is often mistakenly suggested, any denial of the significance of individualized human existence. In fact, it is precisely the other way around. The very act of transcending homocentrism is possible only to a human being who is fully self-conscious. In other words, it is impossible, apart from selfconsciousness on the part of human existence, to go beyond `human' and `living' dimensions and to base one's existence on the `being' dimension. Man alone can be aware of universal transitoriness as such. Accordingly, the facet of transitoriness, common to all beings, turns into a problem for him, though not for other beings, and one to be solved by him as man. Now this self-consciousness is actualized only in an individual self, in one's own self. Further, the problem of birth and death is in its very nature the subjective problem par excellence with which everyone must cope by himself, alone. In this sense Buddhism is concerned in the deepest sense with the individual self, with the person, i.e., man as man. In Mahayana Buddhism, as a preamble to the Gatha `The Threefold Refuge' the following verse is usually recited: Hard is it to be born into human life, We now live it. Difficult is it to hear the teaching of the Buddha, We now hear it. If we do not deliver ourselves in this present life, No hope is there ever to cross the sea of birth and death. Let us all together, with the truest heart, Take refuge in the Three Treasures! The first and second lines express the joy of being born in human form during the infinite series of varied transmigrations. The third and fourth lines reveal gratitude for being blessed with the opportunity of meeting with the teaching of the Buddha--something which very rarely happens even among men. Finally, the fifth and sixth lines confess to a realization that so long as one exists as a man he can and must awaken to his own Buddha nature by practicing the teachings of the Buddha; otherwise he may transmigrate on through samsara endlessly. Herein it can be seen that Buddhism takes most seriously into consideration human existence in its positive and unique aspect. Thus, in this sense one may say that Buddhism also is homocentric. However, for man to transcend homocentrism within his own individuality means for him to `die' in the death of his own ego, for only through the death of his own ego is the cosmological dimension, the dimension of jinen, opened up to him. Only in that moment does he awaken to his true Self by being enlightened to the reality that nothing in the universe is permanent. As regards the above discussion someone may raise this question: Does doing away with the distinction of birth and death, for instance, in the liberated consciousness actually `do away' with these `realities' themselves? By realizing impermanence as the essence of everything whatsoever is one thereby freed from its bondage, not only psychologically but also ontologically? To answer this question leads us to the crux of the problem. `Doing away' with the distinction of birth and death means overcoming the dualistic view in which birth and death are understood as two different realities. From what position does one understand birth and death as two different realities, from the standpoint of life or death? Since it is impossible for one really to distinguish life and death as two realities by taking one of the two as his own standpoint, it must be done from a third position which is somewhat transcendent of both life and death. But such a

third position is unreal because it is a position made by conceptualization through looking at life and death from a position external to them. Rather, one comes to Reality only by overcoming such a third position and its outcome, i.e., the `realities' of life and death. In this overcoming, realizer and the realized are not two but one. Ultimate Reality is realized only in this way. Strictly speaking, however, to attain Reality one should transcend not only the duality of life and death but also the wider dualities, i.e., the duality of being-nonbeing does one attain Reality, because there is no wider duality than that of being-nonbeing. Herein there is no `centrism' of any sort at all and the limitless dimension of transitoriness common to all beings is clearly realized as such. The oneness of realizer and the realized is attained only through the realization of this universal transitoriness. Situating one's existence in the boundless dimension of being-nonbeing one realizes universal transitoriness as the only Reality, including himself in this realization. Reality is realized by him, who himself is a realizer of the Reality. This is an ontological, not psychological, awareness par excellence. In Buddhism the non-homocentric and cosmological aspect is absolutely inseparable from its existential and personalistic aspect. Indeed, in Buddhism, one can be genuinely existential and personal only when his existence is based on the boundless cosmological dimension which transcends the human one. But this cosmological dimension is opened up, not objectively, but subjectively through one's existential realization of the absolutely universal transitoriness. The mediating point, or place of confrontation, of the cosmological and the personal aspects is the death of one's ego. Buddhist salvation is thus nothing other than awakening to Reality through the death of ego, i.e., the existential realization of the transiency common to all things in the universe, seeing the universe really as it is. In this realization one is liberated from undue attachment to things and ego-self, humanity and the world, and is then able to live and work creatively in the world. `Awakening' in Buddhism is never even for one instant ever so slightly other than, or separated from, the realization of universal transitoriness. The so-called Buddha nature, which in Buddhism is said to be inherent in everyone and everything as well, is simply another term for the realization of universal transitoriness or jinen in which every one and every thing disclosed itself as it truly is in itself. It is from this realization of jinen that the Buddhist life of wisdom and compassion begins. MAN'S FINITUDE AND FAITH IN GOD The above-mentioned question, raised by H. Waldenfels, concerning the Buddhist understanding of man and his finitude is, I hope, answered in the preceding section. `The extension of shujo (sentient being-hood) to man, animals and even to everything,'4 as Waldenfels expresses it, should not imply a mere one-dimensional expansion of one's standpoint beyond the human sphere, but, as stated above, a transcendence of homocentrism in the direction of the cosmological dimension through the realization of absolutely universal transiency. Moreover, this kind of transcendence can be achieved only by man, who alone of all beings is selfconscious. The transiency common to everything in the universe is clearly apprehended as what it is by man along through his uniquely subjective realization, In this sense, `The extension of shujo to man, animals, and even to everything' does not obscure the finitude of man but, on the contrary, makes it clear and unambiguous. However, Father Waldenfels' question concerning the Buddhist understanding of man's finitude seems to me to be intrinsically related to another important aspect of our subject, namely, the issue of the direction of transcendence in Buddhism and Christianity. In Christianity man's finitude is realized over against divine justice and divine love. `No human being will be justified in his (God's) sight by works of the law'5 and `they are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as an expiation by his blood, to be received by

faith.'6 Man's finitude in the light of God's righteousness is realized as `death which is the wages of sin.'7 Accordingly, faith implies the death of the `old man' as well as the birth of the `new man' in Christ. Insofar as the death of the human ego is essential to salvation no distinction can be made between Christian conversion and Buddhist awakening. In Christianity, however, because death is `the wages of sin' it is grasped within the context of man's personalistic and responsible relationship to God; due to his own injustice and sin, man can never be saved by his own efforts but only through faith in Christ, as the redeemer, i.e., the incarnation of God. The divine-human relationship in Christianity is thus essentially vertical, with Christ, the mediator, originating in God as the transcendent or supernatural reality. Thus, in the last analysis it is an irreversibly vertical relationship with God as the superior. Even the unio mystica in which the soul of man joins to God in an indescribable experience is not altogether an exception. This irreversible relationship between man and God is inseparably connected with man's deep realization of his own finitude. Viewed from this Christian standpoint the Buddhist understanding of man's finitude may not appear to be clear enough. In Buddhism man's death is not seen as the result of `sin' in relation to something transcendent or supernatural, such as divine justice, but only as one instance of that transiency which is common to all things whatsoever in the universe. Again, because Buddhism emphasized that everyone can attain Buddha nature without a mediator, man's finitude seems not to be properly realized. Does this Buddhist position, however, indicate a failure in its understanding of man's finitude? It is clear that Buddhism, especially its original form, did not admit the supernatural in the form of God as creator, judge or ruler over the universe. This is precisely because Buddhism is convinced that man's finitude is so deep that it cannot be overcome even by the supernatural. Now this conviction is a pivotal point for Buddhism, and in this connection Buddhists would put this question to Christianity: Is man's finitude a kind of finitude which can be overcome by faith in God? What is the ground for such a faith? Dependent origination, a basic idea in Buddhism, indicates that there is no irreversible relationship even between man and `God', nature and the supernatural, the secular and the holy. This is especially clear in Mahayana Buddhism which stresses soku as seen in its familiar phrasing `samsara as it is is nirvana'. Accordingly, `Naturalness' or jinen is not something merely immanent nor a counterconcept of the supernatural but implies the total negation of the supernatural or transcendence. Thus, as I previously wrote: It (Naturalness) does not simply mean naturalism as opposed to personalism. . . . The naturalness meant by jinen is conceived to underlie both the natural and the supernatural, creature and the creator, man and God, sentient beings and so-called Buddhas, as their original common basis. In the jinen all things, including man, nature and even the supernatural, are themselves, and as they are.8 Only in the realization of this kind of jinen can one become a real person, i.e., an awakened one who has compassion and wisdom for all things in the universe. Christianity transcends man and nature in `God' who, being the God of love and justice, is understood to be supernatural. The Christian loves his neighbor as himself, in accordance with the first commandment to love God who is his saviour from sin, with his whole heart. Buddhism, on the other hand, transcends man and nature in the direction of `Naturalness' or jinen which is identical with Buddha nature or suchness. Thus, the `direction' or `location' of transcendence is not the same in Christianity and Buddhism, although the death of the human ego and the realization of the new man are in each case essential to transcendence. Nara University of Education Nara, Japan NOTES 1. Hans Waldenfels, "A Critical Appreciation," Japanese Religions, IV, No. 2 (1966), p. 23.

2. For more detailed discussion in this connection see Masao Abe, "Dogen on Buddha Nature," Eastern Buddhist, New Series, IV, No. 1 (1971), pp. 28-71. 3. Masao Abe, "Buddhism and Christianity as the Problem of Today," Japanese Religions, III, No. 3 (1963), p. 18. 4. Waldenfels, loc. cit. 5. 3 : 20. 6. Ibid., 3 : 24-25. 7. Ibid., 6 : 23. 8. Abe, loc. cit., "Buddhism and Christianity," p. 28. A CHARACTERISTIC OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHIES AND ITS INTERPRETATIONS K. K. BANERJEE This paper proposes to state and to interpret a characteristic of the philosophies which flourished in India in ancient and medieval times and which are studied with care even today, not only by orthodox scholars and Indologists, but also by avid students of philosophy. The task is undertaken in the belief that it would make the meeting of metaphysicians from different countries more meaningful and might facilitate such dialogues as would be rewarding to those who study, teach and write on these philosophies. Two Misinterpretations Students of these philosophies, though impressed by their astonishing richness, find to their dismay that not infrequently they are either over or underestimated. Some scholars seem to hold that almost all the interesting and intriguing questions of philosophy were asked and finally answered by the ancient and medieval thinkers of India, that the task today consists simply in understanding them. Obviously, these scholars overestimate these philosophies. Others, in view of the fact that science was either non-existent or in an incipient stage when these philosophies flourished and also because they were heavily loaded with myths and religion, think that they have ceased to be of importance and accordingly are hardly worthy of being studied by the students of philosophy today. Clearly these thinkers underestimate the philosophies. An honest student of philosophy cannot accept either of these views. He cannot fail to see that they not only are not in keeping with facts, but are the results of a failure to appreciate the critical character of philosophical activity that can exist and assume a form only in a society. The thinkers of the first group are unrealistic in that the ancient and the medieval philosophers did not do one kind of philosophy. Indeed, they built mighty systems of philosophy, one of which was not compatible with another. Accordingly, even if they had asked all the intriguing questions, they did not give unanimous answers. There is no single philosophical system of ancient and medieval India and the scholars who overestimate these philosophies are quite aware of this. Nevertheless, it appears from what they say and write that the system of philosophy they study, to which they subscribe and according to which, in some cases at least, they govern their life even today is the only true philosophical system, and that the other systems either articulate this truth in varying degrees or are instrumental in understanding the glorious truth embodied in the system they favor. In other words, in the opinion of these scholars, of all the various systems of ancient and medieval times only one was a system of philosophy, the others being just ideologies. No honest student of philosophy should think in this way. These scholars are also not quite aware of the fact that philosophizing is a social phenomenon. Though it takes place in the superstructure of a society, it is conditioned by the substructure. Hence, because in contemporary times the social structure has changed, these philosophies, at least in the way in which they were formulated in ancient and medieval days, do not have even a prima facie claim for acceptance or careful consideration by students of philosophy. In other words, reformulation and considerable critical analysis is required by this change. Similar observations are applicable to the thinkers of the second group. They do

not seem to be aware of the fact that the philosophers of ancient and medieval India did not do one kind of philosophy only and that one may find in ancient and medieval India traces of the kinds of philosophies done in contemporary times. This is not said in order to deny progress but only to assert that philosophical thinking, whenever it functions freely, cannot be content with one kind of philosophy. Depending on the experience and preferences of thinkers it may take a multiple--if limited--number of forms. Again, some of these thinkers do not seem to have a clear idea of the social character of philosophy. They identify the substructure with the economically productive class and thus fail to see how the entire society by its sanctions, approved and graded values, etc., functions as the substructure conditioning philosophical activity. To a degree this substructure, while evolving, retains an identity; accordingly the new is hardly ever bewilderingly new and the gap between the past and the present is never total. One should not, therefore, either overestimate or underestimate the past philosophies of India. An honest student of philosophy would do well to study them and to link them up with the contemporary ones. If he be an Indian he should seek his identity and a deeper understanding of his times and society in such a critical, reflective and interpretative study. When one peruses the works of the leaders of contemporary Indian thought and culture like Bankimchandra, Tagore, K.C. Bhattacharyya, S. Radhakrishnan, Sri Aurobindo, Swami Vivekananda, Jawaharlal Nehru, Mahatma Gandhi, etc., he finds this to be precisely the kind of work they did or were seeking to do. Most of them, however, were not university men and were hardly interested in seeking their identity in a metaphysical enterprise. It is for us, therefore, who are actively engaged in teaching and research in the universities to take up this task. We are in need of a deeper understanding of the metaphysical ideas handed down to us from the past by assimilating them with the ideas of metaphysicians from different countries with different back grounds and traditions. Such an understanding presupposes a dialogue which in the last resort is a give and take activity of the rational side of our being. Accordingly, this paper proposes to state and interpret one characteristic of the past philosophies. Philosophy as System The characteristic we propose to state and interpret is that in India philosophies developed as systems. This is well-known but its import or the interpretation we intend to give it may not be. Besides now-a-days philosophers are sceptical of systems. They prefer to treat a concept in isolation; when they write they take care that, like a short story, their paper have a beginning, a middle and an end. That this is hardly satisfactory can be clarified by an analysis of the systematic characteristic of Indian philosophies. Besides, Indian philosophers themselves mislead us on this point. Every system-builder at first formulates a theory of pramanas--a theoryon the estimation of evidences--and proceeds to found his metaphysical theory upon that. This creates the impression that the theories of evidences as formulated by the Indian philosophers are prior to, and independent of, the metaphysical theories they hold. Actually, this is not the case. The theory of evidence as formulated by one system differs from that of another precisely because their metaphysical theories differ. This would be evident to anyone who would read these theories, as it were, between the lines. As the author has argued the point in another paper, it need not be dwelt upon here. Rather, in order to spell out the point that metaphysics occupied the central position in Indian philosophical thought, one question will be considered briefly. The question concerns the nature of darkness. Obviously, one who has not read Indian philosophy would not treat it as a philosophical question. But Indian philosophers gave considerable attention to it and their treatment makes it abundantly clear that they held it to be an important philosophical question. To make the point the Nyaya and the Advaita answers will be noted. Thus, while the Nyaya philosophers consider darkness to be a negative fact, the Advaitins consider

it positive; and the point of interest is that their views are integral parts of their systems. Thus, a Nyaya philosopher cannot accept the proposition that darkness is a positive fact for the following reasons: (a) If it be a positive fact, it is also a perceived positive fact having qualities. (b) Accordingly, it is a compound substance which occurs, ceases to occur, and is divisible. (c) If it be divisible, then when divided it should leave behind fragments. (d) But it does not leave behind fragments. (e) And so either the being of darkness is instantaneous, for as the Buddhist philosophers argue an entity with instantaneous being may be destroyed but may not leave behind any fragment, or it is not a divisible compound substance that occurs and ceases to occur, i.e., it is not a positive fact. (f) But the theory of instantaneous being is counter intuitive and unacceptable. (g) And so darkness is not a positive fact. Thus, the Nyaya theory of darkness is an integral part of the system. The same can be said of the theory of the Advaitins, though they would not argue the proposition that darkness is a positive fact in such a direct way. Nevertheless, their philosophy would be injured if they do not hold it to be so. They hold that ignorance is positive and make attempts to bring out one of its aspects by comparing it with darkness. That is, consciousness which is opposed to ignorance manifests its object by tearing the cover of ignorance, just as light which is opposed to darkness illumines objects by tearing the cover of darkness. They take the cover in both cases literally and are quite clear that language or metaphor is not misleading them. Their metaphysics does not permit them to understand the cover of ignorance metaphorically, that would amount to the position that ignorance is absence of knowledge or consciousness, i.e., a negative fact. But if ignorance be a negative fact it would not play the role their metaphysics assigns it, for it would then neither cover nor be a material cause of the empirical world. Hence, they take the expression `covered by ignorance' literally. Similar considerations are behind their taking the expression `covered by darkness' literally. In other words, of the various evidences they produce in favor of the proposition that ignorance is a positive fact, one is inferential, which in the opinion of the Indian logicians requires an instance that yields and confirms the grounding proposition. In the case of the inference under consideration such an instance is provided by darkness. That is, light illumines an object by destroying the darkness that covered it; so whenever an object is manifested, whether by light or by consciousness, the manifestation is preceded by the destruction of the positive cover. Thus, either darkness is a positive fact or the proposition on which the inference under consideration rests is instanceless and so groundless. Thus, the Advaitins' treatment of darkness is an integral part of their general philosophical or metaphysical system. In other words the question of the nature of darkness is philosophical as the answers to this question are integral parts of the metaphysical views held by the Indian philosophers. Their treatment of the being of darkness was not that of the scientist but of the metaphysician. System and Metaphysics Thus, the philosophies in India developed in the form of systems in which metaphysical doctrines occupied the central place. Why did they develop in this manner? The obvious answer seems to be: its subject matter. That is, the subject matter of metaphysics may be said to be all that is; and in view of that fact they form a system. Hence, the science of metaphysics cannot but be a system. It should be noted that Indian philosophers would have stated the subject matter of metaphysics in a slightly different way. Instead of saying that metaphysics is the

science of all that is they would have said that it is the science of all that is man. In other words, for them man epitomizes the universe, or the microcosm is the macrocosm. To know man is to know all that is. The purpose or prayojana of philosophy was said to be liberation, and an essential condition for attaining liberation was thought to be knowledge of the proper being of man. To know man fully one should know what he is in essence and also in relation to the universe in which he is, so to say, thrown and where he suffers. In short, the science that seeks to know all that is man also seeks to know all that is, and metaphysics is primarily this science of the proper being of man. This being the subject matter of philosophy, philosophy cannot but be cultivated in the form of a system. Though the above answer is quite reasonable, I would propose a different, though not incompatible answer which in my judgment is equally reasonable. In brief, it lies in the nature of a philosophical belief. In other words, whenever we have a philosophical belief we have a cluster of such beliefs, and they are of diverse kinds: some logical, some epistemological, some ethical, some religious, some ontological, some of no exclusive type, and others such that they cannot be labelled. This can be corroborated by an immanent inspection of such beliefs. Beliefs forming a cluster are not unrelated, but are, so to speak, parts of a whole or system. The system, however, has a character of its own. It is not deductive; one cannot hope to exhibit the character of the system by picking up one or two beliefs to be treated as axiomatic and then, by some accepted or formulated rules of deduction, obtain the other beliefs forming the system. This should be evident to anyone who would peruse any such system and to one who does not accept a particular system it appears that the arguments of its advocates move in a circle. Thus the critics of the Vaisasika system argue that their theory of universals presupposes their theories on inherence, substance, qualities and action; that their theories on substance, quality and action presuppose their theory of universals; and that their theory on inherence presupposes all these theories. In short, philosophical reasoning is i a way circular. This cannot be cited as a basis for denouncing metaphysics and embracing scepticism, though it substantiates the result of immanent or phenomenological inspection of metaphysical beliefs, namely, that the beliefs form a cluster with a structure though the structure is not deductive. What precisely is the structure? That the beliefs are closely connected is beyond reasonable doubt, but what precisely is this connection? To answer that question it is necessary to consider of what sort these beliefs are and how they obtain their structure. These beliefs are not of the ordinary kind, but are firm convictions or dogmas in the original Greek sense of the word, as Professor Zahner states in another context. They are as sure and certain for the individual who holds them as is knowledge; for him the distinction between such belief and knowledge ceases to be real. Further, one acts according to these beliefs and this action in some sense lends structure to these beliefs. Hence, it cannot be the case would one hold a set of philosophical beliefs and not live in accordance with them. If his actions are not in keeping with his beliefs, if the relation of vyaghata, as the Indian logicians put it, obtains between his beliefs and his actions, then he really does not hold the beliefs, though he may say that he does. At any rate, unless philosophy be in a reciprocal or dialectical relation with life,which it shapes and by which it is shaped,it does not deserve to be called philosophy. Because Indian philosophers were quite aware of this, for them philosophy was not a mere intellectual pastime or adventure. Read carefully, the conclusion is irresistible that they philosophized as they were in quest for identity--their philosophies represented what they were. Today we find that they do not satisfy our quest if we take them literally or exactly in their original form. We feel the need to reformulate them and hence to be in dialogue with the types of philosophy that flourished elsewhere and are more closely associated with the recent developments in science, technology and the social economy. It is our hope that such a dialogue can take place in today's

troubled world where we are desperately in search of our identity and that we can find at least the path along which we should move. Jadavpur University Calcutta, India CHAPTER XVI SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE AND METAPHYSICAL INTERPRETATION W. NORRIS CLARKE, S.J. The aim of this paper is to reflect, on a meta-level, upon the basic intellectual process in traditions of thought which draw upon spiritual experience as immediate evidence for metaphysical affirmations about reality and man's relation to it. By `spiritual experience' I mean in general the experience, at its deeper levels, of the inner life of the human psyche, spirit, soul, or self--however this be expressed--where, beyond the dimensions accessible to ordinary sense experience, reflective thought and rational argument, it experiences or claims to experience various modes and levels of intuitive awareness of reality and its own relation to it. The most intense level of such experience is, of course, what in both East and West has traditionally been called `mystical experience' or its equivalent. What follows will concern this level particularly, since it has always been one of the most profound inspirations and challenges to metaphysical interpretations of reality. SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE AS EVIDENCE FOR METAPHYSICS In order to avoid sterile technical disputes about the exact nature and limits of mysticism I have chosen the more general term of `spiritual experience', to distinguish it from both sense experience and the process of reflective thought and rational inference carried out through abstract concepts and conceptual-linguistic frameworks. In a word, then, I am concerned with a thought process which is common to certain great traditions of thought, of which not a few are represented here. It passes directly from a profound--and, let us concede, authentic--spiritual experience to metaphysical articulation and interpretation as part of a total metaphysical framework or systematically articulated world view. Reflecting on this process is relevant to the theme, `Man and Nature', for solutions to its problems at any level will frequently be commanded by the dominant spiritual experience that lie at the roots of a metaphysical tradition. The thought process directly from spiritual experience to metaphysical articulation is found to some extent in certain traditions of the West, such as Neoplatonism in both its non-Christian and its Christian strands, and various existentialist such as Kierkegaard, Marcel, Buber and possibly others. It is not, however, the more usual path in Western thought, which ordinarily draws its evidence from the more publicly available dimension of man's relations with the material cosmos and human social community, and argues to the ultimate conditions of possibility or intelligibility of such data. The more characteristic, though by no means exclusive, path of the great Eastern traditions has been from inner experience to a metaphysical articulation and interpretation of reality flowing from and commanded by such evidence. This has been one of the glories of the Eastern traditions, especially those of Hinduism and Buddhism. I do not in the least question the validity and fruitfulness of these traditions for what might be called `spiritually grounded metaphysics.' What I would like to do is to call attention, for common critical reflection, to the special problems in the use of such a method either by Eastern or Western thinkers. The central problem might be phrased as follows: Can any spiritual experience, however profound and authentic, guarantee any particular articulation and interpretation of this experience in metaphysical terms, so as to appeal to it as conclusive and incontrovertible evidence for the truth of such metaphysical affirmations? As one example let us take as our point of reference some of the great Upanisadic spiritual experiences of the identity (or non-duality) of the self with the Atman and the Brahman. These experiences reach metaphysical formulation in the Upanisads

themselves, in such expressions as `The Brahman is all this and all that,' `The Brahman is One without a second,' and `That art Thou' (Tat twam asi). There are similar expressions in the later Advaita or Non-Duality Vedanta tradition. Others insist that the above Upanisadic statements do not have metaphysical, but only practical spiritual significance. Another example would be the thought of Sri Aurobindo, perhaps the outstanding philosopher-mystic of India in the twentieth century, who claims to have experienced the higher states of consciousness of the Over-Mind or Super-Mind and from this experience draws metaphysical affirmations about the unity of all things. His followers stress that his is a metaphysics drawn, not from abstract speculation, but from direct spiritual experience. One could draw similar examples from Buddhist literature, which so often affirms that the one Buddha-nature is in, or actually is, all things. Hence, our distinct limited selves as they appear to us on the level of unenlightened experience already are one Buddha-nature, except that we are not yet aware of what we are. Further, such appeals to spiritual experience are relevant to discussions in comparative metaphysical traditions. The Judaeo-Christian inspired creation metaphysics views creatures as having their own distinct being, though received from God as Creator. The Upanisadic inspired non-dualist metaphysics views all finite entities as held within or reducible to the one being of the Brahman, who alone truly is. In comparing the two the experience of Arjuna in the Bhagavad-Gita can be cited as the basis for arguing that for someone in this spiritual tradition who had experienced his oneness with the Brahman, as had Arjuna, the experience rules out a creation metaphysics maintaining the distinct being of creatures outside of God. The non-duality metaphysics is stated as a direct fruit of this profound experience and supported by the latter as convincing evidence, so that to reject the metaphysical conclusions drawn from it would be to cast doubts on the experience itself. ALTERNATIVE METAPHYSICAL FRAMEWORKS ALWAYS POSSIBLE This is the thought process with which I am concerned here. It has been called `a metaphysics of spiritual experience,' that is, a process of thought which passes directly from inner spiritual experience to metaphysical affirmation, based on the latter as evidence. Now the position to be defended here is the following. On the one hand, authentic spiritual experience, especially at the most profound and intense mystical level, can indeed be a most rich and fruitful source of inspiration and evidence for metaphysical propositions and for a metaphysical world view. This has been shown so clearly in certain of the great spiritual-metaphysical traditions of both East and West that there is no need to argue it further here. On the other hand--and this is the main point of the paper--no direct passage is possible from an inner spiritual experience, no matter how authentic and profound, to a metaphysical affirmation such that the experience can provide conclusive evidence to ground this metaphysical affirmation as opposed to all others. In a word, there is no direct and unambiguous passage from inner experience to metaphysical articulation. My reason for this assertion derives from one of the most decisive contributions of contemporary epistemology, the theory that there are always alternative conceptual-linguistic frameworks for expressing any human experience of reality.1 By this I mean, first, that no immediate or unmediated one-to-one correlation is possible between an experience of reality and a linguistic term or proposition taken by itself. The meaning of any term or proposition is always dependent on, and hence mediated by, a whole interrelated conceptual-linguistic system or field of meaning. This is true for an ordinary language statement; it is the more true for a statement in a metaphysical sublanguage. A proposition can thus have meaning and truth--or falsehood--not nakedly by itself but only within such a field or framework of meaning. Accordingly propositions can agree with or contradict each other only if they are situated within the same conceptual-linguistic framework, although it is possible to translate them more or less perfectly from one framework to another. Neither contradiction nor agreement is possible between

propositions in different frameworks unless they are first translated into some common framework. The second implication of such a framework theory of meaning and truth is that there is always in principle, either existing or possible, some alternative framework for expressing any given experience or contact with reality. Such alternative frameworks as a whole are neither true nor false but only more or less adequate for expressing the experience of those using them. Reality itself is inexhaustibly rich, if not infinite, in depth, fineness of differences, and complexity of interrelations. A human conceptual-linguistic scheme which can be learned and useful must be so limited in what it can explicitly notice and distinguish at any one time, that no human classification or scheme of categories can ever claim to be the only valid way of articulating either the seamless robe of reality or even the richness of our direct experience thereof. One can indeed argue rationally over the adequacy of a given framework in terms of some larger common framework, nevertheless such questions of adequacy are not simply reducible to questions of truth or falsity. Further, and this is the crucial point, such questions of the adequacy, either of the framework as a whole or of the choice of terms within a framework, cannot be settled directly by an appeal to the experience itself, since they involve the complex interdependence of so many concepts and terms in a unified field of discourse. Mediation by the critically reflective rational and discursive mind is indispensable. From this it follows that what is in itself roughly the same or a very similar inner experience can be validly expressed in two quite different metaphysical frameworks, even within the same general ordinary language system and even at times using the same words. Since the experience itself genuinely supports and provides good evidence for, while at the same time transcending in richness, each of the metaphysical articulations or interpretations in which it has been incarnated, appeal to the experience alone cannot settle the issue between them. Thus the supreme mystical experience of oneness of the soul or of deeper self with the ultimate Ground of being, however one expresses it, seems very similar in most of the great Eastern and Western spiritual traditions. Yet it would appear to be validly expressed in several different, irreducible, and even apparently irreconcilable or contradictory ways, either as unqualified oneness in both consciousness and being, or as oneness in consciousness with duality in being, or as non-duality in being, or in other irreducible ways, some undoubtedly not yet specified. The same should be said in the case of the relations in depth of human selves to one another and to cosmic nature as well. DIFFICULTIES AND OBJECTIONS Having said this much, I would hasten to add certain clarifications and qualifications to avoid misunderstanding. First, I am not merely saying that all deep inner experiences contain an ineffable element that defies any adequate positive expression in language. Most traditions agree on this; there is no argument here. But this does not deter them from drawing from their experiences both some very definite negative metaphysical conclusions such as non-duality or non-identity, and some positive conclusions as to the relation of other things to Ultimate Reality. My application of the alternative framework theory would partially relativize, not merely positive metaphysical articulations of the nature of Ultimate Reality and our relation to it, but all metaphysical interpretations, whether negative or positive. The so-called `negative theologies', in order to give meaning to their negations, involve framework decisions outside of the experience no less than do the positive theologies for what may seem to others their incautious affirmations. All are together in this. Second, my position does not imply that spiritual experiences can provide no good evidence at all for metaphysical affirmations. On the contrary, I believe that they can be very powerful guides in illuminating and supporting metaphysical conclusions. In certain cases appeal to the experience itself can effectively rule out some metaphysical assertions or a whole framework of expression as to illadapted or alien to the type of experience that it could not help but betray it.

But from the fact that experience can serve as a touchstone to rule out certain metaphysical interpretations it does not follow that it can unambiguously, exclusively and positively guarantee any one metaphysical articulation against all others. Third, it does not follow that it is impossible for the human mind to transcend all conceptual-linguistic frameworks or that it is always imprisoned within its own frameworks and thus inescapably trapped in the relativity of all frameworks. The mind certainly can and does transcend any and all frameworks in flashes of intellectual or spiritual intuition or insight, and a fortiori in the deeper states of mystical ecstasy. It is this power which enables the mind to know its own self as the source of its actions, to judge the limitations of the very frameworks it creates or uses to express itself, to improve and correct them when necessary and to translate from one to the other when passing from culture or language system to another. Yet, despite this power of transcending its own frameworks by intellectual insight, the mind is still bound to clothe or incarnate these insights in some particular cultural framework of expression and interpretation. This at once becomes limited and perspectival and, therefore, in principle allows of alternative modes of expression. It remains true that the mind can, by imbuing whatever framework it uses with the living and transcending act of insight, control and correct the inadequacy of the expression through its own inner lived understanding of what it intends when it so expresses itself. Moreover, by employing various non-linguistic devices, it can attempt to set up a spiritual resonance in others which will evoke in them also a similar act of insight transcending the limitations of the framework used as a vehicle for expression. The shared insight or experience can then safely use the same framework of expression and metaphysical articulation. But the fact that the experience does unquestionably guide and inspire the expression does not thereby give one the right to impose this particular articulation or interpretation on everyone else as the only possible one allowed by the experience. Therefore, I would venture to say that no metaphysical term or proposition can be uniquely and incontrovertibly dictated by an experience itself as an immediate and uninterpreted transcription of that experience. All such expressions must pass through the mediation of their relation to a whole interrelated network or framework of meaning and language before they can take on any precise meaning of their own. Hence, they are subject to criticism at this level without in any way impugning the authenticity of their experience. This introduces a further question. Does this experience exist first in its own purity and then seek expression through some framework of meaning and belief? Or, on the contrary, is the experience in which the person lives, so that the experience itself and the framework mutually influence or condition each other. In a word, might there be no pure pre-framework experience? There is much truth in this proposal although it should not be over-extended. The mutual influence must be left as a flexible and growing relationship, not taken as a rigid and fixed one. This is another reason why it is not possible for a spiritual experience to provide an incontrovertible guarantee for a particular metaphysical expression of that experience. The framework of expression may have already modified somewhat or creatively entered into the texture of the experience itself, predisposing one to notice or be open to certain facets while overlooking or underplaying others so that they even sink below explicit consciousness. This raises the fascinating and difficult epistemological question of the socalled `myth of the given'. Is there ever any pure given in human experience or are not all experiences and so-called immediately given facts always in some degree `theory-laden', that is, already enveloped in some prior theory or theoretical horizon? We will not enter further into this forest here. In any case, the position developed above would still hold even if there were a pure pretheoretical or pre-framework experience. I suspect that one comes close to this in the most profound mystical experience, though this, too, is very open to discussion.

When I first expressed these ideas in the Oriental Seminar at Columbia University, New York, they awakened considerable resistance from a number of scholars from different traditions as excessively relativizing and emasculating the power and validity of any expression of religious experience on experiential metaphysics. The strongest opposition, however, came not from the Hindus but from the Buddhists present. They claimed that the whole point of Buddhist spiritual training was finally to break through and get beyond all conceptual-linguistic frameworks in order, as they put it, to `see reality as it is in itself,' that is, as the `pure Thatness permeating all things.' Yet, that precisely illustrates my point. I have no wish to question that at a certain level of spiritual development one can break through all frameworks to a kind of direct contact with reality; I accept such an experience as authentic and somehow communicable or able to be evoked in others indirectly. What I am insisting upon is that any metaphysical expression of such an experience immediately takes on the relativity of some conceptual-linguistic framework. Hence, it cannot impose itself as a uniquely authoritative expression or interpretation of what it means to `see reality as it is in itself' (note how theory and framework-laden are the terms of this very statement) or what the content of such a vision is. Hence, neither the somewhat elusive expression `pure Thatness or Suchness' nor even the phrase 'to see reality as it is in itself' can be metaphysically innocent transcriptions of the experience. Therefore, neither can they impose themselves on all who accept the authenticity of that experience. This leads us finally to the inevitable paradox. On the one hand, it is quite possible for two serious and spiritually sensitive scholars in different traditions to recognize intuitively in a flash of intellectual insight the profound similarity if not unity behind two spiritual experiences, or religious traditions (usually only in their deeper experiential dimensions, rarely in doctrines or theology), or even metaphysical doctrines. On the other hand, they could still find it impossible to clothe this common insight in any form of expression acceptable to both. This is the fatal flaw in all the attempts such as that of Aldous Huxley in his Perennial Philosophy, of Frithjof Schuon in his The Transcendent Unity of All Religions,2 and other similar efforts, to actually formulate the unity that transcends all the existing frameworks of expression. Any such formulation inevitably slips over into a veiled form of some already existing framework (which usually turns out in fact to be a Hindu formulation). Understandably, such tradition-transcending formulations will not be acceptable on all points to all of the groups being thus transcended, and a truly new framework of expression almost certainly would not be acceptable in some way to any of the participants. The point is, therefore, that such underlying unities can be seen as one, but cannot be said as one. Even the truth of such a statement could be seen by the mind, but probably could not be said in any way acceptable or satisfactory to all. The bridge to the unities beyond frameworks can be crossed only by sympathetic insight, not by language itself, save in indirect and evocative ways. Such a situation may seem to some a surrender to radical scepticism and relativism with regard to all metaphysical formulations and interpretations. To me, it seems rather an invitation and indeed a condition of possibility for a truly positive and fruitful dialogue between thinkers from different traditions.3 If there were an immediate passage from a spiritual experience to one privileged metaphysical expression or interpretation of it, metaphysical differences purporting to stem from such experience would constitute radical impasses beyond which further discussion could not go. It is not possible to argue with someone's experiences; one either does or does not accept them. If there is no such direct passage from experience to metaphysical expression, moreover, and if experience always allows for alternative metaphysical expressions, then the way is left open: (a) to accept the great spiritual experiences in different traditions as perfectly authentic, no matter how differently expressed in apparently contradictory metaphysical terms; (b) to be free, nevertheless, to argue and discuss the relative merits of the metaphysical frameworks and expressions in which these experiences are clothed in each

tradition; and (c) perhaps even to creatively adjust and adapt the latter to incorporate the strengths of each other, since there is no necessary link between the experience and any one mode of expression. It follows also, given this provisory and always revisable link between experience and expression, that the mutual sharing of experiences at the deepest level by those in different traditions who possess some metaphysical sophistication can provide a dynamic stimulus towards the creation of richer metaphysical syntheses on a higher level of generality. At least it could stimulate cooperative metalanguage analyses which would map out the analogous roles of certain metaphysical structures of thought and expression which on the surface appear irreconcilable. Finally, I do suspect, however, that there are a small number of basic ontological situations or relations which can be experienced in depth but which resist in principle any common metaphysical formulation or interpretation. My list would include: (a) the relation between finite entities, or appearances if you will, and their Ultimate Ground or Source; (b) the mode of ultimate union between the human soul, spirit or deeper self, and its Ultimate Ground or Ultimate Reality itself-this would include the relation between `divine' omniscience, omnipotence and immutability, on the one hand, and human freedom on the other; and (c) the relation between mind and reality. Whether one includes, as a function of one or more of the above, the relation of man's self at its deepest level with other selves and also with the material cosmos or cosmic nature as a whole is perhaps the basic issue for this entire set of papers. Fordham University New York, USA NOTES 1. Cf. my own Presidential Address discussing this problem, `On Facing up to the Truth about Human Truth', Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, XLIII (1969), 1-13, with references to contemporary discussions. 2. (New York: Harper and Row, 1975). 3. Cf. the fine discussion by Jacques Cuttat, The Encounter of Religions (New York: Desclée, 1961). CHAPTER XVII CAUSALITY AND CREATIVITY ELIOT DEUTSCH Most contemporary analyses of causation are based on, or at least take as their starting point, Hume's analysis, and are thus carried out in terms of understanding the nature of a "causal relation" that is thought to obtain between discrete events, and with assumptions (e.g., about space and time) that are drawn largely from mechanistic models of science. Hume's billiard ball hitting another (presumably in a predictable fashion) is still rather typical of the kind of event that is taken as paradigmatic for analyzing the meaning of causality. Changes are thus seen by regularity theorists as isolable events interacting (efficiently) with one another within the framework of lawlike relations or nomic generalizations. Singular causal statements, in other words, are to be logically related to general causal statements, with the latter in turn being regarded as contingent generalizations unrestricted in their scope.1 Now few contemporary regularity theorists accept without qualification Hume's rejection of necessity in nature in favor of just "constant conjunction," or his accounting for our belief in power or necessity by reference to "custom" alone, and in order to distinguish nomic from accidental regularity they analyze causality in terms of conditionship relations. It is often thought by philosophers in the Humean tradition that a cause is that set of conditions (among all those present) each of which is necessary and jointly are sufficient for the occurrence of a certain effect. In somewhat more elaborate and precise terms: . . . a causal condition of an event is any sine qua non condition under which that event occurred or any condition which was such that, had the condition in question not obtained. that event (its effect) would not have occurred and the cause of the event is the totality of those conditions. . . . Once one has

enumerated all the conditions necessary for the occurrence of a given event, that totality of conditions will at once be sufficient for its occurrence or such that no further conditions will be necessary.2 But it has been pointed out by many contemporary analysts of regularity theories that on this account of conditionship relations it is no longer possible to distinguish cause from effect. Georg Henrik von Wright writes: . . . the fact that a certain state obtains is a sufficient condition of the fact that a certain other state obtains if, and only if, the fact that the second state does not obtain is a sufficient condition of the fact that the first does not obtain.3 . . . heavy rainfall in the mountains might. under given circumstances, be a causally sufficient condition of a flood in the valley; but we are not inclined to say, at least not on that ground alone, that the fact that no flooding occurs is a cause of the effect that there is no heavy rain.4 And Richard Taylor writes: The expression `X is sufficient for E' is exactly equivalent to `E is necessary for X" . . . .5 The analysis of the causal relationship [in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions] has one strange consequence . . . namely, that it does not enable us to draw any distinction between cause and effect.6 The main question which I propose to raise and treat in this study is: Can we understand something more about the meaning of causality from the standpoint of attempting to understand the nature of one of the most complex of human experiences, namely of "creativity"? I propose, in other words, to take the "creative act" as the primary example or event to be understood in our thinking about causality, rather than one billiard ball hitting another (or a match being ignited and starting a fire). This approach to the nature of creativity and causality, will undoubtedly be resisted by many philosophers, for it is indeed customary today in studies of creativity (especially psychological ones) to approach creativity as something which is itself to be explained (reductively)-e.g., by Freud, as a compensatory activity which feeds on wish-fulfillment and substitute gratification. Now it is also clear to many of us that this effort to reduce creativity to a mechanistic-based model of efficient causality is rather fruitless, as it tends to miss just what we understand to be some of the distinctive characteristics of creativity (e.g., novelty, critical control and autogenetic development).7 The inadequacy of applying the usual causal models to creativity, as well as.the many difficulties that beset empirico-mechanistic models of causality, suggest the possibility of our advancing in the other direction, namely from an analysis of creativity to the meaning of causality. THE NATURE OF CREATIVITY Desiring, then, that all things should be good and, so far as might be, nothing imperfect, the god took over all that is visible--not at rest, but in discordant and unordered motion--and brought it from disorder into order, since he judged that order was in every way the better. (Timeaus, 30A Cornford trans.) The theory of artistic creativity of a culture, it seems, is always closely related to that culture's cosmology. Under the sway of Judaeo-Christianity Romanticism sees creativity as a kind of creation ex nihilo, a spontaneous but purposive bringing forth of something new into being, with the creative artist. like the creator god, being a fit object of worship. Traditional Indian culture, on the other hand, sees divine creativity in emanational terms as an overflow of spiritual energy, a disciplined yet exuberant and purposeless play. It then sees human creativity as a spontaneous but highly disciplined expression of joy and adoration. For Plato, and the Greeks generally, creativity is seen essentially in demiurgic terms as a rearranging of existing materials so as to bring about a greater (and the greatest possible) measure of order into an otherwise chaotic world of visible becoming. The artist, like the demiurge, is a craftsman, a maker.

Today, however, we do not have a received cosmology that recommends itself axiomatically, as it were, to all educated minds--East or West. In its place we have several competing scientific theories or models (with a general consensus seemingly obtaining among scientists that they are all seriously inadequate) and thus, although we bear the weight of an "historical perspective" on the matter, we can enjoy a certain freedom from this traditional dependency on cosmology in our thinking about creativity. Nevertheless we are still bound today to a considerable degree to a quasi-romantic view of creativity, for in ordinary language the term has come to be used rather indiscriminately to apply to any activity that bears some mark of "expressiveness" or "originality". In our more "progressive" schools children are encouraged to "be creative"--but it is never made very clear just what that is supposed to mean--and indeed the term is applied to the work of the gifted physicist equally as well as to the play of the talented artist. Still it is artistic creativity that serves as the model for what "creativity" means, and so in our analysis we will take artistic creativity, the process by which an artwork is made, as the paradigm case, realizing, of course, that it may contain some features which are not present in any significant degree in other forms of what we accept as creative activity. One of the most striking features of artistic creativity (which I will hereafter use synonymously with "creative act") is what we might call its immanent purposiveness. Aiming at the fulfillment of only those ends which it itself defines and articulates, the creative act answers to no other guiding need or external telos. Its purpose is developed in the process itself; which is to say, a sense of "rightness" or "appropriateness," within the context of the particular creative act, governs the artist's bringing his work to fulfillment or completion. I have argued elsewhere that when art achieves autonomy, as it assuredly has in our age, the meaning of an artwork is not to be found as such in the conventional symbols it might employ or in an independently formulated series of concepts which it may be said or seen to embody, but that its meaning is inherent in the work. A work of art is meaningful, I argue, to the degree to which it realizes the possibilities that it itself gives rise to. This means the bringing of the artwork to an appropriate conclusion and exhibiting the process by which that conclusion is achieved.8 A poem, a play, a musical composition, sets up conditions of expectation and anticipation which call for resolution and fulfillment. Now the progress towards this fulfillment--the process which is in fact exhibited--is not mechanical; the artist doesn't put down initial words, colors, sounds with everything else and then following inevitably from this initial placement, as a conclusion might from premises in a valid deductive argument; rather the "appropriateness" of a conclusion or consummation of the work depends as well upon elements of surprise or novelty. The artist is himself often surprised by the development of his work, and sometimes appears--as Plato observed some time ago--the least able to explain what he is doing. If explanation calls for lawlike generalizations and prediction, then it is not difficult to understand the artist's "ignorance." Anyone else's supposed knowledge would only be a gross pretension; for the creative process, by its very nature, does not aim at a fixed, predetermined end that can confidently be predicted, and does not admit entirely of relationships that can be generalized into nomic statements or universal rules, rather it autogenetically defines itself; its purposiveness is precisely immanent to it. For a work of art to have the kind of integrity--of "wholeness" and "honest use" of materials--that is appropriate to it, the creative act must involve what I call interjective control. It is a rather fancy name for this fact, that the creative act must involve a non-calculative, intuitive--if you will--grasp of the structure, principles or "syntax" of a medium, be it of concrete materials or abstract symbols, so that the act is one of working with these principles and not one of exercising force over them. Any craftsman, from the woodcarver to the auto mechanic--and all artistic creativity is craft in one of its rich dimensions--

realizes this need to be attuned, as it were, to his medium in such a way that he contributes to, but does not impose an alien will upon its natural rhythm or structure. This interjective. in contrast to coercive. control is very difficult to analyze, but it is of considerable importance, I believe, in understanding creativity in relation to causation. One of the reasons the usual models of causation apply so poorly to creativity is just this intimacy between the creative act and its object, the agent here being effective only insofar as he works with the potentialities of his medium in a profoundly sympathetic and understanding way. I can push a chair around the room with only a rudimentary knowledge of practical physics acquired by experience; but I can create a work of sculpture only by a highly disciplined understanding or how to work with stone. In fulfilling the purposes which it itself articulates, the artwork, through the creative act, stands then as a joint effort of its creator and the given medium. It calls for cooperation, for a harmonious relationship, between the self and nature; it calls for a special reverence, for a loving concern, of artist for his material so that he may indeed bring to full articulation one of the many possibilities of that which is given to him. But this is not to suggest some one-sided passivity or abject obedience on the part of the artist. The creative act is a kind of "letting be," but at the same time it is a shaping, a formative act, which involves expressive power. Together with immanent purposiveness and interjective control the creative act is an infusion of power. an imparting of a felt life or vitality; it is a making of that which is alive with the very spirit of natural life. The presence of power in creativity is not, however, as I understand it, an expression so much of a Nietzschean "will to power"--with its associated romantic emotion and sense of radical achievement--as it is a manifestation of a rhythmic force which is spontaneously exhibited. Life is rhythm, as the poet will tell us, and the creative act is just that act which grasps this rhythm--what the classical Chinese called "spirit resonance" (ch'i-yun sheng-tung)9 and manifests it as expressive power. Hume might well have exorcised all powers from (efficient) causation--but to do so for creativity would be to trivialize it and render it incomprehensible. Closely related to the feature of power in creativity is that of form--its natural complement. What oftentimes distinguishes genuine creativity from those acts of "self-expression" enjoyed by the ardent young lover who writes what he is pleased to call "poetry," or by the amateur painter who wants to share his pleasure of pretty landscapes with others, is just this arduous task, namely, bringing the created object to its right conclusion through the achievement of form. By "form" in art we do not mean some kind of independently analyzable shape or structure, but that blending of content and structure which appears then as inevitable. Form is the artwork as a realized end which establishes those relationship which are right for itself. Creativity is formative. It is a making, a techne, which, when wholly successful, results in a form which is radiant by virtue of the rightness of the relations articulated and the appropriateness of the feeling and insight achieved. No two creative acts are ever alike. Now it is assuredly the case that in some important sense no two human acts of any kind are ever alike insofar as any act, no matter how routine, takes place at a given time and place with all its attendant particularities; but in asserting the unlikeness of creative acts we are asserting something much stronger than this; we are asserting that a special kind of uniqueness or singularity is one of the distinguishing features of this kind of activity. Creativity means, at least descriptively from the standpoint of the creative actor, precisely that fusion of chance and deter-mination which allows of no repetition. Constrained by all the limitations of one's character, of one's history and experience, of one's capacities and talents, and yet having this history--and present moment of insight--available to one, is the non-repeatable opportunity that is at the very essence of the creative act. Creativity, in other words, involves. having available to one an indefinite number of possibilities

which are related to one's history; and being singular at its heart, creativity makes for unique objects. Works of art may be similar in many ways (by style. genre, etc., and especially when from the hand of the same artist), but it is always just this particular work as a particular work which commands our attention; it is this realization of form infused with power that interests us-and is in some way compelling for us. Creativity, it has often been pointed out in both East and West, is a kind of play; in Sanskrit designated as lila, as that sportive act of the god who, in creating, admits of no purpose and whose activity is thus a spontaneous overflow of his own superabundant nature. `Play', however, doesn't mean a lack of seriousness or intensity; it means rather a kind of innocent, but not naive, illusion-making; an innovative and hence unexpected ordering and shaping. In creativity as play there is a felt voluntariness, which paradoxically perhaps is nevertheless felt as inwardly necessary, as something that is required to be done. Play, in short, is disciplined spontaneity. It is knowledgeable and insightful; but it answers to no formulae. Spontaneity in creativity is not, on the other hand, an uninhibited exhibition of emotion or feeling; it is not impulsive, a blind response to the strongest force within one at the moment; it is rather a natural extension of that harmony or that subtle tension which is there as part and parcel of the creative act. Spontaneity, in other words, is utterly continuous with all other elements or features of the creative act. Creativity is a free, self-determining act; it is singular and unpredictable, and hence, in these terms, defies usual causal explanation; but it is also disciplined and ordered and, in these terms, is amenable to intelligent understanding. "Discipline" means ordering relations, through experience, so as to achieve just that rightness in relationship which is of the essence of form. Being formative the creative act is necessarily a controlling of a medium--in play. We have so far distinguished immanent purposiveness. interjective control, infused power, formativeness, uniqueness or singularity, and playfulness as special features of creativity. The last feature which I should like to call attention to, and one which has a peculiar relevance for our theme of creativity and causality, is the special transitivity or mutuality between creativity and what is created that seems to obtain. In creativity the creative agent does not simply remain untouched by his act, as we tend to believe an efficient cause is by its effect; rather creativity, perhaps more than any other activity, is self-formative as well as formative of an object. One is changed in the process of making; one discovers oneself (more actually than one "expresses" oneself) in the creative act; one achieves what Albert Hofstadter calls an articulation of self as well as of work, by and through the work itself. The relation, in short, that obtains between human creator and thing created is one of mutual conditioning. Something of oneself is carried over into the work with the work, in the process of becoming what it then is, going to influence one's own being. Creativity, then, is that activity whose end or purpose is realized as such only in the activity; which calls for a working with, rather than a coercive control over, the principles or structure of a medium; which infuses a power or vitality and is thoroughly formative in nature; which gives rise through its own singularity to objects whose uniqueness is central to their definition; and which is a kind of play or disciplined spontaneity which goes in turn to influence or condition its agent. CAUSALITY AND CREATIVITY Georg Heinrik von Wright, in his interesting work Causality and Determinism is extremely modest in his ontological claims. He doesn't believe that he is in a position to articulate features of reality directly and states accordingly that it is "legitimate to ask which requirements the facts (the world) must satisfy in order that there shall exist a concept, roughly at least like ours, of nomic causation."10 He concludes that on this basis "the world must to some degree approximate to the model of logical atomism."11 But suppose we were to follow a somewhat different path and ask what model of

experience is most appropriately in accord with our understanding of creativity and with the facts of our experience, and then from this model derive our concept of causality. Rather than starting with "our notion of nomic causation" and asking what the world must be like to satisfy that concept we start with an account of experience and see what concept of causality is best in accord with it. We start then with perception. And we may meet the issue directly by asking. Do we actually experience mere states of affairs and atomic events or do we experience processes, event-patterns to which. for a variety of reasons, we assign beginnings and ends? Now it is not possible to elaborate here a theory of perception; it should, however, be noted that differing psychologies of perception (gestaltist, genetic) do seem to agree that our basic experience of the empirical world is an active one of our purposive engagement with dynamic structural-unities; that what we perceive are processes and not simply things frozen in space and time. We do, of course, mark-off from continuous changes those aspects that are of special interest to us and regard them as relatively isolable. We do not experience the world as a Bergsonian pure dureé, rather we see things and events as "distinct" insofar as they allow for individuality, for being identifiable ontically as particulars; and it is this kind or measure of individuality rather than Humean "distinct existences" which is the stuff of our experience. Let us look at this a bit further. J. L. Mackie argues that "distinct existences" are indeed required for the meaning of causality. "For this purpose [of saying what causal statements mean]" he writes, "it is sufficient to say that someone will not be willing to say that X caused Y unless he regards X and Y as distinct existences."12 Now if all Mackie means by "distinct existences" is that we recognize that a change has occurred in a manner that calls for our recognizing an event and other consequences taking place, then this is trivially true; in order for the claim to be of any philosophic interest his meaning must be stronger ontically and, as with von Wright, it must involve at least a model of the world as reducible to "atomic events" of the sort that can only enter into "external relations" as "entities" that are otherwise self-defined. But this account of experience neglects the fact that events are histories. What we experience are not events corresponding to (atemporal) logical entities, but events having their own direction and aim. or what I shall call their "intentionality." By the "intentionality" of an event or process I mean its aiming to be what is natural and appropriate to it. The intentionality of a process is the "direction" it takes, not spatially so much as ontically; we conceive of a process as tending, in its normality, toward some state appropriate to it. Intentionality does not imply a "final cause" or even a telological view as such. It means only that all that we experience as process has for us, by virtue of our experience, a normal state or becoming of its being. Normality is of central importance here. It is the principle that unites the continuity of a process with what the particular process is. Now what makes for the specific normality of any given process is for the sciences and other modes of inquiry to determine (the normality of a billiard ball in motion with its particular velocity and direction may be articulated by explanatory concepts of physics, perhaps even adequately for some purposes by classical mechanics); it is enough for us to acknowledge it conceptually. The reality of normality, however, is borne out for us by our understanding of creativity as well as by the apparent facts of perceptual experience. We saw in our discussion of interjective control and immanent purposiveness how a creative act develops its purpose in the very process of its artwork-making; which is to say that it does not have a fixed, predetermined end but one that emerges in the activity through the artist's sense of rightness. This rightness, we argued, was related to the nature of integrity and, accordingly, to the idea of interjective control. The creative act is with and through a medium; this demands that the artist work with the inherent structure or rhythm--the material and spiritual potentialities--of his medium. Creativity is par excellence a process of altering

and bringing to realization potential normalities. As paradigmatic for an analysis of causality, creativity is that process which controls, through active, intelligent participation, the principles of a medium so as to establish an aiming or intentionality of those elements which it selects, organizes, controls. This understanding of creativity provides a major clue, I believe, to a meaning of causality that is commensurate with the facts of our experience. The concept of process--with processes rather than atomic occasions being the fundamental content of our perceptual experience--involves that of aim and intentionality. We conceive of an alteration in states of affairs or events as either disrupting some present, relatively achieved state (e.g., an "inanimate object" at rest, whose aim it is precisely to be at rest), or, as the case may be, of preserving, through counteracting force, a given state of affairs; or of inhibiting the fulfillment of the natural course of some event: or of bringing it to a fulfillment that would not otherwise obtain (e.g., as when caring for--watering, trimming--a plant). "Disrupting," "inhibiting". . . imply an otherwise normality--what the process is in its essential character as the process which it is. As the psychologist A. Michotte has pointed out: . . . Psychologists of the Gestalt school (Wertheimer, Kohler, Duncker, and others) have emphasized that, when certain processes are in course of taking place, they `require' to be continued in a definite way. If they are halted, or if their direction suddenly changes, this produces a feeling of deception, surprise, or displeasure. This can be seen in particular in the case of rhythmic series, melodies, the shape of the path traversed by an object, and even in the case of a simple, fairly rapid movement when the object in motion suddenly ceases to move. Conversely, when the process is continued without interruption, the result seems satisfying or normal; it seems to develop `according to plan'. The same no doubt also applies to the experience of causality; and this is probably one of the characters which differentiates it in such a clear way from a simple impact in which the moving object comes to a halt. It is difficult, however, to see here a genuine necessity; it is rather an `invitation', and an invitation is neither an obligation nor a decree of fate.13 The meaning of causation (at least as given to us initially in a single-case experience) is, we argue, bound-up with the concept of normality. An event A is a cause of another event (or object) B if and only if among all other conditions present, relevant and necessary A alters the intentionality of B so as to interfere, bring to a fulfillment that would not otherwise obtain, or inhibit that intentionality. Mary throws a stone through a closed window, shattering the glass. The thrown stone, the causal event, alters radically the normality of the closed window. And the causal meaning of the thrown stone is found precisely in this interference. The determination that the thrown stone is the cause, the verification of causality, might very well be had only by an analysis of conditionship relations (daylight, Mary's arm being in the right condition for throwing a stone of a certain weight . . .) and involve the assertion of an appropriate counterfactual conditional that will ensure that the glass would not have been shattered if Mary had not thrown the stone, but the meaning of the event, as causal, is found in the radical alteration of the window's normality. John turns on the heat under the pot of water and brings it to a boil. The `boiling water' is a disruption in the accepted field of normality. The `heating,' as cause, involves the counterfactual belief that the situation would have remained as it was, the water not boiling, except for the extraordinary presence of the heat. Henry is driving along in his automobile but is suddenly disturbed by some unusual sounds in the engine. He brings his car home and examines it closely, seeking to find a way to eliminate the unwanted noise. He cleans the points and then discovers that the car now rides smoothly and noiselessly. The event of cleaning is the cause of the car now running properly (just as the dirty points may be said to be the cause of the noise); the cleaning brings to fulfillment that would not

otherwise obtain in the circumstances, the intentionality of the engine to run smoothly and noiselessly. H. L. A. Hart and A. M. Honore in their interesting work Causation in the Law write: So we cause one thing to move by striking it with another, glass to break by throwing stones, injuries by blows, things to get hot by putting them in fires. Here the notions of cause and effect come together with the notion of means to ends and of producing one thing by another. Cases of this exceedingly simple type are not only those where the expressions cause and effect have their most obvious application; they are also paradigms for the causal language used of very different types of cases.14 They go on to state that Human action in the simple cases, where we produce some described effect by the manipulation of an object of our environment, is an interference in the natural course of events which makes a difference in the way these develop . . . . Common sense experience teaches us that, left to themselves, the things we manipulate, since they have a `nature' or characteristic way of behaving, would persist in states or exhibit changes different from those which we have learnt to bring about in them by our manipulation. The notion that a cause is essentially something which interferes with or intervenes in the course of events which would normally take place, is central to the commonsense concept of cause, and is at least as essential as the notions of invariable or constant sequence so much stressed by Mill and Hume.15 It might appear, however, that we have placed ourselves on the circumference of a vicious circle by maintaining that the meaning of causality has to do with the alteration of normality, where the normality itself is defined in other lawlike terms which presuppose causality. The answer, I think, is that we have different kinds of analysis taking place: in the one, we are asking what is the fundamental meaning of causality as this concept is based on our experience--and we find this to be alteration of intentionality or normality; in the other, we are asking what is the ground or basis of normality, and this second-order, albeit more general question, we will argue, is not analyzable conceptually into more basic notions, although answers in particular contexts may be given to it in the descriptive and explanatory terms of various scientific inquiries. Von Wright has, I believe, correctly noted that The confidence which I have that the water in the kettle would have boiled if heated is a confidence in the difference which the presence of a cause would have made to the prevailing situation. . . . Confidence of the latter kind presupposes confidence of the former kind, that is: confidence in the effects of causes (nomic connections) presuppose confidence in the causeless continuation of certain normal states of affairs.16 We assign priority to the sense of `cause' that is based on experience, then, as this sense is precisely what is involved in our usual concern with "what is the cause of" questions. Nomic generalization is experientially derivative. We know about intentionalities and their alterations in experience before we know the "laws of nature" qua laws. A young child knows what to expect when he throws a wall against the wall without his knowing the laws of trajectory and impact. It might also be argued that when science asks the `why' or `how' of the normality of a given process it is not so much asking for causes as it is for reasons that are expressible mathematically in functional terms. Laws are not themselves causes. In the example of the boiling water, the "law" that certain liquids will boil when brought to certain temperatures is not the cause of the water's boiling; rather it expresses only the structure of normality of a given process. P. T. Geach is thus able to write correctly that Scientists do not describe natural events in terms of what always happens. Rather certain natural agents . . . are brought into the description, and we are told what behavior is proper to this set of bodies in these circumstances. If such behavior is not realized, the scientist looks for a new, interfering agent . . .

.17 We are interested then, for the most part, in finding the cause for some event or state of affairs when an alteration in what we take to be the normality of a process occurs. Causal events of alteration (interference, inhibition. . . . ) of an aiming or intentionality as such are thus always single-case; that is, it is always a particular interference that takes place, albeit some single-case situations may be seen as instances of causal uniformity or of nomic generalization (e.g., the boiling of a pot of water at a certain temperature). This particularity needs, I believe, to be part and parcel of our meaning of causality for this reason, that a causal event implies spatial-temporal determinations that are never exactly repeatable. It may very well be that for certain kinds of physical causal events the factor of particularity is rather unimportant in seeking the cause(s) of certain phenomena (e.g., in medical science the search for the cause(s) of a disease is carried out with little, if any, importance attached to the fact that it is Tom or Alice . . . , with their special physical particularities, who is suffering from the disease), yet the dimension of particularity seems evident for the meaning of causality (and even in modern medical science there is a growing awareness that it is not enough to see a patient as just an instance of a "disease," but rather as a particular organism, whose particularity must holistically be addressed).18 The idea of causation as interference with intentionality also allows us to appreciate the mutuality (or karma. if you will) that often clearly obtains in cause-effect relationships--i.e., the effect in turn affecting the cause or the cause simply being affected by its "experience" as a cause. Many causal relations in our experience (especially in the domain of human action) are potentially symmetrical in the sense that my doing something (talking to someone in a certain way) in turn gives rise to activities directed toward me, which affect me in a variety of ways. And all causes as events suffer some consequences of their actions as causes. Events. as we have said, are histories, not logical entities. In actual experience an event occurs in a context of processes, which is to say that events do not just take place, appearing as it were out of a void. as selfsufficient, self-defined things, they occur in, and are subject to, structures of continuous change. The stone thrown into the glass window is not the "same" stone it was before; it too is affected by the impact. The thrown stone as event has its own little history. This mutuality, which is exhibited to a pre-eminent degree in creativity, where the very being of the artist is conditioned by his act, is also becoming increasingly apparent in technology with the advent of many "self-regulating" ("feedback") systems. Contemporary technology in many ways, it seems, is working from more organic models and away from simple, one-directional, one-dimensional mechanical ones. Interdependence with intertwining histories--mutuality--become the key terms of both animate and inanimate processes. In sum: I have proposed that instead of taking as paradigmatic for the meaning of causality those everyday events that seem to lend themselves nicely to explanation by mechanistic causal accounts (billiard balls hitting one another; matches being ignited) we start with one of the most complex forms of human experience, creativity; that we seek to understand that experience as far as we can in its own terms and that we then apply that understanding back to the question of the meaning of causality. We want, in short, to see if an understanding of creativity can enrich our understanding of causality. We saw that creativity, as exemplified in the making of an artwork, may be characterized as that activity `whose end or purpose is realized as such only in the activity; which calls for a working with, rather than a coercive control over, the principles or structure of a medium; which infuses a power or vitality and is thoroughly formative in nature; which gives rise through its own singularity to objects whose uniqueness is central to their definition; and which is a kind of play or disciplined spontaneity which goes in turn to influence or condition its agent.'

In answering the question--What concept of causality best accords with the nature of creativity and the nature of experience?--we found, first of all, that the notion of process must take precedence over atomic events as the content of experience. "Process" means that events are histories; that we do not experience events as corresponding to atemporal logical entities, but as they have their own direction and aim--their intentionality. A process tends in its normality toward some state appropriate to it. Causation may then be seen as an alteration of that intentionality. We are concerned with causal explanation when an alteration in what we take to be the normality of a process occurs. And thus causal events are single-case; it is always a particular interference that takes place, albeit this particularity (to which insufficient attention on the whole has been paid in analyses of causality), while denying strict repeatability, does not rule out universality. When causality is understood in terms of this somewhat more organic model (which itself seems closer to contemporary science and technology, with its self-regulating systems) the mutuality of cause and effect, the event as a history, also becomes evident. The meaning of causality, then, as related to creativity and our ordinary experience, is to be found in alteration of intentionality--of the normality of a process. While the normality of a specific process might call for nomic categories the meaning of causality nevertheless may be kept distinct from questions of what constitutes normality; the latter being answerable only in terms of particular cases. University of Hawaii Honolulu, Hawaii USA . NOTES l. J. Ayer, "What is a Law of Nature," Revue Internationale de Philosophie, X (1956), 144-65, in Philosophical Problems of Causality, edited by Tom L. Beauchamp (Encino, California: Dickenson Publishing Company, 1974), p. 83. 2. Richard Taylor, "Causation," in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Editor in Chief, Paul Edwards (New York: Macmillan, Free Press, 1967), II, p. 63. 3. George Henrik von Wright, Causality and Determinism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974), p. 13. 4. Ibid., p. 17. von Wright believes that the concept of causal necessity, which is required to distinguish nomic from accidental regularities, is intelligible only with reference to counterfactual conditionality; and that the latter in turn makes sense only when seen in relation to a concept of action. "When saying that p is a causally sufficient condition of q, we are not saying only that, as a matter of fact, whenever p obtains, q obtains, too. We also claim that on all occasions in the past, when p did in fact not obtain, q would have obtained, had p obtained on those occasions. Only if the proposition that p is a sufficient condition of q warrants the truth of the counterfactual conditional proposition in question, does the conditionship relation here amount to a causal relation." (Ibid., p. 8). He goes on later to ask: "Can a singular counterfactual conditional statement ever be verified?" He answers: "ln order to verify it, we should have to substitute for a state which obtained at a certain stage in the world's history another state which did not obtain at that very stage. In any straightforward sense of `verification' this is certainly not possible." Ibid., pp. 37-38. 5. Richard Taylor Action and Purpose (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1966), p. 29. 6. Ibid., p. 32. In somewhat different terms J. L. Mackie makes this same point: a simple regularity theory, a cause is both necessary and sufficient for its effect in such a sense that it follows automatically that the effect is equally sufficient and necessary for its cause: `Whenever an event of type B occurs an event of type E has preceded it and whenever an event of type A occurs an event of type B will follow." The Cement of the Universe: A Study of Causation (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1974). p. 160. 7. See Vincent Tomas, "Creativity in Art," The Philosophical Review. LXVII, (1958), and Monroe C. Beardsley, "On the Creation of Art," The Journal of

Aesthetics and Art Criticism. XXIII (1965). 8. Cf. "On the Concept of Art," forthcoming in The Journal of Chinese Philosophy. 9. This is the first of the famous six canons of classical Chinese painting as set down by Hsieh Ho in the fifth century. 10. von Wright, p. 55. 11. Ibid. 12. Mackie, p. 32. 13. A. Michotte, The Perception of Causality (London: Methuen & Co., 1963), p. 261. 14. H.L.A. Hart and A.M. Honoré, Causation in the Law (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1959), p. 27. 15. Ibid. 16. von Wright, p. 43. 17. As quoted in Mackie, p. 75. 18. The denial of strict repeatability in favor of particularity, in short, does not rule out universality. It is quite possible, and indeed necessary, that we recognize regularities in experience without our having to ascribe a sameness to the particular events that constitute the regularities. The "law of gravity" may happily obtain even though one could never `drop' the same object under identical conditions more than one time. Non-repeatability of a strict kind and universality are logically independent. CHAPTER XVIII AESTHETIC MEANING OF NATURE AN INDIAN APPROACH BISHNUPADA BHATTACHARYA All art has its genesis in the confrontation of the artist's vision with the material world, both organic and inorganic. These constitute respectively the subjective and objective counterparts of an artistic creation. Just as artistic intuition without its objective correlative is an empty form, so the objective counterpart or content of an artistic production, however rich and varied by itself, cannot lead to perfection without the aid of the penetrative vision of the artist. This vision brings the great variety constituting the content of art into a coherent whole, adding a new value to the otherwise discrete facts and imbuing the dead matter with the glow of sublimity. For the attainment of knowledge, at least on the mundane plane, neither pure consciousness nor objects as such are enough, their interaction alone making the act of cognition meaningful. Similarly, in the field of artistic creation it is the artist's spiritual vision working upon the objective world, internal and external, organic and inorganic, that makes his act of creation a success. Consequently, in ancient India, as in the West, great importance was attached to these two essential factors of artistic creation, the subjective and objective, the spiritual and material, relating to the major divisions of art such as poetry, painting, sculpture, music and architecture. Therefore, the pronouncements of great thinkers on these two factors and their mutual interaction deserve to be studied with both care and respect. In the present paper I shall attempt to analyze the findings of the ancient Indian critics of art which bear on this particular field and bring them into a coherent body of norms. Its intent is to assist the enlightened layman to grasp the underlying mystery of the process of artistic creation and to compare the ancient Indian approach with corresponding ones in the West. The present study is based mainly upon observations in the masterly works bearing on Sanskrit literary criticism, most of which are applicable also to other fine arts. THE ARTIST The two prerequisites that make up the personality of the artist or poet are creative vision or imagination (pratibh-a) and wide knowledge of Nature (vyutpatti). These correspond to the above-mentioned subjective and objective counterparts of a work of creative art. As the second prerequisite is essential for making the content of a work rich and varied we will treat it first. For the attainment of vyutpatti or wide knowledge of organic and inorganic nature all

critics give priority to direct first-hand experience of the varied aspects of the universe. Early critics like Da.n.din, Bh-amaha, V-amana and Rudra.ta have unanimously stressed the importance of first-hand acquaintance of loka, lokav.rtta and loka-svabh-ava. Bh-amaha, the eminent poet of the 7th century A.D. (circa), while enumerating the different subjects to be mastered by a poet, includes loka in the list: Sabd-as-chandobhidh-an-arth-a itih-as-asray-a.h kath-a.h/ Loke yukti.h kal-as ceti mantavy-a.h k-avyagairhyam-i// Vamana, again, gives the first place to loka: loke vidy-a prak-ir.na-nca k-avy-ang-ani What is loka? Amara, in his lexicon, gives loka as a synonym of bhuvan and jana. Vamana, in his K-avy-ala.mk-ara-S-utra (1.3.2) equates loka with loka-v.rtta, which has been explained as "lokah sth-avara-jangam-atm-a/ tasya vartana.m v.rttam iti//." Thus, it is evident that by loka is meant not only the entire organic and inorganic universe, but also their distinctive modes of living, their customs, manners, and everything relating to them. The commentator Gopendra Tripurahara justifies the priority attached to loka by V-amana in his gloss: "Loka iti/ var.nan-iyam antare.na ki.m var.nyata-iti loka.h prathamam uddi.s.ta.h/." There can be no doubt that without the artist's acquaintance with loka in the widest sense his creation becomes devoid of content or what is to be expressed and is reduced to an empty form. Similarly, Rudra.ta in his K-avy-ala.mk-ara includes loka-sthiti among the subjects of minute study and observation on the part of a poet. As he says: chando-vy-akara.na-kal-a-lokasthiti-pada-pad-artha-vij- ñ-an-at/ yukt-ayuktaviveko vyutpattir iya.m sam-asena// Namis-adhu, in his gloss thereon, explains loka-sthiti as: loka.h sva.hprabh.rtayas te.su car-acar-adisvar-upaniyama.h sthiti.h. The poet has to move within the limits set down by loka-svabh-ava, and he can transgress them only at his own risk. Nevertheless, he does have a type of poetic license to go beyond the strict confines of loka for achievement of the desired aesthetic effect. Bharata, the eponymous author of the N-atvas-astra. attaches the highest importance to loka as a valid source of knowledge (pram-ana), giving it pride of place among the three pram-a.nas recognized by him: "Loka vedas tath-adhy-atmam pram-a.nam trividha.m sm.rtam/." For dramatists and producers of dramatic performances loka has the highest authority as, in Bharata's words, n-a.tya is lok-atmaka. Loka has the greatest authority from the viewpoint of dramatic art as the evidence of loka cannot be invalidated even by s-astra's. As Bharata says: loka-siddha.m bhavet siddha.m n-a.tya.m lok-atmaka.m tath-a/ na ca sakya.m hi lokasya sthavarsya carasya ca/ s-astre.na nir.naya.m kartu.m bh-avace.st-a-vidhi.m prati// n-an-a-s-il-a.h prak.rtayah s-ale n-at.ta.m prati.s.thitam/ tasm-allokapram-a.nam hi vijñeya.m n-a.tya-yokt.rbhi.h// Commenting on these verses Abhinavagupta observes in his Abhinava-bh-arati: Yat loke siddham tat siddham/ na tat kasyacit asiddham iti y-avat/ nahi lokaprasiddhim apahnotu.m kascit smartha.h/ Suvipratipannasy-api tadapahnave k-a.s.thap-a.s-a.nat-apattiprasang-at/ The importance of loka, loka-sthiti, loka-y-atr-a, loka-prasiddhi, loka-v.rttanata, is also duly emphasized not only in poetry and drama, but in other fine arts as well, especially in the art of painting. A verse of Silparatna indicates the broad scone of this art: jangam-a sth-avar-a v-a ye santi (-tyatra) bhuvanatraye/ tattatsvabh-avatas te.s-a.m kara.na.m citra.m ucyate// From the above citations, there can be little doubt as to the awareness on the part of artists and critics of the importance of an intimate acquaintance with the varied cosmic creation for their proper representation in works of art such as poetry, drama, painting, etc.

THE WORLD OF NATURE AND THE ARTIST'S CREATION At this point the question arises: What is the relation of the objective world of Nature to the artist's creation? How is Nature to be represented in a work of art? In the following section some representative Indian views bearing on this issue will be discussed. In the N-atyas-astra Bharata designates dramatic art as anuk.rti, which is employed frequently as a synonym of n-a.tya: `tadante' nuk.rtirbaddh-a', on which Abhinavagupta comments: anuk.rtir iti `n-a.tyam' Dramatic art is seen as a form of `imitation'. Dramatic art is seen as a form of `imitation'. It is also called anuk-irtana. As Bharata observes with reference to n-a.tya, `trailokyasy-asya sarvasya n-a.tyam bh-av-anuk-irtanam'. In drama this anuk-ara or amu- k-irtana or representation is achieved through the four recognized modes of acting (abhinaya)--viz., -angika, v-acika, -ah-arya and sattvika. In narrative poetry, either prose or verse, this is done by linguistic expression known as varnana in the terminology of Sanskrit aesthetics. Therein lies the main difference between these two principal art-forms, succinctly stated in the following couplet attributed to Bha.t.tan-ayaka: anubh-ava-vibh-av-an-a.m var.nan-a k-avyam ucyte/ te.sa-a eva prayogastu n-a.tya.m g-it-adi-rañjitam// How is this var.nana or abhinaya related to the objects belonging to the organic and inorganic universe? Are things, as found in the world identical with those represented in works of art such as poetry, drama and painting? Is the Himalaya as it appears to our perception the same as the Himalaya described by K-alid-asa in the First Canto of the Kum-ara-Sambhava? It is obvious that objective reality cannot be identical with aesthetic representation. The objective universe is penetrated through and through by a continuous nexus of causality, some objects being causes (k-ara.na), some effects (k-arya) and others concomitants (sahakarin). Somehow this nexus has to be broken by the artist in representing the universe in his work of art. He has to choose some and discard others; he may have to reverse the causal order that is apparent in the objective world; he may have to introduce new elements that had no place in the historical sequence of events. Thus the artistic representation cannot prima facie be an exact replica of the cosmic universe that constitutes the material of the artist. It is this difference between the two realities, namely, the objective and the aesthetic, that has been stressed by Indian critics. To avoid any possible confusion between the two they have made use of the terms vibh-ava, anubh-ava and vyabhicari-bh-ava in lieu of karana, k-arya and sahak-arin. Thus realism, in the strict sense, as characterizing the process of artistic creation is something of the sort of a misnomer. The artist's world is distinct from the world of reality as popularly conceived. This point has been very beautifully stated by Bhatta Tauta, a celebrated critic and teacher of the great Abhinavagupta, in the following couplet cited in the latter's Abhinava-bh-arat-i: Kavisaktyarpit-a bh-av-as-tanmay-ibh-ava-yuktitah/ Yath-a sphurantyam-i k-aavy-an-na tath-a' dhyak.sata.h kila// The things of the world that the artist perceives are the raw materials out of which he builds up his own universe by a judicious selection of the vibh-avas, etc., which from his point of view alone possess reality. Abhinavagupta, too, stresses this point frequently in his Abhinava-bh-arati: ete ca vibh-av-anubh-ava-vyabhic-arir-up-a eva/ na tu tadatirikta.m jagti kiñcid asti prayoge// IMITATION OF NATURE If the artist's universe thus differs from the cosmic universe how can art be regarded as imitation (anuk.rti, amuk-irtana)? What is the exact significance of the term anukara.na as applied to a work of art? Is it mere simulation (Sad.rsakara.na) of the external reality? How is it possible to imitate persons, things and moods that are not present, that are spacio-temporally inaccessible to the artist and as such not susceptible to his perception? Thus, the concept of

imitation is a basic theme that underlies the creative process of the artist and constitutes its raison d'être. Its riddle must be solved before we can hope to understand the relation of the artist's world with the objective world accessible to our mundane experience. Abhinavagupta in his masterly exposition of Bharata's N-a.tyas-astra, critically analyzes the concept of anukara.na or anuk-irttana as applied to dramatic art. After a thorough analysis of this concept he comes to the conclusion that imitation, in the usually accepted sense of the term, is totally inapplicable in art, for even in our day-to-day affairs, imitation is a source of ridicule and laughter. `Parace.s.t-anukara.n-addh-asa.h samupaj-ayate.' In the ultimate analysis, anukarana is a form of anuvyavas-aya or mental reconstruction that is an entirely new creation by means of the artist's intensive mental concentration or sam-adhi. Of course, the poet or artist collects his raw materials from his own observations and other accessible sources. When these materials are represented in art, they assume an altogether new complexion; the resemblance they bear to the former is only apparent and not real. This apparent resemblance cannot be achieved by means of imitation in the ordinary sense as the conditions of imitation are available neither to the artist nor to the connoisseur. As imitation in art is distinct from a mere reflection as in a mirror of things of the world or of nature and man, the poet's world must be looked upon as a completely novel creation and not a mere replica or projection of the world of our ordinary experience. The rules that govern the objective world are altogether ineffective with reference to the artist's universe. The laws of providence cannot touch the process of artistic creation. As Mammata puts it, the poet's creation is niyati-k.rta-niyama-rahit-a. The artist portrays, by means of words or other media, things beautiful and ugly, attractive and repulsive, noble and mean, high and lowly. Whatever be their real nature in the objective world, they are completely transformed in the process of artistic creation and all of them serve to achieve the sole purpose of the artist, namely, evocation of the desired emotional states in the minds of the connoisseurs. It is precisely because the poet or the artist has the unique gift of transforming the materials that he culls from the objective world that he is called praj-apati or the creator. -Anandavardhana, the celebrated author of the Dhvany-aloka, refers to this unique creative power of the artist in the following memorable stanzas: ap-are k-avya-sa.ms-are kavir eka.h praj-apati.h/ yath-asmai rocate visva.m tathedam parivartate// S.rnagri cet kavi.h k-avye j-ata.m rasamayam jagat/ Sa eva v-itar-agas cen-n-irasa.m sarvam eva tat// This power of evoking the emotions is not traceable to things as they are in the objective world. It is conferred on them by the artist by means of the artistic expression through the medium he uses, be it words, colours, stone or musical notes. As R-ajasekhara puts it succinctly in a striking mnemonic verse of his Kavyam-im-a.ms-a: kukavir vipralambhe'pi rasavatt-a.m nirasyati/ astu vastu.su m-a v-a bh-ut kaviv-aci rasa.h sthita.h// Also this power of evoking the desired emotional moods that the so-called real things of the world acquire in works of art depends to a large extent on the emotional mood of the artist himself, for it is this which governs his act of selection and transformation of the raw materials of nature. A thing with no emotional appeal to an indifferent and emotionally incapacitated onlooker may serve as a symbol of deep emotional implication for a true artist with strong emotional bent. The same object may even serve as the symbol of two diametrically opposed emotional moods according to the difference in the artist's psychological makeup. R-ajasekhara, on this point, cites the view of one P-alyak-irtti who emphasizes this selective capacity of the artist and his gift for transformation of the apparently intransigent things of nature in accordance with his inner emotional urge: Yath-a tath-a v-astu vastuno r-upam, vakt.rprak.rti-

vise.s-ayatt-a tu rasavatt-a/ tath-a ca yam artha.m rakta.h stauti ta.m virakto vinindati madhyasthas-tu tatrod-aste/ iti P-alyak-irtti.h// Moreover, the poet or artist does not observe the line of demarcation separating the two broad classes of organic and inorganic nature in day-to-day experience. To his vision these things are not divided into clear compartments; rather, each is invested with properties of the other according to his emotional urge whenever occasion demands it. This has been noted by -Anandavardhana in the following -arya cited in his Dhvany-aloka: bh-av-an acetan-an api cetanavac-catan-an acetanavat/ vyavah-arayati yathe.s.ta.m sukavi.h k-avye svatantratay-a// Thus, he is completely at liberty (svatamtra) to deal with nature, animate and inanimate, unfettered by the laws that govern the material universe. The same thought has been expressed by the great Prakrit poet V-akpatir-aja in the following g-ath-a of his epic Gaü.davaho. It was quoted also by -Anandavardhana in support of his views concerning the fact that the endless variety and novelty of things never grow old and commonplace even though they are viewed by artists of every age and clime and incorporated in their works of art: ataha.t.thie vi tahasa.n.thie vva hiaammi j-a .nivesei/ atthavisese s-a jaa-i vika.daka-a goar-a v-a.n-i// This process of transformation of the inanimate into the animate and vice versa is intensely evident in K-alid-asa's Clous Messenger where the cloud, rivers, hills, trees and creepers are portrayed as if they are all sentient beings. K-alid-asa tries to justify this apparently abnormal outlook from the standpoint of the lovelorn Yak.sa with the observation: `K-am-arta hi prak.rti-k.rpa.n-as cetan-acetane.s.u.' However not only lovers and lunatics but poets and artists as well seem to ignore this dichotomy of Nature into organic and inorganic, animate and inanimate, sentient and insentient, which appears to be one of the basic and ineffable principles of cosmic creation. Though this obliteration of the apparently inviolable principle of division underlying the created universe is an affront to reason in genuine works of art this forms the very quintessence of artistic creation itself. -Anandavardhana, with his keen insight, unerringly points to this basic fact of artistic creation in the Second Uddyota of his Dhvany-aloka in the course of his analysis of the nature of rasavad-ala.m-k-ara thus: Yasm-an-n-astyev-asau acetanavastuv.rtt-anto yatra cetana-vastuv.rtt-anta-yojan-a masty-antato vibh-avatvena// If a poet or artist portrays the objects of nature, whether animate or inanimate, only as they are experienced by ordinary beings, he would be failing in the primary duty of a true artist. It is not the task of an artist to hold a mirror up to nature. In this connection the verses cited by Abhinavagupta in his commentary on the N-a.tyas-astra (XIX. 130) and attributed to his preceptor (Bha.t.ta-Tauta?) deserve to be quoted here as they incorporate the very quintessence of artistic representation: Yad yatr-asti na tatr-asya kavirvar.nanam arhati/ Yann-asambhavi tatr-asya tad var.nya.m saumanasyadam// deso'dridanturo dyaurv-a ta.tit-ku.n.dals-ma.n.dit-a// -id.rk sy-ad athav-a na sy-at ki.m kad-acana kutracit// This transformation of nature in art is discernible in the art of painting also. K-alid-asa gives expression to this basic principle in the Sixth Act of his Abhijñ-anas-akuntala through an utterance of Dusyanta with reference to Sakuntala's miniature portrait which he was painting. yad yat s-adhu na citre sy-at kriyate tattadanyath-a/ tath-api tasy-a l-ava.nya.m rekhay-a kiñcid anvitam// This principle of transformation of natural objects in painting is also traceable in the Mah-abh-arata according to K.semendra, who cites the following stanza in his Kavi-ka.n.th-abhara.na to show Vyasa's acquaintance with the principles of governing the art of painting:

atathy-anyapi tathy-ani darsayanti vicak.sa.n-ah/ same nimnonnat-an-iva citra-karmavido jan-a.h// Transformation of Nature In every form of art this transformation, in a greater or lesser degree according to the nature of the medium employed, is present as an indispensable element, a sine qua non, without which it is not possible to portray nature in works of art. There remains an argument against the validity and justifiability of this apparently basic principle and it had to be answered by the great critics and aestheticians of India as by philosophers of ancient Greece. As we have seen all fine arts, such as drama, painting, poetry, etc., are imitations or representations of nature, whether organic or inorganic. If the artist is free to distort nature, to represent things of the objective world as what in reality they are not, it is obvious that his work is unreal, not true to nature, a falsification of the essence of things that are commonly apprehended by men of the world. Drama, poetry, painting, sculpture, music and dance all become unreal appearances; they are asatya or untrue, false. Thus, it is not morally justified to encourage the practice of these arts and their study in a society that seeks the moral edification of its members. That such an objection was actually raised against the validity of artistic creation is evident from a reference to a similar view against poetic art in particular and traceable in R-ajasekhara's K-avyam-ima.ms-a, namely, `asaty-arth-abhidh-ayitv-at nopade.s.taya.m k-avyam-ityeke.' Is this charge against artistic creation valid? Should the artist's creation by denounced as false because it is not a faithful representation or reflection of the things of the world? The question is important and Indian thinkers have tried to uphold the validity and truth of artistic creation by analyzing the nature of the intuitive vision by the artist. This alone reveals to his mind the true nature of things as represented in his work. The artistic intuition is called `divine' (divya) and the artists and poets `divya-d.ro', i.e., endowed with the gift of divine sight. No human eye can see the nature of things which is glimpsed by the artist's imaginative intuition (pratibh-a) alone as if in a flash. It is the third eye of Lord Siva which can probe into the mysteries of things irrespective of their spatio-temporal determination. A thing has two aspects--one that is universal (s-am-anya), and the other particular and individual (visi.s.ta), it is shared by no other thing in the world. The first is amenable to the perception of ordinary beings, but the second or the particular and distinctive nature of things can be grasped by artistic imagination alone. Thus, if the things as portrayed by the poetic intuition appear not to be in harmony with the way they appear to ordinary mortals in their cognitive acts, they must not be denounced as false. It might well be that the things as they are perceived by ordinary folk are themselves false or mere appearances which hide beneath them the true intrinsic essence of things. The poet's imaginative insight removes the variegated and multiform veils covering the inner reality. For this reason artistic imagination is ranked highest among all the possible cognitive faculties--perception, recollection or reasoning--by ancient Indian thinkers. As poets and artists are possessed of this rare faculty, they are regarded as supreme amongst wise men, even above scientists and philosophrs. In this context, the observations of a distinguished Western critic on the nature of imagination, particularly of the Promethean type, may be quoted as they so closely resemble the findings of the early Indian thinkers on the subject: We have found the stolen fire identified with reason and knowledge, but it is probably better to identify it with the symbolic imagination: We have not grown so accustomed to the creative power of imagination as to think it common, in the nature of the human case, like knowledge or reason. We think imagination a wonderful power, unpredictable and diverse, and we are satisfied to call it divine and to ascribe to it an early association with transgression. A Promethean says of it that it is the most precious part of man, perhaps the only precious part, the only respect in which man's claim to superior character is tenable. This intuition of the artist is comparable, indeed almost identical, with the

Yogic intuition caused by intense concentration of the mind as defined by Patanjali in his Yoga-S-utras. The poet is a Yogin and the creative process is a form of yoga. He intuits the things entering his universe in a state of trance or sam-adhi. Just as the Yogin finds endless transcendental bliss by probing into the inmost essence of things that are the objects of his meditation, so the poet and artist experience supreme bliss upon intuiting the nature of things represented in their works of art. V-amana, in his K-avy-ala.m-k-ara-S-utra (I.3.17 and III.2.1), stresses the importance of this essential factor of poetic creation, namely, concentration of mind (avadh-ana or sam-adhi) by withdrawing inward the faculties that tend to move outward towards external objects. This is also the view of one Sy-amadeva, who is referred to by R-ajasekhara in his K-avyam-im-a.ms-a. It is not true, therefore, that the objects revealed by artistic vision, be they vyakta or s-ak.sma, are not true to their nature. Rather things as they are represented by the artist in his state of supreme meditation are more real than their so-called real counterparts in the objective world, which are mere shadows of the former. Plato's censure of artists cannot stand the test of critical analysis; indeed, it is quite the opposite. The verdict of the Indian critics is above reproach when they boldly and unambiguously assert: n-asatya.m n-ama kiñcana k-avye yastu stutye.su-arthav-ada.h/ sa na param kavikarma.ni srutau ca s-astre ca loke ca// The artist tries to give expression to his inner vision attained by virtue of deep meditation and trance through the medium proper to his art. Artistic representation is not at all, as usually conceived, imitation or reflection of an object. It may be regarded, however, as imitation or expression of the mental image of the artist conjured up by his imaginative intuition. With this mental image the impressions, feelings, sense of values and deep emotions are so indissolubly associated that the mental image is an altogether new creation; the resemblance that it apparently bears to things of nature is only superficial. The artist's mental vision is but an idealized version of the original object that gave the initial impetus to his act of intuition; by no means can it be equated with it. According to the views of some empistemological theorists, however, the nature of artistic intuition has some correspondence with the perception which lies at the root of all our day-to-day activities. Their theory is that the thing out there which causes our perception is not identical with the object perceived. This is but a mental image with some likeness to the object outside. Therefore, ordinary acts of perception, too, are beset with the same problems of truth and validity which appear to be inseparable from artistic intuition. In fact, there can be no justification, at least technically, for an unbridgeable gulf between artistic intuition and the ordinary perception of laymen. The main points of difference between the two lie in the fact that in ordinary perception, though the object perceived is a mental image, it is not enriched with the subjective spiritual content that is present in the idealized vision of the artist and marks it off as something sui generis. The image intuited by the artist at the moment of his creative activity is dissociated from its empirical determinants like space, time, personal relations, question of self-interest, profit and loss and a multitude of other similar factors which are invariable concomitants of our mundane experiences. As such, its intuition is always one of pure bliss, howsoever ugly, abominable or frightening it might appear outside the province of art proper. In art, however, the creative intuition that unravels the inherent mysteries of things lifts them to a transcendental level that has no real liaison with their counterparts in the world of ordinary experience. As the personal factor is absent from the point of view of the artist and the connoisseur, both feel the same supreme ethereal pleasure caused by all genuine works of art. This total obliteration of all sorts of personal determinations is the outcome of the process of tammay-ibhavana, along with the consequent s-adh-ara.n-ik.rti of all the elements represented in a true work of art. These are the ultimate results of the imaginative vision that lights up the very depths of their

being and as such is a source of transcendental bliss foreign to our day-to-day experience. It is clear then that artistic truth cannot be judged by the application of the same standards valid for our worldly experience. Rather, it is the experience itself that is of prime importance and is the goal and substance of artistic activity, be it of the artist himself or the connoisseur (sah.rdaya). In truth, the objective reality (v-astavatva) of the thing represented in art is of very little significance. Indeed, the desired experience and the state of transcendental bliss is all the more delightful if it is the result of aesthetic experience achieved by means of apparently objectively unreal (av-astava) things conjured up by the artist's creative imagination (ap-urva-vastu-nirm-a.n-a k.sam-a prajn-a); only aesthetically blind persons would condemn it as false and illusory. Thus the world of art is not untouched by questions relating to validity which invariably haunt the rest of experiences within the limits of the so-called objective world. The great critic Mahimabha.t.ta, the author of the Vyaktiviveka, declares unhesitatingly: ten-atra gamya-gamakayo.h sacetas-a.m saty-asatyatva-vic--aro nirupayoga eva/ kavya-vi.saye ca v-acya-vyangya-prat-it-in-a.m saty-asatyavic-aro nirupayoga eveti tatra pram-a.n-antarapar-ik.sopah-as-a-yaiva sampadyata--iti// Mahimabha.t.ta, thus, gives expression to one of the eternal truths regarding the secret of aesthetic activity in every sphere of art, whether it be poetry, drama, painting, sculpture or music. The Real and the Ideal At this point it might be asked legitimately: If the artist is completely free to create as he likes according to the dictates of his fancy and imaginary vision (pratibh-a), if he is not in the least bound by laws of causality and similar restrictions which rigidly govern the world of matter, why do critics and aestheticians attach so much importance to his knowledge of loka, or Nature in the broadest sense, as noted at the beginning of this paper? The early Indian critics stress on every occasion the utmost importance of the poet or artist having the most thorough and intimate knowledge of the external world, man and Nature; any deviation from the ways of Nature or lok-atikrama is severely condemned by them. An artist's ignorance or violation of the nature of external reality, due to his insufficient acquaintance with it is noted as a serious flaw by all great critics since all forms of art are mainly based upon loka. As Bh-amaha declares: `tatra lok-asraya.m k-avyam' Thus travesty of the facts relating to the external world of reality, a defect (do.sa) called loka-virodhi, is as much to be avoided as desa-viroghi, k-alavirodhi, kal-a-virodhi, -aama-virodhi and ny-aa-virodhi. Not only has this faithful depicting of the external reality been highly acclaimed by eminent critics, Da.n.din in his K-avy-adarsa asserts with great force, though contrary views are not wanting, that svabh-avokto, which consists in portraying Nature as it is, is the foremost of all poetic figures. Rudra.ta, too, enumerates v-astava as the first of the four principal classes under which all the figures of sense (arth-ala.mk-ara) are comprehended. This v-astava has been defined by him as vastusvar-upakathana, and it comprises twenty-three poetic figures in all. Da.n.din, again, mentions k-anta as one of the ten poetic excellences (k-avyagu.na) which constitute the very soul of poetic composition of the Vaidarbha school; its essence consists in the faithful representation of the nature of things as they are viewed in the world, and this has been recommended chiefly in cases of reportage as also of description. As he lays down: k-anta.m sarva-jagat-k-anta.m laukik-arth-anatikram-at/ tacca v-art-abhidh-ane.su var.nan-asvapi d.rsyate// According to Dandin the reverse of this, though much in favour in the rival school of the Gaudas, is a positive defect designated as atyukti or hyperbole. Thus, faithful representation of external reality or Nature is viewed as supreme excellence in poetry and all other forms of art; any departure from it is severely condemned. It might appear from the pronouncements just quoted that Realism was recommended

by the critics and practised by artists and poets in classical India. But this was not the case. Though conformity to Nature has been extolled by the ancient Indian philosophers of art, this conformity must not be confused with blind imitation or copying of external reality. The artist had the freedom to depart from the nature of reality as it appears to our intelligence in the ordinary world. The poet, even when dealing with historical themes, can introduce events that never happened. The innovations, however, must always be made with a view to the emotion (rasa) in question; they must have propriety (aucitya) in respect to the emotion to be evoked (rasocita). -Thus from the aesthetic standpoint the only real thing to be kept in view by the artist is the emotion and nothing else. If description of external reality with scrupulous faith is not conducive to evoking the emotion in question, the artist should not cling to such a procedure; he would be fully justified in deviating from objective reality and introducing novelty even by distorting the things as they are, provided the emotion can be evoked by this departure. The poetic conventions (kavi-samaya), as they are called in Indian literary criticism, are apparently flagrant violations of objective reality; yet, as expedients to attain the aesthetic ideal, namely, emotional relish (ras-asvada), they are much more real than the so-called naturalistic approach to the external world. Thus, propriety (aucitya) was the basic principle governing the process of transformation or reflection of Nature or external reality in art. It was lack of propriety (anaucitya) that was to be condemned in a genuine work of art, even if it was accompanied by a scrupulously faithful portrayal of the world of reality. From the standpoint of common sense, then, all representation of Nature in art was idealistic. From the standpoint of the artist and art connoisseur, however, it might be looked upon as the very essence of the most pure Realism, insofar as the artist and the aesthete seek to realize through such representations, however distorted they might appear to ordinary intelligence, the only real thing, the rasa, of which the external reality is but a crude garb and embodiment. Art is but the bodying forth, the sprouting of the seed of emotion, which is its very soul or spirit. Similarly, according to Monists of the Advaita School of Vedanta, all this universe is nothing but name and form (n-ama-r-upa); it has only illusory being and conceals under its sheaths that core of endless bliss (-ananda) and consciousness which alone is Real. Indian artists and art-critics, therefore, while admitting the importance of the external universe and man as objects of representation in works of art, did not consider Realism as an inviolable creed in artistic creation. Realism or Naturalism, in the strictest sense of the term, was but a misnomer. To them, every object of the external world is transformed, modified and arranged from an altogether new perspective in the course of the creative process under the guiding spirit of the artist's soul. The artist's emotions, values, impressions, reasoning, and every conceivable spiritual element are as if in a crucible only to take new form and shape in the work of art. Thus, it is foolish to apply dichotomies such as matter and form, words and meanings, poetic embellishments and things embellished, and so on, which are the commonplace of every schoolbook on art criticism. Indian thinkers, though scrupulously and monotonously maintaining in their texts these methods of classification and abstraction, never lost sight of the ultimate truth of artistic creation and aesthetic representation, both of which were indivisible and unanalyzable to the artist and the connoisseur respectively. This basic truth has found expression in a beautiful couplet of Kuntaka's Vakroktijivita, which deserves to be quoted here: ala.mk.rtir ala.mk-aryam apoddh.rtya vivicyate/ tadupayatay-a tattva.m s-ala.mk-arasya k-avyat-a// Thus faar we have dwelt at some length on the `objective correlate' of a work of art. As observed in the beginning, however, without the subjective aspect, the poetic or artistic intuition, no creation is possible. In truth all works of art are but objectifications or hypostatizations of the spiritual vision of the artist, which is another name for pratibh-a in Indian aesthetics.

It is the ideal Truth, the ideal Beauty, the Reality that is ideal in all the subtle nuances of that highly equivocal term which the poet or artist intuits by virtue of his spiritual vision with the aid of his "mind's eye." It is that Truth, that Beauty and that Reality which finds expression through the various media in different forms of art. The essence of that inner reality lies in rasa or the emotional experience of the artist and the connoisseur. Around that nucleus, of course, throng the impressions, varied and multitudinous, inherited or acquired on the basis of the artist's empirical experience, all of which undergo a sort of catalytic transformation at the touch of the magic wand of his spiritual vision. Thus, the creative Process is always selective and, as such, idealistic; it is never realistic or imitative as is popularly conceived. The artist must, perforce, be a keen observer of Nature, of the external reality, in all its infinite multiplicity and minute details. His way of observation, however, his mode of looking at things animate and inanimate, abstract and concrete, is always determined by his emotional bias, which is but another facet of his spiritual vision itself. Thus, Realism and Idealism are inextricably blended in the creative act of the artist. It is then, permissible to characterize artistic creation as a mode either of Realism or of Idealism provided we are conscious of the essential reservation, namely, that they refer respectively to the objective and subjective counterpart of the artist's approach to Nature. Yet, taken in its entirety, the work of art and the artist's creative act is basically transcendental; it cannot be touched by these narrow concepts which are insufficient to explain satisfactorily even our day-to-day empirical experiences. It is that inner vision, or pratibh-a, which is the be-all and end-all of every genuine artistic creation. External reality, with Nature and man as its constituents, is nothing but an indispensable element for realizing the spiritual content of art, a helpful expedient towards suggesting rasa which, according to the greatest lndian theorists of art and aesthetic criticism, is identical with the Absolute or Brahman. Sanskrit College Calcutta. India FOOTNOTES l. All this has been profoundly expressed by Bhatta Tauta, the eminent preceptor of the great Abhinavagupta, who have been cited in the Abhinavabh-arat-i on the Natyas-astra, Chap. XXIX. It is this transcendental aspect of art which has been eloquently emphasized by Bharata, Abhinavagupta, Bha.t.tan-ayaka, and Mammata in their celebrated Treatises on Poetics and Dramaturgy, by Bhoja in his Samaranga.na-S-utradh-ara with reference to the art of painting, and in such texts as Hayas-ir.sa-Pañcar-atra and Is-ana-siva-Gurudeva-Paddhati relating to architecture. EPILOGUE SANTOSH SENGUPTA It is appropriate for two reasons that this international conference on `Man and Nature' has been held at Santiniketan. Firstly, Visva-Bharati was intended by its founder, Rabindranath Tagore, to be a meeting-ground of scholars from different parts of the world: `This is the Visva-Bharati where the whole world makes a home in a single nest.' Secondly, it is in the serene environment of this `abode of peace', hallowed by the memory of his father, Maharshi Debendranath Tagore, that the poet-philosopher mediated on the meaning of man and nature. These continued reflections resulted in significant disclosures whose nature I shall indicate briefly. 1. The fact of the internal or essential unity of man with nature is variously expressed in Tagore's writings. He used the analogy of the bud and the blossom to illustrate the internal character of the connection. For him, the Indian Mind has never hesitated to acknowledge its kinship with nature, its unbroken relationship with all. Tagore sought to support this thesis on different grounds. Of these the most basic was ontic, for he was at pains to show that the unity of man with nature has its source in the One: `Unity comes from the One.' This monistic

commitment was defended by the poet-philosopher throughout his life. The One from which the different levels of unity are derived is God, the Supreme Person with whom man and nature are in close union or harmony. Tagore stressed this in a series of metaphors and similes. In turn, man and nature are expressive of the divine Reality, the Supreme Person, on which they are grounded. Rabindranath's characterization of the ultimate reality as person, which is typical of theism, has support in the Vedas and the Upanisads. `Nothing is better than the Person, he is the ultimate Goal,' says the Katha Upanisad. Distinctively, this theistic conception of God provides the basis for the intimate connection between God, man and nature. It is experience or vision that testifies to the oneness of the Real or the reality of the One. In his Religion of Man the poet claimed that he had this experience at the age of eighteen: `When I was eighteen a sudden spring breeze of the religious experience for the first time came to my life and passed away leaving in my memory a distinct meaning of spiritual reality.' The experience was an awareness of integration of the triad: man, nature, and God. It is significant that this spiritual experience is not one of complete absorption into God. In God man and nature are not merged, but preserved in their deeper meaning or significance. Integration is not negation but the deeper affirmation of what is related. Tagore consistently opposed the mystical and the pantheistic denial of the distinctiveness of man and nature; the theism he affirmed can be characterized as integral. One bond, one Truth, unites God, man and nature. `The world without and the intellect within us--these are the manifestations of the same Sakti,' he states in Dharma. Having known this, we experience the unity of nature with the human mind and the unity of mind with God. 2. Tagore affirmed the unity of man with nature on the basis, not merely of their having God as their source, but also of the relationship disclosed in their actions. This relationship is of two kinds: communication and communion, each having different levels. As this is not the place to discuss the modes of relationship, I shall only highlight some essential points of Tagore's view. He urged that the very possibility of communication between man and nature presupposes that the one is not alien to the other. Broadly speaking, there are two levels of communication--one cognitive and the other existential. The mode of the development of human knowledge in interaction with the natural world indicates the importance of the latter on the cognitive level. Similarly, what is in nature acquires significance in relation to human consciousness. As Tagore put it in Religion of Man, `What we call nature is not a philosophical abstraction but what is revealed to man as nature.' He was consistently opposed to the realist's positing of nature as external and unrelated to human consciousness. This sphere of externality is meaningful only as related to consciousness. The human faculties are so constituted that they admit of natural response to varied phenomena of nature. Tagore was at pains to show the nature and extent of the correlation between changes in nature and the variation in the psychic life of man. Nature is as varied as man's mental life, and there is a correlation between the unity of the human mind and that of nature. The development of the human mind depends upon participation in nature, which in turn conditions the nature of human development. This second level of communication embodies significant insights into the bearing which the relationship with nature has upon the development of man. It is not merely the cognitive, but also the affective and the conative functions of man which develop as a result of the regulating functions of nature. As one gazes upon the starry sky or watches the vast expanse of the sea one invariably experiences an expansion of consciousness with resulting development of feeling and will. In view of this guiding influence of nature upon human consciousness the poet initiated an educational experiment at Santiniketan. Nature, he consistently maintained, can be the preceptor. The provision for open-air instruction and other modes of contact with nature was not intended as a ritual, but as the necessary preparation for the natural development of the human faculties. According to

Tagore children have a sub-conscious mind which like a tree has `the power to gather fruit from the surrounding environment.' He consistently warned against the imposition of rules and text books in dissociation from the surrounding environment: `We teach the child geography but rob him of his earth.' 3. The second mode of relationship with nature, communion, unlike communication, has the characteristics of depth, inwardness, and disinterestedness. This is in evidence on the level of human relationship. Communion has two forms: sympathy and love, which is complete communion. The emphasis on man's loving relation with nature is evident especially in Rabindranath's later poetry. Love is not merely attachment to the beloved, but also insight into his or her nature or uniqueness, that is, it is both feeling and knowledge. In the love-experience of nature man has a sense of attachment to, and also an apprehension of, the object of love. Tagore considered possible a loving relation with nature although it neither is a person nor has the qualities of a person. He opposed an animistic interpretation of nature on the ground that it ignores the distinctiveness of natural phenomena. While his writings employ metaphorical expressions indicative of nature's having psychological levels, these are not to be understood as descriptions of natural phenomena, but as indicators of deep affinity between man and nature. Communion with nature, like communication, can be viewed on both the cognitive and the essential levels. Patently, communion on either level has depth and meaning which communication by the nature of the case does not evince. On the cognitive level communion yields an apprehension which can be characterized as a depthexperience of nature. What Tagore stressed throughout is that this experience or knowledge is the source of insight into the selfhood or inner being of the person who is in communion with nature. In one's love-experience of nature there is a disclosure of the meaning of one's own being. This is in evidence on the plane of human relationship where in man's communion with the beloved there is an unveiling or unconcealing of certain dimensions of one's own being. Phenomenological descriptions of love indicate how the same act of communion is the source of selfknowledge and of disclosure of the other person. Self-discovery, through finding oneself in the other, confers meaning on both: the meaning of one's personhood enhances the significance of the person. This cognitive relationship is typical of man's communion with nature. The way the secrets of one's being are revealed in loving relation with the beauty of nature has been highlighted by the poet in some of his significant writings. Communion on the existential level is in evidence on the model of man's selfdevelopment in his experience of communion with nature. This is the source, not only of his self-knowledge, but of the harmonious development of his existence, because such conditions of self-development as dissociation from the way of ego and the dominating influence of passions and cultivation of the attitude of detachment are prerequisites for communion with nature. Communion or love is not a natural possession, but an ideal to be attained. Tagore consistently maintained that the ego which separates one from other persons and nature has to be overcome. Similarly, the other influences which obstruct the expansion of human consciousness, which conditions communion, need to be transformed. The transforming effects of communion with nature on the existential level are evident on the level of man's communion with man. Perfectionistic ethics affirms that self-realization or development is possible through sacrifice and love. One important positive condition of man's communion with nature is the proper development of his aesthetic sensibility. Because this sensibility is ordinarily dormant in man, he does not have the attitude of communion with nature. He responds to, or communicates with, the beauty around him, but does not have the love-experience of the environment in question. Persons such as poets and aestheticians who have properly developed what is latent in man can have an intimate union with the phenomena in question. One distinctive characteristic of man's communion with nature emphasized by Tagore is disinterestedness. In the experience of communion with nature, man is free from the interested attitude of using this as a means to the fulfillment of certain

ends. This apprehension or experience concerns a natural phenomenon as the end in itself; there is no motivation to control it for some gain. In stressing the disinterested way of man's love of nature Tagore distinguished between loveexperience and love-adventure. The latter, considered as typical of the useapproach to nature, is exemplified in Robinson Crusoe's solitary contact with nature in order to gain something from her, `coaxing her, cooperating with her, exploring her secrets, using all the faculties to win her help.' It follows that the joy or the bliss which results from love of nature is equally disinterested. 4. Thus far, I have discussed the nature of the relationship between man and nature, indicating the bearing of their relationship on their meaning. Now, Man and Nature exemplify two spheres of unity which are so related that one can have full or adequate meaning only in relation to the other; neither constitutes a separate sphere of meaning. Tagore's position can be understood only if one relates his rationale of the relationship between man and nature to its ontic grounding discussed briefly above. The thesis is that the One Supreme Spirit or Person is the source of their relationship or unity. This notion of ontic grounding has an existential import whose understanding illumines in a new perspective the nature of the unity of the triad, man, nature, and God. God is not merely the transcendent or the external source of man and nature, but is immanent to both. This means that what is grounded therein is a natural manifestation or expression of God. Man and nature, then, as expressions of the divine reality have adequate meaning, of which God is the ultimate source. This is the more evident if we view God, the Supreme Person, not merely as the ground but as the goal of man and nature. What differentiates man from the lower creatures is not merely the sense of his limitedness, but the urge or the longing for higher being. As a result of dissatisfaction he has a directedness or thrust to what exceeds his existence. The supreme object of this human longing or transcendence is the highest being, the Supreme Spirit, in union with whom there can be complete fulfillment. In the context of this human situation constituted of discontent, transcendence, and fulfillment one can grasp the real significance of the relation between God and man. Similarly there is incompleteness in nature, which is characterized by incompleteness and imperfection. Its beauty is transcendental and has complete fulfillment in God--the infinite Person. One important bond of man's unity with nature is, therefore, the need for total fulfillment through transcendence. Conversely, God relates himself to man and nature in response to his need. It is important to note that God's expressing himself in this response is essential to his nature because God is love itself (Rasa vai sah). In the exposition of Tagore's view proper emphasis has not been laid on this fulfillment situation. The relationship between God, man and nature represents a movement which has both centrifugal and centripetal character: God not only creates, but also fulfills. He is essentially God of man and nature and can no more be separated from them than they can from Him. The enrichment of the three in interrelationship reflects the integration of the triad. That God does not negate but affirms in greater depth both man and nature was aptly stated by Tagore in his Personality: `The infinite and the finite are one as song and singing are one,' and in Sadhana: `Music and musician are inseparable.' From this it follows that God can be realized through both man and nature. The Upanisads onesidedly emphasized the approach to God through one's self-hood, as is evident from the nature of the classical mahavakya system. What is distinctive of Tagore's integral theism is his equal recognition of man and nature as modes of union with God. `Thou art the sky. . . . But there where spreads the infinite sky far to take her flight in reigns the stillness with white radiance.' That spirituality, according to Tagore, requires a balanced strength of the within and the without is indicative of the synthetic, total view of his spirituality which reflects his vision of the integration of God, Man, and Nature. This vision is the basis of the religion of an artist. Visva-Bharati University

Santiniketan, W. Bengal, India **** THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR METAPHYSICS STUDIES IN METAPHYSICS, VOLUME II PERSON AND SOCIETY Edited by GEORGE F. McLEAN HUGO MEYNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS OF AMERICA INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR METAPHYSICS DEDICATION This volume is dedicated to Prof. H.D. Lewis, the first President of The International Society for Metaphysics. His open vision and creative spirit enabled the Society rapidly to undertake the coordinated program of research in metaphysics throughout the world of which this series is the fruit. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Grateful acknowledgement is made to The University of Hawaii Press, for permission to reprint Masao Abe, "The Problem of Evil in Christianity and Buddhism," from Paul O. Ingram and Frederick J. Streng, eds., Buddhist-Christian Dialogue: Mutual Renewal and Transformation (Honolulu: Univ. of Hawaii Press, l986), pp. 139-154. TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction PART I. THE PERSON AS SOCIAL 1. Person and Community, Individual and Society, Reformation and Revolution by Richard McKeon 3-16 2. Confucius, Aristotle, and Contemporary Revolutions by Ellen Chen 17-27 3. Person, Personality and Environment by Peter A. Bertocci 29-38 4. Individual and Society in Metapysical Perspective by Ivor Leclerc 39-48 5. Self-Awareness and Ulitimate Selfhood by Seyyed Hossein Nasr 49-57 6. Buddhism and the Way of Negation by Toshimitsu Hasumi 59-61 PART II. SOCIETY AND THE PERSON 7. The Development of Community by Robert O. Johann 65-75 8. Community in the Process of Development by Mieczyslaw Gogacz 77-79 9. Person as a Unique Universal Social Being by Mihailo Markovic 81-89 10. Homo Creator: Solving the Problem of Human Existence by Janusz Kuczynski 91-99 11. The Extension of Human Rights and the Advancement of Society by Augustin Basave Fernandez del Valle 101-108 Comment by Abraham Edel 109-113 12. The Role of Reason and Its Technologies in the Life of Society by Alwin Diemer 115-123 13. The Problem of Evil in Christianity and Buddhism by Masao Abe 125-142 Index 143-145 INTRODUCTION

It has been the triumph as well as the agony of the 20th Century to have come to a newly developed sense of the person. This has implied in social relations both creative liberation and destructive oppression. It is the task of metaphysics as described by Aristotle to know the good or the end toward which human striving should be directed. Hence, after its study on Person and Nature,1 The International Society for Metaphysics has carried out this study on Person and Society. A third, correlated study on Person and God2 follows. By seeing social crises as the classical problem of the one and the many in contemporary terms, the study searches for ways to deepen the understanding of the person, not in opposition to society, but precisely within it and in terms of it. On this basis it seeks to evolve a deeper and more adequate metaphysical understanding of the nature of society and of its implications for the development of contemporary social life in its legal structures and technological implementation. The study draws upon the resources and the experiences of the world's many cultures. Part I works out a more adequate notion of the person for contemporary life by looking for new insights in the psychology of the person and the dialectical tensions within society. It then develops a metaphysics of the person as social in terms of the various Eastern and Western horizons whether as transcendent or as the ground of being. Part II concerns the person in society, focusing upon the nature of the person in relation to the development of community and social praxis. It draws conclusions regarding human rights, appropriate applications of the burgeoning technological capabilities and the problem of evil. Upon completion of these studies on the person, the International Society for Metaphysics undertook a series of investigations regarding society, in terms of unity, truth and justice, and the good. Further, having studied intensively both person and society it extended the investigation to the field of culture and cultural heritage understood as personal creativity in community and in history. In this manner the work of the ISM has constituted a cohesive and coordinated investigation of metaphysics as a living discipline in our day. NOTES 1. George F. McLean, ed. (Washington: University Press of America and The International Society for Metaphysics, l988). 2. George F. McLean and Hugo Meynell, eds. (Washington: University Press of America and The International Society for Metaphysics, l988). CHAPTER I Person and Community, Individual and Society, Reformation and Revolution RICHARD McKEON INTRODUCTION Inquiries concerning the nature of man and society and programs of action bearing on their formation and change have undergone reformations and revolutions which parallel in sequence and purpose contemporaneous revolts against metaphysics and projections of architectonic substitutes. Again and again, the apparently endless proliferation of warring theories about being and the nature of things and of occurrences has led philosophers to abandon metaphysics in order to investigate how we know, hopeful that knowledge of mind and knowing might enable them to establish principles and uncover methods of knowing being and what is. When their epistemic investigations, in turn, have travelled many paths into many regions of thought and feeling, it has seemed plausible, again and again, that examination of what we say and do might provide a key to meanings and references and to beings and existences. Such revolutions have marked off the turns of the ages since the ancient Greeks laid down the pattern and established the vocabulary of culture and philosophy in the West. Inquiry concerning truly fundamental questions of being and existence, thought and feeling, action and expression faces, as a consequence, the need to

make initial and usually unexamined choices which determine the statement and the examination of the questions. The choice of semantic and substantive presuppositions may be schematized in two dimensions. Perpendicularly, one might choose to begin with beings or with existences, with ideas or with experiences, with symbols or with actions. Horizontally one might ground one's choices in metaphysical principles of things, or in epistemological methods of critical judgment, or in analytical interpretations of statements or processes. Aristotle made a characteristic contribution to the construction of this variable matrix of symbols and significances. He formed a vocabulary of univocal scientific and philosophic terms by giving words in ordinary usage strict definitions and by inventing technical terms or terms of art to transform the original ambiguity of words into a dynamic structure of interrelated terms and meanings. This vocabulary of univocal words entered into the languages of philosophy, science, and policy in the West. But its terms seldom retained the meaning by which Aristotle defined them or the applications with which he used them, and progress or even simple changes in all fields were often announced and developed accompanied either by citation or by refutation of Aristotle. Changing interpretations of Aristotle are among the significant characteristics by which successive ages in the West may be interpreted. Perpendicularly Aristotle opted for self-sufficient subtances, self-evident first principles, and natural potentialities and action. Horizontally he formulated an architectonic theoretical science of being and of first principles, an architectonic practical science of political and moral actions, and a productive science which might be put to architectonic uses to order processes and products of artistic and mechanical making. Aristotle's theoretic science of being, which came to be called metaphysics, related the sciences--theoretic, practical, and productive--and the arts--particular and universal--by their first principles or their commonplaces. But in the inquiries and analyses of his followers and opponents it ceased to be a science; it became a belief about being and reality and principles, formulated and reformulated in antagonistic idealisms and materialisms and disavowed and refuted in a variety of skepticisms. The forms which arts, sciences, and culture take are determined by the circumstances, times, and communities in which they arise and develop. Aristotle's practical science of politics is a single science of human action, individual and social, treated in two parts: from the perspective of the grounds of individual moral action in the Ethics and from the perspective of the grounds of political organization in the Politics. Its purpose was practical: to lead men to perform good actions, not theoretic, to discover and demonstrate the final good. In the inquiries and analyses of his followers and opponents, it ceased to be a practical: science and became a theoretical science of the good, or a physicobiological science of nature, and human nature, or a rhetorical art of inducing actions, good or bad. Aristotle's productive science of poetics can be given an architectonic function, since the statement of what is thought to be and the formation of human associations and communities may be treated as products of arts of making or artificial objects. But from the beginning his followers and opponents turned, from poetic science and the investigation of form and matter in art objects, to the rhetorical art of using words to produce effects in feeling, conviction, and action. NATURE AND FAMILY This is still the vocabulary of discussion and the strategy of action. We tend to begin with the vocabulary in which questions are formulated and to dispute concerning significances and applications. We use rhetorical arts to secure agreement in the reformation and revolution of statements of questions and of principles, and in the establishment of communications and of communities. We seek to be objective by beginning with what men say and do rather than with presupposed things grounded in nature or with alleged facts grounded in knowledge. We expect natural things and warranted knowledge to emerge from the reinforcement or resolution of claims of individuals and groups in opposition.

Nature is a product not a principle; the examination of man and society as disclosed by what they say and do can take over the functions once exercised by metaphysics in determining the nature of things and the principles of knowledge, morals, and policy. Men are still formed by the communities in which they are reared, and these are still formed by the men who constitute them and live in them. Justice and equality are still sought in the relations of man and society, and in the relations of men to men and of societies to societies. The meanings of `nature' have changed, however, and nature operates differently in processes and in explanations. It is no longer used as a principle to establish the `nature' of man and society and of justice and equality in their interrelations. Instead the nature of rights and duties, and of man and society in general, are derived as products and sequences of what men say, and do, and make. From the beginning of Western philosophical speculation, two theories of the relations of men and society have developed in opposition and in mutual adjustment. Plato analogized man and society; the virtues of man can be discovered writ large in the state. They form a single mutually defining whole or a single virtue. The associations and communities of men differ only in size, not in nature. Aristotle made univocal distinctions between the virtues of men and the institutions of societies. He sought a basis for discovering and investigating the `nature' of man in the nature of his faculties and in their natural functions and habituations. The `nature' of the associations of men form a hierarchy from the household, the simplest community required for mere living, to the state, the inclusive community required for living well. The virtues of man, based on his nature, provide him a second nature. The institutions of states, based on natural relations of men and things, constitute a nature prior to the nature of individual men, which orders the relations of ruling and being ruled. Justice is a virtue in individuals, an order in states, and a bond between individuals and states. Aristotle begins his Politics with a refutation of the theory that human associations differ only in size and in the number of their members. This is a preliminary to formulating the theory that their differences are found in the nature and function of their ruler and ruled in ordered sequence from simple autonomous to inclusive free community. Aristotle based the simplest community on two natural relationships, the generation of the immediate family on male and female, the formation of the economy or household on master and slave. Two further relationships arise with products of these relations, father and son, and owner and property. The relation of male and female in the generation of children is a relation of two rational beings. Aristotle likens it therefore to `constitutional' rule, that is, to the true form of the rule of many called by the very name of `polity' or `constitution', as contrasted to the degraded form called `democracy.' The relation of father and son in the education of the young is a relation in which unformed rational potentialities are formed and developed; it is likened therefore to `royal' rule. The relation of master to slave in the formation and operation of the household economy is a productive relationship in which the workers lack by nature the power to make decisions concerning their own welfare and that of the community. Thus, it is likened to `despotic' rule. The relation of owner to property is a relation between man and the things he makes; it operates therefore in production and use. In the household slaves are animate instruments of action, while property consists of products and inanimate instruments of production. NATURAL RELATIONS Aristotle's formulation of the natural relations which underlie the family and the more inclusive communities, the village and the state--into which it enters as an element and from which it derives its most characteristic social functions--are the source of four doctrines attributed to Aristotle and almost unanimously condemned as egregious Aristotelian errors: a conception of property, of slavery, of youth, and of women. They are all errors concerning the `nature' of men in social relations. They are misinterpretations of Aristotle, for they neglect the distinction between the meanings Aristotle gave to `nature' in practical and in

theoretic sciences. Nevertheless as widely accepted interpretations, they take on characteristic forms in successive ages and make his distinctions available to frame new interpretations of man and society, science and knowledge, and action and statement. Property Aristotle differentiated the political order from the economic order; he made economic self-sufficiency of the household a prerequisite to the political organization of the state; and he subordinated economic to political objectives. Politics became inseparable from economics in political economy, and political theory and history were given new economic forms. They came to be seen as theories of property and production--or of the freedom and rights of men--and as histories of the development and interactions of cultures--of the generation of communities and their acquisition of power. With these changes in economics and in its relation to politics Aristotle's conception of the nature of property and of production became egregious errors, but they provided the vocabulary for their own correction. Like Plato, Aristotle recognized that existing Greek cities were in reality two cities rather than one: a city of the rich and a city of the poor. Therefore he changed his definition of democracy from the rule of the many to the rule of the poor. Moreover, he maintained that of all possible constitutions only two actually existed, usually in mixture, oligarchy and democracy. These balanced and opposed the pursuit of wealth and the pursuit of freedom as ends of the state. He separated questions of ownership, production, and use of property. He argued for private as opposed to common ownership, and he sought criteria and limits of production in use. The determinant role of use and consumption in the household led him to distinguish the economic order of the family from the political order of the state. He differentiated property which is an instrument of production from wealth which is accumulated and used for exchange but not for further production. This distinction earned him repeated criticism and refutation for failure to understand the productivity of capital and the justification of interest. Locke began his Second Treatise on Civil Government by distinguishing the power of magistrates over subjects, fathers over children, master over servants, husbands over wives, and lords over slaves. This was in refutation of Filmer's reduction of the commonwealth to the family in his Partrarcha or the Natural Power of Kings. In this Locke was similar to Aristotle who had begun his work on Politics by distinguishing the rules of statesmen, kings, householders, and masters in refutation of Plato's reduction of the republic to the family. Where Locke sought the foundations for society in natural powers, Aristotle sought them in natural relations. Aristotle's refutation of the reduction of the state to the family was for the purpose of distinguishing politics from economics. Locke's refutation of that reduction permitted him to assign the name `property' to "the mutual preservation of lives, liberties, and estates" and to make the enjoyment of property the end of civil government. Modern political revolutions have been economic revolutions, conflicts of rich and poor, haves and have-nots. Resolution has been sought in common ownership of the means of production as a stage to the disappearance of politics and the withering away of law and the state. Resolution has been sought also in private ownership of the products of one's labor as a stage to the extension of rights from the economic to the social and cultural and the withering away of divisive nationalisms in the community of mankind. In the one, dispossessing the dispossessor is the road to freedom and well-being; in the other, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness became a synonym for life, liberty, and property. Among nations, have-not nations came into existence liberated from imperialisms and colonialisms, and seeking to form a third world independent of the worlds of communism and of capitalism. Within nations, have-not groups, minorities and majorities, took form to vindicate their economic, civic, social, and cultural rights. Aristotle's natural relations have ceased to be generative principles of

interdependent societies. But they have reappeared as principles of opposition in existing men and emerging societies, whose clashing purposes and claims may lead to the formation of equal and just societies and men. The rejection of Aristotle's argument that wealth is not productive is usually on the grounds that he confused economic with biological productivity. It is seldom remarked that the argument depends on the sense which `nature' takes on in a practical science there the nature of a political association orders and relates the activities of men and communities that function within it. Its nature defines and delimits the pursuit and accumulation of wealth lest unlimited accumulation take precedence over all other social ends and activities and transform the political community. Slavery Aristotle's exposition of the natural relation of master and slave is the source of the attribution to him of a doctrine no less offensive to modern sensibilities and repugnant to accepted opinions than his condemnation of the art of moneymaking. It is chrematistike, the doctrine that some men are by nature slaves. We have since learned that all men are by nature equal, but in making that discovery we have abandoned again Aristotle's distinction between a practical and a theoretic, a political and a psychological, sense of `nature.' In the controversy between those who think slavery is natural and those who think it is contrary to nature, Aristotle chooses his position by expounding the nature of the rule of master over slave, rather than the individual nature of the slave or the particular science of the master. For the production and use of property in the household or the economy, instruments of two kinds are needed: inanimate instruments of production or make and animate instruments of action or doing; that is, tools and materials that are used and workers who use instruments in production according to the directions of a master craftsman or architecton who relates making to doing. The rule of master over slaves has two aspects. One is an economic aspect, which leads us to recognize the continued existence of "wageslaves" even after the abolition of slavery: the other is a social aspect, which leads us to recognize that in actual social situations there are many slaves who lack the power to make fundamental decisions bearing on their own welfare or that of the community of which they are members. Communities of the unprivileged are formed on the model or as instances of communities of the dispossessed. The vocabulary of natural relations in ruling and being ruled supplies the distinctions of kinds of suppression in discriminations based on race, nation, religion, age, sex, or any other association or co-existence. The change is from natural generative relations to antagonistic oppositions in which the victims of discrimination struggle to achieve equality of individuals, of groups, and of nations. Paradoxically the achievement of equality of men and of societies requires two steps. First, the underprivileged group must be integrated into a group with recognized unity and dignity. Secondly, liberated and established groups must be reintegrated in the just and equal functioning of more inclusive associations and nations in a world community. In the first step integration and dignity are sometimes sought by `demonstration,' not in the sense of proving utility or worth, but in the sense of exhibiting and calling attention to injustice and inequality. In the second step desegregation and community are sometimes sought by assigning "quotas" according to the number of the disfavored group, without consideration of the abilities and functions required for the successful operation of the larger inclusive group. Indeed, demonstrations at conventions, legislatures, administrative bodies, or international organizations may be for the purpose of impeding their operation. Active participation with other groups may be for the purpose of changing the functions, the membership, or the constitution of the inclusive body. The operation of the societies of men depends at once on mutual trust and antagonistic opposition. If one distinguishes the political and the moral, the collective and the individual, senses of `nature', some men are by nature slaves in the societies in which they function, but all men are by nature free and equal in their individual integrity and activities. On the other hand, if the political

and social natures of associations are reduced to and derived from the physical, biological, and psychological natures of individual men, all men are equal. This equality is not in their powers and abilities, but in the rights and freedoms, which they realize in societies. These include: to live, to satisfy their needs and wants, to form and take care of families, to participate in other associations, to think and to express their thoughts and feelings, and to share in the economic and cultural, technological and scientific achievements of society. Youth Aristotle used the natural relation of father to son for the formative education of the young for participation in household and in other communities. This was transformed and inverted to add a cultural antagonism of old and young to the economic antagonism of rich and poor, and the social antagonism of privileged and repressed. Paideia means both education and culture, both a process and a product, individual and social. The education of a man in a society is to acquire a comprehension of the knowledge available and an appreciation of the values esteemed in the society. Cultures endure and change. The culture of an age of innovation or of revolution is found, not in a body of knowledge and a canon of commitments, but in attitudes and abilities which enable men to use what is know to investigate what is unknown, to turn from representations to presentations. Tradition and revolution are natural constituents in any human association. But society sometimes functions as a cohesive whole in which different cultural conceptions and aspirations are adjusted to each other and influence each other. At times revived, reviewed, or newly imagined cultures function to reorder society and to reform man. The revolt of the young has been generalized from a revolt against parents to a revolt against established forms of education and all establishments. From a revolt of children against their father, as it was in the family as Aristotle treated it, it became the revolt of the generation gap, as it was in the family made into state in the Republic of Plato. It became the revolt of young societies, young states, young ideas, arts, sciences, philosophies, religions, modes of production, and policies of action. If education in its broadened sense of culture is not the transmission of the known and the accustomed, but the formation of arts and abilities to go beyond them, the young are clearly right in their criticism of the establishment. The accustomed answer to their criticisms, that they do not yet have the education requisite to judge what they are taught or to propose changes or improvements is inapposite, since such knowledge does not exist in the minds of either young or old and depends on instituting new cultural institutions and designing new modes of education. Women Aristotle's use of the natural relation of male and female for the generation of children and the formation of the family is the source of a doctrine, attributed to him, of the natural inferiority of women. Here, as in the other natural relations, Aristotle distinguishes between the sense of `nature' proper to theoretic sciences like physics, biology, and psychology, and the sense of `nature' proper to practical sciences like politics and ethics. In biology male and female are members of the same species, and they do not differ in any of the biological functions investigated except generation. The terms `male' and `female' occur only in the On the Generation of Animals as the two principles operating in all generations as form and matter in the semen and the catemenia. In order to emphasize the continuity and the difference of the functions, Aristotle says that in the operation of those principles the female is an immature or an impotent male. His interpreters, favorable and unfavorable, generalize such statements to make them apply to all functions, biological, psychological, and social, of male and female. In the controversies of the time, Aristotle did not derive the offspring from the sperm of the father, and he did not attribute a kind of sperm to the mother. He was an epigenecist, and held that the embryo arises from a series of successive differentiations from a simple homogeneous mass, anticipating in all its essential features the doctrine of Harvey.

The natural relation of male and female in the Politics is a relation of rule. It is a "constitutional" or "political" rule in which ruler and ruled both participate in ruling and contribute to the generation of the family. In this the male differs from female in providing the initiation of the process of formation. In the Nichomachean Ethics there is no differentiation of male and female virtues, but in the Politics the differentiation of functions provides a basis for distinguishing the virtues of a mother from the virtues of the father. When political natural relations are reduced to individual natural powers and functions, women are constituted a deprived group or species, alienated economically, enslaved socially, and curtailed culturally. RIGHTS AND NATURAL RELATIONS The vocabulary of natural relations was formed by Aristotle to provide principles for the action of man and society in the context of nature and the cosmos. This has been transformed in meaning and inverted in application to a vocabulary of existential situations in which men form antagonistic groups which seek in actions and statements to liberate men and to form just societies. The vocabulary of universal natural relations which are generative of moral man and civil society has become a vocabulary of particular natural rights to be acquired by constituting societies in which the aspirations of men are realized. Natural relations are univocally distinct; natural rights are ambiguously intermingled and analogically interdependent. Economic rights extend beyond production and consumption for the satisfaction of material needs and felt wants based on economic relations of ownership and property. They include participation in and enjoyment of, whatever has been made or done by man in society that might contribute to a fuller life and even, in turn, protection of nature and the cosmos for the continuation of life and the advancement of well-being and happiness. Social rights extend beyond freedom of action and cooperation based on social relations of workers and supervisors of work. They include decision-making in general, not only concerning one's own actions and those of others, but also concerning beliefs and values, facts to be accepted and the knowledge to be credited. Freedom of choice (the combination of feeling and knowledge in desiderative reason or rational desire) is transformed from a freedom to do as one should in accordance with the order of society, to a freedom to do as one pleases to achieve individual satisfaction in a community based on mutual confidence, in cooperation with other communities moving to a world-community of free and equal men. Cultural rights extend beyond education and cultivation of what is known and what is valued based on cultural relations of old and young, teacher and learner, establishments and processes of formation. They begin to include as well the development and transmission of arts and disciplines designed to use the known as a basis for inquiry into the unknown, and what is perceived and experienced as a basis for discernment of the previously unperceived and intuition of the previously unfelt and unappreciated. They spread, diversify, and deepen culture into a plurality of cultures and societies which is the community and culture of mankind. Political rights extend beyond legislative and judicial institutions for the formation and rectification of economies, societies, and states based on political relations of ruler and ruled grounded in erotic loves and concupiscences. They begin to include other forms of love and attachment, including charity (agape) between God and man, and friendship (philia) between equals who share without distinction of mine and thine. They embrace a world-state which will control and prevent conflicting appeals to force, and recourse to war, as well as a stateless world-society without need for domination and law. The natural relations of men, in a word, provide distinct principles for the generation and continuation of the family and for the formation and operation of the household on which other associations and communities are based. The natural rights of men, on the other hand, are formulated in universal bills of human rights, which overlap as expressions of the single right to live, claimed by existing men and societies of men. They set forth and differentiate rights as

objectives to be sought in the development of man and of society and of the relations between them. Aristotle made ethics and politics parts of a single science of politics, but he carefully distinguished between the scientific treatment of the virtues of man and the institutions of the state. He did not reduce ethics to politics or politics to ethics. The intricate vocabulary in which he made these distinctions has been used to transform virtues into duties in systems of moral laws, and to direct political actions to moral ends ordered in a hierarchy of priorities established by the principles of moral virtue. In the portion of the science of politics concerned with communities, Aristotle distinguished economics from politics by basing the family and the household on natural relations of men. He treated the more inclusive communities based on them as `natures' prior to and determinative of the natures of individual men in themselves and in relation to each other. In like fashion, in the portion of political science concerned with the actions of individual men, he sought grounds for the examination and organization of the virtues of man in the nature and operation of his psychological faculties and by treating the virtues which constitute the characters of men as their `second natures.' The faculties of man provide two basic distinctions for the scientific examination of moral action. The first is the distinction between faculties which are, and those which are not, subject to habituation, since virtues are habits formed by actions such as they in turn produce. The second is the distinction between the irrational faculties which share in rational principles which form moral virtues and character, and rational faculties which have a rational principle and contribute to the formation of moral virtues. Moral virtues have two interdependent characteristics. One is that they are determined relative to the passions and actions of individual men; the other is that they are determined by universal rational principles, as a prudent man would determine them. The rational faculties are likewise of two kinds. One is calculative and grasps rational principles of variable things; the other is scientific and grasps rational principles of invariable things. The calculative faculty is the source of two intellectual virtues: art, the virtue of making, and prudence, the virtue of doing. The scientific faculty is the source of the three intellectual virtues of knowing, the virtues of scientific proof, intuition, and wisdom. Prudence has its applications and exemplifications in the state and in the individual. When it is concerned with the individual man himself, it is called `prudence.' But as man exercises prudence it may be called economics, legislation, or politics; politics, in turn, is divided into deliberative and judicial prudence. These basic distinctions set up univocal differentiations between choice, which is concerned with means, and wish, which is concerned with ends; and between character and rational principles, of desire and reason, as the sources of virtue. They have been merged by the reduction of the invariable to the variable and by the consequent transformation of scientific into calculative virtues. `Deliberation,' `choice,' and `decision' are no longer limited to things which are contingent and within our control. They are used also to know things which are variable but not in our control, and things which are invariant and under our control; they have taken over the functions of `demonstration,' `intuition' and `proof.' Aristotle distinguished arts, prudence, and science as the intellectual virtues of making, doing, and knowing; but the scientific analysis of those virtues did not determine the scientific methods of the productive, practical, and theoretic sciences. We have adapted the vocabulary of those distinctions to reduce intellectual virtues and scientific methods to moral virtues. We have done so by introducing man and his decisions into the processes and the nature of art, policy, and science, and then by reconstructing them according to the rules and choices of games. Justice occupies a crucial place in the relations of man and society, in the

formation and activation of men by societies, and in the constitution and operation of societies by men. Aristotle emphasizes the univocal character of that distinction by remarking that `justice' is an equivocal term whose meanings are as far apart as those of `key' as the collar-bone of an animal and the instrument to lock a door. It is a universal virtue since a man is formed in all his virtues by living in accordance with the laws of his society. It is a particular virtue since societies are formed and regulated by the agreements and decisions of men concerning equality. `Justice' is equivocal because there is no relation between the formation of men by societies and the formation of societies by men. There are two forms of the particular justice by which equality is established and maintained in societies. One is distributive justice which establishes a proportion between persons and the functions and possessions assigned to them. The other is a rectificatory justice which establishes a proportion in transactions, voluntary and involuntary, between man and man. This focuses on the character of injuries done without consideration of the characters of those who injure or are injured by treating men as equal before the law. These distinctions of justice in man and in society now provides a vocabulary by which to deny those distinctions in the recognition of kinds of existing injustices to be rectified. In a time of newly emerging nations, rectificatory justice takes precedence over and determines distributive justice. The antagonistic oppositions of underprivileged and dispossessed groups in established nations make use of rectificatory justice to win assent to new forms of distributive justice. As a consequence no difference remains between universal and particular justice, for the virtues of universal justice imposed by the establishment are injustices to be rectified when rectificatory justice establishes a new distributive justice to take the place of established inequalities and injustices. Metaphysics as a science of being and first principles provides principles and causes operative in sciences of man and of society and applicable to problems of individuals and communities. Metaphysics as an art of statement and action takes its beginnings, its materials and its motivations, rational and emotional, from the oppositions of particular men and societies. A vocabulary of univocal terms is no less useful in an art of metaphysics than in a science. A science of first principles fixes their meanings and references by the scientific methods of the various sciences. An art of grounding one of two opposed statements or actions or of assimilating them in a more comprehensive statement or more inclusive action opens up new meanings and moves to new references. The relation, man and society, as disclosed by what men say and do is heuristic in its orientation and concrete in its foundations. Insight into the relations of persons and communities breaks the dogmatisms which are the source of antagonistic oppositions and leads to revolutions and reformations in the communications and cooperations of men. It preserves a plurality of cultures by reviving them in statement and in action in an embracing world culture whose unity is the community it establishes for the development and enrichment of a diversity of cultures. It finds a basis for the establishment of justice in existing injustices in men and in societies, and in a rectificatory justice which establishes new distributions of function and property in which men seek equality, not in powers, but in rights, and freedom, not in acquisition, but in activity. It looks toward in a just society which seeks common realization for individuals and communities not in overcoming oppositions, but in assimilating to each other innovations and achievements in art, science, and policy. University of Chicago Chicago, Illinois CHAPTER II CONFUCIUS, ARISTOTLE, AND CONTEMPORARY REVOLUTIONS: Comment on Professor McKeon's "Person and Community, Individual and Society, Reformation and Revolution"

ELLEN M. CHEN In his illuminating paper Professor McKeon provided a synopsis of the architectonic structure of Aristotle's philosophical enterprise which, as the culmination of Greek thought, had "laid down the pattern and established the vocabulary of culture and philosophy in the West." He has also delineated the changing interpretations of Aristotle in the successive ages in the West, and drew a careful picture of the dynamic state of affairs on the contemporary social, national and international scene. The central thrust of Professor McKeon's paper is a defense and clarification of Aristotle's position against criticisms of his conceptions of property, slavery, youth and women. Of these four issues on which Aristotle's opinions have been considered wrong the issue of property in its economic aspect is generic and inclusive of the other three: slaves, youths and women were properties of men who were masters, sires and lords. I shall therefore not enter into the issue of property in its economic aspect; but rather, regarding the economic aspect as pervading the other three, I shall address myself to the issues of slaves, youth and woman on which modern revolutions have been based. In view of the renewed interest on Confucius in China, it is opportune, while commenting on the issues that have turned the moderns against Aristotle, also to comment on Confucius' ideas on the same issues which also have been attacked in modern times. In this way it can be seen that the new metaphysical awakening which has brought about the contemporary revolutions is not limited to the West, but is a universal phenomenon bringing changes to cultures and traditions far apart. Consequently my reflections will cover the following three points: 1. The justice of modern criticisms against Aristotle by arguing that Aristotle's treatment of master-slave relation which serves as model for the male-female and father-son relation, is reflective of his entire enterprise from physics to metaphysics. 2. A study of Confucius' distinction between the "chu¦ n tzu," literally, the princely man who is destined to rule, and the "hsiao jen," the little man who is destined to be ruled, is comparable to Aristotle's views on the master-slave relation; that Confucius' contempt for women goes far beyond Aristotelian machismo; and that the Confucian emphasis on filial piety has had a stifling effect on the creative impulse of the young and in no small degree has contributed to the conservative character of Chinese culture. 3. The metaphysical significance of today's liberation movements. METAPHYSICAL ROOTS OF ARISTOTLE'S JUSTIFICATION OF SLAVERY According to Professor McKeon, criticisms of Aristotle's conceptions of property, slavery, youth, and women are "misinterpretations of Aristotle, for they neglect the distinction between the meanings Aristotle gave to `nature' in practical and in theoretic sciences." The purpose of ethics and politics was "practical, to lead men to perform good actions, not theoretic, to discover and demonstrate the final good." Thus according to Aristotle, practically, politically and economically, some men are slaves, even though theoretically, psychologically and according to nature, no men are slaves. My question is: can a practical science stand on its own without being supported by its theoretical foundation? Either Aristotle has to abandon the unity of the sciences, or admit the disjunction of theory and practice in his system. Neither, I maintain, is the case. The parallel between Aristotle's ethics and politics and his physics and metaphysics is unmistakable. The serious recognition and study of motion in his physics eventually points to the motion that moves least as best, motion being a sign of dependency and restlessness. The study of substances in his metaphysics begins as a study of general ontology (ens commune) inclusive of physical substances, but eventually it centers on the study of those pure eternal forms transcending the physical realm, and finally upon the contemplation of the one self-enclosed Thought-Thinking-Itself. In the same way the study of man and society in his ethics and politics begins with acceptance of man as social (he is

neither god nor beast), but ultimately it exalts those values that enable man to be independent of society. In every subject matter, whether physics, metaphysics, ethics or politics, self-sufficiency is the highest norm for Aristotle. Unlike Plato for whom the only just life is the life of the philosopher, Aristotle begins his inquiries into ethics and politics by treating every level of human life on its own terms. But it is a question whether Aristotle had consistently carried out his promise. Whitney J. Oates says: Take, for example, his insistence that the man of practical wisdom should have nothing to do with anything other than that which is specifically human. Hence he is divorced from the man of philosophic wisdom who is supposed to be absorbed in things higher than human and therefore will not be involved in the tensions of ethical inquiry. And yet, when Aristotle makes his final "argument" for the end of ethical endeavour, the contemplative activity of happiness, the man of philosophic wisdom appears as the king . . . .1 While allowing man to be by nature social, self-sufficiency remains for Aristotle the highest value even in ethics and politics. As a physical being man is not self-sufficient, only the state is self-sufficient. Thus the citizen has his nature fulfilled in the state. This means that according to Aristotle sociality as a value is subordinated to self-sufficiency or a-sociality. Sociality in the nature of incomplete beings, i.e., the citizens, is for the sake of forming the self-sufficient individual, the state, which is by nature a-social. (Hence the necessary business of making war in the very definition of a state). When Aristotle says that man is by nature social, he is looking at man as man, neither god nor beast. But when he says that contemplation is the most selfsufficient activity, which would be the true happiness for man, he is speaking of man as aspiring to the life of god. As a thinking being man can be selfsufficient. If liberality, justice, courage and temperance all require external means for completion, contemplation requires nothing but solitude. In the final analysis the man of philosophical wisdom can rise above sociality and above the human condition. He alone is the true master. Clearly there is in Aristotle a built-in tension between what is by nature and what is the best for man, for if man lives according to nature he will not attain the best. In the end happiness consists not in the fulfillment of what is properly human, but it resides in the activity of his thinking power alone. This is why the slave, though a man and by definition having a rational soul, since his mode of existence is primarily that of the body, has to enter into a relationship of inequality with the master. Thus in the actual social context the unity of man undergoes a bifurcation: the master whose activity is supposedly mind moves from being a man to a god, while the slave whose activity is mainly that of the body moves from being a man to a beast. This bifurcation applies equally to the relation between male and female, with the male compared to the form, agent, and final cause while the female performs only the function of the material cause; and between the father and the son, with the father as the actualized form toward which the son as the potentiality in process of actualization is moving. Just as what Aristotle considered to be science and demonstrative knowledge was no more than reasoned beliefs, what he took to be "natural human relations" in his ethics and politics were not natural, but certainly conventional. The distinction between physis and nomos consists in this: nomos was based on man's understanding of physis, hence a change in nomos indicated a new insight into physis. All the so-called "natural relations" have been historically conditioned; in that sense nature is a product, not a principle. In this light, the shift from viewing human relation based on "natural relations" in Aristotle to "natural rights" in modern times has been a giant step toward the liberation of mankind, for the concept of "natural rights" provides the corrective for what is wrong in the practice of "natural relations." There is truly a sense, according to Rousseau, that we move through history to nature, and that even now we are groping toward the nature of things. Following Rousseau we may say that many "natural relations" maintained in the past have been indeed most unnatural, and it takes all the task of

civilization to make man natural. THE DICHOTONOMY OF MIND AND MUSCLE IN CONFUCIUS' THEORY OF MAN If today people identify themselves with the oppressed side of their parentage, this was not Confucius' way. Confucius was born to a concubine of an official. Not unlike the motion of Eros in Plato's Symposium, Confucius desired only the qualities of his father whose manners and life style he adopted. In the Analects we read that he refused to relinquish his carriage to be exchanged for an outer coffin for his favorite disciple Yen Yuan, who died at the age of thirty-two, offering his own noble lineage as an excuse. When Yen Hui died his father asked for the Master's carriage for an outer coffin. The Master replied: `Talented or not, everyone speaks of his own son.' When Li (Confucius' son) died, he had a coffin but not an outer one. I did not go about on foot in order to provide him with an outer coffin, for I am the son of a grand official, it is not proper for me to go about on foot. (11:7) Confucius was a native of Sung, and a descendent of the Shang, who were conquered by the Chou. Yet his conscious and unconscious thoughts were filled with the glory of the conqueror's culture, exclaiming: "How admirable is its culture, I follow Chou" (Analects 3:14). Living at a time when Chou was already on the decline, Confucius took it to be his life's mission to revive the power of Chou. He even dreamed often of his idol the Duke of Chou, founder and consolidator of Chou culture and institutions as well as Chou political power, and interpreted the fact that as his years advanced he no longer dreamed of the Duke to be a sign of his own failing mission. (Analects 7:5) Aristotle speaks of slaves as by nature beasts of burden. Confucius divides human beings into two categories: the "chu¦ n tzu," the princely man who uses his mind and thus is destined to govern others, and the "hsiao jen," literally the little man, i.e., the commoner who labors with his muscles, who is destined to be governed by others. For Confucius, the "hsiao jen" is by definition morally inept, he can never aspire to the virtue (te, i) of the "chu¦ n tzu": "Some `chun tzu' may be lacking in virtue, but there is no case that a `hsiao jen' can be in possession of virtue" (Analects 14:7). There was in Confucius' mind no idea that the educational process could be a means of liberation for the oppressed mass. While it is to be admitted that "in teaching there is no class distinction" (Analects 15:38), when the "hsiao jen" is given an education, the net result is that he becomes a more docile servant: "When the `chu¦ n tzu' learns the way he loves man, when the `hsiao jen' learns the way he becomes more easily commanded" (Analects 17:4). Aristotle's attitude toward women was condescending; Confucius' statements on women verge on the contemptuous. He spoke of women and "hsiao jen" and of "hsiao jen" and thief, in the same breath: Only "women" and "hsiao jen" are hard to deal with. If you get close to them, they lose their respect for you. If you keep them at a distance, they turn resentful. (Analects 17:25) The Master said: `He who assumes a stern appearance while being inwardly indulgent to himself can only be compared with the "hsiao jen.' Is he not like the thief who sneaks over the walls? (Analects 17:12) It is true that the distinction between the "chu¦ n tzu" and "hsiao jen" was by no means clear-cut in Confucius. The various meanings he gave to these terms show that they were undergoing a process of transformation in his own mind. From having been naturalistic terms designating birth right and hereditary title they are on the way to becoming value terms standing for the result of a man's moral choice. Thus the "chu¦ n tzu" is not only the princely man, but also the man whose choice is virtue and the universal good, while the "hsiao jen" is the common laborer as well as the selfish man unwilling or incapable of choosing the higher good. Eventually the "chu¦ n tzu" stands for a virtuous man, the man with a pure heart and an inner rectitude, regardless of whether he holds a title or not, and the "hsiao jen" an evil or morally weak person no matter how exalted his position.

Still, the antagonism between mind and muscles or virtue and labor is not resolved in Confucius. There is no doubt in Confucius' mind that a man who aspired to virtue was above the concerns of certain occupations: Fan Ch'ih requested to be taught agriculture. The Master replied: `I am not as good as an old farmer for that.' Then he asked to be taught gardening. The Master answered: `I am not as good as an old gardener for that.' After Fan Ch'ih left, the Master said: `What a `hsiao jen' is Fan Hsu!' (Analects 13:4) Just as in Aristotle virtue and menial labor cannot be found in the same person, for Confucius farming and gardening are not proper occupations for the "chu¦ n tzu." "The `chu¦ n tzu' is not a mere vessel" (Analects 2:12); one is first and foremost a human being, before one is a farmer or gardener. The tension here is between the universal and particular calling of man. Confucius prides himself for being a teacher of man in respect of his universal calling. Politics, or the art of government, is the learning of how to be a universal man. Thus he calls those "hsiao jen" whose goal in life is no larger than a particular calling, and who mistook him for a mere teacher of a trade. There is an inherent tension in Confucius' conception of man. He could not reconcile his ideal of the virtuous man with the many cruel and uncultured activities performed by a man of labor. For instance, since a man of humanity (jen) neither kills nor can bear the sight of killing, Confucius advised: "The `chu¦ n tzu' stays away from the kitchen," a kitchen at his time being also a slaughter house. If for Aristotle the freedom of some must be purchased by the slavery of others, for Confucius, in order that some human beings may live according to virtue, others whose fate is to serve the physical needs of man must live without the embellishment of virtue. The Confucian belief that "rites do not apply to the common man" is the equivalent to Aristotle's conception that the slave cannot be virtuous. Hence the distinction of "chun tzu" and "hsiao jen," based on the distinction between the man who uses his mind and the man who uses his muscles, becomes also the distinction between the man of virtue and the man bereft of virtue. In Confucius' disciples the tension between labor and virtue disappeared. The superiority of mental work over physical work became a dogma which poisoned the thinking of generations upon generations. Even Chairman Mao, liberator of the Chinese proletariat, wrote in his autobiography that during his student days he had to set aside a sum from his very meagre allowance in order to buy the water he needed. Since an educated man does no menial work, carrying his own water from the river would be too demeaning. In contrast to the anti-Confucius campaign of the 1960's, which was orchestrated by the government for the purpose of purging certain supposedly illiberal elements within the party, the anti- Confucian movement in early Republican China was the expression of a crisis of civilization. It arose out of a deeply felt need among the Chinese intellectuals to reform China's social and political institutions, and to experiment in science and democracy.2 The problem was how to transform China into a modern state without giving up its time-hallowed values. To the partisans of the early period it meant a choice between adhering to the dead weight of China's tradition or opting for the modern Western way. From our analysis of the theory of man in Aristotle and Confucius we see that there is no need to make such an irrevocable choice. Both Confucius and Aristotle were burdened with the inconsistencies which today we call historical necessity but which they took to be simply in the nature of things. There is always the question of how much a thinker can break the tablets of his own time and still express the spirit of his age. At the same time, both Confucius and Aristotle, as great thinkers, have provided what Professor McKeon calls "the vocabulary for their own correction." The cumulative efforts of civilization, the ideals of great thinkers and humanists, aided by advancements made in science and technology, have enabled the moderns to fulfill the desires of the ancients while removing their inconsistencies. In becoming modern we do not have to reject the deepest values of

the past. Rather, the task of the present and future is the liberation of the past from its own inconsistencies. By discovering new ways to bring into concrete realization the values and aspirations of the past, the present makes the past more consistent with itself, and thus its values and aspirations can be truly saved. History has a way of working out its own solutions. What is dead it leaves to rest in peace. But in the present and the future whatever is worth saving from the past is truly preserved, fulfilled, renewed, and enlarged. Thus history, which conditions everything, recedes to make room for the emergence of what transcends history. Modernity means the illumination and at the same time in the light of a new freedom the removal of the historical necessity with which the past was burdened. The universal realization of the aspirations of the best, which was impossible at the time of Confucius and Aristotle, is exactly the challenge today. On the other hand, it is true that Confucianism had not contributed to the development of modern science in China whereas Aristotle's scientific studies had laid the foundation for progress in the West. The main difference between China and the West which is responsible for the general conservativeness of Chinese society and institutions in contrast to the dynamism in Western culture, lies in the long absence in China of the habit of critical intelligence vigilant over ruling ideas and practices. The exaltation of Confucianism since the Han times, as the state cult which monopolized the educational enterprise and discouraged independent thinking, had much to do with the absence of that dialectical process which is possible only when rival schools of thought freely stimulate and challenge each other.3 But that responsibility rests with Confucius' disciples, not Confucius himself. SIGNIFICANCE OF TODAY'S LIBERATION MOVEMENTS The Worker The message brought by the liberation of the worker is that nous resides not in the ruler alone, but in the ordinary man as well. Mencius spoke for all ancients when he declared it to be a universal principle that: "Some labor with their minds and some labor with their muscles. Those who labor with their minds govern others while those who labor with their muscles are governed by others." (Mencius 3A4) The I-ching (Book of Changes), however, acknowledges that Tao was in all men, that "the ordinary people live by it (tao) every day, although they are not aware of it."4 It was exactly the lack of awareness on the part of the ordinary people that had kept them in shackles. With heightened awareness through the implementation of universal education or dissemination of revolutionary ideologies democracy becomes inevitable. Whether today's majority of mankind still, according to Aristotle's yardstick and in Professor McKeon's words, "lack the power to make fundamental decisions bearing on their own welfare or that of the community of which they are members" (p. 8), is beside the point. It is the faith of democracy that when the common people are given the opportunity to make their choice, they produce the most stable and equitable society. Hobbes was the first philosopher to take the common man and his passions seriously; thus he accused Aristotle of expounding an aristocratic philosophy. Locke was the first one to recognize the value of labor. Though he did not quite see the metaphysical significance of his economic theory, it was he who showed that labor was the pathway to dignity, that the laborer, by increasing the value of nature, was the true liberator of mankind. With Marx's definition of man as a worker, there is no more dichotomy between mental and physical labor. The division of labor between mind and muscles, which to Confucius and Aristotle was the foundation of their hierarchic conception of the world, need not be repudiated. What must be repudiated is that conception of a hierarchy of worth and value which excludes physical labor and is easily used as an excuse for oppression. Henceforth mind and muscles must enjoy equal partnership in the production of a just society. Youth There was a time when culture, civilization and science all pertained to a fixed, eternal order. Confucius looked back to the golden age when culture and virtue were complete. The Confucian teaching on rites and music was comparable to

Aristotle's notion of paideia as both education and culture. Admirable as their theories of education were, both Confucius and Aristotle lacked a perception of the growth aspect in culture. Today's youth revolt and generation gap is at least partially due to the rapid advancement of science and knowledge in the last fifty years. Often a teenager today has mastered more basic knowledge in science or know-how than his parents. Thus it is the case now that, not only must parents teach their children, but children must also teach their parents. Since authority and proprietorship go with knowledge, the vanguard of Nous now appears younger and younger. That the young are in the process of growth means that Nous is also in time and history and has a growth aspect. The child is not merely the potential in the process of actualization, but this actualizing process of the child is also the actualization of Nous itself. Here we must all become children again. In and through the child in all of us Nous is set free to have movement and progress. In this light childhood, as full of the sense of wonder, of freshness of being, and of life's adventures, is not a stage to be outgrown, but an end in itself. Woman For ages women had scaled down the power of their intellect to devote themselves to their supposed primary function of child bearing and rearing. The woman's liberation signals the union of the earthly Aphrodite with the heavenly Aphrodite in Plato. We have arrived at an age when the reproductive power on earth is no longer a blind instinct, but has become a conscious, rational choice. Even more significantly, the liberation of woman, symbol of the bearing of life on earth, also means reason's attainment of life and fertility on earth. Woman's unique experience of change and growth in and around her body is an invaluable asset, a necessary and essential ingredient, for the kind of thinking that is life-enhancing and earth-affirming. Nous is no longer an ascetic, life-negating force, but becomes creative in the very fabric of life. CONCLUSION Today we celebrate the return of Nous to the world. We notice that slaves, youth and women in their social roles perform primarily the three functions of the vegetative soul in Aristotle's psychology: slaves supplied the nutritive needs to the body, youth's primary function is to grow and women were meant for the function of reproduction. This shows how deeply rooted the majority of human beings have been in the biological sphere. Yet Aristotle believed that "the excellence of the reason (nous) is a thing apart" (N.E. 1178a22-23). It is clear that Aristotle's ethics and politics are rooted in his psychology and his psychology is rooted in his metaphysical notion of the excellence and independence of thinking itself. This exaltation and separation of the reasoning power over other powers of the soul, this tyranny of mind over body in the history of philosophy, East and West, thus reveals itself to be the cause, as well as justification, of man's alienation from the world and man's oppression of man. Reason, man's pride and jewel, which has enabled him to produce his glorious cultures and civilizations, and often reckoned to be the seat of his spirituality, has also been the agent of man's degradation of man. Today's liberation movements herald an age when Nous is no longer seen as holding a destiny separate from the world, but is fully naturalized to become the logos of change in the world itself. The proper function of intelligence is not a process of cutting off, but union. Intelligence is rooted in life, its function is exactly the service and liberation of physical life on earth, thus its turning back to life is indeed homecoming. St. John's University Jamaica, New York NOTES 1. Whitney J. Oates, Aristotle and the Problem of Value (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1963), p. 316. 2. See Chow Tse-tsung, "The Anti-Confucian Movement in Early Republic China," in A.F. Wright, ed., The Confucian Persuasion (Stanford, 1960), pp. 288-312.

3. Taoism and Buddhism were not interested in social reform, though they were strong rivals to Confucianism in matters religious and metaphysical. Taoism's contribution to the development of Chinese science is now universally recognized. Yet lacking the spirit of social involvement, its scientific activities have made no impact on the betterment of man's social relations. 4. The Hsi Tz'u, Part I, Chap. 5. Cf. Richard Wilhelm's translation: The I Ching (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1950), p. 298. CHAPTER III PERSON, PERSONALITY AND ENVIRONMENT PETER A. BERTOCCI My thesis will be that we can better understand the actual development of human beings in their environments if we distinguish more adequately person from personality. I am aware that "person" and "personality" are often used interchangeably, and that, for reasons now familiar, "personality" has been substituted generally in the social sciences for the hoary philosophical concepts of soul, spirit, mind, self, and person. Yet, it would not be difficult to show that the general conflation of "person" and "personality" is not complete. For example, when we exhort someone to "be a person" we are not asking them to become what they inevitably are, either a person or a personality, but a certain quality of person and personality. Again, in crusading against depersonalization or dehumanization, we do not suppose that a person can become a non-person or have no personality at all, but that as a person one deserves a certain quality of treatment. Once more, in shifting from "chairman" to "chairperson," we still expect the chairperson to have a personality of some sort; we recognize something that transcends gender and personality, namely, the person. I am, however, not interested in rescuing words. My underlying concern, which this paper can begin to express, is to show that both "person" and "personality" are required if we are to develop a more solid appreciation for what is involved when we think about the dynamism of personality-development (or self- realization, or personal fulfillment) in the various branches of the social sciences and philosophy. 1. Let us turn directly to the contrast I have in mind by citing the definition of personality framed by a social psychologist, Gordon W. Allport, whose efforts to bring systemization to the psychology of personality have commanded unusual respect. His definition reflects a life-long concern to free the unique pattern and growth of personality from the confinements of behavioristic-operational and positivistic method, and from the clutches of favored biological and social norms. His thought also reflects the influences of the philosopher-psychologists William James, Mary Whiton Calkins, John Dewey, Wilhelm Stern, G.F. Stout, James Ward, and William McDougall.1 Allport's definition reads: "Personality is the dynamic organization within the individual of those psychophysical system that determine his characteristic behavior and thought."2 This definition of personality refers both to organized and organizing psychophysiological systems. In Allport's work there is never any doubt that personality is a joint-product of the interaction of the individual and his natural-social environment. What is systematically ambiguous in his thought, and in the literature of the social sciences generally, is what is meant by "within the individual." I have in mind more than Allport's comprehensive system as I proffer and defend the following definition in order to render more coherent data in the psychology of personality: Personality is the organization by a selfidentifying person of his or her own psychophysiological wants and abilities that uniquely characterizes their expressive and adaptive adjustments to their environment. 2. The basic issue we face is this: Can personality, with its admittedly unique or characteristic organization, take the place of, or be identical with, a unifying person? Long ago Stern proclaimed: Keine Gestalt ohne Gestalter, James' insisted that

consciousness is owned, and both Ward and McDougall emphasized that psychic monads with their own unique demands had windows open to varied environments. They would not dream of holding that the individual could fulfill himself or herself, let alone exist, in complete isolation from his or her environment. No individual simply unfolds or matures; they require the challenge and the convergence of environments. Nevertheless, the quality of their learned responses and their patterns is never simply the product of environmental influence--natural, social, or divine. Whatever the differentiating modifications and transformations called for by interaction with these environments, there are telic tendencies embedded in the matrix of abilities that constitute the individual, and these tendencies are always involved in the selective response one makes both to one's own abilities and to the environment. In James' terms, then, each person is a fighter for ends. What needs further stress is that all fighters for ends, whatever their unlearned similarities with the abilities and motives of others, undergo conflicts as their own nature matures unevenly, as they interact selectively with their environments. As C.I. Lewis once said, "the individual may not control what happens to him, but the meaning he gives to what happens to him is subject to his active selectivity--within limits that are not easily defined."3 Despite the continuing controversy about what telic factors are innate in persons, it may be noted that resistance by personality-theorists to unlearned tendencies depends on whether (and how) the adaptability of human beings is recognized--the adaptability being possible because in human beings especially abilities are loosely geared to innate needs.4 But there is no final denial--except by those who would reduce even physiological phenomena to the physico-chemical--of the animating telic thrusts whose permutations influence what will be salient, gratifying, or relevant even at the level of human sensory perception. In passing, it may be noted that even the behavior of Pavlov's dogs reflected their hunger in a stimulus-situation; and B.F. Skinner's pigeons are hardly impervious to the inner biological situation that gives purchase to reinforcement. 3. I am urging, accordingly, that the tensions, conflicts, and anxieties that occur have their locus, not in the interstices between individuals (persons, as I shall contend) and society but within the telic persons whose natures allow them to give different meanings and values to what goes on as, at the various stages in their maturational-adaptive-expressive experience, they interact with their environments. Telic persons are not market-places where different avenues converge to form their natures; their inherited (affective-conative-cognitive) activities are not centers of influences; nor is their developing personality a mere complex of statistical averages. Persons--whatever else--go on fighting for ends that are expressed adaptively as they learn more specific ways of gratifying them. The environment is their environment and their personality is their way of organizing their responses to environments, and in ways that they perceive to be open for them. Neither persons nor their personalities, in sum, are mirrors of society or culture, any more than children are mirrors of their family. Such generalized descriptions break down once one sees that society, culture, and family, are relative abstractions to persons who, given their unique endowment in their corner of the world, at their stage of development, confront situation after situation internal to their being and beyond it. Child-persons interact with father and mother as "psychological environments" to which the children are sensitive in different ways; and they take on the meanings open to their outlook at different stages in their development. Parent's actual effect upon children is a jointproduct in which their own response to their parents expresses their own interpretation of what the parents mean to them. At the same time, people's personalities are no mere accretions, because they bear the dynamic marks of their wanting-knowing abilities as, in relatively patterned ways, they realize what they can become as they seek to gratify or satisfy their instinctive needs.5 The nature, number, and dynamics of unlearned telic tendencies make considerable

difference, especially to educational and social theory. For personality, let alone its assessment, is the person's own mode of response to himself/herself in their environments. What I wish to stress is that the locus of action and change is the person with his or her matrix of needs and abilities. Never without an environment, persons purposively and purposefully select modes of expression and adjustment that reflect their varied responses to their environments, that is, to the natural, the social, and the divine world as they are able to appraise them. There is no personality without person. Person is also the unit for social science, for the conflicts that go on between groups occur in the persons who are constantly expressing themselves and adapting themselves to environments. 4. My second main theme is related to this first and emerges from developments in the psychology of personality that called forth reconstructed philosophical concepts. Thus, the ego re-appeared in Freudian thought as an essentially conscious and self-conscious cognitive function. It may seem a far cry from this ego to the Cartesian cogito as a being who thinks, although it is not so far if we remember that Descartes defined a thinking being as one who "doubts, understands, affirms, denies, wills, refuses . . . imagines and feels."6 The fact remains, in any case, that in Freudian thought the ego, beginning as the servant of the id from which its energy derives, seems, nevertheless, to have its own capacity to guide development. But this development requires selective organization and involves both the formation of the ego-ideal and the more rigid super-ego. Both ego-ideal and super-ego reflect the compromise, if you will, open to a telic agent (more reflective than the unconscious id) in its interaction with the naturalsocial environment. In short, the organizing of inner urges, in accordance with the individual's perception of the environmental situation and with his/her appraisal of optional hedonic consequences, is attributed--as it was not in earlier Freudian formulations--to what the ego can consciously know. I would further emphasize here that the ideal: "where the id is, there shall the ego be," calls, not for substituting a cognitive ego for the affective-conative id, but for a wanting- knowing ego whose appraisals of "individual" and "social" demands reduce conflict and produce greater harmony. The ego, we must infer, though born in a womb of non-rational instincts, experiences a rational demand to organize his or her total experience in accordance with norms of logic and inductive inference. In short, the ego that reappeared in Freudian thought is never completely independent of impulse or environment as it engages in the formation of patterns of individual-social life or personality without being reduced or confined to any learned pattern. 5. But the term "ego" made a different reappearance in ego-psychology that had no special links with conceptions of the unconscious.7 Social psychologists and psychologists of personality who had decided that their science was well rid of anything reminiscent of the soul or ontological self, now used self and ego to interpret a phenomenon that involves the unity and continuity of the personalities acquired in environmental situations. Sarah and Ruth, Saul and Paul, are unique minded-bodies, to be sure. The relatively organized personalities that characterize them would not be what they are without an acquired central and abiding psychological core that gives each his/her own quality of unity and continuity. Sarah and Ruth are now to be understood not only by their more or less systematic responses in environments, their personalities, but also, and better, by a learned center or focus that illuminates their own unique organization as they respond. For example, tasks that they learn will be more effectively and enduringly learned if Sarah and Ruth are self-involved, or ego-involved. Moreover, many of their most significant conflicts, anxieties, gratifications and satisfactions are experienced when the egos in their personality are engaged in whatever transaction is taking place. Defense mechanisms, for example, are developed in order to protect the ego in the personality. To be more specific, G.W. Allport, after extensively reviewing research, noted the difference that ego-involvement makes to "attention, judgment, memory, motivation, aspiration level, productivity, and . . . the operation of personality-traits."8

Such studies, he infers, indicate that personalities are not collective assemblages. In his own most systematic exposition, Allport, hoping to avoid the historic ambiguities of the world "self," hit upon the word proprium to designate what was "warm" and "central" to each personality, the "intimate region of personality involved in matters of importance to the organized emotional life of the individual."9 In sum, this psychologist of personality found that better psychological anchorage is required for the organization of learned dispositions in personality, especially when matters of importance or priority involving its unity and continuity are involved. The place assigned by many psychologists to `egoidentification,10 as a process vital to the development of personality, is recognition of the need to unify factors within the personality as the person constantly responds to his own learned formations in personality and assign priorities. In all this, as in the case of Freudian theory, the rejected or neglected self has returned with its own primary unity and continuity, that is, as knower, rather than as known, as agent in organizing and not simply as product of organization. Let me approach my suggestion by reference to the change of Saul to Paul. Saul and Paul are both personalities. The Saul that gives way to Paul is a personality nurtured in a prized community. That personality as a whole does not vanish when Saul becomes Paul. But the self-concept dominating Saul could not be harmonized with new assessments that grew out of experiences of conflict with Christian communities. Surely, it was not the personalities and the egos that did the knowing and the wanting, since they were products of knowing-wanting. It is the knowing-wanting person that was engaged in Saul. What came into being on the road to Damascus was not a new person, not an entirely new personality, but a new ego or self-image that the person later expressed by "I am one with Christ . . . ," as he changed his personality. In brief, Saul and Paul are both personalities with egos that a unique knowing-wanting person learns. He does this as he makes his way in particular natural- social-divine environments which he perceives as they affect him. But both Saul and Paul are the expressions and adaptations of the person involved in them. 6. My concern, then, is to distinguish between the unique unity-in-continuity of the person without which there is no understanding of the unique unity and continuity of personality and ego that are the products of interaction with the total environment. Further analysis of the changing yet relatively continuous organization of personality and ego would also reveal, I suggest, the theoretical need for (self-identifying) agent- persons whose constitutive nature is not generated by the environment, who are no passive re-actors to their ambient, and who discover the range of quality of their own existence only as they interact with environments that provide opportunities for actualizing their potential. Nor is this the place to develop the theme that man is a creator of symbols because he is a self-identifying wanting-knower whose meanings overflow symbols and language, as H.H. Price11 has taught us. A personality and its ego--that is, a changing yet relatively patterned personality responsive to inner and outer environment-reflects the meanings and values of an agent-person whose varied motives are continuous and discontinuous with those already at work before self-conscious criticism and evaluation take place. This personality cannot be substituted for the person. At the core of this contention is the conviction that no theory of acquired personality can forever postpone the question: Is it the personality that senses, wants, feels, remembers, imagines or thinks? What is wanted and learned can hardly be wanter and learner. Using Stern's terminology, there is a unitas multiplex, a person, who is active and not only reactive to his environments. The minimal proposal here is that both a Saul and a Paul are the joint-products of a psycho-physiological telic agent, a person, who, interacting with factors within and beyond his control, organizes both sensory and non-sensory experiences into habits, attitudes, sentiments, traits, and egos that reflect the quality of his adaptation and expression in

relation to environments. Again, anyone who would substitute personality for person must confront the fact that the personality cannot at once know and be the result of knowing, cannot itself act and be the result of interaction, cannot itself evaluate and be the product of evaluation. Personalities cannot be treated like islands that have drifted away from the mainland that continues to respond to the tides of existence. 7. In closing, I can only hint at a view of the person that will fit the personality-situation I have been depicting. Alas, our discussion of the relation of the person to his or her personality may have dredged up the image of an Atlas balancing the world of personality that is no part of it. Indeed, a main reason, expressed explicitly by Allport, for rejecting the dominant, historic concept of a substantive self or person is that the psychology of personality in particular must avoid an homunculus that is at worst redundant and in any case circular. The charge of redundancy and circularity I must neglect. But I think it does misconstrue the theoretical situation. In any case, is it less circular to say that the organism, or the individual, does so and so? But while I shall continue to insist on the need for a self-identifying person (elusive in our experience of ourselves, but undeniable as H.D. Lewis12 has effectively shown), the patterning and growth of personality by itself requires us to reconsider the conception of an unchanging substance-person. Assuming that the change, growth, and structure of personality call for a self-identifying unity in which we can distinguish such activities as sensing, remembering, imagining, thinking, feeling, wanting--and I should want to add willing, oughting, and aesthetic and religious appreciating--it is important to realize that these activities of the person are not exhausted by their formations and their particular objects and objectives at any one stage, although they are limited in the scope of their potential. The person at any point is nothing other or transcending these activity-potentials, whose expression and adaptation are engaged in the formation of personality. It is the irreducible unity-incontinuity of the person that is the common thesis of my personalistic teachers, Borden Parker Bowne,13 Edgar S. Bright- man,14 and Frederick R. Tennant.15 With them I think we must insist that there can be no succession of experiences (or of changes such as we find in personality) without an experience of succession. The person it is who cries: When me you fly, I am the wings. The articulation of the nature of such unified persons must continue to command our attention. But, the personality that is at once their expression and also their limiting formation can hardly be an unchanging, non-temporal, and selfidentical being. We must look for our model, with Bergson and Brightman, in the kind of time-binding unity that we find at any moment of experience. Within limits this time-binding, being-becoming selectively nurtures itself in interaction with the environment and, insofar as it survives, is forever crescent--adaptive and expressive--in the patterns of its personality. Hence the person is never selfidentical but self-identifying. I, for one, can find no referent in my experience for any kind of self-identical wanting-knowing person; the data of personalityformation call for self-identifying that is never mathematical. If to be is to act, if to be a person is to act expressively and adaptively in a total environment, the person is better defined as being-becoming whose self-identifying witnesses to continuity in active unity.16 Since this view will suggest to many the route or serial view of a cumulative identity proposed by some process philosophers, which is well represented in the work of Charles Hartshorne.17 My main obstacle to that particular view is that I cannot understand how the person at any moment can reach a present in time and selectively incorporate his/her given past into a present self-identity. I suggest rather that the given initial and primary unity "enlarges" selectively as its constitutive activity-potentials mature, respond to the environment and, therefore, becomes pregnant, via its personality formations. Thus, there is another equally important pole to my earlier contention that there can be no personality without person. For the personality at any stage of

organization, is no appendage to the person; it is no coat that can be discarded leaving a pristine knowing-wanting person. The actual existent at any point is person-cum-personality. The person is always not simply "immanent" in his/her personality. The person is shaping and being shaped, modifying and being modified, expressing and being expressed. This is the ongoing life of the person in maturation and in interaction. Again, the personality-structure(s) can both express and control the person. A unique person-cum-unique personality is the complete person at any stage. While such a proposal places the actual selective agency in the persons and their complex activity-potentials, it makes full allowance for their interplay with the total environment and for the vital importance of environmental influence to the quality of the person-cum-personality. There is never a neat dividing line between the private and the public person-cum-personality. The reality is always persons engaged in forging, critically and uncritically, the personality that gives a particular form and content to that person's investment at any point in their history, without necessarily being captured by the organization and priorities of any particular personality. The consequences of this formulation of the relation of person to personality will influence the interpretation of the nature of free will and moral obligation, as well as the interpretation of the values in moral, aesthetic and religious experience, but these are themes for other occasions.19 Boston University Boston, Mass. FOOTNOTES 1. Gordon W. Allport, The Person in Psychology: Selected Essays (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968), contains essays on Stern, James, Dewey, Karl Buhler, and K. Lewin. The interchangeable use of "person" and "personality" is reflected in the above titles of Allport's books as well as in Personality and Social Encounter (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1960/1981), and The Nature of Personality: Selected Papers (Westport, Ct.: Greenwood, 1950/1975). 2. Gordon W. Allport, Pattern and Growth in Personality (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1961), p. 28. Chap. 2 provides a useful discussion of "personality." 3. C.I. Lewis, The Ground and Nature of the Right (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1955), p. 26. 4. William McDougall, Energies of Man (New York: Scribner's Sons, 1933). 5. Abraham H. Maslow, Motivation and Personality (New York: Harpers and Bros., 1954). 6. Rene+ Descartes, Meditations, Meditation 2. 7. Gordon W. Allport, "The Ego in Contemporary Psychology," Psychological Review 50 (1943), 451-578. See my discussion of Allport's theme in "The Psychological Self, the Ego, and Personality," Psychological Review 52 (1945), 91-99. 8. Gordon W. Allport, Pattern and Growth in Personality (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston), p. 128. 9. Gordon W. Allport, ibid., p. 127. 10. See Gordon W. Allport, ibid., Chapter 6 for an introduction to the literature. The works of Erik Erikson are central contributions to the phenomena of selfidentification. 11. H.H. Price, Thinking and Experience (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1953). 12. H.D. Lewis, The Elusive Mind (London: Allen and Unwin, 1969). 13. Borden P. Bowne, Theory of Thought and Knowledge (New York: Harper, 1879). 14. Edgar S. Brightman, Person and Reality, ed. P.A. Bertocci (New York: Ronald Press, 1958). 15. Frederick R. Tennant, Philosophical Theology, Vol. I, The World, the Soul, and God. (Cambridge: Univ. Press, 1928). 16. Peter A. Bertocci, The Person God Is (New York: Humanities Press, 1970), chapters 2-6. 17. Peter A. Bertocci, "Hartshorne on Personal Identity: A Personalistic Critique," Process Studies 2 (Fall, 1972), 216-221.

18. Peter A. Bertocci, The Person God Is, see chapters 2-6. CHAPTER IV INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY IN METAPHYSICAL PERSPECTIVE IVOR LECLERC I My aim in this paper is to deal specially with the metaphysical issues involved in the topic: man and society. It is not surprising to find that there is a consonance between the metaphysics involved in the doctrines of a particular school or trend of thought respecting man and society and the metaphysics involved in that school's doctrines respecting other fields, such as nature for example. Indeed it would be surprising if there were not a single metaphysics underlying the particular doctrines and conceptions. When one examines from this point of view the rise and development of modern thought in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, such an underlying metaphysics is what one does find. What we now generally designate modern thought in contrast, for example, to medieval, arose and developed on the basis of a new conception of nature. This conception in turn was grounded in the renaissance resuscitation of Neoplatonism, in opposition to the antecedent domination of Scholastic Aristotelianism. Fundamental in this Neoplatonism was a Neoplatonic metaphysics and in particular a Neoplatonic ontology. Neoplatonism, from Plotinus, had confirmed and emphasized the conception of being found in Plato,1 namely of being as changeless, permanent, static. This conception was basic in the thought of St. Augustine, who states, e.g.,: "For it is only that which remains in being without change that truly is."2 It was this conception of being which was given a new and pregnant formulation by Nicolaus Cusanus in the fifteenth century in his doctrine of being, the Maximum, as coincidentia oppositorum, as containing all complicans, and of the world, i.e., created being, as explicatio Dei. The full implications of Cusanus' doctrine came to fruition in the seventeenth century theories of man. But initially it was a new theory of physical nature which was developed in the seventeenth century, the theory of the physical as matter. Not only was matter, for the first time in history, accorded the status of a self-subsistent being or existent, but its being was conceived fully in accord with the fundamental Neoplatonic conception of being. Matter was held to be created by God, the perfect, changeless, creating being, in an image of that perfection, this image having the form of perfect, in-itself-changeless, completely homogeneous mathematical extension. This was the essential Neoplatonic conception of being in a novel doctrine of the physical, whether as maintained by Descartes in his theory of a one res extensa, or as maintained by an increasing majority, in the theory of material atomism. In both theories matter in its being is completely changeless. Portions or atoms of matter undergo translation from one place to another, i.e., undergo locomotion, but in this remaining in themselves changeless and unaffected by that locomotive change. Above all, in strict accord with the basic doctrine of changeless being, matter is in itself inert, i.e., without activity, and thus completely unable to initiate locomotion: matter is moved; it does not move itself. Thus this doctrine of the physical, conceived in terms of the Neoplatonic conception of being, stands in complete contrast to the antecedent Aristotelian doctrine of the physical as having the source (arche) of its change (kinesis) in itself, this change constituting a process from potentiality to actuality, which is to say a process of coming into being. The ineluctable consequence of this new doctrine of nature was a metaphysical dualism; mind and soul had to be accorded a separate and independent status as another kind of being. Now this other kind of being was also conceived in terms of the Neoplatonic conception of being. It was in this that the doctrine of Cusanus of complicatio-explicatio was especially fruitful. The new metaphysics had extruded "act" from the physical, but had not rejected the concept of act

entirely. It was retained in the other side of the metaphysical dichotomy, but in a way fundamentally different from the Aristotelian conception of act. The new metaphysics remained consistent, in respect of mind or soul, with the Neoplatonic conception of being as perfect, changeless. In this new modern doctrine God created res cogitantes or monads as in themselves perfect, with their essence complicans in them. Thus for Descartes, for example, res cogitantes are created with their full complement of "innate ideas"; and for Leibniz the monads are likewise created with their essential ideas which constitute the law of their individual series. Thus the act of this kind of being, which is fundamentally a thinking act, is an explicatio, unfolding, of what is complicans, enfolded, in it from its beginning. The act of being of a res cogitans or a monad is in no respect a coming-into-being, a becoming, a generation; each is fully in being, and thus in itself changeless--the unfolding or explication of what is implicit is not a change in any sense of becoming; the logical process is its paradigm instance. Consistently with this both Descartes and Leibniz explicitly conceived of God as maintaining every being in its full being in every moment of its existence by an act of perpetual re-creation. II This modern form of Neoplatonic metaphysics and its fundamental ontology underlay and determined the seventeenth century theories of man and of society which came to full and mature articulation with John Locke. Man--metaphysically identified with mind or soul, with body as its immediate "property"--was conceived as an "individual," complete in its being. It is important to be clear that this is the metaphysical basis of the modern doctrine of "individualism." In terms of this basic conception man, as mind or soul, in the first place is an ontological ultimate--in the terminology of the time, a "substance." Secondly, this substance is a self-complete entity, that is, complete in respect of its being or essence, "requiring nothing but itself in order to exist" (except for God's creative act), as Descartes had consistently defined "substance" in accord with the Neoplatonic ontology. Man, as such a substance, complete in his being, has no "requirements" or "needs" other than the moral one of obeying God. There are, it is true, certain "needs" to be acknowledged, but these pertain strictly to his body, his immediate property which, metaphysically considered, falls into the other realm, that of physical nature, needs such as food, clothing, shelter, etc. Thirdly, as a selfcomplete being, the individual has no need of any other individual. This means that "society," conceived as it had been from Plato and Aristotle onward, as "natural"--in the sense of being grounded in the "nature" of man, as necessary to the achievement or fulfillment of that "nature," and thereby not only itself "being natural" but also "having a nature" of its own, one accordingly determinative of man's nature--this conception of "society" had to be utterly rejected. Society, in the new modern conception, cannot be grounded in the nature of man as a natural requirement, since man, in his nature, is a complete individual, and thus does not require or need a "society," i.e., a fellowship, association, partnership, community of men, in any respect to complete his nature. Secondly, this entails that "society" has to be accorded an ontological status quite different from that which it had in the antecedent rejected theory. "Nature," physis, in its original meaning, was contrasted with that which is a product of human artifice, and this feature of the connotation of the term had not been lost. So in the seventeenth century in rejecting the conception of society as "natural," thinkers drew the logical conclusion that society must be, by contrast, a human artifice (Hobbes), a construct or contrivance by individual men for the purpose of achieving each his own individual needs--which are strictly those in respect of his property. Consistently Locke, noting that the family or "conjugal society" is the first society, sees this as grounded not in any need of a man and a woman of each other in their being, i.e., as "individuals," but in the needs of their bodies, their property, more particularly for the propagation of other bodies3--the corresponding souls of course deriving from God's creative act. The consequence of this "individualist" conception of man and its concomitant

conception of society have been sufficiently both analysed and manifested in practice for me to need to spend much time on them here. One consequence is, however, particularly relevant to the metaphysical consideration: this is that societies have consistently failed to conform to the theory of them as artificial contrivances, on the model of the machine, with ends, purposes, and functions determined essentially from without by their artificers, the "individuals" which as such transcend ontologically the societies which they construct. The result of this is that in Western countries in which the "individualist" doctrine of man continues to constitute the fundamental guiding principle of practice, societies, especially the economic ones, the business corporations and the trade unions, have increasingly grown in size and power to an extent that they have now become out of effective control of the political society, that society which has the ends and needs of all members of the community as its purpose. This means that these countries are today floundering dangerously because of the lack of a viable philosophy of man and of society in terms of which the ends of the total community can be safeguarded and served. In the eighteenth century, particularly with Rousseau, began the recognition of "society" as having ends, purposes, and a "will," not to be conceived as the arithmetical sum of the ends, purposes, and wills of the individual constituent members; it became clear to many thinkers that "society" has ends, purposes, and a "nature" in a significant respect transcending those of the constituents. The outcome of this recognition was the theory which accords to society, particularly the political society, the state, the ontological status of a self-subsistent being. In this theory, which derived considerably from an inaccurate and inadequate understanding of Plato, the constituent men were no longer conceived, as in the "individualist" theory, as ontologically complete beings; on the contrary, they were conceived as dependent, in respect of their being or essence, on the supreme, self-complete society, the state. This is the metaphysics of the "organic" theory of society, in terms of which individual human beings are "organs," in the etymological sense "instruments," of the state--an "organism" being a whole in which the functioning of the parts is in reference to the whole, and thus determined by the whole. The practical consequences of this philosophy of man and of society have become sufficiently manifest, especially in the course of the last half century, to make clear the extremely urgent need for a viable alternative to both the foregoing philosophies, between them ruling the globe and threatening its destruction. III The working out of such an alternative is essentially a philosophical task, and it is an obligation which the present generation of philosophers ignores at the peril of the future of mankind. The most fundamental aspect of this task is an ontological one, the development of a theory of being in terms of which a coherent and adequate theory of the nature of man and of society will be possible. In other words, today the theories of man and of society need to be explicitly pursued in conjunction with the theory of being. As a background to this conjoint inquiry we have seen that the modern "individualist" theory of man was grounded in a Neoplatonic theory of being. It is now necessary to recognize that the modern "organic" theory of man and of society was not based on the development of a new theory of being; on the contrary it was grounded also in the modern Neoplatonist ontology. I hardly need to remind you that the modern "organic" theory owes more to Hegel, the arch Neoplatonist of the nineteenth century, than to any other man. It seems to me of the first importance to our topic to bring to the fore and emphasize the fundamental role of ontology in the theory of man and the theory of society, and that in the modern period the Neoplatonic theory of being has dominated and determined both the alternative modern theories of man and society. In the present day ontology has become the most neglected of philosophical disciplines, one consequence of which has been considerable muddle and confusion in thought seeking to come to grips with the issues involved in the theory of man and of society.

Today we need explicitly to face the question whether an adequate and coherent theory of man and of society is possible at all in terms of the Neoplatonic theory of being, or whether it is necessary to seek another ontological basis for the theory of man and of society. As a first step in tackling this question I would suggest that account be explicitly taken of the outcome, in human life and experience in the modern period, of the adoption of the "individualist" and the "organic" theories. Much has been written about this, and it has been dealt with also in several of the papers contributed to this meeting. I will deal with one point in this as of especial philosophical relevance. This is that these theories have survived--apart from the fact of their being in accord with the prevailing metaphysical presuppositions underlying the development of natural science from the seventeenth till the beginning of this century--these theories have survived not by their inherent theoretical virtue manifesting itself logically in practical exemplifications throughout the range of human activity; rather they have survived because human experience has necessitated practice in all spheres of endeavor and life which is strictly inconsistent with the ruling theories of man and of society, and because the respective theorists have failed to recognize the inconsistencies--since these are indeed fatal to their theories. The actual life of human beings, it needs to be explicitly acknowledged today, is not consistently and coherently analyzable in terms either of the "individualist" or the "organic" theories. To anyone not blinded by dogmatic adherence to the "individualist" theory it should be clear that human beings do not live in essential independence of each other; on the contrary, the enormous extent and range of their interdependence is not only manifest, but their interdependence is also manifestly essential to their being--a misanthrope is generally and correctly regarded as pathological; and Hobbes' attempt to construct a theory of society on the basis of a conception of man as fundamentally misanthropic has never received acceptance. And to anyone not dogmatically adhering to the "organic" theory it should be clear that the necessary interdependence of human beings is not that of "organs," "instruments," functioning in relation to a transcendent whole; that is, their interdependence is not consistently and coherently to be construed as dependence upon the transcendent whole. It is on this fact of the necessary interdependence of human beings on each other that any theory of man and of society based on a Neoplatonic ontology must founder. For on this ontology the human individual must be essentially selfcomplete, which entails that the human being is to be conceived as fundamentally without relations to his fellow human beings, "real" relations that is, in the basic meaning of "real," viz., belonging to the res itself. This is the case with both the "individualist" and the "organic" theories: the former can admit real relations in individuals only with God, and the latter only with the transcendent organic whole. IV For the philosophical theory of man and of society the fact which is of cardinal importance is that of the interdependence of human beings. The first philosophical inference to be drawn from this is that interdependence necessitates that relations be seen as "real." The second is that society is to be conceived as a real relationship between individual human beings. It is evident that I am here in full accord with the position taken by Professor Johann in his paper. But this raises as a crucial issue the problem of the ontological status of relations. And this can be effectively tackled only as part of the theory of being per se. I will approach it here in the context of our topic. We have arrived at a point in our investigation at which it has become clear that what faces us is the need of an ontology in terms of which human beings can consistently be conceived as having real relations with fellow human beings, and in terms therefore of which society can be consistently and coherently conceived. What is required is a theory of being in which the act involved in being be necessarily a relational act, and in which the relation is "real," in the full sense of the relation being an actual

interconnection with another being, and not, as in the Leibnizian theory, "phenomenal," and in the Neoplatonic theory in general, wholly "internal." It is most important to emphasize that on a Neoplatonic ontology a relation necessarily has the status of a feature, attribute, or property which inheres in the being itself--for Plotinus explicitly the category of relation had to be conceived on the paradigm of an inhering quality; which is why in the Neoplatonic tradition the term "quality" came to be used as synonymous with attribute or property: a substance is "qualified" by various attributes. Now if we hold that relation be a real interconnection, it becomes clear that there can be no fully completed being anterior to the act of relating, for that would imply the relation not being real, i.e., the interconnection not making any essential difference to the being in question. Consequently it is necessary to acknowledge that the act of being must involve a process which is other than as it is conceived in terms of the Neoplatonic ontology, namely a process of explication of what is implicit. The process must be one of the achievement of completeness, as Aristotle maintained in his conception of ousia as energeia and entelecheia, i.e., as "in-act" and as "achieving its end." This entails, again as Aristotle held, that the process involved in the act of being must be the transition from potentiality to actuality, so that the process is one of the "actualization" or "realization" of the human being. This could therefore be seen as a theory of "self-actualization" or "self-realization," but it is essential to understand the theory in a sense contrary to the similar theory held on a Neoplatonic basis. The theory of "self-realization" has been much favored by thinkers in the idealist school; in that tradition the theory is understood in terms of a Neoplatonic ontology, which means that the "realization" is of what the self is in its essence. In the alternative ontology here being presented, the "potentiality" which is "actualized" cannot be restricted to the "essence" of the being in question, but must include also what is presented by other beings in the interaction between them. The theory of being which is necessitated here must be explicitly recognized as standing in contrast to the Neoplatonic theory of being as complete, changeless. This theory of being is one which was first propounded by Parmenides and taken over by Plato, in his middle Dialogues at least. This theory of being was grounded in an elaboration of the philosophical implications of the Greek verb "be," which rigidly excluded "becoming"--for which entirely different verbs were used, such as gignesthai, "to be born."4 The philosophical limitations and inadequacies of this theory of being became clear to Aristotle, who developed an alternative ontology in which "being" was not exclusive of "becoming" but in which being included a process of becoming. Neoplatonism, however, returned to the earlier conception of being, Augustine's identification of being with God serving additionally to confirm the Neoplatonic ontology in Western thought down the centuries. In the theory of man it is today most important, as Professor Bertocci has urged in his paper, to reject the "historic concept of a substantive self or person"--that is, the Neoplatonic doctrine of the self, for the concept of being as "substance" is historically the Neoplatonic doctrine--and to see the self or person rather as a being-in-becoming. This is the conception of being, I have argued, which is necessitated by the fact of the interdependence of human beings. I have maintained further that this fact of interdependence entails the necessity of relations as real. We must now explicitly address the problem of how relations are to be conceived in terms of the foregoing theory of being. In seeking an answer to this problem it would be unacceptable to suppose that since we have rejected the Neoplatonic conception of relations as qualities inhering in the subject, the alternative is to conceive relations as some kind of tertium quid connecting the beings. This supposition would be unacceptable because it would be incoherent and inconsistent with any theory of being, since the tertium quid would by hypothesis be neither a being nor a constituent of a being; its status would thus be totally inexplicable. The way to an answer to this problem, I submit, is that which I took earlier in

conceiving relations as grounded in the act involved in being, whereby the act of being is essentially a relational act, an act of relating to other beings. I would say more specifically that the act of being is an "acting on" another and a reciprocal "being acted on" by another. This conception has important implications: besides the general one which we have already noted, that this entails the conception of being as necessarily involving becoming, this conception entails "subjects" acting, which are not merely the outcome of the actings--I agree with Professor Bertocci that the conception of subjects as wholly the outcome, product, of acting is an incoherent one. Further entailed, I would want to argue, is that there is a whole constituted by the interacting which is something more than, and thus not adequately analyzable as the mere arithmetical sum of the interacting subjects. Moreover, that whole has a character or definiteness which is analyzable as the definiteness of the relational interacting. It must be emphasized that the definiteness or character must explicitly not be conceived on the analogy or paradigm of a quality, e.g., a color, inhering in a substratum; the definiteness here is the definiteness of an acting, i.e., constituting the "whatness" of the acting. Since the acting is relational, the "whatness" will in one aspect be that of the interacting whole. Now I wish to submit that what we have here in such an interacting whole is a "society," in other words, that the essence of a "society" is constituted by such an interacting whole. This holds for the minimal society, that of two human beings, and for any such whole of a plurality of human beings, however great. The essential condition is that the members be reciprocally interacting. And the character or definiteness of the society in question will be determined by the character or definiteness of the interacting. It is the character of definiteness that would distinguish, for example, the society of two constituting a friendship from that constituting a marriage. Since the character or definiteness of the society is grounded in the "nature" of individuals as acting, a society is, as Aristotle maintained, "natural," and further, has a "nature" pertaining to it, one which is defined by the definiteness of the society as an interacting whole, a nature which is moreover in an important respect determinative of the individual members. This brings us finally to the consideration of the ontological status of "society." In the theory I am proposing a society is not to be conceived as a full being in its own right, since it is essentially and fundamentally dependent upon the actings of its members. Thus the individual human beings must alone be accorded the full and primary ontological status. Only individuals can in a full, non-derivative sense be "agents," with the power of choice and decision. It is only individuals as essentially acting which can include in their being access to the criteria of the "good" which are absolutely indispensable to being as acting. Emory University Atalanta, Georgia NOTES 1. More specifically in the middle Dialogues. It is questionable whether this would hold for Plato of the Sophist for example. 2. Augustine, Confessions, Bk. VII, Ch. 11. 3. John Locke, Second Treatise of Civil Government, Ch. VII, Sects. 78, 79. 4. See Charles H. Kahn, The Verb `Be' in Ancient Greek (Dordrecht/Holland 1973), especially Ch. VIII, n. 5. CHAPTER V SELF-AWARENESS and ULTIMATE SELFHOOD SEYYED HOSSEIN NASR The fruit of several centuries of rationalistic thought in the West has been to reduce both the objective and the subjective poles of knowledge to a single level. In the same way that the cogito of Descartes is based on reducing the knowing subject to a single mode of awareness, the external world which this "knowing

self" perceives is reduced to a spatio-temporal complex limited to a single level of reality - no matter how far this complex is extended beyond the galaxies or into aeons of time, past and future. The traditional view as expressed in the metaphysical teachings of both the Eastern and Western traditions is based, on the contrary, upon a hierarchic vision of reality, not only in reality's objective aspect but also in its subjective one. Not only are there many levels of reality or existence stretching from the material plane to Absolute and Infinite Reality, but there are also many levels of subjective reality or consciousness, many envelopes of the self, leading to the Ultimate Self which is Infinite and Eternal and which is none other than the Transcendent Reality beyond.1 Moreover, the relation between the subjective and the objective is not bound to a single mode. There is not just one form of perception or awareness. There are modes and degrees of awareness leading from the so-called "normal" perception by man of both his own "ego" and the external world to awareness of Ultimate Selfhood, in which the subject and object of knowledge become unified in a single reality beyond all separation and distinction. Self-awareness, from the point of view of traditional metaphysics, is not simply a biological fact of life common to all human being. There is more than one level of meaning to "self" and more than one degree of awareness. Man is aware of his self or ego, but one also speaks of self-control, and therefore implies even in daily life the presence of another self which controls the lower self. Tradition, therefore, speaks clearly of the distinction between the self and the Self, or the self and the Spirit which is the first reflection of the Ultimate Self: hence the primary distinction between anima and spiritus, or nafs and r-u.h of Islamic thought, and emphasis upon the fact that there is within every man both an outer and an inner man, a lower self and a higher one. That is why also tradition speaks of the self as being totally distinct from the Ultimate Self, from -atman or ousia, and yet as a reflection of it and as the solar gate through which man must pass to reach the Self. Traditional metaphysics is in fact primarily an autology, to quote A. K. Coomaraswamy,2 for to know is ultimately to know the Self. The .had-ith, "He who knoweth himself knoweth his Lord," attests to this basic truth. There are, moreover, many stages which separate the self and the Self. In its descent towards manifestation the Self becomes shrouded by many bodies, many sheaths, which must be shed in returning to the One. That is why the Buddhist and Hindu traditions speak of the various subtle bodies of man, and certain Sufis such as `Al-a' al-Dawlah Simn-an-i analyze the "physiology" of the inner man or the man of light in terms of the la.tt-a'if or subtle bodies which man "carries" within himself and which he must "traverse" and also cast aside in order to realize the Self.3 In order to reach the Ultimate Self through the expansion of awareness of the center of consciousness, man must reverse the cosmogonic process which has crystallized both the radiations and reverberations of the Self within what appears through the cosmic veil (.hij-ab) as separate and objective existence. This reversal must of necessity begin with the negation of the lower self, with the performance of sacrifice, which is an echo here below of the primordial sacrifice, the sacrifice which has brought the cosmos into existence. The doctrine of the creation of the cosmos, whether expounded metaphysically or mythically in various traditions, is based upon the manifestation of the Principle, which is at the same time the sacrifice (the yajn+ a of Hinduism) of the luminous pole of existence, of the universal man (al-ins-an al-k-amil), of Puru.sa, of the Divine Logos which is also light, of the Spirit (al-r-u.h) which resides within the proximity of the Ultimate Self and at the center of the cosmos. The Ultimate Self in its inner infinitude is beyond all determination and cosmic polarization, but the Spirit or Intellect, which is both created and uncreated, is already its first determination in the direction of manifestation. It is m-aya in -Atma and the center of all the numerous levels of cosmic and universal existence.4 Through its "sacrifice" the lower levels of the cosmic order in its objective as well as subjective aspects become manifest. The human self, as

usually experienced by men who have become separated from their archetypal reality, is itself a faint echo upon the cosmic plane of the Spirit and ultimately of the Self, and exists only by virtue of the original sacrifice of its celestial Principle. Hence, it is through the denial of itself or of sacrifice that the self can again become it-Self and regain the luminous empyrean from which it has descended to the corporeal realm. Self-awareness can only reach the Ultimate Self provided it is helped by that message from the Divine Intellect which is called "revelation" or tradition in its universal sense. The gates through which the Spirit has descended to the level of the human self are hermetically sealed and protected by the dragons which cannot be subdued save with the help of the angelic forces. Self-awareness in the sense of experimenting with the boundaries of the psyche, with new experiences, and with the heights and depths of the psychological world, does not result in any way in moving closer to the proximity of the Self. The attempted expansion of awareness in this sense, which is so common among modern man anxious to break the boundaries of the prison of the materialistic world he has created for himself, results only in a horizontal expansion, but not in a vertical one. Its result is a never ending wandering in the labyrinth of the psychic world and not the end of all wandering in the presence of the Sun which alone is. Only the sacred can enable the awareness of the self to expand in the direction of the Self. The Divine reveals to man His Sacred Name as a holy vessel which carries man from the limited world of his self to the shores of the World of the Spirit where alone man is his Real Self. That is why the famous Sufi, Man.s-ur al-.Hall-aj, through whom the Self uttered "I am the Truth" (ana'l-.Haqq) prays in this famous verse to the Self to remove the veil which separates man's illusory I from the Self who alone is I in the absolute sense. Between me and thee, it is my "I-ness" which is in contention; Through Thy grace remove my "I-ness" from between us. With the help of the message and also the grace issuing from the Self, the lower self or soul is able to become wed to the Spirit in that alchemical marriage between gold and silver, the king and the queen, the heavenly bride and the earthly bridegroom, which is the goal of all work of initiation. And since love is also death (amor est mors) and marriage is death as well as union,5 the perfection of the self implies first of all the negation of itself, a death which is also a rebirth, for only he who has realized that he is nothing is able to enter unto the Divine Presence. The only thing man can offer in sacrifice to God is his self, and in performing this sacrifice through spiritual practice he returns the self to the Self and gains awareness of the real "I" within, who alone has the right to claim "I am." As R-um-i has said in these famous verses: I died as mineral and became a plant, I died as plant and rose to animal, I died as animal and I was man. Why should I fear? When was I less by dying? Yet once more I shall die as man, to soar With angels blest; but even from angelhood I must pass on: all except God doth perish. When I have sacrificed my angle-soul, I shall become what no mind e'er conceived. Oh, let me not exist! for Non-existence Proclaims in organ tones, "To him we shall return."6 One of the factors which distinguish most sharply traditional metaphysics from that part of post-medieval Western philosophy which is called metaphysics today is that traditional metaphysics is not mere speculation about the nature of Reality, but is a doctrine concerning the nature of the Real combined with methods revealed by the Origin or Absolute Reality to enable the self or the soul, as usually understood, to return to the abode of the Self. The Ultimate Self cannot be approached by the efforts of the self alone, and no amount of human knowledge of the psyche can increase the awareness or the consciousness of the self which will

finally lead to the Ultimate Self. The contemplative disciplines of all traditions of both East and West insist in fact on the primacy of the awareness of the self and its nature. As the great 13th century Japanese Zen master Dogen has said, "To study Buddhism means nothing other than inquiring into the true nature of the ego (or the self)."7 The famous dictum of Christ that the Kingdom of God is within you is likewise a confirmation of the primacy of the inward journey towards the Ultimate Self as the final goal of religion. Traditional psychology or rather pneumatology, which however must not be confused in any way with modern psychological studies, is closely wed to traditional metaphysics, for it contains the means whereby the soul can understand its own structure and with the help of appropriate spiritual disciplines transform itself so as finally to realize it-Self. This is as much true of the Yog-ac-ara school of Mahayana Buddhism as of various forms of Yoga in Hinduism, or of the contemplative schools within Judaism, Christianity and Islam. In the latter tradition for example, a whole science of the soul has been developed based on the progressive perfection and transformation of the self towards the Self. In Arabic, the word nafs means at once soul, self and ego. As ordinarily understood the nafs is the source of limitation, passion, and gravity, the source of all that makes man selfish and self-centered. This nafs which is called the nafs al-amm-arah (the soul which inspires evil), following the terminology of the Quran, must be transfigured through death and purgation. It must be controlled by the higher self. With the help of the Spirit the nafs al-amm-arah becomes transformed into the nafs al-laww-amah (the blaming soul), gaining greater awareness of its own nature, an awareness that is made possible through the transmutation of its substance. In the further stage of inner alchemical transmutation, the nafs allaww-amah becomes transformed into the nafs al-mu.tma'innah (the soul at peace), attaining a state in which it can gain knowledge with certainty and repose in peace because it has discovered its own center which is the Self. Finally, according to certain Sufis, the nafs al-mu.tma'innah becomes transmuted into the nafs al-r-a.diyah (the satisfied soul) which has attained such perfection that it has now become worthy of being the perfect bride of the Spirit, thus returning to its Lord, as the Quran asserts, and finally realizing the Self through its own annihilation (fan-a') and subsequent subsistance (baq-a') in God. The traditional science of the soul, along with the methods for the realization of the Self, a science which is to be found in every integral tradition, is the means whereby self awareness expands to reach the empyrean of the Ultimate Self. This traditional science is the result of experiment and experience with the self by those who have been able to navigate over its vast expanses with the aid of the spiritual guide. It is a science not bound by the phenomena or accidents which appear in the psyche or which the self of ordinary human beings display. Rather, it is determined by the noumenal world, by the Sub.stance to which all accidents ultimately return, for essentially sa.ms-ara and nirv-a.na are the same. Traditional cosmology also is seen, from the practical point of view of the perfection of the soul and the journey of the self to Self, as a form of the sacred science of the soul, as a form of autology. The cosmos may be studied as an external reality whose laws are examined by various cosmological sciences. But it may also be studied with the view of increasing self-awareness and as an aid in the journey towards the Ultimate Self. In this way, the cosmos becomes not an external object but a crypt through which the seeker of Truth journeys, and which becomes interiorized within the being of the traveller to the degree that by "travelling" through it he is able to increase his self-awareness and attain higher levels of consciousness.8 Again to quote R-um-i: The stars of heaven are ever re-filled by the star-like souls of the pure. The outer shell of heaven, the Zodiac, may control us; but our inner essence rules the sky. In form you are the microcosm, in reality the macrocosm; though it seems the branch is the origin of the fruit, in truth the branch only exists for the fruit.

If there were no hope, no desire for this fruit, why would the gardener have planted the tree? So the tree was born of the fruit, even though it seems the other way round. Thus Muhammad said "Adam and the other prophets follow under my banner"; Thus that master of all knowledge has declared allegory: "We are the last and the foremost." For if I seem to be born of Adam, in fact I am the ancestor of all ancestors; Adam was born of me, and gained the Seventh Heaven on my account.9 The process through which man becomes him-Self and attains his true nature does not possess only a cosmic aspect. It is also of the greatest social import. In a society in which the lower self is allowed to fall by its own weight, in which the Ultimate Self and means to attain It are forgotten, in which there is no principle higher than the individual self, there cannot but be the highest degree of conflict between all limited egos which would claim for themselves absolute rights, usually in conflict with the claims of other egos - rights which belong to the Self alone. In such a situation even the spiritual virtue of charity becomes sheer sentimentality. The traditional science of the soul, however, sees only one Self, which shines, no matter how dimly, at the center of oneself and every self. It is based on the love of one Self, which however does not imply selfishness, but on the contrary necessitates the love of others, who in the profoundest sense are also one self. For as Meister Eckhardt has said, "Loving Thy Self, thou lovest all men as thy Self."10 The sheer presence in human society of those who have attained the Ultimate Self has an invisible effect upon all members of society far beyond what an external study of their relation with the social order would reveal. Such men are not only a channel of grace for the whole of society, but the living embodiment of the Truth that self awareness can lead to the Ultimate Self only through man's sacrificing his self and knowing his own limitations, and that the only way of being really charitable in an ultimate and final sense is to see the self in all selves and hence to act charitably towards the neighbor not as if he were myself, but because he is at the center of his being my-Self. The love of other selves is metaphysically meaningful only as a function of the awareness, not of our limited self, but of the Ultimate Self. That is why the injunction of the Gospels is to first love God and then the neighbor. Knowledge of the self in its relation to the Self reveals this basic truth: that the inner life of man leaves its deepest imprint upon the social order even if one were to do nothing, and that harmony on the social level can only be attained when the members of a society are able to control the self with the help of the means which only the Ultimate Self can provide for them. To quote D-ogen again, "To be disciplined in the Way of the Buddha means getting disciplined in dealing properly with your own I. To get disciplined in dealing with your I means nothing other than forgetting your I. To forget your I means that you become illumined by the things. To be illumined by the things means that you obliterate the distinction between your (so-called) ego and the (so- called) ego's other things."11 The traditional sciences of the soul deal extensively with all the questions relating to sense perception, inner experience, contact and communication with other conscious beings and the like. But their central concern is above all with the question of the nature of the self, of the center of consciousness, of the subject which says "I." In fact one of the chief means to reach the Ultimate Self is to examine thoroughly with the help of the spiritual methods provided within the matrix of various traditions the nature of the I, as was done by the great contemporary Hindu saint, S+ri Ramana Maharshi.12 As awareness of the self expands and deepens, the consciousness of the reality of the only I which is begins to appear, replacing the ordinary consciousness which sees nothing but the multiple echoes of the I on the plane of cosmic manifestation. The consciousness of the only I which is the source of all consciousness, leads him who has realized this truth to sing with `A.t.t-ar that All You have been, and seen, and thought,

Not You, but I, have seen and been and wrought.13 The realization of the Ultimate Self, of the I who alone has the right to say "I am," is the goal of all awareness. Through it man realizes that although at the beginning of the path the Self is completely other than the self, ultimately the self is the Self, as Zen masters have been especially adamant in emphasizing. But this identity is essential, not phenomenal and external. The self is on the one hand like the foam of the ocean wave, insubstantial, transient and illusory, and on the other hand a spark of the Light of the Self, a ray which in essence is none other than the supernal Sun. It is with respect to this spark within the self of every human being that it has been said: There is in every man an incorruptible star, a substance called upon to become crystallized in Immortality; it is eternally prefigured in the luminous proximity of the Self. Man disengages this star from its temporal entanglements in truth, in prayer and in virtue, and in them alone.14 Imperial Academy Teheran, Iran NOTES 1. Traditional metaphysics speaks of Ultimate Reality either as the absolutely Transcendent or the absolutely Immanent which however are one, Brahman being the same as -Atman. Hindu metaphysics, however, emphasizes more the language of immanence, and Islamic metaphysics that of transcendence, without one language excluding the other. See F. Schuon, Spiritual Perspectives and Human Facts trans. by D.M. Matheson (London: Faber and Faber, 1953), pp. 95 ff. See also Schuon, Language of the Self trans. by M. Pallis and D.M. Matheson (Madras: Ganesh. 1959), especially chapter XI "Gnosis, Language of the Self." 2. See A.K. Coomaraswamy, Hinduism and Buddhism (New York: Philosophical Society, 1943), pp. 10 ff. 3. See H. Corbin, The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism, trans. N. Pearson, (Boulder, Shambhala, 1978). In diverse traditions, the return of the self to Self has been compared to the shedding of outward skin by a snake which by virtue of this unsheathing gains a new skin and a new life. 4. See F. Schuon, "Atm-a-M-ay-a," Studies in Comparative Religion (1973), pp. 130138. 5. It is of interest to recall that in Greek it (tele+o) means at once to gain perfection, to become married and to die. 6. R.A. Nicholson, Rumi-Poet and Mystic (London: Allen & Unwin, 1950), p. 103. 7. Quoted in T. Izutsu, "Two Dimensions of Ego Consciousness in Zen," Sophia Perennis (Teheran), vol. II (1976), 20. 8. See S.H. Nasr, An Introduction to Cosmological Doctrines (London: Thames & Hudson, 1978), chapter 15. 9. Rumi, Mathnawi, ed. by R.A. Nicholson (London: Luzac, 1930), vol. IV, Book IV, v. 519-528, trans. by P. Wilson. 10. Meister Eckhart, trans. by C. de B. Evans, I. 139. The quotation is from Coomaraswamy, op.cit., p. 13. 11. Izutsu, op. cit., p. 33. 12. S+ri Ramana Maharshi in fact based the whole of his teaching upon the method based on asking who am I. His most famous work, a collection of answers given to one of his disciples, Sivaprakasam Pillai, who arranged and amplified them is called Who am I? (Tiruvannamalai, 1955). See A. Osborne, Ramana Maharshi and the Path of Self Knowledge (Bombay, 1957). 13. From the Man.tiq al-.tayr, trans. by F.S. Fitzgerald. A.J. Arberry, Classical Persian Literature (London: Allen & Unwin, 1958), p. 131. 14. F. Schuon, Light on the Ancient World, trans. by Lord Northbourne (London: Perennial Books, 1965), p. 117. CHAPTER VI BUDDHISM AND THE WAY OF NEGATION:

Comment on Seyyed Hossein Nasr, "Self-Awareness and Ultimate Selfhood" TOSHIMITSU HASUMI The splendid exposition of Professor Nasr manifests the comprehensive character of the relation of self-awareness and Ultimate Selfhood. This problem is as old as the history of philosophy in both East and West. From Socrates to Descarte in the West and from Confucius to Zen philosophers in the East, it has always been the most important philosophical theme. Prof. Nasr approaches it from the standpoint of comparative philosophy. He penetrates into the depths of the religious and philosophical thought of Islam as represented by Sufism, and of Buddhism, most particularly of Zen. From these standpoints he then shows clearly how SelfAwareness is possible and how to arrive at Ultimate Selfhood. This subject of Self-Awareness and Ultimate Selfhood is not a merely philosophical problem, but a large complex of philosophical and religious problematics in both the East and the West; indeed it is the main object of comparative philosophy. Here I will comment only upon the philosophical aspect, particularly the speculative problem of mystical "intention." In explaining the meaning of Self-Awareness, Prof. Nasr distinguished between "Self" and "self." The "self" of daily life is not the ultimate "Self," for we arrive at Self after the destruction of self or ego. First, from the philosophical standpoint, Self-Awareness is the highest goal of the search for knowledge in which the Self as the knowing subject is also the object of the knowing. This "Self-Identity" is the condition sine qua non of the Self-Awareness. To reach this we must separate the self and the Self, and negate our lower self. This way of negation is similar in Sufism and Buddhism. In Zen, however, there is no conception of "creation" as found in such other religions as Christianity and Islam. Hence, the Ultimate-Self is "Nothingness," and self becomes it-Self through absolute self-negation. I agree with Prof. Nasr that the contemplative disciplines of all traditions in both East and West insist on the primacy of the awareness of the self and its nature. The subject and the object are the self and Self in different stages of knowing, in which process negation is the first condition of Self-awareness. In order to reach the higher Self, the lower self should be denied, and through this first negation the lower self begins gradually to approach the higher Self. As the lower self is still far away from this higher Self, however, to reach it the lower self must deny itself in a series of three stages. This process to the higher Self is the process of the "philosophia negativa," whose logical structure is the dialectic: the self as subject denies the self as object, and thereby begins to know and evaluate itself to the Self. In this dialectical process "reflection" is the "reflection" of self-identity moving from the self to the Self as both subject and object. At each of three stages of reflexion, as the self denies itself the process of Self-Awareness gradually develops. We can see this process in the Zen text, "The Ten Images of Ox." As true awareness is "Enlightenment," the Self is the illumined subject without selfness. The following is an attempt to formulate the process from the lower to the higher Self: The first stage is the "intentio recta." The self knows immediately or directly the object of knowing. This self is called "das Dasein" in Heidegger's terminology. It is not yet evaluated as knowing self, and intends only the object. The second stage is the "intentio obliqua." This is the first reflection between the subject and the object. Here objectivity and general validity are the most important. Most scientific knowledge is on this stage. The third stage or "intentio reflexiva" is the second reflection in which the self as both subject and object reflect each other. It is a first primitive beginning of Self-Awareness, for the self is not yet transcendental. Once the self as both subject and object evaluate each other, the evaluated self is no longer the "self" as "das Dasein," but the Self, and is called "intentio reflexiva." However, as it has not yet reached ultimate Selfhood, this intentio does not yet provide absolute

validity and the two are not yet self-identified. The fourth stage of "intentio" is also developed from the second reflexion and is called "intentio intensitiva." In this stage the knowing subject reflects its object. The reflexion is transparent as self becomes like two mirrors facing each other. As object of knowing the Self becomes self-identical and ultimate. The Self is enlightened and becomes like the image in one mirror, which at the same time reflects its object in the other. As subject and object the self both reflects and is reflected at the same time. This is the highest stage of mystical knowledge and is called the "Ultimate Reflexion." The subject of this Ultimate Reflexion is the Ultimate Selfhood. At this stage, the Self has no proper self-hood, but enters the state of the beatific vision, which in Zen is called "Nothingness." This Ultimate stage of Selfhood is illumined from both within and without. Basically, however, it has no inner or outer, no over or under, for it is Nothingness and not selfhood. This is auto-reflection, the highest state of reflexion. The Self now becomes selfless and Truth reveals itself. This illuminated selfless Self simultaneously is the state of the Ultimate Selfhood and of Self-Awareness. One must distinguish the two ways, i.e., the way to the Ultimate Selfhood and the way of realizing Ultimate Selfhood, that is, "the way of going and the way of return." The identity between the self and Self should be realized in this way, for it is not phenomenal and external, but essential: it is the affirmation of selfhood in our daily life. The deep meaning of religion consists in this realization of Ultimate Selfhood. In conclusion, one can say that in the state of Ultimate Selfhood the Self truly knows itself and the self finds its proper meaning. CHAPTER VII THE DEVELOPMENT OF COMMUNITY ROBERT O. JOHANN The question to which I have been asked to address myself concerns human sociability. In what sense are human beings naturally social? Is society to be conceived as an atomic sum of individuals or is it rather an organic whole? The answer which I shall propose is that it is neither. Any human society, I shall say, is a unity of persons who, contrary to the "atomic sum" conception, are essentially relational and, contrary to the "organic whole" conception, are not parts but subsist in themselves as free initiatives. Indeed, the thesis to be elaborated here, instead of exalting either individual freedom or human sociability at the expense of the other, will ground the exercise of freedom in its bearing on relationship and root the reality of relationship in our very nature as free agents. SOME DISTINCTIONS If this thesis is to be understood, some preliminary distinctions are needed. A first and crucial one has to be made between two aspects or dimensions of human existence that correspond to two ways of approaching it. The two ways I have in mind are personally and impersonally.1 To approach fellow humans personally is to deal with them in terms of what is known when we engage them directly in a communicative relation. This is the other as free initiative, an intentional (in the sense of intentio intendens) subject, a being that is significant not merely as a what or one of a kind, but as a who, as uniquely existing. Approaching the other personally is approaching him as you, in mutual relation with me. To approach others impersonally, on the other hand, is to attend only to that about them which is or can be known without entering into a personal relation with them. Since this excludes their reality as unique subjects, what is left is their reality as determinate objects in the world, mere instances of a kind. The two dimensions of the human self that we shall be considering, therefore, are the self as determinate object and the self as intending subject. These two dimensions, however, are not to be construed as mutually exclusive. They are not simply two distinct and contrasting aspects with no other connection between them than that they are both dimensions of the self. Rather, just as the two approaches

to which these dimensions are correlative can be related to one another as the abstract and limited one to the concrete and inclusive one, so also can the dimensions themselves. For it should be noted that when we approach others personally and deal with them as intending subjects, co-sources of a personal exchange, we are also necessarily aware of and dealing with them as determinate objects. To be able to communicate with others we must first of all be able to hear the sounds they make, if not also, as normally, see their movements and gestures. But our awareness of these is subordinate to and controlled by what is at the focus of our attention and apprehended through them, to wit, the intending subjects themselves. The same, however, is not the case with the impersonal approach. For then our concern is with what is true of the other regardless of his or her intention. With the impersonal approach, attention is focused on changes going on in one place and their empirical connections with changes going on elsewhere; it prescinds from whether or not any of these changes are meant or intended. Thus, whereas the personal approach is inclusive of the impersonal, the impersonal (since it focuses only on objective nature while prescinding from what it mediates) is abstract and exclusive. So too with the dimensions of the self correlative to these approaches. The self as intending subject is concrete and includes the determinate object through which the intending subject is mediated. The self as determinate object, however, is an abstracted aspect of this concrete and inclusive reality and is viewed in isolation from it. The bearing of these distinctions on the question before us can now be made clear. When it is said that human beings are naturally social, what is usually meant is that sociability is rooted in their nature as determinate objects. Both the "atomic sum" and the "organic whole" conceptions of human society are, I suggest, contrasting versions of this first interpretation. The sense of "naturally social" defended here, on the other hand, roots human sociability in our nature as intending subjects. As we shall see, this has important consequences for understanding the nature of human values generally, the kind of politics required for their achievement, and the proper place of "community" in the scale of human concerns. But, before going on to these matters, I wish first to elaborate briefly the views of human sociability which I am rejecting. TWO VIEWS OF HUMAN SOCIABILITY The two views I have in mind are the individualist and the organic or collectivist.2 For both these views, the social nexus is first of all and fundamentally a fact about ourselves and only secondarily, if at all, a matter of intention. Dependence on others for being what we are and behaving the way we do is characteristic of our determinate nature, regardless of our individual aims and purposes. Indeed, the very ability to formulate those aims is conditioned by our participation in society. As one author puts it ". . . the concepts that we use to describe our plans and situation, and even to give voice to our personal wants and purposes, often [I would say always] presuppose a social setting as well as a system of belief and thought that is the outcome of the collective efforts of a long tradition."3 Thus, for both views, society is a necessary condition for the human quality of our lives. Human life, as one kind among others, is essentially group life. Individualism The difference between the two views resides in the way this determinate nature is viewed in relation to the individual whose nature it is. Individualism sees it basically as a classificatory construct, something posterior, therefore, to the concrete entities it unites and so not normative for them.4 Since the way we group and classify things is a function of our particular interests, these remain primary in the realm of value. Whether and to what extent certain objective characteristics of ourselves come to be prized and cultivated depends upon how they are viewed in relation to our aims. Thus, one way of regarding, and consequently intending, our union with others is purely instrumentally. Social institutions in this case are not considered to have

any value in themselves, and our participation in them, far from being something prized, is actually viewed as burdensome. But we join together with others in various social arrangements as a way to promote our own personal aims. Such is the case in what has been called "private society."5 Yet, even where social life, or a particular form of it, is intended as good in itself, the priority of individual interests remains intact. For, on this view, it will all depend on whether individuals are so constituted as to find this sort of thing fulfilling in itself, as well as conducive to other things. For example, it is an empirical fact that people normally take delight in exercising their native capacities. Granted, then, that one of our human capacities is reason (understood here as the capacity to adopt a universal point of view), and granted that a justly ordered society is a prime example of the exercise of such a capacity, it would not be out of line with the individualist conception if human beings were to experience a just society, since it is expressive of their nature, as fulfilling in itself. However, that such a society is objectively worthwhile regardless of an individualist's empirical desires, this first position is unable to say. For it holds that there are no values (including society as a value) independent of the desires of individuals, and therefore that there is no final or objective basis for affirming what should or should not be sought or what is really worth seeking. The Organic View Such is not the case with the organic view of human sociability. Whereas the individualist sees the value of society as something relative to individual desire (even if it happens to be desired by some individuals as good in itself), the collectivist sees individuals as functional parts of, and therefore relative to, society as an organic whole. In this instance, determinate human nature is not a construct for classifying individuals but an intelligible unity antecedent to them, one in which they participate and which makes them to be what they are.6 To say here that we are naturally social is to say that we exist essentially as parts; that that of which we are parts has a meaning and value independent of us individuals who compose it; and that only in the light of this larger meaning and value can we ourselves, together with our aims, be properly understood and appraised. Here, then, determinate human nature is normative for the person. A person's freedom is fundamentally a freedom to conform. If we identify this freedom with our being as subjects, then according to this interpretation, our reality as subjects is relative to the objective order. It is only insofar as we conform ourselves to this order that our choices, and therefore our lives as a subjects, are grounded and justified. Any other course is groundless, arbitrary, and indefensible. Comparison and Critique In comparison with individualism, this conception has certain strengths. The first is a logical one. It is the recognition that choice must be grounded, not only if it is not be arbitrary, but even for it to be possible. A choice that is not grounded is indistinguishable from blind impulse. This means that prior to their particular projects, individuals must be faced with some task, set by nature, in the light of which those projects can be appraised. Without such an antecedent task, functioning as a standard of appraisal, it becomes impossible to distinguish alternative claims and so impossible, too, to choose. The second strength of this position is more psychological in character. For it caters to our need to be part of something larger than ourselves while at the same time taking some of the onus out of choosing. When individual desire is accorded the primacy and objective nature viewed as relative to it, the individual can come to feel terrifyingly alone. Instead of enhancing our importance, such a position seems to deprive us of significance. Moreover, having to decide for oneself just what one is to do and be is, as Dostoievsky's Grand Inquisitor pointed out, simply too burdensome for most people. It is much more comfortable to have what is required of us all spelled out beforehand. Needless to say, these strengths have their weaknesses, and part of the case for individualism is its capacity to exploit them. For the conception of the human

being as primarily a part is tantamount to smothering selfhood. Yet what has been the excitement of recent years if not a new and awakened sense of self? The human self has felt the need to throw off all the limitations it has saddled itself with and to reject every structure forcing it to accept this or that single role as the whole truth of its being. This is, equivalently, to reject determinate nature as normative along with the corresponding conformist conception of freedom. Freedom is not really freedom if it means "knuckling under" to what is already the case. And the logic of this contention should be clear from the distinctions that were made earlier. For there we saw that determinate human nature is only an isolated aspect of human freedom and subjectivity. This last is what is concrete and inclusive. Thus, to make determinate nature normative for the person and so subscribe to freedom as conformity is to subordinate the greater to the less, the inclusive reality to a part of itself. But if individualism is right in rejecting this conception, it does so in a way that not only will not stand up to analysis but is also self-defeating. For the basic thesis of individualism is that values are determined by choice. In other words, there are no objective ends. An end is an end only as actually intended by a subject. None of our interests or inclinations function as norms unless and until the subject chooses that they should. But there's the rub. As we have already seen, choice without grounds is not only arbitrary, it is impossible. For choice, as a human act, implies judgment--a judgment about what is worth doing in the situation. Without such judgment, one cannot speak of an act or deed but only of an event. What takes place in that case is simply the result of the interaction of objective forces already in operation. This means abandoning the realm of freedom and responsibility for that of determinism. Judgment, on the other hand, presupposes standards and, in the final analysis, a standard that is not itself a matter of choice--otherwise we are involved in an endless regress. But the only thing that can function as such a standard is some reality to the accomplishment of which the subject as such is naturally ordered. Subjectivity, in other words, cannot be viewed simply in its transcendence of determinacy. There must also be something which transcends the subject and to whose realization the subject's own intentional life is relative. Our capacity to choose is a capacity for a positive reality which is inclusive of us as subjects (much as our reality as subjects is inclusive of our nature as determinate) and which only choice makes possible. Apart from such a reality functioning as an objective end, choice is impossible and freedom an illusion.7 Moreover, this is not the only way in which individualism winds up defeating itself. The denial of objective ends is similarly self-frustrating in the realm of politics. For a plurality of agents in one field of action has to be unified if they are not to work at cross-purposes and accomplish nothing. But their unification is impossible without the subordination of the aims and interests of some to the aims and interests of others. If, however, all goods are subjective, then the idea of reaching a rational consensus about how these goods are to be ranked is unthinkable. The subordination of some aims to others, therefore, becomes the subordination of some preferences to others or, in other words, the domination of some people by other people. Hence, as one author puts it, "The liberal [read: individualist] attempt to establish freedom from domination through the impersonal rule of law [which reflects the values of no particular person and no particular group] is constantly undermined by the liberal insistence on the subjectivity of value."8 With no objective standard for appraising the worth of aims, whatever aims come to prevail in the group will do so, not because of their intrinsic merit, but because of the power behind them. The politics of individualsim is thus, inevitably, power politics. AN ALTERNATIVE So much for these first two views of human sociability. What we have to do now is elaborate an alternative. As the preceding pages have made clear, the crucial point is to establish an objective end for the subject, something that can serve as a final standard of judgment. In order to do this, let me first recall the

meaning that was earlier attached to the term "subject." It will be remembered that the subject was not defined as pure thinker, detached knower, disinterested correlate of mental contents.9 The subject was instead identified with what we are aware of (and, in that sense, know) when we engage a fellow human in personal communication. It is the other, not as something merely attended to, but precisely as intending us. In other words, being a subject is not taken to be something passive, but active. It is not a matter of mere consciousness, being open to and aware of the other. It is rather a question of freedom, of self-disposition. The act of intending is an act of aiming oneself, of directing oneself, of actualizing oneself in this way and not that. The Subjective Interest This is why the subject cannot be thought of simply as part of something else. A being that can determine itself must first of all exist in itself. More importantly, for our present purposes, this conception of the subject as free agent (in contrast with the classical notion of the disinterested spectator) requires us to think of it also as an interest structure. For the subject cannot determine itself in one way rather than another unless it has some basis for discriminating between alternatives This basis can only be their relative bearing on the attainment of some objective it is already interested in reaching. It is only the agent's interest in some goal that can serve as a standard of appraisal. But the interest we are concerned with here cannot be one that is extrinsic to the exercise of self-disposition, i.e., to the subject's very being and life as a subject. For if it were thus extrinsic, it could function as a standard only if it were deliberately adopted. Its adoption, however, as the actualization of one possibility among many, would itself presuppose a previous interest functioning as a standard. Since this is the case with all the interests of the human self as determinate object (they are all only hypothetically normative), we are led to conclude that the subject's very nature as a subject is itself an interest structure. It is our own nature as free agents that is our final norm for choice and this means that simply as a free agent and antecedent to all our choices, we already have an end. Being a subject and having an objective end are thus one and the same. Relationship as Objective End What then is this objective end? For it can hardly function as a final norm if we are not aware of it. In order to answer this question, let us first ask ourselves: What is the context within which intentional activity, precisely as intentional, makes a difference? For as I mentioned earlier, the objective end must be a reality that is not only inclusive of us as subjects but also one that only choice makes possible. The answer is sufficiently obvious to make its neglect by philosophers something of a problem. The context within which activity as intentional, i.e., not in terms merely of its effects but in terms of its source, is meaningful is the context within which subjects themselves are meaningful. This context is neither the realm of ideas nor that of determinate objects. As for ideas, the subject's unique reality as "I" is of no moment in the presence of the universal, the valid for anyone. An object, on the other hand, is precisely that which leaves the subject out of account, that to which the presence of the subject is a matter of indifference.10 The only context, therefore, within which the subject's intentional selfposition is meaningful is the context provided by other subjects with whom the subject is in personal relation. It is, in short, the context of communication--which, indeed, is why the communicative relationship was stressed earlier as being the locus in which the meaning of subjectivity is first disclosed. One is reminded here of Kant's contention that the function of Reason is to bring about a good will.11 Were its ultimate purpose anything like human happiness, well-being or some other determinate state of affairs, this might more surely be accomplished by instinct. The self-justifying function of Reason is rather the achievement of something beyond the empirically determinate, to wit, a will that is good in its very willing. So also, analogously, here. The function of

intentionality is not to bring about a specific transformation of the external situation. Its raison d'etre lies beyond the whole order of empirical objects and the ways in which such objects are arranged and re-arranged. No arrangement of empirical objects requires intentionality for its accomplishment. What calls for and justifies an act as intentional is the achievement of a relation of subjects, of persons. Apart from relationship, a "we" effected by the responsiveness of each of us to the other as "you," our lives as intentional would be without point. This, then, is the larger reality in which persons can participate and still be themselves, and which only choice makes possible. And it is as an interest in this larger reality that the subject must finally be understood. Human subjectivity is by nature a capacity for, and an interest in, life-with-you. This is not an interest which a person has, one among many, but an interest which defines the person. Moreover, it is this interest, identical with a nature of the subject, that alone provides a final standard of judgment and ultimately grounds choice. Actions consistent with this interest and in accord with the requirements of personal relationship are objectively right; those essential to relationship are obligatory; those inconsistent with relationship are objectively wrong. Finally since only actions consistent with the pursuit of our objective end are finally defensible, all others must be judged ultimately irrational and essentially selffrustrating. They are at one and the same time exercises of our capacity to choose and negations of its ground. CONCLUSION It would seem, therefore, that an alternative to the two views outlined earlier can indeed be espoused. It is one which, while emphasizing the essentially relational character of the person, at the same time stresses personal autonomy. Indeed, these two aspects are tied together. It is precisely because persons exist only in response to other persons that we must also view them as existing in themselves, i.e., as, self-determining wholes. Here then is the meaning of human sociability. Human beings are naturally social not only in the sense that their objective nature is a function of group life. Sociability is even more profoundly at the core of human intentionality. Every intentional activity is animated by an (at least) implicit reference to the other as you and, precisely as intentional, is in the last analysis an acceptance or rejection of relationship. Since life is human only as intentional, what this last comes down to is that the unit of human living is not the solitary ego, but "you and I" in communication. It is a unit that can be properly understood only from the "inside," by a participant, not by an observer. And neither the mathematical model of a "sum" nor the biological model of an "organism" do it justice. What is required is the distinctly personal model of a conversation or dialogue. But the import of this third alternative is more than theoretical. Precisely because society is fundamentally a matter of intention, our ideas about it have a bearing on its realization. Political activity informed by mistaken conceptions thus becomes inherently self-frustrating. It is not that such activity must necessarily fail of its aims. It may very well be successful. But then its success will not satisfy. It will not be what those engaged in it really wanted but something at odds with their own natures.12 What, then, is the practical importance of rooting human sociability in our nature as subjects? The import of this move stems from the fact that it provides an objective basis for judgments of value while at the same time respecting the integrity and autonomy of persons. In so doing, it does not, to be sure, set up a kind of ready-made blueprint for action. Neither is it able to certify the objectively right course in a particular situation. It does not circumvent the need for rational deliberation nor eliminate its uncertainties. What it does do, however, is make such deliberation about the objectively worthwhile a meaningful activity, and so enable us to move beyond a politics of conformism or of compromise to a politics of consensus. With the organic view of society, deliberation is not meaningful since the good is not a matter of judgment but is already settled by our determinate nature. The individual's vocation is simply to

conform to some authoritative formulation of it. So also with the individualist view. There is no point in deliberating about the objectively worthwhile, since according to this view there is no such thing. The only rational course for individuals is, given their empirical interests and the powers competing with them, to negotiate the most satisfactory arrangement for themselves. That this may include a society so ordered as to reflect their rational nature, we have already seen. That it categorically should, however, this position is unable to affirm. A rational consensus about the best course to follow in a given situation is consequently meaningless. Only, it would seem, in a position like our own, which recognizes a final standard of judgment does communal deliberation about what is most worth doing become intelligible. And only where such deliberation at least makes sense does the freedom of all from domination at last become possible. Fordham University New York NOTES 1. See Chap. 1, "The Field of the Personal" in John Macmurray's Persons in Relation (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961), especially pp. 30-43. Anyone familiar with Macmurray's thought will recognize my deep indebtedness to him throughout this paper. 2. The tags are applied roughly without any attempt to distinguish the variety of positions covered by each. It is interesting to note that Roberto Unger, after his penetrating critique of liberal individualism in Knowledge and Politics (New York: The Free Press, 1975), seems unable to come up with an alternative other than a form of the organic view. 3. Cf. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1971), p. 522. 4. See, for example Joseph Margolis, Values and Conduct (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1971), pp. 31-34. 5. On this point and the following one, see the section "The Idea of Social Union" in John Rawls, op. cit., pp. 520-529. 6. Cf. Unger's discussion of the unity of universals and particulars, op. cit., pp. 137-144. 7. See my "Person, Community, and Moral Commitment" in Person and Community, ed. Robert J. Roth, S.J. (New York: Fordham Univ. Press, 1975), especially pp. 162172; also my analysis of the interest underlying judgmental activity in "God and the Search for Meaning" in God Knowable and Unknowable, (New York: Fordham Univ. Press, 1973), especially pp. 257-267. 8. See Francis Canavan's feature review of Unger's Knowledge and Politics in Thought, 50 (1975), 432-437, p. 433. 9. Absolutely basic to Macmurray's thought is the shift from "self as thinker" to "self as agent." He restricts the notion of "subject" to the former and prefers "person" for the latter. I have used the terms "intending subject," "free agent," "free initiative," and "person" interchangeably. 10. For this idea of Marcel's, see Roger Troisfontaines' synthesis of his thought in De L'existence a- l'etre, 2 Vols. (Paris: Vrin, 1953), especially Vol. 1, pp. 77-80. 11. See the first chapter of the Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten. 12. On this point about the consequences of mistakes regarding matters of intention, see Macmurray, op. cit., p. 148. CHAPTER VIII COMMUNITY IN THE PROCESS OF DEVELOPMENT MIECZYSLAW GOGACZ The Metaphysics of Community A community is a group of persons bound by real as well as by mental, connections. A community is not, therefore, as some existentialists propose, a mere sum of persons like atoms without mutual bonds, an agglomerate of absolute and hence solitary beings, steeped in self-depreciation. Nor is a community, as the

NeoPlatonists suggest, an organic whole, a continuous and durable being, a special order or zone of reality. That notion is found today among Hegelians, in the thought of Teilhard de Chardin and among many in the natural sciences. A community is then composed of two essential elements: persons and interpersonal bonds; it is a unity, on the one hand, of individual, autonomous, and rational beings and, on the other hand, of contingent relations. Just as a person is not a system of relations, but a subject in his or her own right and autonomous, the community is not a system for relations for these are essentially contingent and cannot exist in themselves. A community subsists only through its subjects which are its efficient causes. Hence, a community is defined as a unity of rational autonomous beings in non-autonomous relations. The relations, as bonds between real persons, are then both real and personal; whereas between persons and their products they are only relations of reason. There are many personal relations: presence, conversations, friendships. There are also many relations of reason: descriptions, doctrines, sciences, ideologies, art, unity. We tend to confuse these two types of relations. We treat human beings as if they were only clients, sick people, workers, pentitents; inversely, we allow business interests, social machinations, interinstitutional rivalries, institutions, punishments and reward to dominate us. The Metaphysics of Growth If the community is a group of persons bound together by a multitude of real and mental relations, the growth or development of community consists in the appearance, continuation or change of these interpersonal bonds or relations between persons and other things or processes. The development of community is not a process or transformation taking place in a continuing and distinct structure. Instead, the growth of the community consists in working out the role and place of persons with other persons, substances and effects. It is the work of metaphysics to discern, acknowledge and describe this role and place of persons. The NeoPlatonic ideas predominant in our days misconceive the difference between mental products and relations, on the one hand, and real beings, on the other, attributing to the former a value in themselves and superior to that of human persons. As a result society becomes more important than the individual human, the whole becomes more important than the part, the culture or ideology is placed above man, and institutions impose upon persons. Thus the person is reduced to the reality of a thing, that is, to being an interchangeable part in the midst of a larger structure or hierarchy of being. It should be added that the same notions persist today in certain NeoPlatonizing theologies and currents of thought that dominate our epoch. They see man as part of a cosmos crowned by the person of Christ, in such wise that the person is conceived as a thing and loses the dignity of a being whose friendship with God is basically personal, individual and direct. Such theologies risk deforming the authentic message of Christian Revelation. According to Revelation Christ suffered for every person, for each human being, and not for a class, group or social stratum composed of men. Each person has been saved by Christ and endowed with his friendship; in each person Christ, with the Father and the Spirit, establishes his home. Thus, a person is not a thing or object, either among men or before God; rather one is chosen and is distinguished by one's personal friendship with God. The person, then, is not a product, much less a system of real or mental relations, but a reasonably autonomous, singular, unique and individual being. The role or proper position of the person with others can be conditioned only by love. By one's profound personal nature with others to be an object of love, not of interests, machinations, rivalries, punishments or rewards. Community and Its Development In contemporary Polish metaphysics one can discern three principal notions of community: 1. A group or ensemble of persons who choose the common good in a similar manner (Card. Wojtyla). 2. A group of relations between persons whereby they achieve their existential

goals in approaching God (M. Krapiec). 3. A group of persons, each of whom in relation to the others is the common good made concrete within their conscious. These different conceptions have the common merit of clarifying and underlining persons. At the same time they have the common deficiency of not being precise regarding the essential constitutive element of community: "Similar activities" (Wojtyla), "the bond with God which perfects man" (Krapiec), "interiorization in a given person of the transcendental character of other persons." This could lead to confusion, for such general conceptions of the constitutive element of community, reduces the development of community to activities that are supposed to be common to all men such as establishing contact with God and all other persons. The constitutive factor of community, however, inasmuch as it defines its essence, cannot itself be contingent. A community consists essentially of related persons as causes and subjects of their own interrelations. Consequently, its development and growth is nothing other than the place and role of given persons in relation to other persons and things. CHAPTER IX PERSON AS A UNIQUE UNIVERSAL SOCIAL BEING MIHAILO MARKOVIC I The question of the relative priority of society and of individual person could be a fertile starting point for a critical analysis that reveals a multitude of mediations between two sharply opposed concepts and eventually discards the very question of priority in its initial simple form. On the other hand, interpretation of the question can be so misleading that it would give rise to extremely biased, mystifying and sometimes practically dangerous answers. We still live in the world governed on the one hand by one-sided, narrow-minded ideologies of authoritarian collectivism which tend to assume full control over the life of the individual, and dominated on the other hand by possessive individualism which systematically over-emphasizes "free initiative" and civil liberties at the expense of social justice. We have been witnessing significant changes during the last three decades: increasing concern about civil rights and individual participation in collectivist societies, growing state control and social welfare in liberalist societies. But the changes are much too cautious, slow, and reluctant; and too often new initiatives and institutions tend to degenerate in an alien, incompatible environment. There are hardly any movements which struggle for genuine transcendence of the essential limitations of contemporary societies; it is usually one-person or one-journal armies. Where there are or have been movements, they invariably constitute what Hegel used to call "abstract negation": expressing demands extremely opposite to official values and aspirations, rather than transcending them, differentiating between the limited and the historically indispensable in them. Thus, the Soviet dissident movement for civil rights, in its just struggle against bureaucratic oppression, tends to underestimate the remarkable achievements of its society in conquering poverty, ignorance, and excessive social differences. They do not come up with new solutions of the old conflict between the personal and the social; ideologically they go back to eighteenth-century liberalism or an even older patriarchal Christianorthodox political culture. On the other hand, the New Left movement in the liberal societies, in its just struggle against wars backed by the capitalist establishment, and against the values of an over-competitive, over-discriminative, and consumerist society, has invited total destruction of the old world and the building of a new one on its ashes. It has tended to forget that it took centuries of struggle by the best human minds to achieve a certain level of technology, democracy and culture, and that only on that ground a really new, more rational and more democratic community could be built. Instead of showing how in principle the step can be made from

representative to participatory democracy, from a competitive to a coordinated economy, and from a consumerist to a creative lifestyle, many New Left activists borrowed ideas directly from predominantly rural and authoritarian societies, and rather irrelevant in societies at much higher levels of material and cultural developments. II Abstract analytical thought, whether in its liberal or authoritarian version, tends to oppose the society and the person as two simple, unstructured, and unmediated entities. "Freedom of the individual" it is argued, "is absence of social constraint. The interests of the individual should be subordinated to the interests of society." But what is this society which lays down norms, imposes laws, plans and controls life, awards and punishes, and requires sacrifices? Is it that immediate social community in which a person lives; one's family, neighborhood, peers, working place, or club? Or is it the nation, race, religion, political party, or movement to which one belongs? Is it the government of one's country, or community of countries? Or humankind at large? A young man is ordered to go to war, as his government tells him that it is his sacred duty, and that there is nothing so noble as to die for his fatherland. His peers tell him that this is a lie, and that he should escape. His family tell him that they do not like to see him going to war, but that they even less like him being arrested and dishonored. The mass media tells him he should obey, whereas his moral and religious feelings strongly tell him that he should not. What is the voice of the society? Which social law has priority: written laws of his country, or unwritten ethical laws of a broad human community with which he shares basic values and commitments? But who stands for the society even as interpreted through the written law: those who wrote it, or those who interpret it (and interpret it in different ways)? Is the law the constitution, or the special bill, or the reading of either by one of the courts? Is the law what the judge eventually says? But an expensive lawyer makes a lot of difference in what the judge says. And there are higher level judges, and the Supreme Court sometimes overrides its own precedents. What sense does it make, then, when Jacques Maritain demands obedience even with respect to unjust laws? According to him: "Whether the law be just or unjust free men obey it only because it is just to obey, just by a justice intrinsic to the law."1 But even granted that we know which law we are talking about, what is there to give such a dignity to any law, no matter whether just or unjust? One might answer, the very principle of social order. But why should any order be better than any disorder? Orders are known in history which blocked all progress, and stifled human initiative and creativity for centuries. And examples of disorder are known which cleared the ground for liberation and unprecedented growth. There are certainly philosophical ways to justify the ideas of law, of the state, and of social order--by reference to: eternal ideas (Plato), reason (Aristotle, Aquinas, Spinoza), general will (Rousseau), good will (Kant), or absolute mind (Hegel). However, these philosophical justifications, just because they are purely philosophical and not concrete and historical, refer to the concept of social order and not to all actual orders, nor to any specific social order--and if they do, like sometimes in the case of Hegel,2 they must be considered ideological and apologetic slips, unless they are sufficiently mediated and supported by detailed and comprehensive historical analysis. "A people is free," says Rousseau, "whatever the form of its government when it sees in that which governs it not a man but an organ of law and the law expresses the general will which is always in the right because it considers only the common interest."3 How is one to interpret a theory like this? The apologist who commits himself to the views that the society or the government has unquestionable priority over the person, will first dogmatically and purely ideologically assume that the given law expresses general will. From that assumption he will derive the proposition that the given law is "always in the

right, always an expression of common interest," and therefore that people will be "free" precisely when they obey the given law. But if we do not make the unwarranted jump from the law in general to the given law, the only reasonable interpretation is: If the will expressed in the law is general will, i.e., the will that always pursues common interest, then persons will be free by following the law, because the law under those conditions would be the general element of their own will. This leads us to the following two conclusions: (1) Not every law and not every order should be obeyed. (2) In order to know which social order deserves to be respected and which law is worth being obeyed, we must be able to establish what is "common interest" and what is "general will." III Now what is the unanalyzed person whose will is a constituent of the general will, and whose freedom is incompatible with social constraint? One can hardly find sharper early expression of extreme individualism than in Stirner: "I have founded my thesis on nothing. . . . The divine is God's concern, the human man's. My concern is neither the divine nor the human, not the true, good, just, free, etc., but solely what is mine and it is not a general one, but is unique, as I am unique. Nothing is more to me than myself."4 Stirner could certainly have fully affirmed his individuality without asserting an unlimited egoism. He could have rid himself of all divine or pseudo-humanist Feurbachean mystification without inferring that he, as a creator, can build everything out of nothing,5 that all ideas deserve to be rejected,6 that he can be his own species . . . without norm, without law, without model,7 that one should not aspire to community, but to one-sidedness, that "one should not `seek'" the most comprehensive community, `human society,' but `seek' in others only means and organs which we may use as our property."8 This kind of absolute individualism cannot be even formulated in a consistent way. Stirner had to admit, in contradiction to everything that he said elsewhere: "Without doubt culture has made me powerful. . . . I receive with thanks what the centuries of culture have acquired for me; I am not willing to throw away and give up anything of it; I have not lived in vain."9 Stirner undoubtedly understood much better than he expressed the fact that without culture, without existing language and inherited ideas, without some kind of ethical concepts, there is no person as human being. But what he probably did not understand is that the essence of human culture is its productive and creative rather than consumerist character. Creating and giving away is greater joy than is taking and possessing. Friendship is doing things for the other without expecting return. Love is pure delight in making the beloved happy. Art is shaping new forms and looking around for someone who will genuinely need them. Philosophy is inventing words and thoughts which will help men of an epoch to understand their time, to become aware of their prejudices and grasp their best possibilities. A truly free, powerful and creative person opens oneself toward the world without fearing his vulnerability, one's life is so abundant and overflowing that one's will always be more ready to give than to take. And the very last thought in his mind would be "to seek in others only means and organs which he may use as his property," or what Nietzsche once said, "to desire to overpower . . . until, at last, the subjected creature has become completely a part of the superior creature's sphere of power."10 A person is indeed unique, endowed with some capacities, talents, needs, and dispositions which no other individual in the world has. One of the most important human rights, indeed the basic right of a person, is to be able to discover, express, develop, and cultivate those unique personal potential capacities and needs. This is the right to actually be what one potentially is. This is at the same time one of the clearest and most concrete criteria to evaluate the basic character of a social system. The best and earliest sign that a society is, or is going to become, oppressive, is the pursuit of uniformity, severe constraints on

expressions of individuality, and a stress on external discipline and heteronomous conduct. A society that genuinely grows and develops, and that is becoming a real human community, will create favorable conditions for personal self-discovery and self-actualization. It has no reasons to accept as its general policy an external control and suppression of individual idiosyn- crasies for fear that some of them could be incompatible with social needs and norms. There are two essential reasons for this tolerance. First, in contrast to the sphere of public social life (production of socially necessary goods and services, public decision-making, public education, mass media, etc.), there will be a growing sphere of private life, and organs of public power will have to refrain from interfering in what individuals do in their free time. Second, and most important, in the very basic structure of his or her being a person is not only a unique individual but also a social being. As a social being a person will have a critical attitude toward his or her individual idiosyncrasies, and will autonomously--rather than as pressed from outside--decide which of these unique personal dispositions should be given priority, in what direction they should be developed, and how their initial natural genetic forms should be transcended into socialized and cultivated ones. IV A person is a social being in a particular and in a universal sense. The particular sense is obvious; since birth an individual belongs to a growing number of particular social groups, such as family, neighborhood, school, community, larger local community, and nation. One is socialized through interaction and through reward and punishment. One learns one's mother tongue, communicates, is educated, receives an increasing amount of information, and is exposed to and asked to comply with an increasing number of rules. Some of these are in conflict with a morality and a particular ethnic tradition learned at home, with the ideology of the national state, with more or less present racial or religious awareness and solidarity, or with an implicit or explicit class-and-statusconsciousness. Pulled to different and often mutually incompatible gravitational centers, the person either lives a chaotic and incoherent life, or finds it useful to be deliberately split, or manages to introduce necessary harmony by sacrificing some commitments and allegiances in favor of others. But no matter how conformist or harmful for the unique creativity of the individual these various particular forms of socialization might be, they are the mediating link between unique individuality and the universal humanity of a person. By learning the mother tongue the individual actualizes his universal human capacity to learn a language and communicate with other human beings. The disposition to learn any language, to communicate with any symbolic forms, is already in the person's genetic make-up. But it can be manifested, objectified and fixed only in some particular social community, and in just one definite phase of individual development, never later. With the help of a rapidly-growing network of symbolic forms in any particular ethnic environment a person develops universal senses to experience the world, to see and feel in an increasingly more comprehensive, articulated, and richly interpreted way than with crude primitive senses. That this power of cultivated senses is universal can be seen from the fact that, once developed due to one particular symbolic form, its results can be translated into other particular forms. This is even more true with regard to the capacity of rational thought. Had an individual never been exposed to learning concepts and solving problems, his built-in genetic disposition to generalize, discriminate, grasp regularities, and derive logical conclusions from given premises, would vanish. But once developed, it becomes trans-national and trans-cultural. And the same applies to imagination, critical capacity, creative work, and so on.11 Once a person has lived in a definite human community, and developed basic universal human capacities, he becomes universally social and stays that way even when living alone on a deserted island, as the story of Robinson Crusoe beautifully illustrates. This leads to the following two conclusions.

(1) It depends on social conditions in a particular community whether our universal humanity, our communicative, rational and creative capacities, will develop, stay dormant, be crippled, or perish altogether. What then could be a better criterion of critical evaluation of various particular societies; of establishing which are progressive, just, and emancipatory, and which are retrogressive, unjust, and oppressive? What could be a better ethical criterion for a person to judge among various particular commitments, whether national, ideological, religious, or racial? (2) Because society is such a complex, stratified,and multilevel structure, it can never become completely corrupt and dehumanized, nor can all its members be alienated. Surely if this should ever happen to a society it would lack any forces for recovery. Many students of Marx have had great difficulty in understanding how the most dehumanized and alienated social class, the proletariat, was supposed to create the most humane form of society that ever existed. The truth is that, fortunately, neither the political regime nor the economic structure constitute the whole society, and that many persons and whole social segments escape dehumanization. A potential universal humanity is genetically built-in, ready to burst forth as soon as conditions become favorable within any particular social community. V States and new movements often seek legitimation by construing their particular interests as "general" ones: "defence of the free world," "economic justice," "worker's state," "national liberation." There are several clues that help a person--under pressure to support and actively engage in "the cause"--to detect a selfish particular interest lurking behind it. One is by mystification of both ends and means. Goals are formulated in terms of hypostatized abstract entities (National Glory, Free Society, the New Order, Dictatorship of the Proletariat). Means are justified by the ends, which is a quite pragmatic and indeed cynical procedure, given that the ends themselves have no rational and ethical ground. Another clue is extreme disregard for personal integrity, the demand of mere obedience, reinforced by external discipline, intolerance for individual criticism and dissent, and interpretation of anything less than total acceptance as betrayal. A third clue is mobilization of mass support on a low motivational basis, along with a tendency to take human beings rather than institutions as targets for attack, which results in outbursts of unnecessary violence. Once a social undertaking is moved by resentment and hatred for all persons of an opposite creed, race, nation or class, it is bound to end up in pathological deformations of whatever were the initially declared goals. Fourthly, there is the authoritarian structure of decision- making within the social establishment or movement which allegedly pursues a universal human interest. Once the person is asked to surrender his power to a central authority, once decisions that deeply affect him are being taken without his participation, once his loyalty is called for and not his suggestions or critical opinion, it is clear that the person is confronted with a selfish particular interest, and that between universal emancipatory claims and the actual reality there is quite a substantial gap. Between a person and the society there are a variety of conflicts and a variety of possible temporary identifications at different levels. The interesting question is when a person, who is fully developed as both a unique individual and a universal human being, finds it possible to identify with a society. And the answer seems to be that identification is possible when there is no longer a monopoly of political and economic power in the hands of any particular elite which usurps the right to speak in the name of the whole society; when there is no more public power at different levels of social organization than is necessary to coordinate necessary social activities and direct the communal development; when none of the public power is (professionally) political, and all of it is delegated and responsible to the electorate, subject to change and recall, and controlled by a powerful democratic public opinion. In such a self-governing community12 social

institutions really pursue common interests and a person is as free as possible because both aspire toward the same inherent, universal humanity. University of Belgrade Belgrade, Yugoslavia NOTES 1. Jacques Maritain, Scholasticism and Politics (New York: The MacMillan Co.), pp. 102-103. 2. Already in an early essay on the German Constitution, written from 1799 to 1802, Hegel began to apply his philosophical ideas to German conditions. While he praised the independent German states as "an expression of the inherent German passion for autonomy," he characterized that historical state as a period of negative freedom of the princes, and proclaimed the historical necessity of entering into a new stage of "positive freedom" within a national state where the freedom of the citizen would be guaranteed by the concentration of all state power in one center: a national German monarch. "But that a monarch is at the same time the state power, or that he has the supreme power, or that a state exists at all-these are synonymous." (Hegel, Die Verfassung des Deutschen Reichs, ed by G. Mollat, Stuttgart, 1935, pp. 46, 58, 83, 84, 112-13). 3. J. J. Rousseau, Lettres ecrite de la Montaigne, in Oeuvres completes de J. J. Rousseau (ed. P. R. Anguis [Paris: Dalibon, 1824] vol. VII, Part II, Letter VII), p. 438; J. J. Rousseau, The Social Contract, in The Social Contract and Discourses, transl. by G.D.H. Cole (Everyman's Library; New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1950) B. II, ch. 6, p. 37. 4. Max Stirner, The Ego and His Own, New York: Harper & Row, 1974, p. 41. 5. Ibid., p. 41: "I am not nothing in the sense of emptiness, but I am creative nothing out of which I myself as creator create everything." 6. Ibid., p. 49. 7. Ibid., p. 55. 8. Ibid., p. 214. 9. Ibid., p. 238. 10. Nietzsche, The Will to Power (London: T. N. Foulis, 1914), vol. II, p. 130. 11. M. Markovic, From Affluence to Praxis (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1974), pp. 12-16. 12. More on the humanist assumption of self-government: Ibid., ch. 7, "The New Human Society and its Organization," pp. 209- 249; "Self-management and Efficiency," in M. Markovic, The Contemporary Marx, (Nottingham: Spokesman Books, 1974), ch. 12, pp. 208-217; "Philosophical Foundations of the Idea of Selfmanagement," "Socialism and Self-management," and "Self-government and Planning," in Self-governing Socialism, ed. by B. Horvat, M. Markovic and R. Supek (White Plains, New York: International Arts and Sciences Press, Inc., 1975), vol. I, pp. 327-351, 416-438, 479-491; "Basic characteristics of Marxist Humanism," decentralization--A Precondition of a More National Society" and "Political Power, State, Self-government" in M. Markovic, Democratic Socialism: Theory and Practice (Sussex: The Harvester Press; New York: St. Martin's Press, 1982). CHAPTER X HOMO CREATOR: SOLVING THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN EXISTENCE Comment and Counter-Proposal to Professor Markovic's "Person as a Unique Universal Social Being" JANUSZ KUCZYNSKI Preliminary The paper not only interestingly but often brilliantly poses several detailed questions, and also contains many accurate and concrete formulations. Within the framework of accepted philosophical assumptions, the author aims at an objective approach to difficult problems. Based on his own often new interpretations of the European philosophical heritage, he endeavors to concretize humanism and formulates with deep concern propositions for the defense of the great values of

our common human tradition. The introduction supporting Hegel's refusal of the principle of "abstract negation" has important consequences. This allows the author, sometimes even to a considerable extent, to surmount the limited nature of the New Left programs and to present the glaring and literally reactionary nature of some anti- socialistic pronouncements, which are incapable of suggesting any constructive alternatives to the Communist movement. Also correct is the closely related statement on the lack of proper class and historical orientation of the New Left. However, it is unfortunate that the author did not extend this principle of classhistorical perception of phenomena to his entire paper. One of the consequences of this is the omission of differences within the New Left, in which we will also find valuable elements of criticism of capitalistic development and of the errors of the socialist and communist movement. Another consequence is omission of the positive moment of differentiation of leftist movements in general. To be sure, lack of unity weakens the power of the entire Left, but at the same time it reflects the unusually broad popularization of socialist ideas, corresponding to very different socio-historical conditions.1 In the name of the above common values, and scientific philosophical discussion, and with a view to constructive program and building understanding, I wish strongly to underline: 1. the positive aspects of opposing theoretical propositions; 2. the principle of treating differences also as values, on condition that they do not undermine mutual, fundamental values, but aim at enriching them; and 3. the need for the development of a new type of philosophical discussions. Ideological struggle is not only a reality resulting from class-political differences, for the intellectualist it is an imperative, a consequence of fidelity to truth and the cohesiveness of theory. For not only realism, but also intellectual exactitude requires one to repudiate the illusion of abandoning this battle or introducing immediate ideological compromises. At the same time, these same realistic moral presumptions warrant one to seek and develop mutual values, even though these may be differently justified.2 In the long run philosophers may be more responsible than politicians for the world's future. Marx was correct in his famous statement on ideas which become material forces when they dominate the masses, and perhaps Husserl was right when he defined philosophers as "functionaries of mankind." Important among these are socialism and humanism. The first links us with Prof. Markovic, though we may many a time differently understand the vital constituents of this concept. The second, certainly, we share with many, though the differences in understanding humanism may be enormous .Perhaps these very differences are one of the most important subjects for discussion. Conditions for fruitful and direct discussion, however, are to eschew equivocous formulations and to pose questions as accurately as possible. A necessary precondition of such scientific precision in human studies is historicism and the closely related class perception of phenomena from the point of view of the philosophy of history. Despite some simplified interpretations of Marxism, as well as some theoretically important but peculiarly neo-dogmatic interpretations,3 the principle of class and historicism in authentic Marxism is closely connected with humanism, with the principle of the accumulation and inheritance of authentic values, wherever and whenever they were created. This raises some specific issues. At one point, Prof. Markovic asks several questions concerning the relation of a young man to war. They are formulated without reference to concrete national-class-historical situations, and thus each of them may be answered in many ways. In the accepted theoretical horizon of the paper, one cannot justify any answer outright. In the case of the young heroes in the battles against Fascism there is actually no need to ask such questions. It is a matter of fact, that they defended, not only their class and nation, but also the general values of humanism. One may presume that some of the author's questions have rhetorical character

after all, and are proof of his oratorical talent; for example, on the same page we read: "What is the voice of the society? Which social law has priority? Written laws of his country, or unwritten ethical laws of a broad human community with which he shares basic values and commitments?"4 The brilliant and ironic remarks against sophistry in the interpretation of written law are a correct answer, though an indirect one. On the same page, however, Prof. Markovic treated Jacques Maritain too one-sidedly as a result of an ahistorical approach.5 Not only the majority of Christian thinkers, but also official advocates of the Apostolic See, including the two last popes, have distanced themselves from the centuries-old tradition of "natural law" as a means of sanctifying ruling authority and exploitative regimes. This includes the "established confusion" of capitalism, as E. Mounier correctly called it. Cooperation between Christians and Marxists in the name of social justice and progress, of peace and humanism, may become one of the means of saving the world, as well as the subject of unusually fruitful discussions from the cultural point of view.6 On the other hand, Prof. Markovic's summarizing remark at the end of this paragraph is completely justified: "Disorders are known which cleared the ground for liberation and unprecedented growth." It is worth adding that Marx made similar remarks on the American Revolution; the positive estimation of this aspect of bourgeois as well as socialistic revolutions is closely linked with the fundamental constructions of historical materialism. Marxism as a Class and Universal Philosophy A historian of philosophy (especially one who treats works of human thought also as a process of gaining knowledge) will recognize residues of linear, dogmatic Marxism in estimations of various "philosophical ways to justify the ideas of law, of the state, of social order," as "ideological, apologetic slips." As a rule they constitute absolutizations of the partial truths of various stages of historical recognition.7 Engels and Lenin8 noted that scientific socialism also originates from Aristotle9 and certainly from Spinoza and Rousseau. The sources of Marxism can be traced to many national cultures (besides the three classically ascertained by Lenin). For example, many elements of Marxist humanism and the theory of the national question undoubtedly were inspired by Marx's studies on Polish history.10 This has paramount significance for contemporary times. Such an authentic and historically profound movement of human community as socialism which looms so large on the universal scale must consider all achievements, including the contemporary. The future united culture of a socialistic world and a complete man ("der totale Mensch," according to Marx) will have to incorporate all accomplishments, liberating them from today's political and class functions and meanings. This concerns, of course, not only the great achievements of American civilization and culture which can be very easily justified, but also of "exotic" cultures very distant from the "Western" manner of thinking. H. Parsons tried to effectively show in his important book that Marxism may efficiently break barriers of cultural strangeness, while respecting to a maximum degree the distinctiveness of such cultures.11 The apparent digression of the last few paragraphs allows us to approach, from our point of view, answers to the question contained in Prof. Markovic's conclusions. Dialectical thinking must differentiate various grades or levels of "common interest" and "general will," according to one's ideas about the socialization of community. Prof. Markovic's Ideas The finesse and depth of many of Sartre's deductions, especially when he moved from phenomenology to historical materialism, fascinated some Marxists who, however, took a road leading in the opposite direction, from Marxism to various existential, phenomenological, and other positions--the paradox of ideological transformations! Prof. Markovic, instead, in the basic parts of his paper strives for a

concretization of Marxism in the defense and development of his humanistic content. However, some of his formulations such as "one man or one-journal armies" (though logically contradictory to other theses, for example, about the New Left) block the possibility of class analysis, and thus of sociological precision. They also tend to exclude worthy deliberation of the one universal social force that may assure the development and even the salvation of human civilization. Marxism, as a real humanism, must also be a realism; it must be closely linked with authentic revolusionism and hence above all with creative attitudes. Below I develop the idea of Marxism as the philosophy of creativity; in my opinion, only fully effective creativity fully effective surmounts subjection to social and theoretic evil. The "abstract negation," of which Prof. Markovic so justly reminded us, often leads to deep and unnoticed intellectual dependence on criticized evil. The author is right to reject it. I approve with the greatest interest the plurality of values in the author's beautiful remarks on creativity,12 friendship, love, and philosophical invention. I wish to underline how much it goes beyond the horizon of E. Fromm's famous work, "Love as the Solution of the Problem of Human Existence." We will probably agree that love (in itself) has often been a mystification or utopian dream as a means of social transformation; only when linked with just striving, could it solve problems of man-society relations, and then only partially. Today, however, just creativity may solve the problem of human existence; though to do so it must be connected with struggle, love, etc. We are both against the separation of individual aspects of human existence and thus against absolutization, and by same token the alienation, of existence. For this reason, I would prefer a somewhat more precise and revealing definition of the "essence of human culture" underlining that it indeed has a "consumerist character" as well. Consumption is one of the most important aspects of culture in a universal perspective: exactly as one means of linking the individual with society. This is the paramount phenomenon from the ontological point of view, inasmuch as the reception of culture is its co-creation.113 In an anthropological approach in a developed socialistic society (in contradistinction to society or sections of society dominated by mass culture) it gives the broadest chances, apart from creative work, for solving the "antinomy" of individuals and society in such wise that the receiver at the same time becomes the creator.14 Similarly I would broaden and modify the idea of humanism, which for Markovic is closely connected with naturalism and which was considered even in the exampleequation form in "The Economic-Philosophical Manuscripts." a) It is still the case today that man has "the right to actually be what one potentially is." This results of course from the destruction of "human nature" by previous social conditions. b) Nature itself must be seen historically; naturalism must take history into account. If, for example, nature is also man's essence, then as a "complexity of social relations" this essence is subject to development.15 The ecological crisis stimulates today and sometimes absolutizes this original naturalism but, besides valid slogans on the defense of nature, one must also see in it "natural evil." Socrates, drinking hemlock, linked himself through nature with death; today, cancer is a natural phenomenon and so is death. Will we always be reconciled with both of them? c) Thus I propose extending the concept of humanism, transcending it and complementing it with humanistic creationism. In order to really solve the problem of human existence, we must basically develop man's nature, in the biological, as well as the existential sense.16 The philosopher must sometimes suggest very farreaching projects based on the coherence of theory. Prof. Markovic' previously discussed concept is a classic Marxian idea, even a repetition with the help of contemporary terminology a famous thesis of the "Communist Manifesto," in his beautiful statement: "A society that genuinely grows and develops and that is becoming a real human community will create favorable conditions for personal self-discovery and selfactualization." In relation to

naturalism, we must develop Marxism according to its own principles in the same way, one must look deeper into the relation of the private and public spheres of a man's life. Their opposition arises naturally out of the antinomy of class societies; in an authentic community, it ceases to be a political and humanistic problem, and becomes purely technical. I sharpen this formulation purposely, for I feel along with all its virtues, the greatest fault of Prof. Markovic's philosophy is that it is dominated by a problematic horizon, forced on by antagonistic societies and their antinomies. Despite all its reservations, the proposed approach grows out of a metaphysical (in a counter-dialectic meaning) opposition of the individual and society. This manifests itself in a lack of differentiation of categories in the description of man, and reduces almost everything to the notion of "person." This gives rise to a conception of society in which divergent and opposing activities of individuals, groups, etc., remind one of the disorderly, chaotic, and hence absurd "Brownian movements" seen under a microscope. University of Warsaw Warsaw, Poland NOTES 1. In his paper in Santiniketan (see Man and Nature, ed. George F. McLean; Calcutta: Oxford Univ. Press, 1978), Prof. A. Woznicki paid attention to this differentiation, but in a classically idealistic manner (in the sense of historical idealism), and introduced it with a differentiation of interpretations of Marx's theory: ". . . different ways of interpreting Karl Marx leads to a wide variety of contemporary socio-political movements" "Nature and Human Praxis in Karl Marx," in Dialectics and Humanism, Nr. 3, 1976). A related aspect--youth and dynamics of scientific socialism--though exaggerated is beautifully formulated as quoted in the paper in Sartre's statement: "Far from being exhausted, Marxism is still very young, almost in its infancy: it has scarcely begun to develop. It remains, therefore, the philosophy of our time." 2. For a more extensive treatment of this see: J. Kuczynski, "The MarxistChristian Dialogue" (Dialectics and Humanism, No. 2, 1974); and idem, ChristianMarxist Dialogue in Poland, (Warsaw: Interpress, 1979). 3. For example, Maoism and various aspects of the "cultural revolution"; also L. Althusser in his subtly developed, yet historically and theoretically false thesis, that "Marxism is not humanism," since it is concisely scientific (L. Althusser and E. Balibar, Lire le Capital, Paris: Maspero, 1968). 4. This was once, in the period of battle with Stalinism, a vital problem. I think that momentous theoretical accomplishments in proving the existence of suprahistorical elementary norms and moral laws, as well as showing the presence of such a conviction in classic Marxism, are evident in Marek Fritzhand's famous book entitled, Man, Humanism, Morality. From Studies on Marx (Warsaw, Ksiazke i Wiedza Publishers, 1961). 5. I do not know exactly why, but under the influence of his stay in the USA, Maritain's views became more retrograde. One must remember, however, his magnificent fight against Franco's fascism (in remarks, openly contradictory to the ones cited in the paper). Also, Polish Marxists will never forget that "Integral Humanism" was inspirational to broad circles of Polish liberal intelligentsia in the battle against the "laws" of the German occupational state. Naturally, irrespective of this, we conducted and will continue to conduct philosophical understanding and scientific discussion with theo-centric humanism. 6. I anticipated this a few years ago in the Polish commentaries on the ideological aspects of the Second Vatican Council (J. Kuczynski - "Porzadek nadchodzacego swiata" /Order in the Oncoming World/, Warsaw: Ksiazka i Wiedza, 1976), recent years more broadly confirm these predictions. The policy of social cooperation with the Christian world was inaugurated by Lenin; Thalmann confirmed this in his speeches, as has Berlinger in the famous idea of the "historic compromise." 7. "From the point of view of primitive, vulgar, metaphysical materialism,

philosophical idealism is only rubbish. To the contrary, from the point of view of dialectic materialism, philosophical idealism is one-sided and exaggerated, . . . one of the minute features, one of the sides of the edge of recognition . . ." (W.I. Lenin - Philosophical Notebooks, Warsaw: "Ksiazka i Wiedza" 1956, pp. 338339). 8. "We, German socialists, are proud of the fact that we descend from Kant" - this statement is sufficiently expressive. Lenin required communists to acquire all human knowledge. 9. The extent of the theoretical discoveries of Aristotle was often underlined by Marx. 10. It suffices to mention Marx's unique estimation of the classical altruism of the Polish nobility, which, for the good of their Fatherland, renounced part of their important state privileges in the May 3rd Constitution of 1791. I documented and analyzed this problem in the book entitled Individuality and Fatherland (Warsaw: Panstwowy Istytut Wydawniczy, 1972); also see my article, "The National Question and Real Humanism" and J. Borgosz, "National and Internationalist Aspects of Marxist Philosophy" (Dialectics and Humanism, Nr. 1, 1975). 11. H. Parsons, "Man East and West" (Amsterdam: B.R. Gruner, 1975). To a considerable degree inspired by the conference in Santiniketan, co-organized by the International Society for Metaphysics, Dialectics and Humanism issued a special publication on Indian philosophy, devoted mainly to the matter of the relation of Marxism to Indian culture in the perspective of world culture. 12. There has recently been a substantial increase of interest in creativity as a philosophical problem. Tatarkiewicz published an important historical analysis of this phenomenon in "Dzieje szesciu pojec" History of Six Ideas; (Warsaw: Panstwowy Instytut Wydauniczy, 1975). Intensive research is being carried out by soviet scholars (for example, Kiedrow, Altszuller, Korszunow and Bibler, the Georgian school of philosophical anthropology, and Towmasjan in Armenia). Unfortunately, I am acquainted with only a few American works, though for example from E. Landau's Psychologie der Kreativita¦t, (Munchen: E. Reinhardt, 1972) we know how many there are. With greater interest, I have begun studies on materials of "The Foundation for Creative Philosophy," in which H. Parsons' paper displays the surprising convergences between some of Wieman's thinking and Marx's theses. W. Minor's paper, "Range and Depth of Creative Interchange," is also very persuasive. This matter demands, a separate discussion which, on account of the manner of posing the problems in the above-mentioned materials, will certainly be scientifically fruitful. 13. Roman Ingarden, in his book, "Das literarische Kunstwerk" (Halle: E. Niemeyer, 1931) proved this in detail. His achievements were recently highly rated during the conference "Marxist Critique of Phenomenology and Philosophy of R. Ingarden," especially in the papers of K.K. Dolgow, J. Fizer, N. Motroszylowa, D.M. Rasmussen, McCormick, Ojzerman and Henrich. See Dialectics and Humanism No. 2, 3 and 4, 1975. 14. A. Kuczynska, "Piekn--Mit i Rzeczywistosc" (Beauty, Myth and Reality; 2nd ed; Warsaw: Wiedza "Powszechna" 1976). 15. I think that certain elements of this non-historical, aprioristic naturalism (sources of which are to be found in the Stoics, Rousseau, and some trends of American cultural anthropology) were evident at the Santiniketan conference, for example in the pages of Professors Bhattacharyya's and Thakur's papers. Such an approach is also found in H. Parsons' inspiring book, "Man East and West." 16. So that there be no misunderstandings, I would note that I reject the idea of super-man. This involves me in a polemics with the numerous successors of Nietzsche, which is presented very extensively in my book, "Zmierzch mieszczanstwa. Immoralizm--nihilizm--faszyzm" (Decline of the Bourgeoisie: Immoralism--Nihilism--Fascism (Warsaw: Panstwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1966). CHAPTER XI THE EXTENSION OF HUMAN RIGHTS AND THE ADVANCEMENT OF SOCIETY

AGUSTIN BASAVE FERNANDEZ del VALLE BEING-WITH-OTHERS For objects there is no coexisting or being other: objects simply exist. Being "with" another, however, means that at the same time, the other is with me. In life there is no other way of being than "with" others, which is equivalent to saying that "being with" one's fellow-men is a primordial manner of existence. As no persons pre-existed society, there has never been a moment of association simply in view of a goal. We find ourselves living by reciprocal actions with usages, traditions and beliefs. These social forms do not belong to anyone in particular; they are everyone's. This does not mean, of course, that they lack meaning. On the contrary, because social phenomena as intelligible structures are full of sense, it has been possible to develop sociology and social philosophy. Social life has a spiritual nature and, in time, takes the form of institutions, limited groupings and individual actions. It should be well-understood that society is not a subsistent entity. Social realities are meaningful totalities, not by any inconstancy of romantic thinking, but because of the tested fact that in every concrete, social phenomenon the whole precedes the parts. This is a priority of logic or of meaning, rather than of time. In history, however, social groups interact so as to form society. Persons convert the universe of the spiritual values into historical reality by their concretion in greater or lesser circles of life. It is necessary, therefore, to find the structural law of the spiritual world and to fix the appropriate position for the different sub-groups in society. Even though the hierarchical order of the spiritual universe remains the same for all times, some realizations are genuine while others are deficient. However, the fact that there is an absolute norm and that realizations are more or less complete does not imply a static concept of society. There is a difference between the ideal and the concrete order, whether in the United States or in Russia, in the twelfth century or in the twentieth century, for in the temporal and developing world the spiritual is not pure, but diluted in empirical phenomena. It is commonly said that society perfects and develops mankind, as if by some external addition. Nothing could be more erroneous. Society is a projection of peoples' most deeply felt reality. Whether it is a decision that affects all humans, a great natural institution or a spontaneous personal enterprise between neighbors, it pursues a temporal public benefit for the people. The common good is reflected, finally, in the goodness distributed because from the beginning it was a social community of personal goods. In coexisting with others, a person gives birth to and develops one's spiritual life. The individual and the social are two essential aspects of a person. To destroy either of these aspects is to destroy the person. As a mobile and relatively autonomous spirit, the person possesses the nonspatial and incorporeal faculty of putting himself in the place of his fellowmen. Around each person there grows an ever-expanding circle of communities. In love, this spiritual movement and social freedom reach their perfection. To undertake an ontology of society one must begin with the real, concrete man in his characteristic relation to other men. Prior to any concrete option, the person is destined from the depths of his being to live socially. The person is an open being-in-himself; progressively, he achieves his own dynamic self- development. Every human is a relative being who transcends the order of mutual necessity. Hence, human communication is intentional reciprocity, and this coexistence of men is directed toward the realization of a union with the fundamental and founding being. Being-together-in-the-world is a primary character of intersubjectivity. I am authentic only when I discover the other as thou. Upon discovering the thou I discover the intersubjective we, which is supra-real, supra-concrete and transcendental. Only within this existential orientation does the social phenomenon become a scientific object. Love accents and underlines the singularity of the other. In it there resides the animating power of human activities and the

interchange of persons; in it corporality becomes dialogue. It is not enough to say that we are beings-in-the-world; we must add that we expand toward and project ourselves toward the world. More than an encounter with the world, we have being with the world. Hence, I speak, not of being thrown into the world, but of being implanted in it with a personal mission. Justice, which depends upon respect for the other and exhorts us to give each one his due, rests upon the proper and distinctive value of each human being. The rights of the person have always constituted the main focus of the struggle for justice. If lawfulness is social order, humans and their good are situated at the center of law. To give adequate recognition to human dignity, the law must recognize and protect the liberty of men as morally independent and selfresponsible beings. This sphere of moral freedom with its ontic foundation is not subject to the decisions of the authorities as if it were a mere instrument in the service of the purposes of the state, the race or the social class. It is a matter of safeguarding a supreme good by legal justice, for every right is a contribution to the realization of a moral life, assuring its free development and establishing an ethical "minimum." Respect for human dignity is demanded of every person and of the community itself, the state or the nation. It is one thing for an individual to want to sacrifice oneself voluntarily on behalf of the community, and another very different thing for the community to impose that sacrifice. The rights of man, based upon the moral command to respect human dignity, derive from the ontological reality of one's capacity for self-determination. For this reason, a person is capable of law and of acting in a juridically responsible manner. To fulfill one's specific objectives, the individual must conserve, develop and perfect one's being. This ontological requirement of the full development of one's being bases the inalienable and irremovable character of the fundamental rights of the human person. The human individual is, essentially, an incarnate spirit, intelligent, independent and free, who as a self-contained whole acts upon the world while remaining open to communication with his fellowmen. In the existential plan, the individual is the original and transcendental possibility of a search for salvation. His liberty and communicability, within his space-time dimensions, are projected toward the Subsistent Plenitude. In the multidimensional being of man one should distinguish such material aspects as the corporeal and the living, such religious aspects as both the deiform which originates from God and the theotropic which is directed toward God. From the material fact of being a living organism are derived such fundamental powers as the rights to life, to physical integrity, to the use and disposition of material goods for subsistence and to work. The spiritual, cultural and historical aspects of the person are the bases for the right to communicate thinking, to educate children, to have legal security and to participate in public life. From the religious aspect is derived the rights to direct oneself toward God and not to deliver one's soul to the community, the state, the social class or the race, although in times of danger one's life can be given for the community. A political society can ask its citizens to sacrifice their lives when the country so requires, but it can never ask for the sacrifice of their souls. RIGHTS Although there exist numerous classifications of human rights, we prefer a classification that attends to the distinctive nature of its object: 1) Civil or properly individual rights: the rights to life; to physical freedom and to the guarantees of due process; to freedom of religion, education, expression and assembly; to equality; to property; and to the inviolability of the home. 2) Political or civil rights: the rights to one's national identity, to participate in the civic life of the country, etc. 3) Economic rights: the rights to just and satisfactory remuneration, to an adequate standard of living, etc. 4) Social rights: the rights to work and to the choice of work, to social

security, to protection of maternity and of infancy, etc. 5) Cultural rights: the right to participate in the cultural life of the community, to education, etc. All these rights are connatural, universal and absolute in the sense that every person and authority must respect them; they are necessary in an ontological sense because they are derived from each person's own human nature; they are inalienable, inviolable and imprescriptible. Notwithstanding, human rights neither can nor must impair the legitimate interests of society. No human rights can justify transgressing the boundaries imposed by ethics, by other's rights or by the demands of temporal public welfare. Just as the collectivity cannot be a justification for breaching the prerogatives of the person, neither is it admissible for an excessive exaltation of the individual to impede the common welfare. Not only does the individual have rights; each people has the right to assure that its personality, independence and culture be respected. In addition, states have the right to an adequate standard of living. Beside the traditional individual rights, the community has social rights, for example, that its members enjoy the benefits of education, culture and the minimum socio-economic well-being. While individual rights are susceptible to jurisdictional protection, social rights lack this type of protection. Through history there has been slow but sure progress in the fundamental rights of mankind. Together with the development of culture there has been a progressive awareness of one's human dignity. In ancient times theoretical formulations of human rights did not exist, nor were there legal norms to protect them. From primitive cruelty till the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" (1948), a long, hard road has been traversed. There remain the great landmarks in the history of human rights: the Spanish judicial power in the Magna-Carta of Leon (1188), the British Magna Carta (1215), the Virginia Declaration of Rights and the Declaration of Independence of the United States (1776), the American Bill of Rights (1787), the Declaration of Human and Citizens' Rights (1789) of the French Revolution, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), the creation in Western Europe of a legal system of international protection of human rights (The European Convention, 1950). This is an impressive listing of doctrinal formulations. It must be asked, however, if effective respect for human dignity, beyond words and declarations, is exercised in every nation. The reports of the different commissions of jurists state that in many regions of the earth there is a great distance between the legal texts and reality. Thus, there has been talk of a geography of freedom in order to diffuse the great spiritual and moral values in every region of the world. At the same time there is need for a bold struggle for the social, economic and technological progress of underdeveloped regions. Were the huge expenditures of the armament race to be assigned even in small part to promoting the national income of underdeveloped countries, it would contribute to the abolition or reduction of "infra-life." SOCIAL PROGRESS Etymologically, the word progress, from the Latin progressio, means moving ahead, the action of advancing or pursuing something. In a philosophical sense, however, progress is accomplished only when values are fulfilled and the conditions of life are improved. Not every change is progress; some may be truly retrogressive. A change of structures is desired, not for the change itself, but for progress in the realization of the essential human values of truth, goodness, beauty, justice and, above all, love. The person, in his search for integral self-realization, is the cause of social changes. As just one has a real power which actualizes itself in behavior. This power is initially conceptualized in norms that are esteemed or valued. Justice is motive power, whereas injustice by excess, defect, perversion or demerit is human frustration. Though the human person is the dynamic principle which initiates change, it is accomplished by models which thematize values and refer to the ideal of society. There is no model without reference to goals and goods. Particular projects are

pragmatic plans for transforming or adjusting to, the environment. We need the model in order not to perish from excessive mechanism and pragmatism; but we also need the project in order not to tarry in the ideal order alone. Change requires the search for a spiritual "home," a new vision of the cosmos, because people desire to have a more full and creative spirit. This problem is not resolved by destroying the past or by its superficial modification. The solution lies not in building a new society with limited social engineering, but in developing mature political decisions in terms of concrete situations. We cannot eliminate the political act and replace it by a "governing machine." Computerized thought would, if possible, reduce all metaphysics to physics and every ethical evaluation to technological purpose. In contrast, true thought would return everything to its original place, its proper and essential context, its origin or beginning. Cybernetics cannot substitute for political action. As the nature of the answers furnished by computers depends on what has previously been fed into them, the will of the one who employs them determines the real behavior of these electronic brains. Similarly, the politician's act precedes and always completely determines the process of the "governing machine." Supposing that a politician relies upon the best available information, there remains the question of who will make the final decision on the basis of that data and with political prudence. Man begins and stops the computer process; he controls automation in public administration. The political act cannot be lowered to the level of mere technical process, for the essentially ethical character of the political act is irreducible to mechanization. The progress of politics is always directed toward love. Models of society involve an ethico-metaphysical evaluation. The consumer society, built upon the value of that which gratifies, does not permit man to achieve the highest values of his spirit; it promotes in the person conformism rather than creative transcendence. The domineering society enthrones the will of power and abandons the norms of justice and the imperatives of charity. The scientifictechnological society produces a technical dehumanized man who does not know what to do with life, nor how to conciliate essential truths. The unconditioned society erects the aesthetic enjoyment of self-promotion as the supreme law. The "total man" is promoted, eliminating the repression of the libido, abolishing the unjust distribution of goods and suppressing psychic and social negativities. This utopic model is seen as overcoming all the conflicts and obstacles to an earthly heaven. The informed society conforms to a world turned into a spectacle in which the person is reduced to an image consumer. Beyond all these unilateral and distorting models it is necessary to look for a society which accomodates both body and spirit and which allows for an harmonious development of the multiple strivings found in individuals and in groups. Like the models prescribed for social change, it occurs to me to call the model of this society which will permit an harmonious and creative development of the many strivings of individuals and groups `an adequately human society'. This type of society, which is always perfectible, considers the person in function of the common good without depersonalizing him or her. It looks upon the common good in function of the ultimate and of the human person. The person is relative for the State and for society, whereas they exist absolutely for the person. The contributed common good is translated into the distributed common goodness. By common good is meant the organized set of social conditions on the basis of which the human person can fulfill his natural and spiritual destiny. Human rights are a very important part of the common good, but do not exhaust it. Thus, for the progress of the society in which we live it would not be sufficient to extend human rights to the whole world, because beyond human rights there is the quasicreative existence of man who inhabits the planet in a human manner. An "adequately human society" would favor the communion of men and respect the development of every person and thing according to its proper nature; each person must be allowed to exist in his own manner. This will make possible real growth in

culture; a diffused ability to be loyal to one's personal vocation in its uniqueness will result in a richer, more human and more plentiful world. The vocational structure must be found within the horizon of an all-encompassing and transcendental awareness and value. We must return to the simple, without renouncing cultural achievements; we must substitute the politics of power by the politics of culture. The "soul of a culture," as Hector D. Manrioni states, "must be the reality of love." To aspire to a "politics without enemy" sounds utopic if it is not based in "caritas," in the profound and noble sense intimated by its etymology. When dialogue is carried out fraternally and in the great light of truth, opposition is turned into fellowship and one's neighbor can be seen as a fellowman. This is one of the virtues of democracy. Prior to being a political form of government, democracy is a form of human conviviality. More basic still, it is a human vocation. In politics this vocation culminates in the practical achievement of ethical postulates of co-participation, co-responsibility and reciprocal help. It supposes the acknowledgement and protection of the rights of human person. This carries the dialogical being of the human person to its fullness, serving as an instrument of complete personal realization by making the human being, rather than the state, the basis and goal of the political structure. It invites the adhesion of free human beings; it evolves their responsiveness into a method which permits the variety of political opinions to subsist and prohibits the barbarous mutilation of dissident sectors of society. As a form of government, democracy recognizes in men an essential equality of opportunities for the exercise of their civil and political rights; it relies on the people to structure power. The democratic regime is the most fair; it is the only one that permits true progress inasmuch as: 1) it guarantees the citizen active political participation; 2) it avoids despotism by those who govern; 3) it facilitates a continuing and ordered expression of public opinion; 4) it makes possible appropriate and opportune changes and readjustments; 5) it promotes man's characteristic and distinctive note of rationality and, through rationality, ethicity; 6) it adapts itself better to fractioned society with a pluralism of values; and 7) it recognizes the essential equality of persons and favors the structuring and functioning of the state as a lawful society. One must not ignore the importance of the institutional aspect of the common good. In proper time the best means must be found and implemented to guarantee order and peace in society, freedom of men and groups, ways for everyone to fulfill in a free and responsible manner the essential tasks of life, economic security for the near future and coming generations, and the well-being of society as a whole. But social progress must not be looked for in the purely institutional, organizational or technical order. The danger that progress in the natural sciences will overcome moral progress creates deep suspense and fear. Scientific progress can be utilized for constructive goals as well as for such destructive purposes as an armament race. True progress in the natural sciences must be proportioned to the moral strengths of people. The future is in our hands; history is the work of freedom. Universidad de Nuevo Leon Monterrey, Mexico COMMENT ON PROFESSOR BASAVE'S "THE EXTENSION OF HUMAN RIGHTS AND THE ADVANCEMENT OF SOCIETY" ABRAHAM EDEL The strategy of my comments will be to make explicit the series of questions to which Professor Basave gives such interesting answers, then to confront his answers with alternatives (even where I would share his views), and thus to see upon what grounds his answers should be preferred. I think this analysis will also

reveal in his approach a hidden pragmatism. As I see it, the topics through which we range are: 1. Ontological categories for the discussion of man. 2. Moral values central to the human situation and the human enterprise. 3. A conceptual structure in ethical theory for the organization of the values and their achievement. 4. A direction of social policy implicit in the notions of "extension" and "advancement," employed in the title of the paper. 5. Finally, since we are working here in the framework of a metaphysical inquiry, a return to the metaphysical through the method of selecting categories that operates in the discussion. Ontological Categories for the Discussion of Man There are many categorial experiments in the history of thought for focusing on the human being. For example: a Plotinian lowly fragment of the One or Whole, an inner struggle of the dualistic body-soul (with Manichean overtones), a focused reflection of an eternal or spiritual order, a voluntaristic atomic individual contracting with his fellows (on his own terms), a material being manifesting higher complex levels of organization, an interpersonal primordial I-Thou, an existentialist center of creativity, and so on. Professor Basave's paper stands on one of these and explicitly rejects some others, but is quite ready to invoke some familiar ones in the discussion of specific issues. Clearly his basic model is the interpersonal one of being "with" another, and this is taken to involve the social content of the self as well as social origins of the self. It likewise seems to involve a good that is not individually appropriated but toward which the individual strives as part of the individual's self-expression. (This suggests the knowledge model: not my belief and your belief compromised or tested, but the truth drawing my thought and your thought). Such a metaphysical approach is a welcome variant after several centuries in which the dominant models have been centered either on the group-totality or on the isolated atomic individual, and it is philosophically exciting in the hands of a scientifically oriented thinker like George Herbert Mead or an existentially oriented thinker like Martin Buber--both cases having social and political as well as scientific implications. But Professor Basave seems to have an open house for other models as well: "the hierarchical order of the spiritual universe" remaining the same for all times; the separation of the individual and the social as "two essential aspects of a person"; the person as "an open being-in-himself" and yet as having a personal mission; "the existential plan" (pace, Sartre); society has to accommodate both body and spirit; and surprisingly, later on, states have rights. I find difficulty in relating this eclectic hospitality to the original bold stand. Are these other categories generated out of the basic ones, or are they approximations or deteriorations, or systematically related in a supplementary way Without such an explanation we are left with an unstable meta- categorial voluntarism on Professor Basave's part. And yet if metaphysics is to have its central philosophical role-to marshall and guide the form of our questions as we go from human domain to human domain--it must show its principles of selection. Central Moral Values Professor Basave's catalogue of values is an exalted one: the autonomous spirit, love, social freedom, dynamic self-development, the creative spirit, human conviviality, in general the values of culture and spirituality. They are set off against the imposed and the automatic. No sensitive spirit in the contemporary world can fail to see the pressures for coordination, alienation, and reduction, that bear heavily on human beings today stemming in large part from their institutions. No reasonable being today could fail to conclude that the great moral heresies of individual competitive self-aggrandisement and domineering powers have shown their morally baseless character. Yet in some sense the profound values that Professor Basave evokes are increasingly apparent to most philosophical schools. How are they related to the metaphysical position he espouses? Do they take on different character according to the type of metaphysics involved? How, for example, does a dialogical individual autonomy differ from a

voluntarist one, or a Sartrean existentialist one, or for that matter a Marxian one? Or does he envisage a chorus in which we all sing "autonomy" but each to his own metaphysical beat? Conceptual Structures in Ethical Theory Professor Basave's discussion of the good and human rights gives a clear and convincing answer to the old problem of the relation of the right and the good. Justice rests on respect for the person and through this we come to the human good. Professor Basave's "adequately human society," always capable of improvement, "considers man in function of the common good without depersonalizing him." Human rights are themselves an important part of the common good, but not the whole of it. His list of rights and his analysis of democracy, his comments on the developing character of rights, show a refined sensitivity to the moral needs of the historical present and its problems. Why, for example, does he say that "states have a right to an adequate standard of living" rather than individuals? It is a striking departure from the traditional picture of the locus of rights and he takes it in stride without comment. But it makes sense because the question of the redistribution of resources among countries in the world is on today's agenda of justice. Similarly, though he lists the right of property, he would have to tell us whether it means property for consumption alone or also property for large-scale production--in short, whether capitalist free enterprise is enshrined among the human rights. In the light of such comments I would like to suggest a greater dialogue between the eternal and the historical than Professor Basave's metaphysical presentation would seem to allow. It is actually the historical developments that refine and make clearer to us the meanings of what we ascribe to the eternal order of human striving. Is not historical reality stronger in Professor Basave's account than he makes explicit? To give a fuller scope to the historical development of human problems would also help Professor Basave counter those who insist on the primacy of rights and the right over the good. It could be carried into the study of the ethical structures themselves. When in fact do people demand rights and when do they multiply the lists of rights? One demands a right when the shoe pinches and the evil is great enough. You are not allowed to speak your mind and you demand the right to free speech. I give you the right and you talk, but nobody listens. You now demand the right to be heard. You are now listened to but systematically misinterpreted. Do you have the right to a fair report? (If I have misinterpreted Professor Basave, surely he has the right to correct my interpretation). The right to clean air is a modern right of which preindustrial man had no awareness. The growth of rights lists is thus a measure of the growth of evils or the recognition of past evils with some hope of moving toward their remedy. And if the idea of rights grows, why should not the idea of goods grow comparably with the growth of human knowledge? As to the much vaunted struggle between a rights approach and a "good"--or utilitarian--approach, it is historically the case that each, at different times, is the bearer of progress as Professor Basave envisages it. We would have to ask why that is so. Extension of Rights and Advancement of Society The concepts of extension and of advancement embody a definite proposal about the direction of social policy. Professor Basave goes directly from the formal lists of rights with their slowly expanding content to the "need for a bold struggle for the social, economic and technological progress of underdeveloped regions." And this is seen as desirable for progress in "the realization of the essential human values of truth, goodness, beauty, justice and, above all, love." In short, we are called on to adopt an all-human global moral community and to translate old ideals into contemporary programs. What needs to be made clear in this is that in such a redirection of policy the very concepts of the ideal are undergoing development. It is not merely the same ideal with a changing content, as for example some legal philosophers have written of natural law with a changing content, but a real and sometimes creative novelty in the development of human beings. For example, there

was no doubt a time when liberty as a human ideal first made its appearance on the world scene, as in its time did the ideal of universal peace or that of a global conscience and a global moral community. We would show little capacity for a genuine dialogue of the world's cultures if we had always to subsume their ideals under ours or see, for example, the demand for a global redistribution as justice as simply a new expression of the old missionary charity attempting to convert the colonial "heathen." We need that "courage to be" which can not only face fresh ideals as well as fresh institutions, but can participate cooperatively in their creation. Back to Metaphysical Categories I suggested at the outset that there was a hidden pragmatism in Professor Basave's metaphysical procedures. For it seems to me that throughout the paper he was invoking whatever metaphysical categories made sense in the specific problem at hand. To overcome a selfish individualism one could ask for a polar individualsocial concept of the person. To attack a reductionist materialism in technology and a domineering manipulative politics one could appeal to the eternal values or pit the spirit against the body. To support the need for creativity one could apply the existentialist touch. To keep at bay a relativistic subjectivity there would be the basic good objectively inherent in the I-Thou dialogue. I do not mean to suggest that Professor Basave is pursuing a metaphysical opportunism. It only sounds that way when not rendered explicit as a theory of categories. I submit that metaphysical categories are to be viewed as large-scale experiments of thought stretching over the whole of human life and knowledge. If so, we should not be surprised to find them refined, developed, modified, in the course of philosophical history. The test for which to adopt and how to define them is the basically pragmatic one of how they render coherent a system of inquiry with its form of questions and its line of answers in the various domain of knowledge and action. Professor Basave does precisely this in his evaluation of democracy; he lists what kinds of advantages it has in promoting the character and quality of human life. Why should he not be allowed to do the same in selecting metaphysical categories--that is, list the advantages that will follow for the growth of knowledge in all its reaches and the coherent and satisfying guidance of human life? In such a perspective what we now have is this: there is a revolution going on in the contemporary world which calls for material reconstruction, institutional reconstruction, moral reconstruction, metaphysical reconstruction. Let me repeat Professor Basave's conclusion: "The future is in our hands; history is the work of freedom." University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, Pennsylvania CHAPTER XII THE ROLE OF REASON AND ITS TECHNOLOGIES IN THE LIFE OF SOCIETY ALWIN DIEMER If it is true, as many philosophers of history say, that the spirit of the time expresses itself in a specific philosophy which in turn expresses itself in brief mottos, one could think that we are living now in a period of reason, an epoch or era of rationality and rationalism. Beside slogans such as `the period of the atom and automation' or `the era of scientific, industrial or technological revolution', inside and outside of philosophy much is being said of reason and rationality. In this, it is crucial to note that the whole discussion takes place within the framework of society. Society is not only constitutive of reason and rationality, but simultaneously contains a tension between rationality and many other factors. In various contexts reference is made to the tension between individuality as inaccessible to all reason and rationality, especially in its modern form of `technical' or `one-dimensional' reason. As the latter is seen as deorienting man,

whatever be said about reason and rationality, this indicates an ambivalence, dialectic or even antinomy, in the Kantian sense, between individuality and reason. Since this requires, first of all, an elucidation of the basic terms and of their related vocabulary, we will consider the significant terminological development. This will show that the terms `ratio', `raison' or `reason', or `vernunft', `rational', `vernunftig', `rationalistic', etc., involve new dimensions of meaning and can lead to a number of important questions. From this we can proceed to our central issue, which is not a question of differences in meaning, but a problem of reality. Namely, what is the role of reason and its technologies in the life of society? "Reason" first meant two things, a universal principle and a human instance. From their historical roots both have a common core of meaning. Basically, the word was coined to indicate an element of the human being. Reason (ratio) was seen in the Middle Ages as the human counterpart to belief and authority; the ratio, therefore, is the specific mundane instance. 1. This implies that at the beginning of the modern epoch the divine ceased to be the universal principle and was replaced by reason. This took place by the establishment of the "principium rationis" as a new universal principle of being, acting and thinking, along with the Aristotelian principle of contradiction which then gradually diminished in importance. In the secularized world, especially as conceived by German idealism, reason thus became the sole principle of the world. When Hegel later established reason as the dominant "god" immanent to the world, the total metaphysical content disappeared; though it retained its universal relevance. Today, reason is now the only accepted universal principle. Whether one believes in God or adheres to atheism, we appeal to reason when we say that one must be reasonable; that one should talk with others reasonably; and that only in this manner can one achieve a reasonable solution to social conflicts in the family, in society or in the state, or even in international politics. This "appeal to reason" is the motto from which follow such other postulates as liberty, equality, justice, peace, etc. When we relate these notions to reason, its specificity appears clearly; the notion of freedom, justice, equality, etc., which we have become accustomed to as slogans, are always understood within dogmatic ideologies. The Marxist, be he a philosopher or politician, undoubtedly understands by the term "freedom" something totally different from one who would be called a bourgeois philosopher or politician; similarly, an existentialist understands something different from a positivist. Through all these metaphysical variants the notion of reason remains stable. It would appear to comprehend three basic ideas: a. the idea of sense (Sinn) and reason (Grund) b. the idea of coherence and structure in correlation and connection with the idea of totality c. the idea of consistency and consequence a) What is essential to the conception of reason is sense and the principles which follow therefrom. The appeal to reason implies that one believes in a sense, that is, in a factual and possible order of the world. This is understood in the sense of an actual situation, but especially of the ideal which is the task of the future. It implies the principium rationis, namely, that everything should be done reasonably. This holds true both for discussion and for action. Since the Enlightenment, the Greek `logon didonai' has been replaced by appeal to `thought': one is supposed to `live reasonably' because only then is one a rational animal. In the concrete, this postulate means that all action should be explicable and this holds true in everyday life, e.g., in the workings of the U.N.O. b) Reason as a universal principle also implies the idea of cohesion. This is not only a matter of factual understanding; beyond that, it expresses the idea that everything hangs together. This implies that if everything coheres with everything else, reason can grasp all; and, as everything can be understood and explored

rationally (science), so everything can be made (technology). c) To what extent the third idea of the concept of reason generally is accepted remains a question. According to the older notion of the Enlightenment it might seem to be more a postulate than a solid idea. It is the ancient principle of contradiction, according to which a thing is what it is, from which it follows that one cannot at the same time say both A and B, or even do non-A. This obtains also for all consequences. 2. The great significance of the idea of reason, as also its possible doom, is expressed in the conception of reason as human. In the Middle Ages the highest human characteristic was the intellect understood as the power to see and to receive God; in relation to this reasoning itself reason was secondary. Since the beginning of modern times reason is not only the highest or supreme, but the constitutive element in man; man quite simply is the rational animal. With this begins the history of the man of reason in both his greatness and his misery. This conception implies the following ideas: a) the autonomy and maturity of man; b) theoretical reason as the capacity autonomously to think and explore; c) practical reason as the capacity to work autonomously in forming human, and especially social, reality or in developing technology and industry; d) rational reason as the capacity of argumentation and rationalization; e) the capacity of self-consciusness, that is, of re- flection, both as the subjective power to legiti- mize itself and render account in criticism and counter-criticism, and as the objective power to organize these ideas more closely. Let us examine these ideas more closely. a) The essential new factor is self-understanding by man as an autonomous and mature being. No God, no demon, no king, no dictator, no party, nor any other reality can give orders. Man as man has achieved adulthood. This is the basic idea of freedom in the Enlightenment as formulated, e.g., by Kant; `Enlightenment' is the emergence of man from his culpable immaturity or minority. This becomes the formative principle for man throughout modern times in politics, science, etc., whatever interpretation it later receives. Undoubtedly, this notion is `ambivalent,' though the term seems to be better than such others as `antinomic' or `dialectic'. The ambivalence reflects two possibilities. On the one hand, reason is the highest triumph of man; by it he is free, he determines his destiny, he shapes his world. He is able to explore the world because it is structured according to laws, that is, reasonably; thus, he forms the world, etc. On the other hand, he is handed over to himself or selfpossessed. Having reason he insists upon his own will, especially when he exercises power. b) Man as rational being possesses the capacity to think, not only as a wise man, but as an explorer because the world is determined by laws. Here one could even point to the words of the Bible: subdue the earth. With this the idea of autonomy achieves its essential expression. If man is master of the world, then it is true that knowledge is for power (scientiam propter potentiam). c) Theoretical reason is oriented to an object, whereas practical reason is based on the principle that everything can be done or constructed, including the human reality. The results of this review now need to be summed up. Since the second half of the 18th century modern technology has been developed and, building on that, modern industry. In addition, there is the human fact that on all levels of human existence man rationalizes in the broadest sense of this term. This begins with exploring and introducing laws. Then, man naturally attempts to diagnose and cure, with important results in medicine, hygiene, etc. Finally, social life is rationalized and structured and with this there begins a strong and ambivalent development of modern society. On the one hand, everyone is declared to be equally autonomous, which means that social life is possible only in terms of a modern democracy. On the other hand, from this it follows that no member of society

should or could have a special position. Society should be understood rationally, and hence should be rationalized. The foundation of rational sociology in the 19th century in order to explore the laws of social life initiated a process from exploration to the development of social engineering and social technocracy. d) Through this triumph of theoretical and practical rationalism and rationalizing, the earlier idea of getting to the root of things, reflected in the principle of reason, unfortunately was greatly weakened. In its place, reason is taken to mean that each man as man has the power, not only to think and act independently, but especially to judge and criticize independently, that is, to expect of others explanations or accountability. This situation must be understood clearly. Independence and the demand for proofs and accounts takes place in a secularized, that is, in a purely human world. It means that no one can or should appeal to a so-called "higher authority," be it God, the people, society or the party; anyone is suspect who comes "in the name of . . . God, the people, the party, society" and appeals, acts, requests or orders. There is no need for special proof that we have a deficiency of reason in the life of society today. e) People often forget now that when we speak of reason as a human fact, reflection is one of its essential elements. Reason as conscious being, is not only awareness, but awareness of self. In basic contrast, for example, to the Marxist theory of consciousness where it is seen as secondary to matter, reason or self-awareness means that man has his special position in reality through the fact that reason knows itself. He possesses this power to reflect on everything, even on his own reason. Unfortunately, in the meantime, there has been a strong decline in the appreciation of this reflective aspect of reason which was preeminently expressed by the classical philosophers of idealism, sometimes in a onesidedly idealistic manner. What is meant by reflection? First, it is the knowledge of self, which implies knowledge of one's own situation in relation to reason and to the reality of the world. It implies also the possibility of self-criticism, which initially concerns reason itself. This reflection makes it possible for reasonable men to become aware of the greatness and misery of reason, and to criticize it. In fact, among the classical philosophers of reflection it was practically onlt Kant who, as an authentic Enlightenment figure, indicated not only the greatness but the limits of pure reason. From him, we must learn that the strength of reason consists not merely in the knowledge of the triumph of reason, but also in the knowledge and understanding of the limits of reason. This is the meaning of the last thesis, that human reason, which is the only one we now can acknowledge, always is limited. We will return later to this, but, following Kant, it is now possible to indicate three limits. One is in contrast to rationalism's claim to unlimitedness and totality. This was pointed out by Kant in his dialectics of reason. A second limit, broadly developed by Kant but lost with Hegel, is the limits of rational understanding. One should not overlook the fact that, besides and against the triumph of rationalistic, scientific rationality, there exists also a reason of which Pascal said "le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connait pas." It is this reason which Kant explicitates in his Critique of Practical Reason, and from which he develops the categorical imperative of reason as a social postulate. Perhaps it is time to bring this precise aspect of reason to the fore, as this author postulates, in terms of a philosophical imperative. The third limitation of reason is based on the postulate of reason itself. It is the acknowledgement that no one can claim to represent reason, that no one can constitute himself as the guard of reason. Fortunately, Hegel claimed this for himself only theoretically, though today many politicians claim it for themselves in the practical order. In view of the above discussion concerning reason, we encounter several difficulties when we consider the technologies of reason mentioned in the title of this paper. To begin with, one could object that true reason knows and develops no technology, that this is only the work of instrumental reason which is the slave

of modern technocracy and rationalism. As the inner tension in the modern discussion of reason manifests itself in this matter, one must proceed rationally. The first major question is, What is to be understood by the term `technology'? If one departs from customary international usage, it can be said that technologies are developments (in the modern "technological" sense) upon the basis of theoretical insights (in science) of methods, procedures, and products, which in their turn will be put in the service of primary principles. An example is the total complex of information media, including the computer, which has entered social life as scientific technology in the service of reason. If reason is taken in this broad pluralistic sense, one can develop distinct forms of rationality which in turn provide the foundation for corresponding postulates and technologies. Of the many ways of characterizing reason, one might mention as essential concepts: a) universal/human reason, moral reason; b) logical reason; c) social/political reason; d) scientific reason; e) technical reason. It is not possible to complete these differentiations, but some remarks can be made concerning the above. a) Human reason has already been spoken of; it implies all the factors noted above and develops postulates rather than technologies. b) Logical reason includes all of the postulates grouped under the complex of logic, both ancient and modern. Hence, the postulate of consistency is considered essential. In addition, the question of a "dialectical reason" in the sense of Sartre remains open. c) The sense in which one can speak of a social reason is uncertain. It would appear to be a specific manifestation of human reason. The ambivalence of all social rationality is manifest in the concept or idea of political reason. It can be understood, on the one hand, as the material orientation of the idea of human reason to shaping political life and, on the other hand, as the expressed formal, methodical, and technological-- not to say, technocratic--orientation to the development of political or multiple individual interests. d) This is manifest also in considerations of scientific reason. It oscillates between the "scientific" and the "scientistic" reason. The first tests out hypotheses and proceeds critically and methodically, while the other is a matter of scientific beliefs in the advances of the "scientific-technical revolution" especially of the 19th century, understood as setting man free and promising a new utopian paradise. e) This is analogously true for technical reason, which includes industrial reason, though in different terms. Generally it is contained in the western anticapitalist critique of modern technology and hence is less a critique of reason than of system. It is accompanied by the charge of alienation, onedimensionalization, etc. Regarding the life of the society and the quality of that life there are the following problems of reason: a) basic provisions for life's necessities, such as food, clothing, shelter, health, etc.; b) regulation of the tension between universal security and individual freedom beginning with occupa- tions and work areas and continuing through po-litical life; c) social communication and information; d) the needs of culture; e) guarantee for a human life as life of a rational being. Clearly, in all areas of social reality reason, as characterized thus far, has a role to play. As has been shown in man, reason primarily is not a given reality or fact, but exists in the tension between ability, capacity, power or faculty and

the postulate. Certainly, the solitary individual has the capacity of reason and of rationality, while postulating reason as the universal principle. The life of society is ultimately the primary place for the realization of reason, including its principles, postulates and technologies. There is a second and still more important antithesis, that is, between rationality, above all as rational technology, and the Aristotelian principle of the mean between excess and defect. Let us take as an example the technology of social communication in the specific form of information. One postulate of reason is to regard man as a citizen who has come of age. This stipulates that every single individual should be informed about everything, requiring, in turn, that, ideally, all information be collected and made available, and hence that appropriate media be developed, from newspapers, radio and television to computer information banks. If this is done on the basis of the claim for totality by an autonomous reason, there results, on the one hand, total comprehension of human reality and, on the other, the modern information avalanche. Obviously, this opens the door to manipulation and raises the question: What is the rational solution, total information inundation or special manipulation? There does appear to be a solution; it lies in the recognition and formation of the individual man as a rational being. The cases under consideration involve exercising an appropriate power of judgment by citizens who were minors but now have come of age in all areas governed by the information processes. They must evaluate the current information, and have the courage to demand justification from those who supply information. Analogies hold true for other areas, nearly the entire complex of which can be designated as social engineering, social technocracy, etc. Here, unfortunately, the history of modern humanity since the 18th century has led to a disintegration of the idea of reason. On the one hand, scientific and technical reason have been applied to mastering reality, including the social, and have produced repeated successes. Corresponding to the 19th-century belief in reason, and its related ideology, this has led to a kind of technological-scientific religion. On the other hand, man as man, especially in his orientation in culture and philosophy, has been fractured and has abandoned belief in high speculative reason as caught in excessive self-reflection and moving in an ideal realm of philosophical dreams. What is needed today as an aspect of the philosophical imperative of reason is the development of a conception of reason which will restore rational unity. This will require new courage. As Kant noted, only thus does reason become really human and, hence, practical. This conception of a "new-reason-philosophy" must include the following: a) Each man is to be regarded as a rational being, meaning that he possesses all potentialities and that these are to be developed and recognized in him. This begins with education and ends with critical reason and such postulates as (social) self-responsibility. An actual example is contained in "developmental politics" where it is believed that man is treated as man if he is helped by having had provided for him the necessary means of life. This implies that man is not regarded as a rational being. One must help; but, at the same time, selfresponsibility must be required of the one who is helped. This is true for present political structures and applies also to the postulate of self-determination of the individual citizens in the so-called Third World. b) The highest principle and to a certain degree the highest law in the principle of reason in the sense delineated above. c) Reason, finally, is also reflection upon oneself, that is, upon man as reason and rationality. This implies both possibilities and its limitations, from which result the following postulates: 1) a twin openness: (a) neither blind faith in reason howsoever this is understood, especially technical reason, (b) nor blind aversion to reason, whether as technical or as personal; and

2) an understanding of the limits of reason: (a) that all reason as human is finite and therefore not all, whether in society or in history, is subject to reason and hence to exploration and to being produced; (b) that reason has its limits within itself; e.g., in the personality of the self, and (c) that reason is also measured from above inasmuch as its ultimate foundation lies in faith or metaphysics in whatever manner these be understood. University of Dusseldorf Dusseldorf CHAPTER XIII THE PROBLEM OF EVIL IN CHRISTIANITY AND BUDDHISM MASAO ABE* It is said that human history began with the realization of evil. The problem of evil is indeed one which is deeply rooted in human existence. Throughout human history, both of the East and the West, evil has time and again been regarded as one of humanity's most crucial dilemmas. However, the approach to and the resolution of the problem of evil have in the East and the West not always been altogether the same. To begin with an example of the East, it is a fact that Westerners in general and Christians in particular often express the criticism that Buddhists are rather indifferent to the problem of good and evil. Whether or not their impressions are true must be carefully examined. On the other hand, quite a few Buddhists whose lives are based on the realization of the as-it-isness, or suchness, of man and nature often feel somewhat uncomfortable with Christianity's strong ethico-religious character and its excessive emphasis on righteousness and judgment. Whether or not such an impression reaches the core of Christian faith must be carefully scrutinized. Giving up stereotypical understanding of each other, and with receptive and responsive minds, both Christians and Buddhists must try to enter into a deeper understanding of each other's faith by striving to achieve a critical, mutual understanding. They may then be in better position to discover both affinities and differences. In what follows, I shall undertake a comparative study of Christianity and Buddhism from the angle of the problem of evil. Although I am not unaware of the many important attempts at new interpretations of Christianity which are now being written, I will take up here only the traditional form of Christianity. The limitation of space partly encourages this approach but more importantly, I believe that new interpretations cannot be properly understood without the basis of traditional Christianity. Therefore, this paper is a prolegomena to the "problem of evil in Buddhism and Christianity." GOOD AND EVIL IN CHRISTIANITY AND BUDDHISM In Christianity the good is not simply that which is desirable, such as happiness, nor is evil merely that which is undesirable, such as misery. The good in Christianity refers to an act, belief, attitude, or state of mind that obeys and fulfills the will of God. Evil on the other hand is an act or state of mind which disobeys and goes against the divine will. This is precisely because in Christianity God is the creator, the ruler, the law-giver, and the redeemer of all the universe, and the end for which human beings exist consists in establishing and maintaining a relationship with God. The Ten Commandments, which form part of the basis of Judeo-Christian ethics, are described in the Bible as given by God to Moses on Mount Sinai.1 Moral transgression of the divine law is termed "sin" in theology. Sin is an attitude, act, or inward state of the heart that is offensive to God. As is well known, the origin of sin is to be found in the Genesis story of Adam and Eve partaking, against the word of God, of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. For St. Paul, "sin was not just an act of disobedience to God's will and law; it was open revolt against Him, the result of which was a state that was inimical to God and would lead to death."2 For Paul then, "sin is something internal and

stable in man," that is, "a personal force in man that acts through his body. It entered into the world with Adam's sin and exercised its deadly work by means of the Law."3 In Romans, Paul declares that sin permeates the whole human race through death, but its power is not equal to Christ's grace and justice: "For if by reason of the one man's offense death reigned through the one man, much more will they who receive the abundance of the grace and of the gift of justice reign in life through the one Jesus Christ . . . ."4 By being baptized into Christ's death and resurrection, one is freed from sin and begins to live by Christ's life. After baptism the "old man" and the "body of sin" cease to be the instruments of sin. Now the Christian has a new mode of being, a new mode of acting. He is no longer in the service of sin; the Holy Spirit is present in him. The new man is inspired, motivated by the Spirit to fight against the flesh; he passes from the carnal state to a spiritual state. St. Paul's opposition between a life of the flesh and a life of the spirit represents his belief that sinful flesh is God's enemy while the life of spirit is God's divine gift. Sin, then, is a personal force by which we are opposed to God, and sinful deeds are its fruits. However, if one does not accept Jesus as the Christ and does not believe in his death and resurrection as God's work of redemption, one will be inflicted with eternal suffering. The sufferings of the damned in hell are interminable. This eternal punishment, which is laid upon the souls of the unredeemed at the last judgment, constitutes the largest part of the problem of evil in Christianity.5 Thus, in the full range of Christian beliefs (from the doctrine of creation to that of eschatology), the problem of evil is a primary preoccupation and one which consists in a dis-relationship with God. What is the Buddhist view of good and evil? From earliest times, Buddhism had its own "Ten Commandments", or better to say "ten precepts," which are very similar to the Ten Commandments of the Judeo-Christian tradition. These emphasize not killing, nor stealing, not lying, not committing adultery, and so forth. A remarkable difference between the Buddhist and Judeo-Christian Ten Commandments, however, lies in the fact that although both equally prohibit the destruction of life, that prohibition appears as the first commandment in Buddhism and as the sixth in Judeo-Christian tradition. In the latter the first commandment is "You shall have no other gods before me," a commandment whose equivalent cannot be found in the Buddhist ten precepts. The differing emphasis in the item of the first position in two lists indicates the strong monotheistic nature of the JudeoChristian tradition and the I-Thou relationship between persons and God in Christianity on the one hand, and it also shows the Buddhist emphasis on the boundless solidarity of life between persons and other living beings, on the other. Without the notion of transmigration which links human beings to other forms of life, there can be no proper understanding of why the destruction of life in general is prohibited as the first precept in Buddhism. On the contrary, in the Judeo-Christian tradition, not the boundless solidarity with other forms of life, but personal obedience to the will of the one God, and the distinction between creator and creation with humanity at the summit of the created order are essential. This difference naturally reflects upon the different understanding of good and evil in these two religions. However, the emphasis on the solidarity between humanity and nature does not mean that Buddhism is indifferent to human ethics. In the Dhammapada, one of the oldest Buddhist scriptures, there is a well-known stanza: Not to commit evils (But to do all that is good),and to purify one's heart--This is the teaching of all the buddhas.6 This stanza has been held in high esteem by Buddhists throughout their long history and is called "the precept-stanza common to the past seven buddhas," indicating that it is a teaching that was realized and practiced even before Gautama Buddha lived. In this connection, let me introduce a story concerning this stanza. In China of the T'ang Dynasty, there was a Zen master, Tao-lin, popularly known as Niao-ke, "Bird's Nest," for he used to practice his meditation in a seat made of the

thickly growing branches of a tree. Pai Le-t'ien, a great poet of those days, was officiating as a governor in a certain district in which this Zen master lived. The governor-poet once visited him and said, What a dangerous seat you have up in the tree. `Yours is far worse than mine', retorted the master. `I am the governor of this district, and I don't see what danger there is in it.' To this the master said, Then, you don't know yourself! When your passions burn and your mind is unsteady, what is more dangerous than that? The governor then asked, What is the teaching of Buddhism? The master recited the above-mentioned stanza: `Not to commit evils, But to do all that is good, And to purify one's heart. This is the teaching of all the buddhas.' The governor, however, protested, Any child three years old knows that. The Zen master up in the tree responded, Any child three years old may know it, but even an old man of eighty years finds it difficult to practice it. The point of this stanza lies precisely in the third line, that is, "to purify one's heart," and the first and the second lines, "Not to commit evils, But to do all that is good," should be understood from the third line. And "to purify one's heart" signifies to purify one's heart for avidy-a, the fundamental ignorance rooted in a dualistic view, and thereby it indicates "to purify one's heart" even from the dualistic view of good and evil. Eventually the text enjoins us "to awaken to the purity of one's original nature" or "to awaken to the original purity of one's nature"7 which is beyond the duality of good and evil. The problem of good and evil must be coped with on the basis of awakening to the original purity of one's nature--that is, the teaching of all Buddhas. This Buddhist notion of "the original purity of one's nature," roughly speaking, may be taken to be somewhat equivalent to the state of Adam before eating the fruit of knowledge of good and evil. It is to be back where, according to Genesis, "God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good."8 Therefore, God blessed Adam because he was good. Does the term "good" in this connection simply mean good in the ethical sense? I do not think so. The term "good" God used to evaluate his act of creation is not good as distinguished from evil, but the original goodness prior to the duality between good and evil, that is, the original goodness prior to man's corruption of the primordially good nature of mankind and the world. It is good not in the ethical sense, but in the ontological sense. The goodness of Adam as created by God is, roughly speaking, equivalent to the original purity of one's nature as understood in Buddhism. "The original face at the very moment of not thinking of good or evil" requested by the sixth Zen patriarch, Hui-neng, is simply another term for one's original nature which is pure, beyond good and evil. Thus Buddhism often refers to our original nature as "Buddha-nature," the awakening to which provides the basis for human ethics to be properly established. THE ORIGIN OF EVIL--A CHRISTIAN VIEW The problem of evil in Christianity and Buddhism, however, is not so simple as I have suggested. There is the serious problem of the origin of evil that must be clarified. The problem of evil in both traditions involves the contradiction, or apparent contradiction, between the belief in the actuality of evil in the world and religious belief in the goodness and power of the Ultimate. This problem is especially serious in Christianity because of its commitment to a monotheistic doctrine of God as absolute in goodness and power and as the creator of the universe out of nothing, ex nihilo. The challenge of the fact of evil to this

faith has accordingly been formulated as a dilemma: "If God is all-powerful, he must be able to prevent evil. If he is all-good, he must want to prevent evil. But evil exists. Therefore, God is either not all-powerful or not all-good. A theodicy (from theos, god, and dike, justice) is accordingly an attempt to reconcile the unlimited goodness of an all-powerful God with the reality of evil."9 Accordingly, there are at least two questions to be addressed in this connection: Why has an infinitely powerful and good God permitted moral evil or sin in his universe? and Why has an infinitely powerful and good God permitted pain and suffering in this universe? In Christian tradition, there are two main versions of theodicy, the Augustinian and the Irenaean. Limitations of space constrain me to a description of only the essential points of these two types of theodicy in connection with the problem of moral evil. Rejecting Manichaeanism dualism, Augustine insisted that evil has no independent existence, but is always parasitic upon the good, the latter alone having substantival reality. "Nothing evil exists in itself, but only as an evil aspect of some actual entity."10 Thus, everything that God has created is good, and the phenomenon of evil occurs only when beings who are by nature good (though mutable) become corrupted and spoiled. Accordingly, to Augustine evil is nothing but the privation, corruption, or perversion of something good. How does this spoiling of God's initially good creation come about? Augustine's answer is that evil entered into the universe through the culpable volitions of free creatures, angels and human beings. Their sin consisted not in choosing positive evil (for there is no positive evil to choose), but in turning away from the higher good, namely God, to a lower good. "For when the will abandons what is above itself, and turns to what is lower, it becomes evil--not because that is evil to which it turns, but because the turning itself is wicked."11 When we ask what caused the Fall, Augustine's answer is his doctrine of deficient causation. There is no efficient, or positive, cause of the will to evil. Rather, evil willing is itself a negation or deficiency, and to seek for its cause "is as if one sought to see darkness, or hear silence."12 "What cause of willing can there be which is prior to willing?"13 According to Genesis, a serpent tricked Eve and Adam to eat the forbidden fruit. Adam's sin was not absolutely the first. The serpent was the evil tempter of Adam's innocence. Augustine was saying that Adam had within himself the possibility of falling and that fallibility is not an evil in itself.14 However the notion of fallibility explains only the possibility of evil, not its reality. Thus, according to Augustine, the origin of moral evil lies hidden within the mystery of human and angelic freedom. The freely acting will is an originating cause, and its operations are not explicable in terms of other prior causes. This traditional theodicy has been criticized as an account of the origin and final disposition of moral evil. For example, Schleiermacher argued that the notion of finitely perfect beings willfully falling into sin is self-contradictory and unintelligible. A truly perfect being, though free to sin, would, in fact, never do so. To attribute the origin of evil to the willful crime of a perfect being is thus to assert the sheer contradiction that evil has created itself out of nothing. The final disposition of moral evil, that is the eschatological aspect of Augustinian theodicy, has also been criticized. If God desires to save all his human creatures but is unable to do so, he is limited in power. If, on the other hand, he does not desire the salvation of all but has created some for damnation, he is limited in goodness. In either case, the doctrine of eternal damnation stands as an obstacle to a consistent Christian theodicy. The second type of theodicy was developed by the Greek-speaking fathers, notably by Irenaeus (120-202), prior to the time of Augustine. Whereas Augustine held that before his fall, Adam was in a state of original righteousness, and that his first sin was the inexplicable turning of a wholly good being toward evil, Irenaeus and others regarded the pre-Fall Adam as more like a child than a mature, responsible adult. According to this earlier conception, Adam stood at the beginning of a long process of development. He had been created as a personal being in the "image" of

God, but had yet to be brought into the finite "likeness" of God. His fall is seen not as disastrously transforming and totally ruining humanity, but rather as delaying and complicating its advance from the "image" to the "likeness" of his maker. Thus, humanity is viewed as neither having fallen from so great a height as original righteousness, nor to so profound a depth as total depravity, as in the Augustinian theology; rather, humanity fell in the early stages of its spiritual development and now needs greater help than otherwise would have been required.15 THE ORIGIN OF EVIL--A BUDDHIST VIEW In Buddhism there is no theodicy. There is no theory justifying God because in Buddhism there is no notion of one God whose goodness and power must be justified against the reality of evil in the world. Buddhism has no need of a notion of one God because the fundamental principle of Buddhism is "dependent origination." This notion indicates that everything in and out of the universe is interdependent and co-arising and co-ceasing: nothing whatsoever is independent and self-existing. This is the reason Gautama Buddha did not accept the age-old Hindu concept of Brahman as the sole basis underlying the universe and the accompanying notion -atman as the eternal self at the core of each individual. Rather, he emphasized an-atman, no-self, and dependent origination. The universe is not the creation of one God, but fundamentally is a network of causal relationships among innumerable things which are co-arising and co-ceasing. In Buddhism, time and history are understood as beginningless and there is no room for the idea of unique, momentary creation. Since time and history are believed to be beginningless and endless, there can be no particular creator at the beginning of history and no particular judge at its end. Thus the sacred and the human are, in Buddhism, completely interdependent: there is nothing sacred whatsoever that is self-existing. The supernatural and the natural co-arise and co-cease: there is nothing supernatural whatsoever which is independent of the natural. The same is true of good and evil. Good and evil are completely dependent on one another. They always co-arise and co-cease so that one cannot exist without the other. There is, then, no supreme good which is self-subsistent apart from evil, and no absolute evil which is an object of eternal punishment apart from good. To Buddhists both the supreme good and absolute evil are illusions. In this respect Buddhism significantly differs from Christianity, in which God is understood to be infinitely good, and sinners who do not believe in God must undergo eternal damnation. In his Enchiridion, St. Augustine says: "No evil could exist where no good exists,"16 but he does not say that "No good could exist where no evil exists." This is precisely because to Augustine, evil is nothing but the privation of good. Evil does not exist in itself but is always parasitic upon good, which alone has substantial being. Elsewhere in the Enchiridion, St. Augustine says: "Wherever there is no privation of good there is no evil."17 Here we can see the strong priority of good over evil. This notion is not peculiar to St. Augustine but is common to Christian thinkers in general. Contrary to this, Buddhists generally talk about the complete relativity of good and evil and reject the idea of the priority of the one over the other. The emphasis is on the inseparability of good and evil and even their oneness in the deepest sense. It is understandable why, given this emphasis on the relativity of good and evil and the consequent rejection of the priority of good over evil, Christians find an indifference to ethics in Buddhism. Whether or not this is the case must be carefully examined. We human beings must seek good and avoid evil. To be human is to be ethical. Unlike animals, persons can be human only when guided by reason and ethics in place of instinct. This is an undeniable fact. Buddhists accept this without qualification. That is why, as I said before, not to commit evil, but to do all that is good, is emphasized as the teaching of all the buddhas throughout Buddhism's long history, as exemplified, for instance, in the precepts of monks and laymen, including the ten precepts. "To do good, not commit evil" is an ethical imperative common to the Easterner and the Westerner. Wherever persons exist this ethical imperative must be emphasized. A question arises, however, at this point as to whether it is possible for persons

to actually observe that ethical imperative. Can human nature be completely regulated and controlled by that ethical code? If we can actually observe that ethical imperative thoroughly only insofar as we try to do so, the problem of evil is very simple. In actuality, however seriously one may try to observe the ethical imperative, one cannot do so completely and instead cannot help realizing one's distance from the good to be done. This is the reason Niao-ke said to Pai Le- -t'ien, "Any child three years old may know it, but an old man of eighty years finds it difficult to practice it." This is also the reason St. Paul painfully confessed, "the good which I would do, that I do not; but the evil that I would not, that I do."18 Because persons are flesh as well as soul this is the inevitable conclusion of the ethical effort. To reach any but this conclusion implies a lack of seriousness in one's ethical effort. However strong the ethical imperative may be, we cannot actually fulfill it, but rather must fall into a conflict, the dilemma of good and evil. Human nature cannot be completely controlled and regulated by ethics, which is why we must go beyond the realm of ethics and enter that of religion. The limitation of, and the dilemma involved in, ethics are equally realized in Buddhism and Christianity. So far, Buddhists share with St. Paul the painful confession mentioned above. One primary difference between Paul and Buddhists lies in the following by saying, "If what I would not, that I do, it is no more I that do it, but sin which dwelleth in me,"19 Paul ascribes the ultimate cause of the problem to original sin and finds the solution, or salvation, in the redemptive love of God working through the spirit of Christ. On the other hand, Buddhists realize the ultimate cause of the problem in karma and find the solution in enlightenment, that is, the awakening to the truth of dependent origination and no-self. Since our present existence is the fruit of a beginningless karma, we are involved in the conflict between good and evil. However, if we go beyond such a dualism and awaken to our original nature, we will be freed from karma as well as from the problem of good and evil. In Christianity, the limitation of, and the dilemma involved in, ethics and its religious solution are grasped in contrast to the absolute nature of God who is all-good and all-powerful. In this sense, the religious solution realized in the context of the collapse of human ethics still finds its orientation in the problem of good and evil, although in a religious rather than an ethical dimension. In Buddhism, on the other hand, the collapse of human ethics is grasped in terms of beginningless and endless karma and its religious solution is found in the realization of no-self which is neither good nor evil. The Buddhist solution of the problem is not faith in God as all-good but the awakening to one's original nature, which is free from both good and evil. In this sense we may say that Buddhism has primarily an ontological orientation whereas Christianity has primarily an ethical orientation. This difference may cause Christians to feel an indifference toward ethics in Buddhists and cause Buddhists to feel skeptical about the Christian emphasis on faith. We must, however, inquire into the background of this difference to elucidate the present issue. THE NATURE OF EVIL IN CHRISTIANITY AND BUDDHISM The above-mentioned difference between Christianity and Buddhism comes from their divergent understanding of the nature of evil. As seen in St. Augustine, Christians understand evil as the privation of good or as the rebellion of human beings against the will of God, who is viewed as infinitely good. Thus, in Christianity, evil is understood as nonsubstantial, as not existing in itself, and as something to be overcome by good. Accordingly, good has priority over evil not only ethically but also ontologically. This conviction gives Christianity its ethico-religious character and also gives rise to the problem of theodicy: that is, the question of how to explain the reality of evil in relation to God as absolute in goodness and power. On the other hand, Buddhists base their beliefs and practices not on the ethical dimension but on the ontological dimension by realizing that everything is impermanent and interdependent, and understanding that evil is entirely relative

to good. Good and evil are inseparably related to one another. Therefore, what the Buddhist is concerned with is not how to overcome evil by good, but how to transcend the good-evil duality. To Buddhists, the problem of how to overcome evil by good is a "wrong question," based on an unrealistic understanding of the nature of evil and an unjustifiable assumption of the priority of good over evil. Although, ethically speaking, good should have priority over evil, ontologically and existentially speaking, good is not stronger than evil, and good and evil have at least equal strength in their endless struggle with each other. Accordingly, it is necessary for Buddhists to overcome the good-evil dichotomy itself and return to their original nature prior to the divergence between good and evil. This is the meaning of the third line of "the precept-stanza common to the past seven buddhas," "to purify one's heart"--to purify one's heart from the duality of good and evil. It is noteworthy that even in the oldest scripture of primitive Buddhism what is emphasized is the need to go beyond good and evil. For instance, in Suttanip-ata (547), it is said: "Just as a beautiful lotus flower being not tainted with water and mud, you are not spoiled by either good or evil." In the case of Mahayana Buddhism, it is emphasized even more strongly that we must go beyond good and evil and attain the realization of s+-unyat-a, or "emptiness," which is neither good nor evil. As I have indicated, in rejecting the priority of good over evil, Buddhists emphasize their relativity. Buddhism is similar, at least in this respect, to the Manichaean insistence on the dualism of good and evil. The central theme of Manichaeism is that the world is an inextricable mixture of good and evil with each force in constant combat with the other. Thus, Manichaeism proclaims two deities in opposition, a good deity as the author of light and an evil deity as the author of darkness. Insofar as good and evil are understood dualistically as two different principles and as inextricably related to and fighting against each other, there is great affinity between Manichaeism and Buddhism. The essential difference between them, however, can be seen in the following three points: 1. Although Manichaeism emphasizes the fight between two opposed principles of good and evil, it does not carry this opposition to its final conclusion. On the other hand, Buddhism existentially realizes the final conclusion of the contradiction of the two opposed principles as beginningless and endless karma, and tries to overcome it. 2. Buddhism, thus, comes to a realization of s+ -unyat-a in which the duality of good and evil is completely overcome and their nondualistic oneness is fully realized. Contrary to this, Manichaeism remains a rigid form of dualism from beginning to end, without any means of overcoming that conflict. 3. In Manichaeism, good and evil are two independent principles which respectively have their reality and substance. In Buddhism, however, although good and evil are two opposing principles, they are not understood as reality or substance but rather as something non-substantial. Thus, in the awakening to s+-unyat-a, both good and evil are emptied and the duality is overcome. From the Buddhist point of view, the weakness of Manichaeism does not lie in its dualistic view of good and evil as two independent principles but in the rigidity of that dualism, which takes the two independent principles as substantial realities. It is not a mistake for Manichaeism to take good and evil as two equally powerful principles rather than emphasizing the priority of good over evil. It is, however, a mistake for Manichaeism to end with this dualistic view without attempting to transcend it. In the history of Christianity, St. Augustine strongly rejected the ultimate dualism of Manichaeism and insisted that only good has substantial being whereas evil is unreal--hence, his theory of evil as the privation of good. Given the belief that a good God is the sole ultimate reality, it is inevitable that evil be interpreted as privation. However, if the monotheistic God is unambiguously good, what is evil, and where does it come from? Theodicy thus becomes a serious problem. As we say earlier, Augustine emphasized evil will, that is, the ill-use of human

free will, as the origin of evil. Thereby God is freed from all responsibility. However, Genesis suggests an evil even before Adam's ill-use of his freedom in the form of the serpent's temptation. Since he was created free, Adam had the possibility of falling or not falling. Although the possibility of falling is not an evil in itself, Adam yielded to the temptation and actually fell. Why did God not turn the human will toward the good without doing violence to its nature, so that we can freely do good? To this Augustine replied, "simply because God did not wish to." Is there not a mystery here? Recently, the Irenaean type of theodicy has been reformulated in John Hick's book Evil and the God of Love. The Irenaean theodicy, which regards the fall of Adam as a virtually inevitable incident in humanity's development, is more acceptable than the Augustinian one. However, I am afraid that in this type of theodicy the problem of the Fall is understood somewhat from the outside, objectively, as a problem of human development, while its existential meaning is more or less overlooked. I personally appreciate the Augustinian type of theodicy, which focuses on the problem of free will and thereby grasps the issue from within one's being more existentially than the Irenaean one. And, in this sense, I think the Augustinian approach is more appropriate and justifiable. Yet Augustinian theodicy ends with the mystery of evil. To speak of the mystery of evil is, however, nothing but to confess the insolubility of the problem of evil and God. For if God is conceived of as the creator of all the universe, all-good and all-powerful, the origin of evil is ultimately untraceable except to the "mystery of evil." This is at best a half-solution. To complete the solution one must go beyond mystery and radically reinterpret the notion of God. It is quite natural for Christianity to reject the Manichaean form of dualism because Christianity is fundamentally monotheistic. However, if Christianity is simply monotheistic and rejects any form of duality of good and evil, Christianity becomes abstracted from human actuality. Theodicy is an attempt to include the duality of good and evil within the monotheistic character of Christianity without destroying the character. However, there remains an essential tension between the duality of good and evil and the framework of monotheism. Thus, as we see in Augustine's theodicy, the origin of evil tends to be explained in terms of mystery. In the history of Christian thought down to the present, there have been many variations of these two types of theodicy. In my view, neither dualism nor monotheism can solve the problem of evil satisfactorily. We must find a position which is neither dualistic nor monotheistic. HOW IS THE PROBLEM OF EVIL SOLVED? Buddhists try to go beyond the duality of good and evil and to awaken to s+-unyata, which transcends both good and evil. This is because, insofar as we remain in the duality, we are involved in and limited by it. In the realm of good and evil, an ethical imperative (Thou ought to do this) and the cry of desire (I want to do that) are always in constant conflict. Thus we become slaves to sin and guilt. There is no final rest in the realm of good and evil. To attain the abode of final rest, we must go beyond the dichotomy of good and evil and return to the root and source from which good and evil emerged. That root and source is grasped in Buddhism as "emptiness" (s+-unyat-a) because it is neither good nor evil. When the Six Patriarch, Hui-neng, was asked by the monk Ming what the truth of Buddhism was, he said: When your mind is not dwelling on the dualism of good and evil, what is your original face before you were born? "Your original face before you were born" is simply a Zen term for s+-unyat-a, because only through the realization of s+-unyat-a do we awaken to our true Self. Another important point raised by Hui-neng's answer concerns the words "before you were born." This symbolic phrase does not necessarily indicate "before" in the temporal sense, but rather "before" in the ontological sense, that is, the ontological foundation, or root and source on which the duality of good and evil is established. Therefore, this "before" can and should be realized right now and right here in the depth of the absolute present.

We may translate Hui-neng's question into the Christian context by asking, What is your original face before Adam committed sin? or even by asking, What is your original face before God created the world? Adam is not merely the first man in a remote past, or is his fall an event apart from us, one which took place far distant from us in time. As Kierkegaard rightly said, we ourselves committed sin in Adam. Adam is none other than ourselves. Adam is the first one of mankind and at the same time is each of us. Thus the Zen question concerning "your original face" may be understood as a question concerning "your original face" before you ate the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. It may also be understood as a more radical question; What is your original face before God said, "Let there be light." For Zen persistently asks, "After all things are reduced to oneness; where would that One be reduced?"20 God created everything out of nothing. God is the only creator. All things are reduced to one God. To what, however, would that one God be reduced? Everything comes from God. Where did God come from? This is a question which must be asked. God created everything out of nothing. Therefore, it cannot be said that God came from something nor can it be said that God is reduced to something. Accordingly, the only answer to this question is that God came from nothingness. God is reduced to nothingness. However, this nothingness is different from the nothing out of which God created everything. The nothing out of which God created everything is nothing in a relative sense. On the other hand, the nothingness from which God may be said to emerge, is nothingness in its non-relative sense. This nothingness in the absolute sense is exactly the same as Buddhism's s+-unyat-a. This absolute nothingness from which even God emerged is not unfamiliar to Christianity. Christian mystics talked about the Godhead from which the personal God emerged, and they described the Godhead in terms of nothingness, as seen, for instance, in St. John of the Cross and the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing. However, in Buddhism, this absolute nothingness from which even God came to exist is precisely the "original face" of ourselves which is beyond good and evil. The Buddhist solution to the problem of evil can be found in the realization of absolute nothingness, or s+-unyat-a, as the awakening to true self. It is neither dualistic nor monotheistic. HOW IS THE BUDDHIST ETHICS POSSIBLE? The final question is how ethics then can be established on the realization of s+unyat-a. Having transcended the duality of good and evil, to what moral principles may one appeal that are in keeping with the spirit of this liberating experience? First, in Buddhism, the realization of s+-unyat-a is not merely a goal to be reached, but the ground on which everything in life is established. It is, indeed, the point of departure from which we can properly and realistically begin our life and activity. In other words, it is the root and source from which the duality of good and evil and all other forms of duality have come to be realized. Second, when we take the realization of s+-unyat-a as the point of departure as well as the goal of our life, the duality of good and evil is viewed in a new light, namely, from the viewpoint of s+-unyat-a or the awakening experience itself. In this light, the distinction between good and evil is thoroughly relativized by dropping away any and all sense of absolute good and absolute evil. Furthermore, the distinction between good and evil is not only relativized, but the two values are reversed. In this regard, however, the relativization and the reversion of the distinction between good and evil does not destroy human ethics as is often believed. Of course, one may say that if the relativization and reversion of the good-evil distinction takes place within the context of an ethical life, it will necessarily entail a loss of the firmness and intensity of commitment to the ethical principles by which a person might give meaning and integrity to his life. However, in Christianity as in Buddhism, which goes beyond mere ethics to a higher commitment to the will of God (consider Kierkegaard's "teleological suspension of the ethical" in his interpretation of the Abraham-Isaac story), some relativization and reversion of the good-evil distinction is necessitated. This

fact is clearly seen in Jesus' words, "I came not to call the righteous but sinners," and "Why call ye me good: there is none good but the Father." Sinners, therefore, have priority over the righteous (i.e., those who obey the letter of the law, but neglect the spirit) in the light of salvation through Jesus Christ. However, in Christianity, where God is believed to be the highest good and the ruler of the world and history, the distinction between good and evil is not completely relativized nor reversed. Given the belief that God is both righteous and loving, the complete relativization and reversion of the good-evil distinction is not acceptable. In Buddhism, by contrast, the complete relativization and reversion of the good-evil distinction is totally realized without fear of destroying the basis of the ethical life. This is due to the fact that the "transvaluation of values" is realized not within a certain established framework of ethical life nor under the rule and judgment of the all-good and all-powerful God, but in and through the realization of the boundless openness of s+-unyat-a in which there is no one God. Third, in the awakening to the boundless openness of s+-unyat-a and the relativization and reversion of the good-evil distinction, the basis of the ethical life is not destroyed but is rather preserved, clarified, and strengthened. This ultimate experience makes the distinction between good and evil clearer than before because the distinction is thoroughly realized without any limitation in the awakening to the boundless openness of s+-unyat-a. At the same time, the relativization and reversion of the good-evil distinction in this awakening leads us to the realization of the undifferentiated sameness of good and evil. The first aspect, that is, the clearer realization of the good-evil distinction, indicates prajn+ a, or Buddhist wisdom. The distinction of things or matters more clearly realized in enlightenment than before is well indicated in the following discourse of Chi'ing yuan Wei hsin, a Chinese Zen master of the T'ang Dynasty: Before I studied Zen, to me mountains were mountains and waters were waters. After I got an insight into the truth of Zen through the instruction of a good master, mountains to me were not mountains and waters were not waters. But after this, when I really attained the abode of rest, that is, enlightenment, mountains were really mountains, waters were really waters.21 The second aspect that is the realization of the sameness of good-evil through the relativization and reversion of its distinction entails karun- -a, Buddhist compassion. The compassionate aspect is emphatically expressed both in Pure Land and Zen Buddhism as follows: Even the virtuous can attain rebirth in the Pure Land, how much more so the wicked!22 The immaculate practitioner takes three kalpas to enter nirvana, whereas the apostate bhikkhu (monk) does not fall into hell.23 This twofold realization of the clearer distinction between good and evil on the one hand and of the undifferentiated unity and reversion of good and evil on the other, is nothing but a reappraisal of the good-evil duality in the new light of s+-unyat-a. Herein, Buddhist ethical life is established in the light of prajn+ a (wisdom) and karu.n-a (compassion) where, transcending the distinction of good and evil, the distinction is clearly realized. The distinction and unity, wisdom and compassion, are dynamically working together in Buddhist ethical life because the boundless openness of s+-unyat-a is taken as the ground of the ethical life. If, however, s+-unyat-a is taken as the goal or the objective of our life and not as the ground or the point of departure, then the Buddhist life falls into the indifference of good and evil and an apathetic attitude toward social evil. The risk and tendency of falling into ethical indifference is always latent in the Buddhist life. In no few instances, Buddhist history illustrates this. In this respect, it is important and significant for Buddhism to have a serious encounter with Christianity which is ethical as well as religious. In conclusion, let me quote a Zen story as an example of the dynamism of Zen

compassion. One day a visitor asked Joshu, an outstanding Zen master of the T'ang dynasty: "Where will you go after death?" "I will go straightfowardly to hell!" answered the master. "How could it be that such a great Zen master as you would fall into hell?" retorted the visitor. To this the master said: "If I will not go to hell, who will save you at the bottom of hell?!"24 Haverford College Haverford, Pennsylvania NOTES *This chapter originally appeared in Buddhist-Christian Dialogue: Mutual Renewal and Transformation, ed. by Paul O. Ingram and Frederick J. Streng (Honolulu: Univ. of Hawaii Press, l986), pp. 139-154. 1. Exod. 20.2-17; Deut. 5.6-21. 2. The New Catholic Encyclopedia, 13:239. 3. Ibid. 4. Rom. 5.17. 5. John Hick, Evil and the God of Love (London: Macmillan, 1966), p. 377. 6. Dhammapada 14.5. 7. Masao Abe, "The Idea of Purity in Mahayana Buddhism," Zen and Western Thought (London: Macmillan and Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1985) pp. 216-222. 8. Gen. 1.31. 9. The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 3:136. 10. Augustine, Enchiridon 4. 11. Augustine, City of God 12.6. 12. Ibid. 13. Augustine, On Free Will 3. xvii.49. 14. New Catholic Encyclopedia, 5:669. 15. Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 3:138. 16. Augustine, Enchiridon 4.421. 17. Ibid. 18. Rom. 7.19. 19. Rom. 7.20. 20. Pi-yen lu (Hekiganroku), case 45, Taish-o 48:181c. 21. Abe, "Zen is not a Philosophy, but . . . ." Zen and Western Thought, pp. 4-24. 22. Tannish-o, A Tract Deploring the Heresies Thought of Faith (Higasji Honganji, 1961), pp. 4-24. 23. Zenmon nenjushu, copied by Seizan Yanagida, 2:120. 24. Chao-chou lu (-Joshuroku) ed. Ry-omin Akizuki, Chikuma edition, p. 170. **** THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR METAPHYSICS STUDIES IN METAPHYSICS, VOLUME III PERSON AND GOD Edited by GEORGE F. McLEAN HUGO MEYNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS OF AMERICA INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR METAPHYSICS DEDICATION This volume is dedicated to the memory of Prof. Richard M. Martin whose life of work in the field of logic showed the highest genius and creativity. As can be seen from his chapter in this volume, "On Some Theological Languages," the broader concern of his work was life itself, up to its highest realization in life divine. Like Descartes, he felt that logic can now make possible significant advances in Metaphysics and even theology. The presentation of this paper in Jerusalem, which Prof. Martin considered in some ways the culmination of his service in philosophy, occasioned intensive debate

with Prof. John Findlay. That interchange was reflected by Richard Martin in his "On Philosophical Ecumenism: A Dialogue," which has been added as a fitting appendix to the present volume. Prof. Martin has pointed the way. He presents an inviting challenge to a younger generation of philosophers to develop the similar combination of professional perfection and personal peace required to follow the pathways he pioneered. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Grateful acknowledgement is made to The State University of New York Press at Albany for permission to reprint R.M. Martin, "On Philosophical Ecumenism: A Dialogue," Chap. VIII of Primordiality, Science, and Value (Albany, New York: State Univ. of New York Press, l980), pp. 120-136. TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction PART I. METAPHYSICS AND GOD 1. God and the Problem of Being by Ivor Leclerc 3-13 Comment: Salvino Biolo 15-21 2. Religious Experience by H.D. Lewis 23-38 3. Critique and Hermeneutic in Philosophy of religion by Benoit Garceau 39-51 4. On Some Theological Languages by Richard M. Martin 53-77 Comment: Jan Van der Veken 79-81 PART II. METAPHYSICAL TRADITIONS AND THE DIVINE 5. The Hindu Metaphysical Tradition on the Meaning of the Absolute by Jehangir N. Chubb 85-103 Comment: Margaret Chatterjee 105-110 6. Metaphysical Traditions and the Meaning of the Absolute: The Locus of the Divine in Chinese Thought by Ellen M. Chen 111-131 7. God - To What, If Anything, Does the Term Refer? An Eastern Christian Perspective by Metropolitan Paulos Gregorios 133-143 8. God, Philosophy and Halakhah in Maimonides' Approach to Judaism by David Hartman and Elliott Yagod 145-180 Comment: Isaac Frank 181-189 9. Philosophy, Man and the Absolute God: an Islamic Perspective by Bahram Jamalpur 191-202 Comment: Francis Kennedy 203-205 PART III ORIGIN AND THEOPHANY 10. Origin: Creation and Emanation by Richard V. DeSmet, S.J. 209-220 Comment: Hugo Meynell 221-225 11. Harmony in Nature and Man by Ewert Cousins 227-238 Comment: Jan Plat 239-241 12. The World as Theophany by Jean Ladriere 243-259 13. On the Reduction of Temporal Categories Within the Process of Divine Intervention by Evanghelos A. Moutsopoulos 261-263 Comment: F. P. Hager 265-271

PART IV. FREEDOM, THEOLOGY AND ETERNITY 14. Evolution and Teleology by Evandro Agazzi 275-286 Comment: Susanne Mansion 287-291 15. Absolute Being and Freedom by R.J. Njoroge 293-305 16. Freedom and Omnipotence: Love and Freedom by Frederick Sontag 307-315 Comment: Thomas A. Fay 317-321 17. Philosophy, Religion and the Coming World Civilization by Leroy S. Rouner 323-331 Comment: Joseph Nyasani 333-335 18. Time and Eternity by J.N. Findlay 337 -347 Comment: Kenneth L. Schmitz 349-353 APPENDIX On Philosophical Ecumenism: a Dialogue by Richard M. Martin 355-371 INDEX 373-377 INTRODUCTION Classically, human understanding of oneself and of one's relation to nature has been founded upon an awareness of one's relation to the divine. Though diversely understood, this has constituted the source, the goal and the deepest meaning of Being. As such, it has provided the basis of personal dignity and the inspiration to strive for a life of harmony with others in justice and peace. Many developments, in philosophy and beyond, have opened new possibilities for understanding the implications of this for all facets of human life. Often, however, they have implied an emphasis upon either the immanence or the transcendence of the divine in a manner difficult to conciliate one with the other. Further, issues implied in the resultant notion of progress have raised anew questions concerning the nature of God. In turn, in the West this has implied a renewed concern for the meaning found in earlier Eastern and Western religious philosophies. In developing, as will as technologically advanced, societies this has raised the question of the presence of God in all dimensions of human life. The present volume presents a study of these issues by The International Society for Metaphysics (ISM), hosted by Dr. Nathan Rotenstreich at the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Jerusalem. It begins by situating the study of God in relation to metaphysics, religious experience and logic. This is followed by a search of the great religious and metaphysical traditions for their sense of the divine. In this light God is studied as the source and goal of all, and consequently as the context for human freedom in time and eternity. This is the last volume in the ISM series on the person. It follows other works on Person and Nature,1 and Person and God2. Upon completion of these studies the ISM undertook an intensive series of investigations regarding society, and its issues of unity, truth and justice, and the good. It extended these two series on person and society to the field of culture and cultural heritage understood as personal creativity in community and in history. Together, they constitute an effort to promote the development of metaphysics as a living discipline in our day. NOTES 1. George F. McLean, ed. (Washington: University Press of America and The International Society for Metaphysics, 1988). 2. George F. McLean and Hugo Meynell, eds. (Washington: University Press of America and The International Society for Metaphysics, 1988). CHAPTER I GOD AND THE PROBLEM OF BEING IVOR LECLERC INTRODUCTORY: THE ISSUES

We today have arrived at a juncture of thought at which both the question of God and the question of being require basic reconsideration. Contemporary scientific development has necessitated the latter, and this has inevitable implications for the question of God. Besides that, in our time it has become easier to see that in respect of God the ontological issue runs up against peculiar features and also singular aporiae. For example, the question can significantly be raised, whether God exists--by contrast with other areas of inquiry, in which it would not be significant to ask whether man, or nature, or society exists. In these areas the pertinent questions would be, what is man? what is nature? what is society?; that is, the issue is concerning the ontological status of man, etc., the kind of being which is to be accorded to man, etc. Earlier ages raised the question of the proof of the existence of God, but not whether God exists. That the later question has become common in our time makes it more readily appreciable not only that there is a singular significance about the question, namely that it can significantly be raised, but that the question itself is singularly problematical. What exactly does the question entail? What does "exist" mean respecting God? Historically the verb "exist" and the abstract noun "existence" arose from a need terminologically to distinguish "that it is" in contrast to "what it is." So to ask whether it is or exists entailed that the "it" in question be something able to stand out or forth, appears manifest itself. This implied, primarily, that the "it" be a "being" which is the "subject" of "what," i.e., of properties or attributes--the latter "existing" only in a derivative sense of the properties of the being as subject. The question facing us is whether the terms "exist" and "being" can consistently and coherently be used in the same sense with respect to God as to natural beings. This is an old issue in the history of philosophy, but it is facing us today with renewed urgency and puzzlement. This issue has a twofold aspect: one is ontological and the other is categoreal. These are, however, closely interconnected, and neither can be tackled in disjunction from the other, nor can one be taken as unquestionably prior to the other; on the contrary, they intrinsically involve each other. The recognition of this is especially crucial in regard to the question of God. This point needs special emphasis, for not only is there a long and powerful tradition that the fundamental category is "being" --that is, what is ontologically primary is "being," and that it is this which is categorially the subject in thought, so that whatever is the subject is categoreally "a being"--but with regard to God this tradition has in this century received an interesting and emphatic reaffirmation by Whitehead in his Process and Reality with his proclamation that: "God is not to be treated as an exception to all metaphysical principles, invoked to save their collapse. He is their chief exemplication."1 Accordingly Whitehead explicitly maintained that God is to be conceived as an "actual entity" or res vera, categoreally no different from any other actual entity or being.2 This tradition, however, cannot today be simply accepted as a presupposition; it has to be critically examined and justified. For to accept it as an unexamined presupposition constitutes begging the issue which we have seen to be crucial today. The question now is how we are to proceed with regard to this ontological and categoreal issue. It is evident that fundamental in this is "being," and accordingly that the prime requisite is clarification with respect to "being." The requisite clarification is not simply one of the meanings of the word, for as we are concerned with it the word occurs only as a term in philosophical thought; so what we are up against is "being" as a philosophical problem, and one of singular profundity, difficulty, and complexity. In tackling this problem it will not suffice to take, or to seek to clarify, the conception of being in any contemporary philosophical theory of system. For, in the first place, it is precisely every such conception which it is necessary to subject to critical scrutiny. Secondly, every such conception stands in the inheritance of some two millennia of ontological thought, involving different theories and thus divergent

meanings of "being," much of which has come in the course of time to acquire the status of tacit presuppositions; consequently the adequate clarification of contemporary conceptions of being necessitates that these presuppositions be brought fully to light and scrutinized. In this we have one of the greatest difficulties involved in the inquiry into the problem of being. In view of this difficulty it seems to me that the best, most satisfactory, and perhaps the only effective way to tackle the problem of being is by an historical inquiry. For, by examining theories of being in their origin and development we can most readily become clear as to what is included in them and thus what has come to be inherited in subsequent generations of thought. The historical procedure is, however, fraught with a crucial difficulty. It is all too easy, as the history of philosophy amply testifies, to interpret earlier thought in terms of current conceptions and presuppositions, and to do so involves completely frustrating a main purpose in adopting the historical approach, viz., to bring to light current presuppositions. It is accordingly highly important for the inquirer to be specially on guard against such insidious anachronisms. Of course the difficulty will not thereby necessarily be eliminated; but it can be significantly diminished and, in the course of critical scholarship, overcome. The historical inquiry into being is unquestionably a considerable and complicated task, to be fittingly undertaken in a lengthy monograph and not in a brief paper. All that is possible here is the presentation of some conclusions which are the outcome of such an inquiry.3 ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE CONCEPT OF "BEING" For the origin of the concept of "being" we have to go back to Parmenides. It is true that to on and ta onta, as Jaeger has said, were used from the very beginning of Greek natural philosophy in the sense of things immediately and tangibly present.4 But it was Parmenides who for the first time became aware of the philosophical import and implications of the words. The question of how and why he was brought to that awareness, highly relevant as it is, cannot be entered into here. For us now the point is that he discovered the singular significance of saying: esti, "it is"--not, "it is something-or-other," i.e., using the verb in its usual copulative function, but in a distinctly new sense; and that he went on to bring out the implications entailed in that new sense. These implications, Parmenides saw, were entailed in the Greek verb "be" per se. This becomes clear by an examination of the verb. Fundamentally relevant here is that the Greek verb einai, "to be," stands in contrast to, and excludes, "becoming"--which is expressed in Greek by an entirely different and unrelated verb gignomai, having the primary meaning of "to be born." In a recent highly important and detailed study of The Verb `Be' in Ancient Greek,5 Charles H. Kahn has shown that in this is exemplified a basic feature of the Indo-European verb *es-, namely, that it functions to express "the stative aspect, by which it contrasts with verbs meaning to become, arrive at, get, and the like."6 This stative value is especially strong in Greek, for in this, as Kahn points out,7 "almost alone among European languages, the stem *es- has remained rigorously durative, admitting no aorist or perfect forms like fui and been in the conjugation of eimi." His investigation reveals "that the typical or primordial use of the verb is for a living creature or more especially a person as subject (as is always the case in the first- and second-person forms); and that the verb itself indicates a station or position of that person's body at a given moment or over a certain stretch of time."8 Thus the verb "indicates the extrinsic position or presence of the person in a given place. If no place is specified, the verb alone may indicate simply that the person is present somewhere or other, i.e., is alive (at a given time)."9 From this analysis it becomes clear why the Greek verb "be," in addition to its primarily copulative function, also has locative, vital, and veridical uses,10 and that it has the fundamental sense of "presence."11 This fundamental sense is what Parmenides clearly saw: what is, is now present. Therefore what is not there, present (e.g., the Pythagorean void) simply "is not" at all. Further, since the verb "be" excludes "becoming," what is must be all

complete, what it is, now in the present. Parmenides having brought to philosophical consciousness what basically is entailed in the Greek verb "be"-viz., that what is, to eon, "a being," implies its immediate presence and its exclusion of all becoming--this determined subsequent ontological thought till Plato, and beyond. Advancing from the new philosophical approach of Socrates, Plato concluded that it was necessary to admit duo eide ton onton, "two kinds of things,"12 but he was then faced with the problem of what was entailed in saying that both are "onta." Evidently they both were onta in the sense of "things present"; but when account was taken of what is entailed in the verb "be" as established by Parmenides, it became clear that only that kind which is eidos, "form," since it alone was without becoming, could be regarded as on alethes, "true being," as to ontos on, "beingly being." Plato was responsible for a further, most important advance in respect of the concept of being. For this he adopted and adapted the word ousia to a new philosophical meaning. The ordinary meaning of ousia was that of "property, possession, what is one's own."13 The argument in the early Dialogues establishing the eide (forms) sometimes required Socrates to make the point that things have each their individual form, whereby they are distinguished as each that particular thing, and that this meant that the individual form is idios, "its own," pertaining to that individual itself, and he began using the word ousia to express this, thereby generalizing the meaning of property, possession, as what is "one's own," "proper to," "exclusively individual to," beyond what is ordinarily considered "property."14 In this context ousia is usually, but not quite adequately, translated as "essence" - essentia was a coinage from the Latin infinitive, esse, to render the Greek term ousia in its later, fully developed sense. In these early Dialogues it is quickly argued that each "form-itself" also has its ousia, in the sense of what is its own, of what properly belongs to it.15 Then from the Republic onward it is evident that Plato had become increasingly aware of the implications of the fact of the word ousia having derived from the verb "be," more particularly that it entailed a fundamental connection between what in a thing is "its own" and the "to be" (to einai) or "being" (to on) of the thing. In the Republic, ousia mostly continues primarily to express "what is its own" (essence), but at 479 c and in most instances of its use in the Theaetetus, ousia has the meaning of "being," but in a new sense. In this the word ousia is not merely an alternative to the participial action noun to on, "the being" (analogously to "the thinking," "the running"), but expands that meaning of "being" to include the sense of "what is its own." This new compound sense of ousia is that which is prevalent throughout the later Dialogues. Moreover in these, this compound meaning comes to be extended also to to on, so that in these late works to on is, in the crucial instances, not adequately rendered by esse, "das Sein," "l'etre," or "Being" (the gerund in English replacing the infinitive), or by "existence," for these catch only part of the new sense. It is this new fully developed sense of ousia and to on which is taken over by Aristotle, as is clear from his analysis in Book VII of the Metaphysics. The appreciation of this, however, tends to be blocked by the traditional translation of ousia in Aristotle by "substance," a word which most inadequately renders the meaning of the Greek term. In Ch. 1 Aristotle makes clear that the question, ti to on ("what is being"), is the question tis he ousia ("what is ousia").16 That is, he was acknowledging the full connotation of to on ("being") as developed by Plato and expressed by the term ousia. Starting the chapter with the reminder that to on has many senses, Aristotle points out that first it indicates to ti esti ("what it is") or tode ti (a "this" or "individuality"), which means that which is primarily (touton proton on) is the "what" (to ti estin), and that this is the very thing which is indicated by ousia (hoper semainei ten ousian).17 In other words, the "what" is that which Plato had argued is "its own," which is "individual to it"

and to indicate which he had used the word ousia. The fundamental connection of the "what" which is "its own" (entailed in the word ousia) with "being" Aristotle brings out more fully in a phrase (which became for him a technical term) viz., to ti en einai, "the what it is to be." That is, this phrase denotes the "what" which is peculiar to it, its "own," whereby it is. BEING AND THE CATEGOREAL ISSUE But Aristotle was aware of an important incongruity in Plato's doctrine of ousia, in which ousia, what is "its own," is ascribed to both physical things and the forms. Aristotle argued that while a physical on is manifestly a singular individual, its to ti en einai or ousia thus appropriately indicating it as tode ti (a "this"), a "form-itself" (eidos auto kath auto) is not thus singular, for it is that which is "participated in," which entails that it is fundamentally universal. But a universal indicates "a such" (to toionde) and not "a this" (tode ti), and therefore a universal could not be ousia.18 Aristotle was thereby brought to a most important conclusion in respect of "being." Plato's theory of the forms per se as "being" had to be rejected; on the contrary, it was the other kind of onta, which Plato had denied the status of to ontos on, that had to be regarded as to proton on, "being" in the primary sense, for ousia properly pertained to it alone. This meant that for Aristotle it was the physei on, the physical or natural being, that which is in "becoming," which strictly is to on and ousia. That is, Aristotle found it necessary to reject the conception of "being" deriving from Parmenides and which was grounded in the verb "be" as excluding "becoming." He had arrived at a new conception of that which is a "being" in the primary sense as essentially "in becoming," and which had therefore to be conceived as in a process of change (kinesis) from dynamis (potentiality) to energeia (actuality). What did this entail in respect of the status of form? He agreed with Plato that in a physical being eidos (form) is to be identified with to ti en einai (essence), and thus the ousia, of the being. Categoreally considered, this meant that form constituted the predicates of the being as subject. That is, a form "is" only as a quality, quantity, etc., of "the being" which is its subject. But Aristotle saw that the categoreal issue was quite crucially raised in another respect. Since a physical being is in becoming, in kinesis, this entails a substratum, not only as the recipient of the forms, but as underlying the supersession of forms, without which one could not think or speak of "it" as changing. This meant that a physical being had necessarily to be "composite" (synolos) of hyle (matter) as the substratum and eidos (form). Now hyle and eidos could not be "constituents" or "parts" in the sense in which elements are constituents of a compound whole, for the "elements" (by the very meaning of the word)19 of a natural being would themselves have to be natural beings.20 Therefore hyle cannot have the status of "a being" (to on); it is "that which in itself is neither a particular thing nor of a certain quantity nor assigned to any of the categories by which being (to on) is determined."21 As itself not "a being" it is therefore not known as beings are known, viz., in terms of the categories; it can be "known" only analogically and relatively.22 The other component of natural being, viz., eidos, likewise has to be accorded the status of an arche (source) of being--that eidos cannot have the status of "a being" is amply evident from his critique of Plato. Further, analogously to hyle, there is also a peculiarity in regard to the "knowledge" of eidos; since the forms are that in terms of which there is knowledge, they themselves cannot be known in the way the physical things are: eidos is the arche (source) of knowledge as well as of to on (being). In thus distinguishing between to on (being) and the archai (sources) of being, Aristotle had attained a formulation of a categoreal insight of the utmost importance, which Plato had been able to state only in terms of mythos or simile.23 This insight was inherited by Plotinus. In common with the new movement of thought of that era he had accepted a single, divine, arche (source) of all things, in place of the three archai of Plato and Aristotle, and maintained that this One, as the arche (source) of being and of the forms (in terms of which there is

knowledge) accordingly cannot itself be known and transcends being (ou me logos, mede episteme, o de kai epekeina legetai einai ousias).24 For Plotinus "being" (to on, to einai, and ousia) is identified with the first emanation, nous,25 the enaction (energeia) of whose ousia is the second emanation, psyche, which is to ontos on.26 Augustine took an importantly different position on this, one which has been determinative of most subsequent thought. Plato had identified form as to ontos on, because only form was in itself changeless, immutable; Augustine held that only God was supremely immutable and perfect, so that only God deserved the title of Vere Esse.27 For Augustine God is "the being" which most completely "is," whose essentia signifies perfection. GOD, BEING, AND THE CATEGOREAL PROBLEM This Augustinian ontological position, which became the accepted doctrine of most Christian theology, namely that the source of being is "a being," was found to involve many aporiae with which thinkers struggled for a millennium. Central and basic to these is the issue of "being." Augustine had followed in the ontological tradition of Parmenides and Plato. In this the approach is from the meaning of to on ("being") to the identification of that which accords with that meaning. Plato, following Parmenides in holding that the fundamental connotation of "being" is immutability (since the Greek verb "be" excludes "becoming"), identified the forms as "beings" in the basic sense. This connotation of "being" as immutability was inherited by Neoplatonism and accepted by Augustine, who identified God as "being" in that sense. The Augustinian position therefore maintains "a being" as the single source of all other "beings." Important difficulties in this position soon emerged. If "being" fundamentally connotes immutability, how can physical things, which are manifestly in "becoming," be regarded as "beings" at all? God could not then be the source of being, since God alone is "being"; God could only be the source of "becoming." But if "being" and "becoming" stand in mutually exclusive contrast, this entails the absolute transcendence of God, with no relation to "becoming." The Neoplatonic solution to this difficulty was to identify "to be" (to einai, esse, "das Sein," "l'etre") with form as ousia, essentia. Then a natural thing in becoming "is" by virtue of its form, its "essence." But this involved further difficulties. First the Arab and then Western thinkers saw that this deprived "being" of the feature of its meaning which had been basic in Greek philosophy, namely "presence." In other words, a separation of "existence" from "essence" had occurred. Accordingly, if "being" means "essence," there is no way to account for "existence," and for the "individuality" (tode ti) which "to be there, present," "to exist," primarily entails, as Aristotle had correctly insisted. Aquinas sought to remedy this by emphasizing the features of act" (which Neoplatonism had originally identified with "form," but which had, analogously to "existence," became lost to "essence") and identified "act" with "esse," "to be." But with this new conception of "being" the original difficulty still remains, for "being" still retains the fundamental connotation of immutability, standing in exclusive contrast to "becoming," and thus the problem is not resolved of how "being" can be the source of "becoming." Another most important aspect of these difficulties emerges in the categoreal issue. With the conception of God as "a being," the source of all other "beings," it was entailed that, categoreally considered, the same mode of thinking pertained in respect of God and the other beings: each is "a being" of which attributes are predicated. Early however it became evident that attributes could not be univocally predicated of God and creatures, and from the Pseudo-Dionysius, with his "superlative theology," to Thomas Aquinas, with his doctrine of analogy, a way out of this categoreal problem was sought. Though both were thought of as "beings," a fundamental difference between them as "beings" had to be acknowledged, and to meet this situation Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and Occam developed the theory of transcendentals as predicates pertaining solely to God. But in this we are up against a singularly difficult issue, namely, whether the "source" of being can at all validly be thought in terms of the categories, which

manifestly pertain to physical things, i.e., in terms of "a being" of which attributes are predicated. Aristotle was more profoundly aware of this issue than was anyone, not only before but also since. He saw that the fallacy basic to the thought of the physical philosophers was that they had conceived the arche (source) of physical things as itself a physical thing (e.g., water, etc.). He saw that the same error vitiated the Platonic doctrine, which maintained eidos (form) as the arche of the changing physical onta, beings, but conceived form as itself to on, "a being." Plato himself was indeed aware of the fallacy of the "third man" involved in this and, it seems to me, made an important attempt to overcome this difficulty in the Timaeus through depicting the forms, along with the demiourgos and the receptacle, as the archai of the physical world. Aristotle was clear that not only hyle, but also eidos was not to be understood in terms of the categories, for eidos is the arche of the categories; for him the gnosis of the forms could only be meta noeseos,28 by direct intuition. It seems to me necessary today to face the question whether the aporiae involved in the dominant doctrine of God as "a being" which is the source of all other beings, are not grounded in the same basic mistake which Aristotle saw in Platonism. I would suggest that this is the case. The alternative is that we conceive God as "source of being." In our conception of God we have therefore to proceed from "being," and thus how "being" is conceived is crucial. The "being" in question is evidently that of the entities validly understood in terms of the categories. It is to be noted that the word "being" here is the participial action noun; I shall distinguish29 it typographically as "being." This "being" entails "presence"; but it entails more than simply "presence" ("existence," Dasein). Primarily, the "being" must be that of "a being." This means that "being" entails "individuality," in the double sense of an individual and of what is individual to it, i.e., "essence" in the sense of its own peculiar definiteness. It is to be emphasized that "being" does not connote only "essence," and that essence does not constitute "being," for "being" entails "acting." Also, this "being" cannot exclude "becoming," but rather includes it. Now this "being" necessarily entails "source," in a threefold respect. There is required a source of its "definiteness," and equally so of its "acting." Further, since "acting" entails "end," also required is a teleological source. The question then is whether these three "sources" can validly and coherently be combined into one. It seems to me that this cannot be done without falling back into the error to be avoided. Also involved in this is that while "source" of being entails transcendence of being, "transcendence" here cannot validly entail temporal precedence, for this would imply "a being" as precedent. "Source" has to be transcendent and immanent. The Divine, I would say, is more particularly to be identified with the teleological source, but we should not fall into the error of completely separating the three sources from each other. Emory University Atlanta, Georgia NOTES 1. A. N. Whitehead, Process and Reality (New York: Macmillan, 1929), p. 521. 2. Ibid., p. 28. 3. Ivor Leclerc, The Theory of Being, An Inquiry into Ontology. (In preparation). 4. Werner Jaeger, The Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers (London: Oxford University Press, 1947), p. 197, note 2. 5. Charles H. Kahn, The Verb `Be' in Ancient Greek, Part 6 of The Verb `Be' and its Synonyms, ed. W. M. Verhaar (Dordrecht/Holland: D. Reidel Publishing Co., 1973). 6. Ibid., p. 217. 7. Ibid., p. 219. 8. Ibid., p. 224. 9. Ibid., p. 224. 10. Ibid., pp. 156ff; 233-35; 330-70. 11. Cf. Jaeger, The Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers, p. 197, note 2:

"Homer and Hesiod speak of ta eonta as that which exists at present and contrast it with ta essomena and ta proeonta, things as they will be in the future and as they were in the past. This very opposition proves that the word originally pointed to the immediate and tangible presence of things." 12. Plato, Phaedo, 79 A. 13. Cf. R. Hirzel, "Ousia," Philologus 72, 1913, pp. 42-52. 14. Especially interesting as illustrative of this is Gorgias 471 B, in which Socrates says: ekballein me ek tes ousias kai tou alethous (to drive me out of my property, the truth). 15. Cf. Protagoras 349 B; Euthyphro 11 A; Cratylus 423 A, 424 B; Phaedo 65 C., 76 D - 77 A. 16. Aristotle, Metaphysics, VII, 1028 b 4. 17. Ibid., 1028 a 14-15. 18. Ibid., 1038 b 34 - 1039 a 2. 19. Aristotle, De Caelo 302 a 16-18. 20. Aristotle, Metaphysics 1028 b 8-13. 21. Ibid., 1029 a 20-21 (Ross tr.). 22. Aristotle, Physics 191 a 8-12, 194 b 9. 23. Plato, Timaeus 29 D; Republic 308. 24. Plotinus, Ennead, V, 4, 1. 25. Cf. Ennead, III, 8, 8: all ousia kai to tauton to einai kai to noein einai. 26. Cf. Plotinus, Ennead, IV, 7, 85. 27. Cf. Augustine, Confesiones, Bk. VII, ch. 11: "For it is only that which remains in being without change that truly is." 28. Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics 1036 a 5-6. 29. It is important to distinguish "being" as a nominalized participle from "being" as a gerund substituting for the nominalized infinitive, and thus from des Sein and l'etre. COMMENT On Ivor Leclerc, "God and the Problem of Being" SALVINO BIOLO The thought-provoking report of Professor Leclerc about the fundamental problem of being, that invited us to a "basic reconsideration," convincingly emphasizes from the start the close relationship of the two metaphysical aspects of the central topic: the ontological aspect that considers being as such, and the theological aspect with its consideration of God. 1. In regard to his introductory remarks, it seems essential to propose some preliminary questions closely connected with the fundamental problem of the existence of God. Prof. Leclerc points out that contemporary scientific development gives a rather negative meaning to the question: "whether God exists." This seems to be the predominant attitude also of most modern philosophy. Is possible to see in the traditional distinction proposed by Leclerc between "that it is" and "what it is," the implicit transcendental opposition between, and mutual relationship of, essence and existence? I feel rather perplexed in observing how Leclerc, who seems strongly influenced by the thought of Whitehead, states the basic question as follows: "whether the term `exists' and `being' can consistently and coherently be used in the same sense with respect to God as to the natural beings." The term same means "identical" rather than "similar but different," and could insinuate at the beginning an attitude suggesting a univocal knowledge of being that would lead in turn to a pantheistic conception of God. Another crucial point is the twofold aspect of being: ontological and categorial. Why are these two terms so closely interconnected, when the term "categorial" seems to imply a deviation from the correct transcendental and analogical notion of being? I doubt that it is philosophically justified to use the term "categorial" in referring to being, particularly in the usage of Whitehead quoted

by Leclerc. In this quotation referring to God he says: ". . . res vera categorically not different from any other entity or being." I would like to specify my difficulty in this way: being as such transcends everything, that is, it penetrates and supercedes all reality since it involves and is involved in all being, in every aspect and mode of being. Thus it embraces and overflows every category. Being is immanent in all its determinations and may not be confused with any determination whatever: "it is neither a thing nor an idea, it constitutes the profundity of things and the objectivity of ideas."1 2. Concerning his interpretation of Greek philosophy, Prof. Leclerc quite correctly emphasizes the enduring stability of being as found in Parmenides, but neglects the differences found in later thinkers. Considering the explicit ontological and theological nature of the topic, it would have been helpful to consider more deeply the metaphysical aspects of God as supreme Beauty found within the Symposium of Plato. This work reaches heights of sublime transcendence in the field of Greek philosophy, which embraces not only aspects of absoluteness and uniqueness but also multiplicity and becoming, as in Heraclitus. Both aspects are reconsidered by Plato and explicitly developed by Aristotle. Although Leclerc gave the two great masters special consideration, he might have more clearly focused their thought to allow an interpretation closer to the traditional one. Referring to Plato he provides an initial orientation to the analogy of being when he reveals his fundamental distinction between the identical and the different in both things and ideas. Does Plato exclude completely the real and true nature of being in the things of this world, even if they appear like shadows in comparison with the reality of ideas? If so, what do the typical Platonic insights of mimesis (imitation) and of metexis (participation) imply, considering the terms of their operations? These basic insights, because they imply a doctrine of analogy, should not be neglected; they include both a certain similarity and a greater dissimilarity in regard to the respective reality of things and ideas. This holds to a much greater extent when we consider the supreme ideas of the Good and of the Beautiful? I agree with Prof. Leclerc's acknowledgement of Aristotle's fundamental contribution to our central problems. As one who is in agreement with the "perennial philosophy," I would like to suggest that the metaphysical principles of Aristotle should be developed in a different and more coherent direction. For example, his solution of the classic dilemma of Parmenides (being either is or is not) rests upon the basic distinction of potency and act, that suggests an ontological difference between beings as they are this or that, but an ontological similarity between beings as they simply are. This opens a pathway to the future development of the logical and ontological aspects of intrinsic analogy.2 It is true that every material thing in this world is a "composite" sunodos of matter and form. But "matter and form" are the principles of intrinsic causes within the natural constitution of material being. The "composite" also demands, as Aristotle explains, the extrinsic "efficient and final" causes of that composition. Considering further Aristotle's interpretation of the knowledge of being, Prof. Leclerc makes a fundamental point: "eidos is the arche (source) of knowledge as well as of to on" (p. 9). Certainly in answer to the question: what is being? Aristotle replies that the cause of being is its immanent form (Met. Z, 17). But allowing that such an interpretation is possible and coherent, I would like to suggest a development in the line of Thomas Aquinas' thought and founded upon an Aristotelian insight. Let me explain further: the eidos is a proximate formal principle of the knowledge of being and not an agent. It is of being as known, but not of being as made to be. 3. Regarding his brief consideration of both St. Thomas and St. Augustine, his brief mention of St. Augustine is correct but is too partial, both for what it says and what it does not say. Augustine has not only provoked struggles among thinkers, but both as a theologian and a philosopher he suggested a radical solution to the problem of the origin of being from God.

The passage from the Confessions quoted partially by Leclerc, in its completeness certainly affirms the absolute being of God, but also attributes being, that is relative by participation, to other things: Also I considered all the other things that are of a lower order than yourself, and I saw that they have not absolute being in themselves, nor are they entirely without being. They are real in so far as they have their being from you, but unreal in the sense that they are not what you are. For it is only that which remains in being without change that truly is."3 The relationship of beings to God is one of dependency in their common reality, but opposition in their similar yet different being. Some lines earlier Augustine, in one of his most brilliant insights, had explained this very similar idea about the dependency of created things, including the mind itself: What I saw was something, quite different from any light we know on earth. It shone above my mind, but not in the way that oil floats above water or the sky hangs over the earth. It was above me because it was itself the Light that made me, and I was below because I was made by it.4 Augustine accepts the transcendence of God from Platonic philosophy but develops it differently in order to accommodate God as Creator according to the JewishChristian revelation. It is metaphysically important for our common problem to emphasize that this Doctor of the Church also uses the term `source' (fons) about God to explain that he is the Principle of all: . . . these knowing God, found that in Him was both the cause of the whole creation, the light of all true learning, and the source of all felicity."5 "Source" is here clearly used in a metaphorical way to express the metaphysical category of first cause, that is the Creator. Considering Prof. Leclerc's treatment of St. Thomas, whose conception of analogy is very different from that of Duns Scotus and Ockam, I would like to stress that he further explains the doctrine of creation systematically with an explicit distinction betweem--but not by separating--essence and existence. Therefore being is not only identified with "to be" but also implies "it." Thus Thomas both sought and found a mode of expression that would resolve the supposedly rigorous contrast between the being and becoming of creatures. He could say that the Creator is "a being," but such a singular being that He is the Pure Act of being, who freely makes beings that are capable of, and contain the reality of becoming. In a similar way there is no reason to be frightened of the "same mode of thinking" being used in regard to God and other beings. The correct way of thinking about, and predicating value of, God and creatures is analogous not univocal. Nor is it equivocal but similar and different, although the difference is a major one because He is the cause propria of all things. What is such through the essence is the proper cause of what is such by participation. But only God is being through his essence, while all other things are beings through participation, because only in God `esse est sua essentia'. Consequently the `to be' of every existing reality is a proper effect of God, in such a way that every thing that produces some existing thing does so insofar as it acts in the power of God."6 Therefore, strictly speaking, God is not "Wholly other" but "simply different." Total difference is repugnant because it would create an abyss between God and creatures who are related to Him. 4. Regarding the principal conclusions to be reached and the final problems that need to be resolved, it seems that when Prof. Leclerc affirms that: "there are aporiae involved in the dominant doctrine of God as `a being' which is the source of other things," he multiplies rather than resolves the problems. It is not clear to what dominant doctrine he is referring. He formulates the question by focusing on the problem of the origin of beings from God, beginning from a conception of being. In order to clarify my interpretation and to discover some solution for the main problem, I would like to propose two questions and two possible solutions. My first question in the form of dilemma regards the origin of beings from God: Is

it by emanation or creation? My dilemma is proposed both in reference to the missing solution in Aristotle, whose fundamental principles I can accept, and also in order to seek a further clarification from Prof. Leclerc about the term "source" in reference to God. "Source" more strongly suggests a metaphor than a technical philosophical category. Only if that word means "active cause," and in this context creative cause, is it acceptable. Otherwise I cannot see any way of overcoming almost impossible difficulties. It is precisely here that we have need of the doctrine of analogy where we try to use the fundamental and universal category of "cause." Leclerc finally asks about individual being which includes becoming: "Now this `being' necessarily entails `source' in a threefold respect." The first aspect: "there is required a source of its definiteness." The word "source" here is overburdened with too much meaning, considering the delicacy and importance of the fundamental question of the origin of being. I therefore think that in this context "source" may be (a) the substantial form which is the intrinsic principle determining and specifying being as this or that substance or essence; (b) an accidental form which is a further actual determination of the substance; or (c) the extrinsic efficient Principle, which is the first Cause of singular beings. It is essential that we do not confuse the constitutive intrinsic principles with the extrinsic transcendent first Principle who is God. Here is the crucial aspect of the entire question. If by "source" Leclerc means the creative Cause of being, then I am in agreement with him. However, if by "source" he means something less as immanent in this world, then I cannot agree with his vague use of the word. This is not to deny that the transcendent first Principle is also immanent, but actively and creatively immanent. Such a first Principle is not to be identified with beings who are relative in their dependence. The second aspect: "and equally so of its acting." Because "to act is the consequence of to be" (operari sequitur esse) it is necessary to make some further distinctions that are a logical application of those we have already made. First of all: If "source" means the first Cause that makes every being exist and consequently act, then the expression is acceptable. However, if by "source" he means an intrinsic principle like substance or accident, then the logical consequence must be a type of pantheism. The third aspect: "Further since `acting' entails `end', (there is) also required a teleological source." Because "every agent works for an end" (Omne agens agit propter finem) in a determined manner, and this indicates the ultimate existence of an intellect, we must still distinguish: (a) if "teleological source" means final, extrinsic Cause as an ultimate end to which all is oriented and ordered, it is acceptable. In this instance this final cause must therefore be identified with the first Principle from which every thing originates. This first Cause or Principle makes the teleological order residing in every contingent being, and must be both the first Intelligence and Will that thinks and wills the existence of beings. However this does not appear to be what Leclerc means. (b) On the contrary, if "teleological source" means some principle internal to beings as a constitutive element of their very natures, then it must simply be denied, because it inevitably leads to pantheism. Finally it seems to me that the crucial point we must always emphasize is that God is both transcendent and immanent. He is transcendent because, insofar as He gives being to all creatures, He is superior to all relative beings. But by this very same fact of creation He is also immanent, in that He is intimately present causing what is most intimate in beings to be: "Yet you were deeper (intimior) than my deepest self and higher (superior) than the topmost height that I could reach."7 In regard to his final statement: "The Divine is more particularly to be identified with the teleological source," I prefer finally to explicitly call that "source" God, insofar as He is the creative "source" which makes the teleological order of the universe including man. But let us not call God "source" if by this

we mean an internal principle that is identified with the nature of created things. This seems to be the error that should be avoided at all costs because of the danger of pantheism. As far as the second question is concerned I would like to refer briefly to the general conception of God and being and to the presuppositions related to these questions. What fundamental conception do we have of man as far as he conceives and knows being, and finally God? Only if we are grounded in a sound epistemology and methodology of the knowing and conscious subject can we be capable of both certainty and truth. Unless we are intellectually open to the notion of being and consequently to self-transcendence, and to the absolute transcendence of the Ipsum Esse, we cannot have any answer to the problem of being and the mystery of God. Gregorian University Rome, Italy NOTES 1. "L'etre apparait comme le sens des phenomenes, ce qui le pose et permet de les affirmer. Il n'est ni chose ni idee; il fait la profondeur des choses et l'objectivite des idees." Joseph De Finance. La connaissance de l'etre. (Paris: Desclee de Brower, 1966), p. 36. 2. "The notion of being penetrates all other contents, and so it is present in the formulation of every concept. It cannot result from an insight into being, for such an insight would be an understanding we have not attained. It is, as has been said, the orientation of intelligent and rational consciousness towards an unrestricted objective." Bernard J.F. Lonergan, S.J., Insight (London: Longemans, Green and Co., 1957), p. 360. 3. Confessions, VII, x, 17. 4. Ibid. VII, x, 16. It is very significant: " . . . sed superior quia ipsa (=lux) fecit me, et ego inferior quia factus ab ea." 5. The City of God, VIII, 10. 6. St. Thomas, III C.G., 66, 6. 7. St. Augustine, Confessions, III, vi, 11. "Tu autem eras intimior intimo meo et superior summo meo." It belongs to the brilliant genius of Augustine to have recognized the intimate relationship existing between the immanence and transcendence of God. CHAPTER II RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE H.D. LEWIS The notion of religious experience appears to me central to all discussions of major religious issues today. It is however a notion about which there appears to be a great deal of confusion and misunderstanding. There are terms like `Nature', and `Freedom', which admit of such a wide variety of interpretation (some of them sharply contradictory) that their use tends to become almost pointless. `Religious experience' is apt to fall into this class. It is sometimes used to refer to any religious activity or practice whatsoever, and thus to become quite otiose. This is the use that some have in mind when they say that they have never had a religious experience; they just mean that they are agnostics. For others `religious experience' means some very peculiar type of experience, like having visions or hearing voices, or having a distinctively mystical experience. For some the term is associated, with some but only very limited justification, with an excessively emotional religious indulgence. In its main use, and in the profound importance ascribed to it by devout persons in all ages, the term stands for none of these things. It is important therefore to indicate just what we should normally understand by `religious experience'. I shall attempt to do this as fairly as I can within a limited space, and I shall also try to give a brief indication of how this relates to other major concerns. I shall waste no time over those who think of religious experience primarily, and perhaps exclusively, in terms of paranormal phenomena. Such occurrences need not in fact be properly religious at all. To what extent they may be I have discussed in Chapters XIV and XV of my Our Experience of God.1 Those who have had paranormal

experiences in the context of their religious life, ascribe importance to them only in relation to other aspects of their faith; usually they minimize their importance and treat them as quite peripheral to their essential commitment. This is why it seemed to me so unreasonable for a critic of the standing of Alasdair MacIntyre, in a well known book2 some years ago, to make such heavy weather over claims to have had visions of the Virgin Mary, etc. Did she `speak Aramaic', did she `remember Galilee'? Questions of this kind seem to me to show a total, indeed obtuse, insensitivity to what religion is essentially like, even in the contexts where visions and voices and other forms of `the marvelous' are in fact invoked. But we must be equally careful not to think of religious experience merely in terms of some features of human experience as a whole or some generalizations or deductions from what our situation as human beings is like. Religious experience, in essentials, is not incipient metaphysics, however important it may be for metaphysical reflection. Its peculiar significance derives from its being a distinctive experience which people undergo, as they may have a moral or an aesthetic experience. This does not mean that it is always easy to recognize or delimit, as in the case for example, of some forms of pain. But it would be quite wrong to identify it with features of experience which all can recognize, or with natural occurrences to which some further religious significance may be ascribed. Religious experience is essentially religious, a distinct ingredient, to my mind a vital one, in an essentially religious awareness, and identifiable as such. I go out of my way to stress this because of a prevailing tendency, in current philosophy of religion, to think that so much of religion is initially neutral, even the sense of the numinous according to some. In my view, we cannot produce any proper form of religion out of non-religious elements. There is indeed a place for the interpretation of experience; perception for example looks very different as the philosopher considers some of its extraordinary features. The last thing I wish to do is to discourage reflection on religious awareness, or to present it as a raw datum which some may accept, others not, and no more. We need in fact to think more carefully about it than anything else in religious commitment at present. But we must not, in the process, so dilute it that it is nothing recognizable in and for itself. The same goes for some fashionable views which equate religious experience with an alleged contentless relation with God sometimes known as an `I-Thou relation'. I have a very great regard for Martin Buber, and I wish more heed were paid by those who refer to him to my fairly close discussion, in Chapter XIII of The Elusive Mind, of what emerges in a positive way from all that he had to say on this theme. But I make no sense whatsoever, in human or in divine relationships, of a mere relation to which no kind of a distinctive precise significance can be attached. The nearest we get to this is the insight or intuition into the inevitability of there being God, and of this I shall say more shortly. But an encounter which is no particular kind of encounter, a `meeting' which cannot be characterized in any way, appears to me to be just nothing. To make the invocation of it a way of bypassing all the hard epistemological problems is just an escape from our intellectual responsibility, it plays into the hands of contemptuous agnostics. For related reasons I dismiss all accounts of religious experience in exclusively emotional terms. Emotion plays its part, but the core of religious experience, I submit, is essentially cognitive. How then should we understand it? At the centre, it seems to me, is the enlivened sense of the being of God or, if that at this stage is too theistic a term, of some supreme transcendent reality as involved in the being of anything at all. This is what lies behind the traditional arguments. We all know their inadequacy as arguments, notwithstanding all the refinements attempted in recent times. But they still haunt us, and this seems to me to be because they reflect in different ways the conviction that there can be no ultimate fortuitousness in the being of things. We seek explanations of the way things are, not as a mere psychological compulsion but as rational beings. We do not give up when no sort of explanation is possible, we insist that it must be available somewhere; but no finite explanation is fully adequate, each proceeds

in terms of the way we actually find that things cohere, but there remains the question why they should be this way at all, or why anything at all should exist. We can, at least without sheer inconsistency, say that it all just happened, that somehow things began to be out of a total void and took the remarkable course which enables us to manipulate and understand our environment, in terms of perfect concomitant variation even to the astonishing vastness and complexities of macroscopic and microscopic science of today. We may not contradict ourselves if we say that all this just came into being out of nothing, but is it credible? Why should anything start up at all, much less take the remarkable intelligible shape they have out of just nothing? On the other hand it is equally unintelligible to suppose that the world has always been, that in no sense has there been any sort of origination. `Always' in this sense becomes meaningless. Aeons beyond all computation, and certainly beyond imaginative realization, we can at least comprehend, but a strictly infinite past is just not intelligible. It is these radical antinomies that compel us to recognize some more ultimate reality in which all that we can, in principle, comprehend is rooted, but which is not itself comprehensible beyond the recognition of its inevitability, a mystery, not partial but total, in which everything there is is invested, but not the mystery of mere bewilderment, the mystery of real transcendent being. Philosophers put this in fairly sophisticated terms. But the sense of it, however imperfectly expressed, does not require great sophistication. It is elicited in various ways, not least by what Jaspers has called `limit situations', and I have ventured myself elsewhere to indicate in more detail how the sense of the transcendent is awakened in the minds of the most naive as well as of sophisticated persons and societies. It can be traced back as far as recorded history goes. Art and practice as well as intellectual reflection involve it. But granted some intimation in this way of a supreme or transcendent reality, how do we go from there? It is at this point that I would wish to invoke the idea of religious experience. I wish to stress very much that I do not appeal to the notion of religious experience as such to establish the existence of God, least of all in the naive form of insisting that there must be God because we experience him. That would clearly not do without indication of the sort of experience this is and how it is warranted. It could be a gigantic begging of the question. Religious experience properly comes in at the point where we ask, how we go further than the sense of some ultimate all-encompassing mystery involved in all that we are or find. There are of course some who do not seek to go further. They stay at the sense of profound wonderment at the essentially incomprehensible source of all there is, sometimes almost to the point of the repudiation of finite being. In practice actual religion has rarely been able to remain at this rarefied level. Present existence claims its rights and our attention. Finite existence cannot be denied any more than the infinite, even if it finds no better place than some mode or articulation of the infinite. At some level there appear, from the remotest times to our own, particular practices, attitudes, obligations, varied and suggestive symbolism, all intimating that the sacred which, in one sense, we cannot approach and whose essential mystery we cannot fathom, is nonetheless peculiarly present, `in thy mouth and in thy heart', as one scripture puts it, that it involves a way of life for us, a purpose, a formative influence in personal and social history, a meaning and a presence articulating itself in all manner of ways and leading, in some instances, to highly refined formulations of belief, even to the curiously presumptuous intimacy of petitionary prayer. Men speak of meeting God, of `walking' with him, of hearing his voice, of turning away from him, of encountering his wrath and, in the same awareness almost, finding him a seeking, reconciling God who draws all men to their ultimate fulfilment `in him'. They even speak of God incarnate as a living, limited finite creature who died in a scandalously shameful way. How is any of this to be warranted, affirmed or rejected? What meaning can it have? It is here, in my view, that religious experience is the seminal and vital

consideration. I do not, of course, wish to deny, that the `insight' into there having to be God, along the lines indicated, is itself an experience. But it is so in the sense that all cognition is experience. To apprehend that twice two is four, or that the angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees, is experience. But no one would claim, in these cases, that we know from experience, on the basis of what we find or observe, that these things are so, as we know that grass is green and fire is hot. `The appeal to religious experience', as it is sometimes called, is not a strictly empirical one, in the sense of empiricism which confines it to presentations of sense, but it has more in common with it than strictly a priori knowledge.' Certain things are claimed on the basis of certain things that have happened. The one qualification of this, and it is a vital one, is the point already noted, namely that at the core of religious experience, is the enlivened insight into the being of God. We do not know this because things happen in any particular way, but, essentially, because they happen at all. The insight involved is peculiar but certainly not quasi-empirical. On the other hand, the enlivening of this insight in peculiar conditions, and the repercussions of it on other crucial aspects of particular experiences, seem to me to be the raw material out of which all other genuine religious awareness is built - and by which it is tested. At this point there is a very close analogy between the way we know one another and the way we know God. We do not know the existence of other persons generally in any a priori or in any intuitive way, though some philosophers do make that strange claim. We know all we know about other persons, I submit, in some mediated way, however close and intimate this may be. Without some evidence we would not know the existence of anyone. But the being of God we know quite differently, as indicated. It is in no sense a matter of evidence as this usually goes. But all the rest is, and it is along these lines that I, at least, react to the familiar challenge of empiricist critics - what would count for or against your belief? For the existence of God I answer `nothing'. It is not that kind of awareness, it is a quite peculiar insight about which nonetheless much may be said, again along the lines indicated. But for all other affirmations, the live particularization of profound devotion, we turn to specific evidence, to what counts for or against, to what can, in some respects at least, be analyzed and set forth, though by no means in exclusively sensible terms. I make a special point of stressing this, as so many who are concerned about religion, at highpowered professional levels or more simply, fall back before the fashionable challenge on either blind appeals to authority or some vague noncognitive attitude or commitment for which there is no rational justification. Interest in religion may be revived today, in fleeting and transitory ways, by simple-minded appeals to emotion or hysteria or palliatives to those who hunger for spiritual sustenance - or we may make do for a while with attenuations which but thinly disguise the essential secularity of our attitudes. But this will not last. Religion needs justification, most of all in a sophisticated age like out own. No great religion can survive without it. It is this justification of what is distinctive in the claims of the great religions, and the means of assessment and the basis of dialogue, that is to be found essentially, in my view, in religious experience, rightly understood. The points of convergence as well as the differences can be much better understood in these terms and a means made possible of maintaining our distinctive stances while entering with genuine empathy and appreciation into the religious devotion of others. It will also be a very great gain indeed, in all religions, to show that we are fully equipped to confront the demand for justification and fully take the point of empiricist critics, though by no means entirely on their own terms. Let us return, then, now to the question what a religious experience involves besides the enlivened sense of the being and mystery of God. I want first to add here that, if the transcendent is to function adequately as the ultimate answer to our `why questions', or as explanation in the very special elusive sense indicated, it must be deemed to be complete and adequate in all respects in

itself, in other words perfect in the evaluational sense as well as selfsustaining. I do not see how anything less than supreme perfection could meet the case, and in this context I would like to refer you to a quite admirable, but not I suspect sufficiently regarded, book by Professor Sontag entitled Divine Perfection (Student Movement Press). The sense of the holy is essentially evaluational, and does not become so, as is implied in some readings of Otto, by further schematization. This point I must leave as it is for our purpose. The main point to be stressed now is that the sense of ultimate being, mysterious beyond any fathoming in what it must be in itself other than ultimate perfection, has a distinctive impact on other formative features of the total experience in which it occurs. It corrects the perspective in which we view the world around us, it highlights what is of greatest import for us, it makes us see the familiar anew, as in art and poetry; and it does this under the insistent sense of transcendent being unavoidably having its place in our thought. The transcendent claims what it stimulates for its own; and God, whom no man hath seen, the impenetrably Holy, removed and remote as infinite being from finite, becomes a closely intimate articulate presence in the very core of our own essentially finite awareness. The substance of what we come to learn about God in this way is finite. It may present difficulties but no difficulties beyond our understanding and resolving in the normal exercise of finite intelligence. What we learn is finite and has no irresolvable mystery in it, much is indeed very simple, however astonishing on occasion. The peculiarly divine factor comes in when these exceptional insights into our own situation and its requirements are seen to be induced in a very sharp way, deepened and refined, under the impact of the movingly enlivened sense of the Holy and the transcendent. As I have put it elsewhere, God puts his own imprimatur on certain insights and sensitivities, he underlines, as it were, certain things in our experience and writes his own mind into them. They come to carry his authority additional to their own. They are what he specifically wants us to note. The devout acquire the art of listening and heeding what is communicated thus within our own sensitivity and concentration. One feature of exceptional importance in this process whereby our understanding is extended in the enlivened sense of the involvement of our lives in a supreme and transcendent reality is the refinement and deepening of moral awareness. The view has often been advanced that we cannot ascribe genuine objectivity to ethical principles unless they are considered to be expressly dependent on some religious reality. This seems to me to be dangerous doctrine. It is plain that persons with no religious awareness or commitment can have profound appreciation of moral ideals and splendid devotion to them. There is no inconsistency or logical impropriety in their being so. The objectivity of morals is autonomous, as I have stressed myself on many occasions, and some of the most notable and persuasive defenders of moral objectivity have been prominent agnostic philosophers such as G. E. Moore and C. D. Broad. Their case, a very convincing one to me, does not rest at all on religion. Ethics has no more direct dependence on religion than mathematics or science. But this does not preclude morality from being, as most persons would take it to be, at the very heart of reliion. It is so not just because the ultimate is also supreme perfection, and commitment to it is also therefore commitment to what is surpassingly good, but also because it is in the refinement of ethical understanding, in the sharpening of conscience as it may more popularly be put, that the peculiar disclosure of divine intention for us takes place. It is in the voice of our own conscience that the voice of God is most distinctly and significantly heard. This does not make conscience an essentially religious faculty, but it does make it the pre-eminent medium within which the articulation of the mind of God to us takes place. It is here above all that we find our exceptional clue to what God is like and what is our own involvement and special relation to him. None of this means that devout people are morally infallible or have a monopoly of all good sense and advance in ethical understanding. There are perversions of

religion and profound misunderstandings about its nature that have been very gravely detrimental to ethical good sense and which have from time to time brought religion itself into serious discredit. The refinement of moral understanding involves moreover a great deal besides the sharpening of ethical insight as such; it requires sound appreciation of the facts and circumstances in various situations and the over-all consequences of various policies. On these matters the devout may not always be the best authorities, and religion certainly confers no immunity from error on matters of fact. Nor does it always carry with it the guarantee of the finest ethical insight as such. The agnostic may sometimes excel in both regards. What we can say however is that, other things being equal, the enlivened sense of the transcendent carries with it essentially a refinement of moral sensitivity and that it is moreover to this source that the most impressive advances in ethical principles over the years have been due. This is not the place to justify the latter submission in detail. My concern at the moment is more with the general contention that, while it is inherently impossible for us to rise beyond our finite nature and comprehend the being and mind of God as it is for him, we find the incursion of the divine into specific human experience, and thereby a preeminent clue into what our relation to it should be, in the peculiarly religious toning and refining of moral experience. This is not the only example, far from it. We may speak in similar terms of our appreciation of the world around us and its significance, and of the impetus this has given, among other things, to the advance of science. The artistic attitude is in the same way close to religion here, and each has immensely fructified the other for that reason. But it is not primarily a matter of general affinity as of moments of profound religious awareness in which the deepening of religious insight as such takes its course in the blending of itself with perceptions and sensitivity in other secular regards which thereby afford distinctive matter, apprehensible in the normal secular way by us, out of which the fullness and the richness and the intimacy of genuine religious existence is shaped, and by which it is also corrected and criticized. Correction and criticism are indeed of very great importance here. For the distinctively religious factor, in a total religious experience, operates upon and within the other secular features of our situation. These often have faults of their own, and this is how it comes about that we sometimes sincerely ascribe to the voice of God items which are only too grievously marked by our own limitations and failings. It would be fine in some ways if the mind of God were disclosed to us in some indelible and wholly unmistakable way, written in the sky or on tablets of stone or of gold in some inscription which is indisputably divine. Dispute, and presumably doubt, would be at an end. But it does not happen that way. Short of being God ourselves what sanction could we invoke, what are the credentials of a message so conveyed? There is indeed no such way for the voice of God to be heard by finite beings. He speaks in the ways we can understand in his peculiar obtrusion into the normal exercise of the faculties with which he has endowed us. But it is not the mere exercise of finite powers that is involved. There is the peculiar transformation of them which we have the reasons indicated for ascribing to divine intervention in the enlivened sense of the transcendent already described. A genuine prophet can, for these reasons, be sincerely mistaken, and devout persons have always to be searching out their own minds and hearts to be as sure as they can that what they take to be the voice of god is not the voice of their own errors and failings, or at least tinged by these. That does not preclude firmness of conviction and deliverance. The prophet may speak with authority, but he must be mindful also that he is but a medium, a vessel that is often cracked and broken. One particular feature of the fallibility of genuine prophetic awareness is the involvement of all of us in the particular circumstances of our age and society. When, as in societies at a relatively low level of moral development, the sense of

the divine impinges upon their attitudes, the progress they make will be correspondingly limited and sometimes distorted. If the ethical understanding of a community has not advanced beyond the level of crude retribution and collective guilt, there may well be a genuinely religious ingredient in the perpetuation of ideas which a more enlightened age would find morally abhorrent. What we have to be constantly heeding is the intertwining of genuine religious disclosure and insight with other all too fallible aptitudes and interests of finite creatures. Much in the sacred scriptures of various religions will become more intelligible to us and can be viewed judiciously in their proper setting if we think, as indicated, of divine disclosure as a leaven in the totality of our own aptitudes and aspirations. At the same time the distinctiveness of the transcendent influence must not be lost or wholly merged in the finite media on which it operates. The precise moment of genuine religious awareness, operating within the functions it claims for its own operation, may not always be easily delimited. It may be sharp as in sudden conversion, but even in these cases there is often a period of subtle maturing in which truly religious elements come to their open and more explicit formulation. More commonly, although religious awareness and sensitivity may be clear and explicit, it has its own ebb and flow, it merges itself in other concentrations of attention, it may be gentle and unobtrusive, in acts of worship or meditation, much as aesthetic awareness is not always easily delimited and isolated from the observations and attentiveness which it takes up into itself. It is for these reasons that some may even fail to detect the moment of live religious awareness or allow it in retrospection to be lost in the media which it embraces. This, in particular is where very careful thought is needed in our times to detect and uphold the element of genuine religious awareness against crude and bogus travesties of it. This is all the more the case because the live religious awareness lives on in other experiences and practices and also perpetuates itself dispositionally in our way of living as a whole. Its occurrence may be known obliquely and indirectly, and this in notable cases is no mean assurance of its presence. It may well become apparent by its fruits. But we can never rely on that alone. The enlivened individual awareness is the indispensable religious factor, and it is out of it preeminently that the distinctively religious shape of any faith is formed. In my fuller discussion of these matters, in my book Our Experience of God, I also ascribed particular importance to what I described as the patterning of religious experience. There are significant recurrences and variations which I sought to describe. It has often been found, for example, that the enlivened awareness of transcendent being often comes about in situations where we have least justification for expecting it, for example in states of an overwhelming sense of guilt. The latter, especially a sense of grievous wrong-doing, comes between us and one another and between us and God, it drives us on our own inner resources which dry up without the sustaining sense of the world around us and of other persons. It is in this debility that we find the real penalty of sin. But, surprisingly, it is often in just this situation of despair and desperation that men have found the onset of the renewed awareness, sometimes gentle, sometimes disturbing, of infinite being as the end and sustainer of their own existence; and life as a whole becomes renewed again and transformed. The recurrence of this, its variations and the extension of it into the religious consciousness of various societies, builds itself up over the ages into the sense of God, not as mere remote sustainer or `Unmoved Mover', but as a seeking reconciling God peculiarly involved in what we are and in our relationship with him. This is, to my mind, a very important aspect of the emergence of the more theistic forms of religion. The same may be said of other situations of desperation, whether we bring them on ourselves or not. It does not follow that distressing circumstances and evil are straightaway resolved. Appalling evil is still with us and presents the severest tension and strain for religious commitment. It is not a problem I can lightly deviate into now. But in these situations also men have found the sustaining and

recurring sense of God invading their attitudes as a whole and giving them renewal of strength. God comes to be known as `an ever present help in trouble'. My submission, without pursuing any of these illustrations in further detail here, is that it is in the substance and the patterning, which I would also much stress, of the moulding and refining of otherwise neutral sensitivities and attitudes by the insistent impact of the transcendent rather than in a priori and essentially empty attempts to determine abstract properties of God, that we find the vindication and shaping, as well as the appropriate critique, of the more particular affirmations and practices of actual living religions. The parallel with `other minds' is here very close. We do not, as I have persistently maintained elsewhere, know the minds of other persons as we know our own; however close our relationships may be, however intimate, there is an essential element of mediation. The relation we have with God is no less intimate and close because it comes in the mediation of the peculiar modification of our own experience, it is as close as finite-infinite relationships can be, and to those who experience it profoundly there is no barrier that matters. For many who persist in an agnostic or skeptical view of religion I suspect that a major determinant of their attitude is the expectation that religion must vindicate itself for them, if at all, in some form of supernatural experience of which finite beings are not capable at all. This is the sophisticated version of the expectation that the astronauts may discover God for us. What we need is to know better where and how to look, and to persevere more in the demanding discipline of looking in the right way. Far too often we take it all to be a matter of a few formal considerations one way or the other when in fact it is a matter of living committed lives in the closest association with the witness of profound experience over the ages. Closely related to the same mistake is the supposition that religious experience is essentially and wholly a private matter. It has to be initially and in itself private, but what matters most is not the intimations of God that we may chance to have in our more exclusively private existence, but rather the absorption into our individual awareness of the wealth and significance of the sustained and developing religious awareness of men down the ages. It is not in a void that we encounter God but in all the rich diversities of our cultures and the formative part of religion within them. This is what must come alive for us in our individual experience. This is what is sustained for us in various ritual and symbolic practices. How these function, and where they are genuine and healthy, is a subject in itself. There can clearly be perversions and parasitic imitations, just as there can be over-intellectualized treatments of practices where the true significance is closely bound up with the figurative and symbolic expression. Symbolism is not a thing apart, a decorative superimposition, it is a major, and often indispensable way of articulating what is profoundly perceived and felt and finds its appropriate depth in the fertilization and sustaining of one another's experience within a continuing social unit. At the same time the symbol is not final, and the ritual must not become an end in itself, much less be exploited for purposes extrinsic to its proper motivation, indeed as has sometimes happened evil purposes. All the same, in the last resort, the symbol is not final and it does not exist for itself. It derives its proper power from the continuity of the experience it expresses. The same is true in art. Poetry, or other forms of art, which depend entirely on lively image or emotional overtones, is not the finest. It palls unless it high-lights or exhibits something distinctive and notable, however impossible it may be to distil the meaning from its figurative expression. The symbol must not, in religion, take wing on its own, it must be anchored in experience. The same is true of the more formally credal expressions of religious truth. There is a place for sophisticated formulation, acutely difficult though it is and full of pitfalls, but it is not, alas as has too often been assumed, an a priori

intellectual exercise. It proceeds on the basis of what is taken to be conveyed in the medium of live experiences enriching and extending one another in a variety of social contexts. This means that the theologian has a peculiarly difficult task and requires a greater variety of skills and aptitudes than is usually realized, least of all by the practitioners themselves--a point which I much stressed elsewhere.3 It is particularly hard because one has to be responsive to the symbolism, and the appropriate artistry, and also to the critical assessment of all which these convey. A very serious pitfall, most of all for Western theologians and religious thinkers, is to take some striking religious symbol or story out of its context in the total themes of the scriptures in which it appears. This has happened, for example, when juristic metaphors in the New Testament have been made the basis of doctrines of retributive punishment and vicarious suffering in ways appalling to any moral or intellectual sensitivity. Creda1 affirmations do have their important place, most of all in religions in which the historical factor is important. They help to concentrate attention in the right way. But they must proceed on the basis of what is initially made evident in the formative disclosures in experience. In Semitic religion there is usually accorded an exceptionally important place to a distinctive form which divine disclosure in human experience is alleged to have taken in a particular stretch of history. This is not the place to assess that claim or the even more astounding claim that the one transcendent reality was able, in some way which baffles all comprehension, to so limit itself as to enter into a fully human limited form in the culmination of the process which had been taking shape in Hebrew history. This remains the central Christian affirmation and I myself make very little sense of recent attempts to retain the formulae and ritual practices of the Christian faith if these central themes, as they seem to me, of the New Testament and traditional Christian understanding are so eroded as to bear little relation to the sources from which they came and the meaning they would normally be given. Far better, it would seem to me to abandon them altogether, though that is far from what I myself commend. At the moment the question is not the soundness of the distinctive claims of the Christian faith or any other. But there is one point I do want to stress, namely that the assessment of these and like affirmations must, in the last analysis, go back to the profoundest appreciation of the subtle interlacing of normal sensitivity with divine intimation. If this adds up, in the available evidence about Jesus and his background, to the central affirmations of the New Testament and traditional Christian thought, so be it - it is what I myself think. But if the central claims are not to be sustained along those lines I know of no way in which they can be so sustained that can stand in the light of open reflection and criticism today. It remains most important, however, to recognize that, which ever way the evidence points in respect to the distinctive stances of various religious, this is no bar to the profound recognition of one another's insights and achievements. We have learnt much better today how much of mutual enrichment of one another's experience and insight is possible in this way. The differences, where they remain, must not be blurred, any more than they must be hardened by misunderstanding. We can reach across to one another's practices and histories to the great deepening and enlivening of our own experience, and the gain in this way to the West today is much too evident for me to need to underline it now. We have learnt enormously from varieties of experience that were new to us, and the range of our sensitivity has been much extended. Meditation has acquired a new depth for us, and flights of religious imagination opened up that were little known before. My contention is that the major clue for understanding and assessment, when expertise and scholarship has done its work, is the religious toning and directing of religious experience along the lines indicated. There is one point of considerable substance which I would like to add. It refers to what I was saying at the beginning about the initial awareness of the transcendent. In my understanding, the transcendent is altogether beyond and other

than finite being. Creaturely existence, though wholly dependent, is not any part or mode of ultimate being. This is however much in dispute, not only in extensive features of Eastern thought but in Western philosophies from Plotinus to Hegel and contemporary mystical philosophers like W. T. Stace. This again is a vast issue in itself and the opposition of view varies a great deal in its sharpness. I maintain, however, that this is the crucial issue for today in religious thought. It is not an easy one, and we all have our attachments to entrenched positions which we find hard to surrender. My own allegiance has been made plain in one publication after another. I strongly insist on the distinct reality of finite existences and especially on the peculiar distinctness of persons. On the line we take on this issue will turn, more than on anything else at present, the ultimate understanding we have, and even the sensitivity to genuine religious reality as such. It is an issue we must firmly face, though the last thing we must fall into is the temptation to settle the question lightly out of hand to ensure easy accommodation and good will. The right sort of good will does not call for that sort of price, and is contaminated by it. But we must have this central issue steadily before us, and it is on our success in coping with it, I maintain, that the best eventual progress will be made with all our other major problems and our power to share the wealth of one another's insights and experience. I have spoken mainly of communication and assessment of truth. No space is left to consider the part which our own responsiveness plays in the process as a whole. The wind may blow `where it listeth' but `prayer and fasting' has its place too. An age committed to exclusively secular pursuits, and those not always the most elevated, can hardly expect to be well appraised of things that have to be `spiritually discerned'. What Simone Weil and others have brought to mind for us about heeding and `waiting on God' is immensely relevant, and this means more than being religiously attentive in a general way, it means also the continual response, in practice as in thought, of individuals in the ebb and flow of the illumination they have in their own religious experience and what they assimilate from the religious life of their community. It is in these terms, in the exchanges of genuine response, in the part we play ourselves in the formulation of our own religious awareness, that we come again, if I may further reflect my personal allegiance, to our understanding of the more theistic approach to religion and our proper participation in it. Religious experience, so conceived, is not passive, and it does not under-rate the essential mutuality of living, personal relationship as involved centrally in it. The language of prayer and devotion, of struggle and surrender, as well as the essential serenity, bring us to the vitally personal character of religious existence which we are also apt to overlook, even though some like myself may be inclined to over-stress it. The `God of the living', even of the wayward and rebellious, the relentlessly seeking God, is the God I have encountered in my own experience. I hope such an element of personal testimony is not out of place. What matters for us here is that, in discussion and amity, we should enter into one another's views and sensitivity with as much imaginative insight and empathy as we can. Where the gaps can be closed let us hasten to do so, but our main concern is with the truth and `the wind of the argument withersoever it takes us'. We must understand as much as we can across the boundaries, with humility as much as with firmness. There is no place in true religion for confrontation or rancour, there is all the place in the world for empathy and humility. King's College University of London NOTES 1. See also Chap. 3 of my Persons and Life After Death (London: Macmillan, l978). 2. New Essays in Philosophical Theology, Chap. XI. 3. "What is Theology?" Freedom and History, Chap. XVII. CHAPTER III CRITIQUE AND HERMENEUTIC

IN PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION BENOIT GARCEAU When called to reflect on religion, as on other works of man, the philosopher seeks to understand it. But there are many ways to understand a phenomenon, firstly, to grasp its meaning and to express it in clear and distinct concepts; secondly, to explain it or to sort out the conditions which make it possible; finally, to judge its value. Any search to understand a phenomenon must attempt to answer three questions: What is it; Why is it thus; and Is it as it ought to be? These three questions call upon three different yet indissociable functions of the intellect: its hermeneutic, explanatory, and critical functions. The philosopher who has decided to try to understand religion soon discovers that he is entering a domain dominated by a separation of the methods of understanding and a fragmentation of religious language. This discretely respected division of labor reserves for the theologian the hermeneutic of religion, for the psychologist and the sociologist its explanation, and for the philosopher its critique. This fragmentation of language arises not only from the fact that each of these disciplines employs a particular mode of understanding, but also from the fact that within each of these languages there are numerous and varied concepts of religion. It is necessary for philosophers to confront this situation with courage and lucidity, recognizing that their principal task by which they have something valid to contribute to the understanding of religion is to seek to overcome this fragmentation in the human understanding of religion. Guided by this fundamental intent, the only way open is to redo on one's own each of the three questions which religion raises for the intellect--to carry out a repetition of the three, hermeneutic, explanatory and critical functions of the understanding in relation to the religious fact. This implies that the philosopher of religion begins to listen to the theologies, the religious sciences, and the critiques of religion in order to be sure how religion is understood. Above all one must examine closely the presuppositions and consequences of each of these groups of disciplines and thus prepare the elaboration of a theory of religious practice. What is thus sketched out is nothing less than a new type of philosophy of religion which has become necessary by reason of a break-up of religious language. It is new in contrast to the two principal ways in which, in the western tradition, philosophers have studied religion by using either hermeneutic or critique. Whereas the former was a reflection from within the faith and aimed at understanding its content, the latter dealt with religion as a given which did not escape the rule of reason. It submitted religion to a model of rationality with the more or less explicit goal of guaranteeing the autonomy and freedom of reason in relation to religion. This is not the occasion to write at length on the difficulties raised by each of these approaches to a philosophical study of religion. It is sufficient to note that each employs a particular function of the intellect--either hermeneutic or critical. The hermeneutic of religion only partially answers the questions asked of the intellect by the religious fact. The critique of religion, when separated from a hermeneutic, risks being satisfied with generalities which reduce the religious given to a pre-established rational framework. Both lead to a very impoverished language--a kind of Logos without Praxis. In this initial sketch of a "repetition" of one mode of discourse on religion, I propose to reflect on a particular type of critique of religion in order to show how it is impossible for the critique to isolate itself from the hermeneutic: how it is necessary at a certain stage for a critique to appeal to a hermeneutic. I have chosen the critique developed in these times especially in the Anglo-Saxon context of empirical philosophy. In order to situate this, I shall begin by comparing it to other existing types; then I will show the manner in which this critique, which is entirely taken up with judging the value of religion, finds itself driven, despite itself, to restate a presupposed question regarding the nature of religious faith.

THE EMPIRICIST CRITIQUE OF THE LANGUAGE OF FAITH The empiricist critique of religion took the form of a critique of the validity of religious language, that is to say, it disputed the right of such language to be a candidate for truth or falsity. That questioning was carried out in two different manners; first, in the name of a theory of meaning which stipulates the criteria to which all language must conform in order to be considered as a possible candidate for truth, and second in the name of a theory of knowledge or of a general epistemology. The critique of the meaning of the expressions of faith is a relatively recent enterprise developed by analytic philosophy of religion. It questions something prior to the truth of the expressions of faith, namely, their aptitude for being held to be sensed--the only type of expressions concerning which one can ask if they be true or false. The skepticism that inspires this is not a theological one, questioning in the name of historical data or of a philosophical worldview the truth of religious faith. Rather, it is a "metatheological" skepticism which questions the validity of the language of faith uniquely in the name of a logical analysis of language. Only with difficulty can this critique of meaning, though it depends ultimately upon a theory of meaning, be isolated from a general theory of knowledge, in particular from a model of knowledge borrowed from the practice of science and rationally justified only on the basis of the fruitfulness of science. In contrast, the critique of the validity of theological language or discourse based upon a theory of knowledge manifests greater sincerity and clarity regarding its presuppositions, and is practiced today by some followers of the critical rationalism of K. Popper. It does not stop at the language of faith, nor is it preoccupied with judging whether or not it has meaning. Rather it sees in religious faith a transgression of the essential function of reason, namely, to submit to criticism all hypotheses, to try to refute all conjectures without ever pretending to have ethical certitude and without any other manner of approaching truth than through its passing the test of falsification. I would like to attend to the first form of the critique of the validity of the language of faith, that which is based upon a theory of meaning. According to this theory, which has been reformulated several times since the heydey of logical positivism, a statement can be held as declarative or having a referential value-and therefore being a candidate for truth--only if in principle it is able to be controlled, or subject to verification or falsification, on the basis of empirical evidence. The critique itself consists in judging that statements made by a believer regarding God have only the appearance of declarative statements, since the believer is incapable of showing the manner in which these statements could be verified or falsified. Hence they should be eliminated from all language which claims truth. One could think that this critique of the validity of language regarding faith presents the believer with a much less serious challenge than the critique of the genesis of religion1 introduced in our culture by the three masters of suspicion, Marx, Freud and Nietzsche, which seem to create a much more profound crisis for religious faith. This consists in holding the language of faith to be that of a consciousness which is false or not really as it appears; that it is language which has been elaborated with the aim of concealing and justifying the unrecognized interests of one's consciousness. The Marxist theory of ideology, the Freudian analysis of illusion, the Nietzschean genealogy of morals do not consist in questioning that its statements are true or that they are possible candidates for the truth. More radically, they consider them to be residues of the unconscious, whose origin must be reconstructed, even in its material conditions, in order to explain them and to allow consciousness to become independent of them. The radical character of this critique is clear for, as S. Breton has shown, it is the critique not only of a principle, but of all principles. Any discussion on the truth or falsity of a theological statement is prohibited when from the outset it is held to be ideological or illusory, and explicable by illogical individual or social factors.

What gives the critique of the validity of religion its importance is that without it the critique of its origin is not justified, for it is the critique of validity as a necessary presupposition for the critique of origin. When the critic of ideology or of illusion undertakes to retrace the origin of a thought in order to explain it, he is convinced that this research has interest and promises useful results. But this research can be of interest only if he is convinced that religious thought, which he wants to explain by the material conditions of its possibility, does not have the right to be held as true and that despite this it nonetheless persists in being cultivated by many. From the beginning among critics of ideology or of illusion there is always an implicit value judgment on that which one attempts to explain as being an anomaly or a symptom of a sickness which must be explained by him in order to free the patient. This value judgment, unless it be only a prejudice, rests upon a critique of the validity of the language of religious faith. In Marx, one finds one of the most significant examples of this necessary dependence of the critique of the origin of religion upon a critique of its validity. He is convinced that religion is both a false substitute for true happiness and a form of protest against human misery, and hence that it will disappear when man takes into his own hands the direction of his existence. But this conviction depends upon another which is less explicit in Marx's work, but constantly necessary to justify the first. This is the conviction common to all rational atheists that religion has its source in ignorance of the powers of nature and of society, and that it would disappear with the progress of science, just as did alchemy and astrology with the progress of chemistry and astronomy.2 Only this rationalist postulate--which, it is necessary to insist, deals with the validity of a language of faith--explains that among the products of consciousness enumerated in the German Ideology--religion, morality, art, philosophy--only religion must completely disappear. Morals, philosophy and art can be transformed and become moments of human praxis; only religion cannot be retained, precisely because it is presupposed to be irreconcilable with scientific progress. This means that the Marxist critique of the origin of religion is based upon a prior critique which the Enlightenment proposed as its program and which the metatheological skeptic of our era takes up once again in order to assure its success, namely, the critique of the validity of the language of faith.3 A CRITIQUE OF THE EMPIRICIST CRITIQUE OF RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE Therefore, let us examine more closely this critique of the validity of religion which is carried out in the name of a theory of meaning. This is not the place to present a history of the debates provoked by this critique since it first was formulated in a precise manner by A. Flew.4 Nor is it the place to examine all the strategies employed to demonstrate, either against this critique the validity of the language of faith, or in agreement with this critique that its result has been to purify religious faith from unsuitable language. I prefer to focus instead on an answer to this critique which I consider most satisfactory because it comes from analytic philosophy itself in which the critique is rooted, and because it submits each of its two principle theses to scrupulously careful examination. This is R.S. Heimbeck's reply in his work Theology and Meaning.5 For reasons I do not understand this has received little attention by analytic philosophers of religion, though it offers the most convincing criticism of the empiricist critique of the validity of the language of faith. The first thesis of meta-theological skepticism, according to Heimbeck, cannot withstand criticism. It is not true that an expression must be verifiable or falsifiable in order for it to have a referential value or to be used to express a proposition. To believe so is to fail to note the difference between the criterion of meaning of a statement and evidence of the senses. The criterion of meaning designates the conditions which must be fulfilled in order that a statement may serve to express a true or false proposition, while evidence of the senses designates the sensible conditions which must be satisfied in order that we might know or have the right to believe that this proposition is true or false.6 Now,

the sufficient and necessary condition in order that a statement might express a true or false proposition is not that it be controlled by verification or falsification: its verifiability and its falsifiability only constitute sufficient, but not necessary conditions for its referential value. The fact that a statement is verifiable or falsifiable, that is, controllable, suffices for one to suppose that it says something about what is real, but it is not necessary that it be controllable in order for it to have such meaning. The sufficient and necessary condition of its referential value consists rather in the fact that it has with other propositions relations of implication or incompatibility.7 Applied to theological language, this criterion allows one to recognize among the statements used by the believer those which are declarative propositions and hence candidates for truth or falsity. The statement "God is love," for example, has referential value if it is used by the believer in such a way that it entails relations of implication or incompatibility with other propositions. That is to say, if the believer, in making this statement, implies that "God knows all men, wants their well-being and in order to realize it is prepared to give himself," and if it excludes that "God wants the eternal misery of all men."8 Having shown that the requirements of verifiability or falsifiability imposed on theological expressions so that they may have meaning result from an unfortunate confusion between verification and semantic entailment, between falsification and semantic incompatibility, between sensible evidence and criterion of meaning, Heimbeck attempts to prove that the second thesis of meta-theological skepticism is equally untenable, and that theological statements are as a matter of fact verifiable and falsifiable in a decisive manner on the basis of empirical givens. Let us note immediately that this task is not strictly necessary in order to refute the empiricist critique of the validity of theological statements; this refutation was already accomplished when it was shown that these expressions do not have to be controllable by verification or falsification in order to be held as valid. If they maintain relations of implication or incompatibility with other propositions these statements have a referential value; they serve to express propositions and are candidates for truth. But Heimbeck wants to do more. For the skeptic who is steadfast in claiming that a statement has cognitive value only if there exists in principle a way of controlling it empirically, he takes up the task of showing that in theological language there are propositions (and precisely those which provide the foundation of this language) which are not withdrawn from the requirements of falsifiability and verifiability. If his argument succeeds in convincing the reader, then one can see what it promises: to justify one's recognizing objective value for statements of faith which serve as principles for all theological discourse. In this sense, such discourse, far from being reduced to what Wisdom and Flew called a "picture preference,"9 would have the value of propositions susceptible to being empirically controlled. A theological system, according to Heimbeck, is formed from two different kinds of propositions: those which admit of no relation of implication or incompatibility with empirically verifiable or falsifiable propositions (for example, "God exists," "God is triune," "God is omnipotent"), and those which maintain such a bond (for example, "God raised Jesus of Nazareth from the dead, near Jerusalem, at time2" which implies the truth of the following two propositions: "Jesus of Nazareth died near Jerusalem, at time1," and "Jesus of Nazareth was alive in the vicinity of Jerusalem, at time3").10 In traditional Christian theism, propositions of the second kind, grounded on empirical data, serve as the foundation for the first. Heimbeck finds it strange that in recent meta-theological debate one is exclusively occupied with the first.11 An abstraction has been performed upon the language of faith, retaining for submission to logical analysis only the propositions not having any relation of implication or of incompatibility with empirically controllable propositions. However, when he asserts "God loves all men"--a proposition without empirical incidence--the believer bases the assertion on this other: "God sent His own Son in order to offer his life for the sins of the world," and this on still another: "The Word was made flesh in the person of

Jesus Christ," and this finally on this other which implies empirically verifiable propositions and excludes others: "God raised Jesus of Nazareth from the dead, near Jerusalem, at time.2"12 It is necessary therefore, holds Heimbeck, to reverse the flow and apply logical analysis on those propositions anchored in statements of observable facts which serve as principles procuring for all others their positive legitimation. Heimbeck has no trouble showing the falsifiability of these empirical theological propositions. If a theological proposition has a purely empirical consequence and if this consequence is falsifiable in a conclusive way on the sole basis of empirical data, then the antecedent proposition (by analogy with modus tollens) is ipso facto falsifiable in a conclusive manner on the sole basis of empirical data. If there is some purely empirical factor which is incompatible with a theological proposition and if this incompatible is verifiable in a conclusive manner solely on the basis of empirical data, then the antecedent proposition (by analogy to modus pomendo ponens) is ipso facto falsifiable in a decisive way on the sole basis of empirical data.13 For example, the proposition "God raised Jesus of Nazareth near Jerusalem, at time2" is falsifiable in a decisive way on the basis of empirical data from the fact that it implies "Jesus of Nazareth died, in the vicinity of Jerusalem, at time1", and "Jesus of Nazareth was living, in the vicinity of Jerusalem, at time3". These are falsifiable propositions on the basis of empirical givens, or on the basis that they exclude that "Jesus of Nazareth was dead at moment3", which is itself verifiable in a conclusive manner on the basis of empirical data. Are such theological propositions having consequents or empirical incompatibles equally verifiable in a conclusive manner? Are they controllable to the extent of being able to be verified by empirical evidence? Yes, maintains Heimbeck, on condition that one acknowledge the originality of the reasoning employed by the believer in order to adhere to this kind of proposition. It is no longer a question of a reasoning by implication or incompatibility, but by inference proceeding from an agglomeration of the signs of that which is found signified therein.14 To exclude this type of reasoning, under the pretext that it is never conclusive, is, in his opinion, to hold a monolithic conception of reason, to acknowledge only one method, and to be obliged not to recognize the validity of a process which is used not only by clinical psychology and history, but also by the physical sciences.15 Certainly, this reasoning from signs to the thing signified implies an a priori. The choice of empirical data serving as signs signifying the truth of a theological proposition is itself determined by the context to which belongs the theological proposition which empirical data are able to verify. But this circle in which reasoning by signs moves is not unique to the believer; even the scholar cannot avoid selecting empirical data on the basis of a theoretical proposition which the same date serve to control or justify. The effort made by Heimbeck to show that theological language is empirically controllable led him to defend three closely related theses: 1. In theological language, everything depends upon an aggregation of empirical propositions joined to propositions which are conclusively controllable on the basis of empirical evidence; 2. These propositions, which give all the others their positive justification, are falsifiable and then empirical incompatibles are verifiable; 3. Finally, these propositions are verifiable to the degree that they are the result of an inference from signs to what is signified. Of these three theses, the second is unassailable if the two others are true. In effect, if there are empirical propositions at the source of theological language, which are obtained by inference from an agglomeration of signs and which are verifiable by those signs, there is no difficulty in allowing that in this language there are propositions which are falsifiable in a conclusive manner on the basis of the evidence of the senses. HERMENEUTIC AND RELIGIOUS FAITH But does theological language truly rest upon an aggregate of empirical propositions, and are these obtained by inferences based upon an agglomeration of

signs? This question is raised by Heimbeck's reply to the critique of the validity of the language of faith. Evidently, this is a question to be resolved by research on the nature of theology and faith, which is a matter for theology. This means that at this stage in its development, the critique of the validity of theological language calls upon an hermeneutic of religious faith, and that the philosopher must therefore suspend his critique and question the theologian in order to learn how religious faith understands itself and how it judges its own language. M.L. Diamond's16 recent reaction gives important evidence that the question raised by Heimbeck's work concerns the nature of theology. One of the rare representatives of analytical philosophy of religion to take Theology and Meaning into account, Diamond's brief commentaries help to understand the silence which surrounds this book. In Diamond's view, Heimbeck's position rests on an extremely naive conception of theology, that of the "fundamentalist" who presupposes that everything in Scripture is to be taken according to the letter and that Scripture has unquestionable authority. With such a conception of theology, Heimbeck excludes himself from the debate on the verification of statements of faith and condemns himself to not being heard by the participants involved in this debate. Though they recognize that "fundamentalists" have no difficulty in verifying the statements of their faith, fundamentalists remain of no interest because their criteria of credibility are irrevocably outdated by the development of science and have been abandoned by more enlightened theologians.17 This reaction is very significant. Heimbeck's answer to the critique of the validity of theological language is criticized and rejected in the name of what theology ought to be. Because it employs a conception of theology which one judges no longer to be in agreement with the criteria of rationality developed by scientific thought, Heimbeck's thesis does not have the right to be heard in discussions on the validity of theology. This reaction reveals a more or less conscious decision at all costs to keep the debate on grounds of validity. This concerns no longer, however, the validity of the expressions of faith, but that of a conception of theology which is to be kept or done away with according as it is or is not in conformity with the criteria imposed by scientific reason. However, Heimbeck's thesis raises a question of truth--more precisely, a double question of truth: (a) Is it true that theological language depends upon an aggregate of empirical propositions obtained by inference from an agglomeration of signs? and (b) Is this language itself true? The first question calls, as we have underlined, for a hermeneutic of theology and of faith; the second calls for a critique of the language of faith, no longer as to its origin or validity, but as regards its truth. What does a philosopher engaged in the debate on theology and verification learn from a hermeneutic of religious faith? One learns two elementary truths without which this debate will be poorly oriented from the outset. One learns, in the first place, that religious faith cannot be reduced to the inevitable outcome of a challenge which would be imposed from without, as would be the case of just any fact. If the Jewish faith is never separable from the experience of the Exodus, if the Christian faith always refers to witnessing the resurrection of Christ, they are, for all that, not understood by those who live them as inferences proceeding from empirical data, similar to the adherence of an historian or psychoanalyst to an hypothesis suggested by reading documents. To liken it to the attitude of a scholar who concerns himself with a theory which can be abandoned and replaced as soon as it no longer succeeds in giving an account of all the facts would be to misunderstand faith. To acknowledge in theological language, as Heimbeck does with good reason, the utilization of the criteria of falsifiability and of verifiability in a manner which is not very different from that which one finds in scientific language, does not necessarily imply that faith itself is inferred from empirical data and is able to be certified or controlled by such date. Though its certitude is always without evidence, faith never does without signs. This is the second elementary truth which a hermeneutic of faith would bring to light. The presence of signs is necessary for the birth and maturation of faith in

another person. In this, faith in God does not have a different status. Whether furnished by the sensible universe, by Scripture, or by the intimate life of the believer, signs are necessary mediators of religious faith. Understood by the believer as an invitation from God who is taking the initiative to address himself to his creature and as communion with him--and not only as an adherence to a discourse on God--faith, like any other communion between subjects, is possible only if based upon communication by signs. It is therefore not altogether wrong to conceive the language of faith as resting on elementary propositions which, in turn, are based upon a reading of signs by one who is disposed to believe signs.18 Is this reading of signs by the believer shielded from criticism? No, no more than it escapes the question of truth. But the type of critique that it calls for is not primarily the critique of its origin or that of the validity of its language. It needs a critique of its truth. This is more exigent than the other two for it does not restrict itself to evaluating the language of faith on the basis of an aggregate of objective criteria of validity, nor to judging faith on the basis of the material conditions which seem to explain it. Anticipating in a way both of these critiques, it seeks overall to judge the language of faith on the basis of what is ultimately intended by faith, and to judge faith itself on the basis of the signs by which it is nourished. This certainly is a critique immanent to the life of faith, and carried out by the faith and for the faith. That the first critique of religion comes from faith itself, is a fact too often ignored by many analysts of religion. Religion is poorly described if its originality is not taken into account. One considers one's faith to be an absolute and exclusive certitude: absolute because it is the result neither of a system of thought nor of social or psychological factors, but of a conversion based upon God's initiative; exclusive because it does not present itself as the establishment of one meaning among others, but as the sole affirmation of the ultimate sense of the universe. Much more, one is convinced that only one's faith is apt for critiquing its own expression, for deciding on the value of all that one can imagine, conceive, or say of the God envisaged by one's faith. Moreover, not only do enlightened believers claim the critique of the language of their faith as a task for which they alone are fitted, but they see in it an indispensible task for the health and development of their faith. Without it faith soon succumbs before one or another of the two crises through which it will inevitably pass: (a) that which is produced by the transcendence of its object, that is, of God who must never be assimilated to a being of the world nor thought of as if he were a being among others; or (b) that which is produced by the refusal of the non-believer to admit that what the believer holds as true, with absolute certitude, has meaning and can be true. If a philosopher judges the truth of the language of faith, they can do so only in the name of the first principle of his philosophy which they consider evident. Any philosophy worthy of the name founds itself, in the last analysis, on a particular answer to the question: "what is the real?", an answer which is commonly called one's "ontology." It is clear that not all ontologies are equally hospitable to the affirmation of God. One who holds a materialist ontology, for example, cannot avoid judging to be false any statement of faith affirming the existence of a God that is the creator of the universe. He will make it seem that he is appealing to a logical analysis of faith language to show that it is unintelligible or incoherent, but he will already have decided, by the type of philosophy he has decided to employ, that the language of faith is an error. Other ontologies could come to a more nuanced judgment--e.g., certain idealist ontologies--and lead to the decision simply that, though the language of the faith is not true, it symbolizes at the level of representation what philosophy knows to be true. There is, however, a way in which the philosopher and the believer can share the critique of the truth of theology. If they agree to admit that theological language rests on a believing reading of signs, they both are faced with the crucial question: based upon what conditions does the interpretation of signs

become possible? This reflection aimed at explicating the a priori of communication by signs is an urgent task for philosophy of religion, preliminary in all cases to the apparently more rigorous, but less decisive, disputes on the validity of the language of faith. University of Ottawa Ottawa, Canada NOTES 1. For a further study of the relations between a "critique of the validity" and a "critique of the genesis" of a language of faith, see Stanislas Breton, Du Principe (Paris: Aubier, 1971), 289ff. Also see, by the same author, "Critique des ide+ ologies et crise de la foi," in Foi et e+ pistemologie contemporaines (Collection "Philosophica," 7; Ottawa: Editions de l'Universite+ , 1977), 71-89. 2. This aspect of the Marxist critique of religion has been brought to light by N. Lobkowicz, "La critique de la religion chez Marx," Les Etudes Philosophiques, 3 (1976), 317-330. 3. A good example of the critique of the validity of religion aimed at establishing its falsity and assuring the truth of the skepticism of the Enlightenment before undertaking the critique of its genesis, is to be found in Kai Nielsen's Contemporary Critiques of Religion (London: Macmillan, 1971), p. 1. See my work on this subject, "La philosophie analytique de la religion: contribution canadienne 1970-1975," Philosophiques, 2 (1975), 307-308. 4. "Theology and Falsification," New Essays in Philosophical Theology, ed. by A. Flew and A. MacIntyre (London: SCM Press, 1955), pp. 96ff. 5. R.S. Heimbeck, Theology and Meaning: A Critique of Metatheological Scepticism (London: G. Allen and Unwin, 1969). I know of only two brief commentaries by analytical philosophers of religion on Heimbeck's book: A. Flew's "Theology and Falsification in Retrospect," in The Logic of God: Theology and Verification, edited by M.L. Diamond and T.V. Litzenburg (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1975), pp. 275-79, and M.L. Diamond's, "The Challenge of Contemporary Empiricism," Ibid., p. 45. Note also the excellent article of Jacques Poulain, "Proble- mes logiques du langage the+ ologique," in Les quartre fleuves, 6 (1976), pp. 54ff, which sees in the work of Heimbeck "one of the most convincing" responses to the empirical critique of theological language. 6. Heimbeck, Theology and Meaning, p. 48. 7. Ibid., p. 56. 8. Ibid., p. 91. 9. See Flew, "Theology and Falsification," p. 97. 10. Heimbeck, Theology and Meaning, pp. 172-73. 11. Ibid., p. 174. 12. Ibid., pp. 175-76. 13. Ibid., p. 167. 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid., pp. 245-46. 16. Diamond, "The Challenge of Contemporary Empiricism" (cited in fn. 5), p. 45. 17. ". . . they [contemporary empiricists] regard fundamentalism as so hopelessly outmoded by the development of scientific standards of believability, that they do not even bother to challenge the thrust of its factually meaningful statements" (ibid.). 18. Note that Thomas Aquinas, who saw a triple sense to the word religio (i.e., religare, reeligere, and relegere), conceived of religion as an attitude by which man joins himself with God by choosing him as his supreme end and by ceaselessly rereading, as in a book, that which God expects of him. See Summa Theologica, IIIIae, q. 81, a. 1. CHAPTER IV ON SOME THEOLOGICAL LANGUAGES RICHARD M. MARTIN Nas+ yami aham bhu- nas+ yati lo+ ka: Sruyata- m dharma, Bhagawat.

I Important steps in the study of linguistic structure have taken place in recent years. By `linguistic structure' is meant here deep structure, logical structure or logical form, semantic structure, "source" form, or whatever. The deep form is usually contrasted somehow with so-called surface form, but just hwat the difference is supposed to be is far from clear. In any case, the exact study of logical form has recently come to the fore and now occupies a very central role in contemporary linguistics. And on the more philosophical side, there has been sufficient progress to provide genuine guidance in the analysis and reformulation of the metaphysico-theological aspects of our language. Because of the obvious alternatives here, in terminology and in the semantics involved, let us speak of theological languages, in the plural, each of which may be regarded as a specialization of some one basic linguistic format or "source" system.1 It would be unwise, I think, and not conducive to conceptual progress ("progress in clarification") to disregard in metaphysics and theology these recent achievements in the exact study of language. As we enter the last decades of the twentieth century, not to take account of them, it would seem, is to remain retardataire and to rest content with horse-and-buggy procedures and concepts in a day of highly sophisticated methodologies. In taking these achievements into account, indeed, in embracing them as our best guide in the formulation of theories, we must not think that the great traditional views are therewith threatened or to be abandoned. On the contrary, they are threatened only when we fail to bring them into harmony with contemporary knowledge. Here, it seems to me, is a great shortcoming in recent theology. There had been all manner of talk about God's being dead and then found again, about the emotive need but cognitive unacceptability of talk of God in general, of God's revelation in the historicity of man's experience, of demythologization, of God and out of process, of the hermeneutics of theological language, of the "peculiar" or "odd" character of much of it, and so on and on. No doubt valuable points have been raised in such discussion, of which account should be taken. Unfortunately, however, there has been little really deep study aimed at harmonizing theological discussion with the methods of mathematics, logic, and the empirical sciences, with the results, yes--countless attempts, most of them rather spurious, it is to be feared. What is urgently needed, it would seem, is a profound methodological seriousness in theological discussion, to bring it to the high level of logical sophistication from which it should never have been allowed to decline in the first place. The subject is of infinitely greater seriousness in human life than those in which scientific techniques have won the day hands down. Modern science has, after all, been a tremendous theoretical as well as practical success, whereas theology has had a great fall, at least in the popular view. Let us never forget, however, that success is a kind of "bitch goddess," to be pursued and ravished only at one's peril. What is God? Jesting and unhappy humanity has been asking for several millenia and not sufficiently tarried the answer. Of course, all manner of attempts have been made to approach this most fundamental metaphysical question, but most of them have been but partial, emphasizing this or that feature at the expense of others. Volumes have been written on these partial answers, as the history of philosophical theology and metaphysics amply attests. And much that is precious from these volumes must be retained. We should not reject valuable insight and the dearly won progress, however slow, that constitutes the history of these subjects. But at the same time we should not be slavish imitators of it, paying no heed to newer and vital developments of relevance. Unfortunately, much of the philosophical theology of our time, as already in effect suggested, has been written as though no progress had been made in the logical analysis of language since the time of Aristotle or even St. Thomas. Such study is dismissed as irrelevant, or in any case not helpful. And, still more unfortunately, where such study has been taken into account, it is not the real thing that is used but some illicit surrogate. The real thing is not easy to come by, and hence it is no

wonder that so little recent progress has been made in the use of serious logicolinguistic theory in philosophical theology. Form to most is a secret, Goethe has told us. Yet without it--order, system, structure, logical connection, rationality--we can do no discursive thinking whatsoever. We could perhaps do all manner of mental things--perceive, feel, believe, rejoice--but nothing that could be dignified as thinking in any ordinary sense of the word. So we should pay some attention to form, logical form, right at the start of our discourse. And the curious fact is that the more attention we pay to it, the less we seem to know about it. Form is all fine and tidy only to those who inquire little concerning it. The comments here in Par. I are merely introductory. In Par. II items in the logical machinery needed are enumerated. In Par. III we glance at some recent analytic work on Plotinus. In Par. IV some comments concerning the language needed for St. Anselm's ontological proof are given. Attention is called, in Par. V, to important work on the ex motu argument of St. Thomas. In Par. VI we turn to Whitehead and the seminal notion of a primordial valuation. A discussion of the logical foundations of metaphysical idealism occupies the remainder of the paper. The comments in Par. VII are introductory. In Par. VIII a few fundamental principles are laid down, and generalized somewhat in Par. IX. In Par. X the problem of harmonizing the language of modern science, including the mathematical theory of sets, with the language of idealism is discussed. St. Thomas's five signs of will are introduced in Par. XI, and it is shown how an adaptation of the theory of them may be accommodated upon an idealist basis. The theory of the divine will is made somewhat more exact in Par. XII. In Par. XIII there are a few somewhat general comparative comments, and in Par. XIV, there are some glimpses beyond, concerning science, faith, and aesthetic feeling, the theories of which cry out for further development on the basis of what has preceded. The reader may choose for himself the sections that interest him most. II For the necessary logical background throughout, let ususe the crisp, standard first-order theory of quantification with identity, with virtual classes and relations added as merely notational conveniences. (Virtual classes, remember, are almost as good as real ones, but, of course, we can never quantify over them directly, although sometimes we can do so with suitable technical artifice.2 To this framework it is useful to add the theory of the part-whole relation as between individuals (Les+niewski's mereology or calculus of individuals). And of course it would be foolish to try to do without the resources of logical syntax and semantics as developed in recent years. For these let us assume first-order formulations, with the semantics based on suitable relations (especially denotation) taken as primitive. To this a method of handling intensionality must be added, as well as a method for accommodating entities such as events, states, acts, and processes. To handle intensionality, let us adapt Frege's notion of taking entities under a given linguistic mode of description or Art des Gegeberseins. We can then distinguish between the individual x and x taken under some mode of describing it. (This latter might even be taken as the ordered couple of the entity and some one-place predicate applicable to is). And for the characterization of events, states, etc., it is un- doubtedly best to introduce a new style of variables, and then squarely face up to the need for new kinds of predicates, the event-descriptive predicates, and for general logical principles governing them. But all this is readily available, to some extent anyhow.3 (If notions of higher-order logic or set theory are needed here or there, attention will be called to them in situ). III By way of a preliminary, let us note very briefly how logico-linguistics has been helpful in enabling us to clarify some of the historically great theological views. And let us consider, first, the system of Plotinus (which has had so profound an effect on the Islamic world). It may well be contended that Plotinus as the first really systematic theologian in the West.

The fundamental relation in the Plotinic system is that of emanation, so that we may let `x Em y' express that x emanates into y. Em is presumably a totally irreflexive, asymmetric, and transitive relation. In addition. let `One' be a proper name for the Plotinic One or Unity, and `All Soul' for the Psyche or All-Soul. And let `Int' be a one-place predicate so that `Int x ' expresses that x is a Form or that it is a member of the Intelligible Realm, of Nous. And let `Obj x' express that x is an object of the lower cosmos, of the lower world of Nature or of the Sensibles, among which are included human bodies. Roughly, then, we have these four expressions for the four Plotinic levels; two of them, note, are proper names, and two of them are predicates. The proper names are for the multiplicities, which, however, also have a kind of unity, a secondary unity or fusion, let us say. Clearly these four realms are mutually exclusive in appropriate senses, and jointly exhaustive of the whole cosmos. Concerning the One, there are some special principles as follows. |_(x)(~x = One One Em x), |_~(Ex)(~x = One. (y)(~y = One x Em y)), |_(x)(Int x One Em x), |_One Em AllSoul, |_(x)(Obj x One Em x). And also |_(x)(Int x x Em AllSoul). |_(x)(Obj x AllSoul Em x), and |_(x) (Obj x ~(Ey) x Em y). Concerning the One, very little can be truly said not said in terms of `Em.' Thus also |_~ F One, for most precidates F not containing `Em.' The converse Em of the relation Em enables us to handle the "return to the One," which plays so central a role in Plotinus' ethics and theology. (Recall that x bears the converse of R, R, to y if and only y bears R itself to x, for all x and y.) We can read ` Em' as `aspires to the condition of', `desires to return to the purity of', and the like. The Plotinic theology is implicit in the theory concerning Em and Em as regards the One. A very fundamental problem in Plotinus is to provide for the multiplicity of individual souls in terms of the unity of the All Soul. Roughly this is done in terms of the "Couplement" of the All Soul with individual bodies. The individual souls are thus handled as intensional constructs of a certain sort.4 IV Let us reflect next for a moment upon the celebrated argument of St. Anselm, concerning the existence of God regarded as id, quo maius cogitari non potest. Note what must be provided even to formulate this definition in an exact way: a Russellian singular description ofor some unique entity, a theory concerning the relation of being greater than, a theory of knowledge concerning concepts or conceiving, a theory concerning ability or capability, and then of course some doctrine as to how all these are interrelated.5 Think how complicated all this is when we look at it from close to, much more complicated than ordinarily thought. It is failure to come to terms with the complications involved that has vitiated most recent discussions of the subject. And until we have looked at the subject closely we cannot be said to understand it in any very deep sense. Gott wohnt im Detail, as an old German adage has it, whether we like it or not. Let `Per x' express that x as a human person, and `x Able e, `F'' express that x is able (capable) of doing e as (intensionally) described by the one-place predicate `F'. And let `x Cncv e, `G'' express that x conceives of e under the predicate `G', and `e1 Gr e2' that e is greater than e2. Also `a Des e' (or `a Des

x') expresses that a designates e (or x). We may then let `Uns e' abbreviate `~(Ee') (Ex) (Ea) (Eb) (a Des x . b Des e . Per x. x Able e', )'. Here the cormers are used in the sense of Quine's quasi-quotesand `{e1 --e1 ---}' stands for the virtual class of all e1's such that --e1--. And `<---->' is a suitable event-descriptive predicate. The definiendum may read, following Hartshorne, `e is an unsurpassable entity'. In any steady gaze ar Anselm's view, certain principles must be assumed, some of them to be gotten out of the actual text of the text of the Proslogium or elsewhere, and some of them to be supplied as necessary addenda. These latter perhaps are too obvious to have been written down, or perhaps are to be presumed as taken for granted, or perhaps are principles the need for which has not been recogmized heretofore. And so it is with all of the historically great philosophical views. Considerable latitude must be allowed to make the reconstructed theory fit the text. The fit is not given automatically and considerable ingenuity is often needed to make it even approximative. The fact, as sad one perhaps, is that we always have to be content with approximations; and, even more annoyingly, there are always alternative approximations that assert themselves with perhaps equal cogency. Thus, we should never claim very much victory even if the fit we achieve seems fairly close. The same is true, incidentally, whether we use methods of modern logical analysis and reformulation or not. The best that we can ever say, it would seem, is that a given historical view is mertely the disjunction of the most likely alternative readings of it, howsoever formulated. In order to prove that God exists uniquely, i.e., that there is one and only one unsurpassable entity, it must hold that soeone ("even the fool") conceives of something under the predicate `Uns', that every unsurpassable entity (if there are any) exists, that there areno two unsurpassable entities, and that anything conceived as unsurpassable is in fact unsurpassable. With these principles provable fro prior principles governing `Able', `Cncv', and `Gr', it may be proved that |_E! ( e . Uns e), where `E!' is construed essentially as a Principia Mathematica, *14.02. Whether such prior principles are acceptable, and whether the primitives here are suitable for the intended purposes, are of course questions that remain open -- here asfor any theological, or indeed even scientific, theory. V Important logico-linguistic work on the ex motu argument of St. Thomas has been carried out by J. Salamucha.6 Very briefly and somewhat simplified, his work may be described as follows. Let `Mx' express that x is one of the entia realia in loval physical motion, and let `x M y' express that x moves y or is the cause of motion in y. Concerning these notions some assumptions are made, that (Ex) Mx, (x) (Mx (Ey) y M x), (Ey) (y C`M . (x) ((x C`M . ~x = y) y M x)), (x) (y) (x M y ~ y M x), (x) (y) (z) ((x M y . y M z) x M z), (x) (y) ((x C`M . y C`M . ~x = y) (x M y v y M x)). Here C`M is the campus or field of the relation M, i.e., the class of entities that bear M to or are borne M by some entity or other. These assumptions then state that there is an entity in motion, that evey moving entity is moved by some entity, that there is a "first" entity in the campus of M that moves every other entity in the campus of M, and that M is an asymmetri, transitive, and connected relation. From these assumptions--not all of them are actually needed--it is provable that (Ey) (~My . (x) ((x C`M . ~x=y) y M x)). Salamucha discusses in some detail the justification of the assumptions here on the basis of Aquinas' text, especially as in the Summa contra Gentiles, I.c. 13.

He also considers proofs of some of the assumptions, and a number of alternative approaches tot he proof as a whole. His concern is primarily with the validity of the argument given the premisses. This indeed was the primary concern also in the remarks above about Anself. In both cases, of course, a deeper discussion is needed to determine the acceptability of the assumptions, and indeed of the entire linguistic frameworks, in the light of modern scientific knowledge. In the case of Anslem, it is doubtful that appropriate scientific meanings of `greater than' and `conceivable' can be found. In the case of the Iex motuR argument, the theory of motion involved is probably at best naive in the light of modern physics. However, such judgements are by not means final, and the essential contents of these proofs may well be forthcoming in other ways. VI From St. Thomas to Whitehead is a leap of several centuriesin time but a natural next step for systematic theology. Much that is St. Thomas is obscure because clarified on a Whiteheadian basis.7 And it may well be that the notion of a primordial valuation is the reatest single contribution to theology inall the years from St. Thomas to the present. Unfortuanately, however, Whitehead does not characterize the notion explicitly, scarcely if ever givesan example, and says nothing concerning the structure of the language in which the primordial valuations may be expressed. Nor does he subdivide them in any way but treats them rather isocephalically, gaining therewith a rather unpliable theory. Later on we shall try to broaden it somewhat in order to gain more flexible notions, with which to characterixe the divine will. But for the present, let us consider only primordial valuations as they occur in Whitehead. The primordial nature of God, it will be recalled, is "the unconditioned conceptual valuation of the entire multiplicity of eternal objects" with respect to their "ingression" into, or applicability to, each and every "actual occasion."8 Thus where a is an n-place predicate standing for an n-adic eternal object, the "propositions" a e1...en is "valuated" in the primordial nature, perhaps even to just such and such a degreee, where e1,...,en are any actual occasions. To express this we may write (with the numerical superscript 'i') a PrimVal1,...,en . The primordial naute then is just the totality of all (acts or states of) primordial valuating. Where Fu `F is the \ifusion of the virtual class F, we may let `png' abbreviate `Fu `{e (Ea) (Ee1)...(Eek)(Ei) (O <= i <= 1 . ((PredCon1 a . e) v (Pred/Con2 a . e) v ... v (PredConk a . e))) '. Here `PredConja' expresses that a is a j-place predicate standing for a j-adic eternal object. Here j is said to be the degreeof the eternal object. We need not assume that there are eternal objects of degree greater than some pre-assigned `k'. So k here is the degree of the eternal object of highest degress admitted, in the sense of having a name for it as a primitive. Note the really stupendous all-inclusiveness of the png. Every hair of one's head is primordially "valuated" with respect to every eternal object, and this to just such and such a degree. The fundamental meaning of `ought' is presumably provided for here. Every actual occasion ought to have just the properties, to speak loosely, ascribed it in the primordial valuatings. The png is thus more the source of value, however, then of fact or of scientific law. It might be thought then that the definition is too restricted, not providing the png with sufficient breath or power. It is all-inclusive with respect to value, but that is all. In a moment we shall broaden the notion considerably, in connection with the discussion of absolute idealism. In terms primarily of `Primvali' essentially the whole of Whitehead's theology may be formulated, so that little more concerning it need be said here. In the articulation of these various historical views emphasis has been placed upon the primitive vocabulary needed. It is the choice of this that is crucial, and differences here of course may result in radically different theological

systems. Some modicum of clarity concerning the primitive vocabulary must be achieved before we can frame fundamental principles or axioms. Strictly, of course, the two must go hand-in-hand, but in practice the choice of primitive notions usually comes first. But this is only the beginning, the foundation, and should not of course be mistaken for the full edifice. VII The foregoing comments, about Plotinus, Anselm, St. Thomas, and Whitehead--chosen in part because of the availability of technical studies concerning the language-structures implicitly employed--are merely preliminary to the main intent of this paper. Let us try now, in what follows, to do what is commonly thought impossible, namely, to reconcile--nay, to bring into indissoluble union--the basic insights of philosophia perennis with logico-linguistics. The latter, as we have already seen, is "subject-matter neutral," and hence metaphysically so; it should be as useful for the articulation of any one theological view as well as any other. In any case, this reconciliation is the theme to be explored. If we succeed, at least to some extent, we shall be close to a conception of God, suitably characterized formally and rationally, embracing all fact and value in its "real internal constitution," and of such grandeur and majesty that we would all do well faithfully to surrender our whole lives to comprehend it, and "above all things in the words of Peirce in a related context to shape the whole conduct of our life, and all the springs of our action into conformity . . . " with it.9 In this way we should be well on the road to a meeting not only of east and west, but also to characterizing in a most intimate way the union of religion and science, on the other. An overambitious goal, perhaps, but at least one for which it will be worthwhile to help prepare the way, in this ecumenical metaphysical congress devoted in part to the notion of God. "What is that, knowing which, we shall know everything"? It is not easy to know the real, internal constitution of God's nature, and perhaps no one has ever known it fully. Perhaps no one has ever known it even partially, although this is doubtful. Beliefs, intimations, surmizes, and the like, have often sufficed. No matter, the notion of God should be characterized, it would seem, in so grand a fashion as to contain, in some specific sense, all knowledge of all beings and happenings, here, there, and everywhere, past, present, and future. In particular God's nature should contain, in a most intimate way, all scientific law, both causal and stochastic, as well as all boundary conditions. Hence implicitly it should contain all factually true statements. But God is not merely the repository of truth, but of value, of beauty, and goodness, as well. Science and value, whatever the shortcomings or defects of our knowledge about them, should be properly fused, it would seem, in any satisfactory characterization of the real internal constitution of God's nature. Failure to attain this fusion is to rest content with an only partial and hence inadequate characterization. The perennial theme "that being is one and identical with God the creator," as Richard Taylor puts it, ". . . is rediscovered in every age and in every corner of the world. It is at once terrifying and completely fulfilling. It will never perish and nothing will ever replace it. Nothing possibly can; its endurance is that of the stars."10 But even the stars may come and go and still be terrifying. Only if we add the insight of philosophia perennis, that being is in its real nature akin to mind or spirit, in some sense, do we have the basis for a view of the kind described. Whatever spirit is, being is "identical" with it, and being one, so also is spirit. "There is only one river, which here and there assumes new forms or is modified in this way and that, either briefly or more lastingly. Here it assumes the form of a ripple, there of a waterfall, and numberless other forms in other places." Being here and now is a material object, but there and then a mental act perhaps. No matter what forms or shapes it assumes or however it is modified, it still may be regarded as identical in character with God the creator, "that from which the origin, subsistence, and dissolution of this world proceed. VIII Let `AS' be a primitive individual constant designating Absolute Spirit or Mind.

Immediately we note, as a first metaphysical principle, that AS exists. Pr l. |_E!AS. The existence of individuals is handled here predicatively, where `E!x' is short for `~x = N'. N being the null undividual.11 It is interesting that Hegel, at the very beginning of his Pha¦ nomenologie des Geistes, differentiates "Subjective" and "Objective" Spirit from the AS.12 The one is a "manifestation" of AS, the other, we might say, is an "embodiment" of it. The farious objects of nture are embodiments of AS, those of the mental realm, manifestations. Accordingly, two new primitives are needed for these notions. Let us symbolize them by `Manif' and `Emb'. Clearly the following principles should obtain concerning these notions. Pr 2. |_(x) (y) ( (x Manif y v x Emb y) x = AS). Pr 3. |_~(Ex) (x Manif AS v x Emb AS). Thus AS alone manifests or embodies enything, and nothing whatsoever manifests or embodies it. Also nothing is both manifested and embodied by anything. Pr 4. |_~(Ex) (Ey) (x Manif y . x Emb y). We may now define `SubjSp' as `Fu `{x AS Manif x}' and `ObjSp' as `Fu`{x AS Emb x}'. Thus the realm of subjective spirit is the fusion of (the virtual class of) everything manifexted by AS, and objective spirit is the fusion of (the virtual class of ) everythig embodied by AS. These definitions give a very natural way of providing for the two Hegelian realms. Should they be regarded as mutually exclusive? If so, we need to postulate that every part of a manifested or embodier individual is also manifested or embodied, respectively. Thus, where P is the part-whole relation, we have also that Pr 5. |_(x) (y) (z)( ( x manif y . z P y) x Manif z) and Pr 6. |_(x) (y) (z) ( (x Emb y . z P y) x Emb z). Also it should then obtain that |_~(Ex) (~ x = N. x P SubjSp . x P ObjSp), that SubjSp and ObjSp have no non-null part in common. If thst two spheres are taken to exhaust the cosmos, we have also a Principle of Completeness, that Pr 7. |_ (x) (~x = AS (AS Manif x v AS Emb x)). IX But perhaps there are realms of derivative being other than these two, or even altogether different. Perhaps the two Hegelian ones are themselves unjustifiable on the basis of modern science, and constitute an illicit dichotomy. These difficult questions we need not attempt to answer for the moment, but we should note that the foregoing material may easily be extended to allow for any number of derivative realms of being--or even for none at all. But let us assume at lease one. And let us speak of manifestation in a wider sense for the moment, so as to include embodiment, as well as whatever further kinds of process are appropriate for generating the given kinds of entities. Thus we let `Manif1', `Manif2', and so on, be primitives, and we let `U1' abbreviate `Fu {x AS Manifi x '. Thus the universe of entities i is merely the fusion of the entities to which AS bears Manifi, for each i. For each relation Manifi we then have principles analogous to Pr 2 and Pr 3, and an appropriate extension of Pr 4. If i = O, absolute monism results. AS is the only reality and there is nothing else except m-ay-a. Even the name `AS', the very inscriptions of Pr 1-Pr 4, and so on, would be dropped. They would all be items of m-ay-a and thus presumably not worthy of rational discourse. But even if i>O, we could still hold to a form of the doctrine of m-ay-a in regarding the entities of U1, U2, and so on, as m-ayaitems but allow rational discourse about them. However, if the discourse is to be

in accord with modern logic and science, it will quickly be seen to be so important for our human life, and so insistently objective and compelling--and indeed so difficult to come anywhere near getting it right--that the point of talk of m-ay-a at all is seen lost. Surely the AS is not the less great, the less worthy of our total and all-absorbing effort to grasp it, if we regard the derivative entities to be genuine in some sense, if only as manifestations of it. In fact, the situation is the other way around. Let us embrace the derivative entities as worthy of our love and respect, and make every possible effort to come to see most intimately how they are interrelated one with another. It is in this way, in part, that we can come to know the grandeur and munificence of the AS itself. However, our "knowledge" of it need not be exhausted therewith, but rather enhanced. The manifested objects of the Ui's are to comprise whatever it is that our cosmos contains. Precisely how we are to populate them is of course an incredibly difficult matter. Surely they must contain the objects needed for the sciences in their most developed stages. We must not rest content with the ontology of centuries back nor even with the "stale" science of yesterday. But to spell out in detail the ontology of even one science, at its present state of development, would be very difficult, and would tax even the greatest practitioners. Nonetheless, we may suppose it to consist of a presumably small number of Ui's in terms of which the desired assertions of that science can be made. And similarly for other sciences. And we must never suppose that any characterization of the Ui's needed for science would ever be final or complete. On the contrary, they would always be semper reformanda, and would exhibit enormous variation in the hands of different practitioners in the same field even at the same time. X Of particular interest for philosophers of logic and mathematics is the Ui, or the Ui's, needed for both. If logic is taken as standard, first-order logic, as throughout this paper, no assumption concerning the Ui's needed be made. On the monist view, our only individual is AS, plus the null and world individuals. The latter, however, would be identical with AS, and the null individual N has the proper that ~E!N, that it does not "exist" in the appropriate sense. (Of course N is a value for a variable, but that is something else again). And if i>O, the Ui's are merely those of the sciences as already provided. Logic as such has no ontology. For mathematics, however, the situation is very different. Let us think of it set-theoretically, in terms of the Zermelo-FraenkelSkolem system. Here two Ui's are needed, one for individuals or Urelemente-Zermelo himself insisted upon their admission, it will be recalled--and one for the realm of sets. No harm need arise from admitting the Urelemente, the very entities that may be presumed to populate the cosmos. The admission of a domain of sets, however, postulates entities that do not populate the cosmos in any obvious sense. Even so, this matter need not deter us, for we may use merely our Urelemente but allow set-theoretic talk about them in the manner of the "moderate" realism of Duns Scotus.14 In this way classical mathematics in the set-theoretical sense may be preserved, and used, moreover, as a basis for the other theoretical sciences. For this, of course, a new primitive is needed, and for applications to the sciences, such new primitives as those sciences require. The question arises as to whether, once the Ui's required for the sciences have been arrived at, any further ones are needed. Do the ontologies of the sciences suffice for all discourse?--other of course than that concerning the AS and its possible manifestations in SubjSP? Well, surely yes, if `science' is construed widely enough. Note that the question is merely one about ontologies, not about the modes of discourse allowed concerning the items admitted in that science. One and the same act, for example, may be said to occupy such and such a place-time in one context, but to be immoral or illegal or prohibited or whatever, in others. Mental entities are the occupants of the realm of SubjSp, and any interesting

metaphysical idealism may be presumed to admit such entities. The basic items here are no doubt individual souls or minds, and mental acts are presumably dependent upon these fundamentally. It is a bit mysterious as to just what an individual mind is and how it is to be individuated. You have one and I have one, and they are alike in both being minds. Let yours be m1, and mine m2, and let m3, m4, and so on, be those of others. The calculus of individuals allows us to form then the "group" mind (m1 m2 m3 m4 -----). Even this group mind does not of course exhaust the AS, the latter being infinitely greater. Is this group mind a part of the AS? If so, then each individual mind is also, each being a part of the group sum. Equally difficult is the question as to how the individual souls or selves are related to the mental acts of or pertaining to them. And this in turn leads to the problem as to how such acts themselves are to be individuated. Individual minds result from the AS by one kind of manifestation, bodies by another. Does the human person, a unique complex of mind and body, result by still a third kind of manifestation? Some idealists might well contend so. To bring then a mind, a body, and a person together, we need the Of-relation of possession.15 It is not clear whether the mind possesses the body, or the body the mind, or the person the mind, or the mind the person, or the body the person, or the person the body. Perhaps there is possession in all of these ways. In any case, if bodies, minds, and persons result from separate kinds of manifestation, a suitable way of bringing a body, a mind, and a person together must be at hand to provide for a concrete human person. The idealist, of course, regards minds as par excellence the real entities, they being like unto the AS itself. Rather than to regard the other types of entities as arising by other kinds of manifestation, perhaps they should be regarded rather as the result of the concentration of soul-stuff in some particular way or other. Each material object is merely soul concentrated in a certain way. The notion of concentration, the very prototype of mental activity, then would play the role of the relations of manifestation. But concentration is mental in a way in which the relations of manifestation are not. And if "subject" and "object" are alike, both must be mental. Thus the following "principle," where Conc is the relation of concentration, might well hold, namely, ||_(x) (AS Conc x x Like AS). Everything that results from the AS by concentration is itself like or similar to AS. And likewise, ||_(x) (x Like AS x P AS), that everything like AS is itself a part of it. The former principle might well hold without the latter. If the two principles are taken together, a genuine monism, even a pantheism, is achieved. The development of idealism in terms of the theory of concentration would be more Vedantic that Hegelian. Principles akin to Pr 2-Pr 4 and Pr 6-Pr 7 would obtain, with `Conc" in place of `Emb", no change being required in Pr 1 and Pr 5. For the purposes of the subsequent discussion, and to simplify, lit us presuppose the theory above as developed in terms of the Hegelian `Manif' and `Emv'. But whatever modifications ofthis might be thought desirable can easily be presupposed equally well. XI Howsoever the fundamental ontology is arranged, the AS has remarkable tasks to perform and must be given some remarkable properties, akin to those of the Thomistic God and the Whiteheadian primordial nature. To see this let us consider again the primordialvaluations constituting this latter, which will be helpful as a heuristic, enabling us to flesh out the theory underlying St. Thomas' "five signs of will." The five signs of will, it will be recalled, are operation, permission, precept, counsel, and prohibition, but St. Thomas is nt too clear as to precisely how these

are to beconstrued. The words are used analogically. "A man may show that he wills something . . ." by doing it "directly when he works in his own person; in that way thesign of his will is said to be an operation. He shows it indirectly, by not hindering the doing of a thing; . . . In this the sign is called permission. He declares his will by means of another when he orders another to perform a work, either by insisting upon it as necessary by Iprecept, and by prohibiting its contrary; or by persuasion, which is a part of counsel."16 St. Thomas goes on to note that "since thewill of man makes itself known in these ways, the same five are sometimes called divine wills, in the sense of being signs of that will. That precept, counsel, and prohibition are called the will of God is clear from the words of Matt. vi. 10: Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. That permission and operation are called the will of God is clear from Augustine, who says: Nothing is done, unless the Almighty will it to be done, either by permitting it, or by actually doing it." These very dignificant but difficult comments should be helpful in attemptingto characterize the divine will, whether sonstrued Thomistically or not. Among the operations we should surely include all the manifestations and embodyings. These operations concern only the ontology. In addition, there are the primordially ordained circumstances, lawsand do on. Let `AS PrimOp a,x1,...,xn' express that the AS primordially operates or has it obtain that the n-place predicate a, standing for a virtual class or relation, apply to or denote x1, ..., xn, in this order. That the AS is the "creator" of all entities (other than himself) is in effect provided by Pr7 above. But he is also the ordainer of all scientific, moral, and aesthetic law, and this aspect of the divine activity can be stipulated only by bringing in the relation PrinOp. Thus suppose ax1...xn obtaind, for fixed x1, ..., xn, and a, not just factually but as the result of, or as an instance of, some scientific law. Then it would obtain that Pr 8. |_AS PrimOp a,x1,...,xn, for such a, x1,...,xn. Nor need Pr 8 be restricted to just scientific law. It should be extended to instances of whatever laws are thought to obtain in any of the spheres of knowledge. And if one or more of the xi's are allowed to be numbers, natural, real, or complex, even laws of a probabilistic kind may also be included here. Think what a staggering principle Pr8 then is, incorporating as it soes all the laws governing the cosmos, construed in the most inclusive possible sens. But surely the AS must be conceived as so great as to incorporate no less.17 Clearly also it holds that Pr 9. |_(y) (a) (x1)...(xn) (y PrunOp a,x1,...,xn y = AS, so that the AS is the only entity capable of the primordial operations. And also Pr 10. |_(a) (x1)...(xn) ((AS PrimOp a,x1,...,xn . a Desvc F) Fx1....xn). Whatever is primordially ordained to obtain does actually obtain. But the converse need not hold. Not all that obtains is primordially ordained to do so. (The `Desvc' here is the sign for the designation of virtual classes, where `a Desvc F' is short for `(PredCon1 a . (x) (a Den x =_ Fx))', `Den' being the primitive for denotation.18 The primordial operations need not be confined to just the demands of scientivic law, as already noted. Moral and aesthetic laws, if there are such, are included, and even such boundary conditions as might be thought to obtain independently of law. Perhaps even there are miracles in some sense as the direct result of a primordial operation. If so, the stipulation of such is presumed included here St. Thomas speaks of prohibition in a somewhat narrow sense, of prohibiting the "contrary" of a precept. Here let us speak rather of prohibiting the contradictory of an operation. Thus we may let `AS PrimPrhbtOp a,x1,...,xn' abbreviate `AS PrimOp -a , x1,...,xn'. where -a is the negation of a. There are other kinds of prohibition, which we shall meet with in a moment. The primordial operations concern all objects whatsoever, including human persons,

actions, events, states, processes, and the like. The precepts and counsels, on the other hand, may be thought to concern only human beings and their actions. Let `p' be a variable for persons and `e' for actions of trhe kind humans are capable of performing. And let P be a virtual class of persons satisfying such and such conditions, and A a class of suitable actions. Thenwe may let `As PrimPrcpt `P',`{p (Ee) (p Prfm e . A e)}'' express that it is a primordial precept that persons of the kind P should be persons who perform actions of the kind A, under appropriate circumstances. Presepts alway seem to be general in this way applying to all perfons and actions of given kinds. Counself, on the other hand, may always be regarded asspecific, applying to a given person with respect to a given action. Are all counsels covered by a precept? It is tempting to think so, whether the precept is explicitly known or exhibited or not. If so, we may let `AS PrimCnsl p,e, `P',`A'' abbreveiate `(AS PrimPrcpt `P', `{q (Ee') (q Prfm e' . Ae')}' . Pp . Ae)', so that p is counseled to do e relative to P and A just where it is precepted that all P's do A's and p is a P and e an A. More general definitions, with variables in place of the constants, may be given by letting `AS PrimPrcpt a, {p (Ee) (p Prfm e . b Den e)} ' be the primitive form and then letting `AS PrimCnsl p,e,a,b' abbreviate `AS PrimPrcpt a, {q (Ee')(q Prfm e' . b Den e)} ' . a Den p . b Den e)'. Note that by means of precept the AS in effect "orders" a person "to perform a work" by "insisting upon it as necessary," in some social, moral, or aesthetic sense. And surely some generality must obtain as a condition for the necessity. Hence the use of the class terms `P' and `A'. Cousel, however, is always specific and "persuasion is a pate of it." Only a person, even a sum of persons, can be persuaded and hence counseled in this sense. There are relevant kinds of prohibition corresponding with precept and counsel. Thus we let `AS PrimPrhbtPrcpt `P',`A'' abbreviate `AS PrimPrcpt `P', `{p ~(Ee) (p Prfm e . Ae)}'', so that persons of the kind P are prohibited in this sense from being persons who perform actions of the kind A. And there are also prohibitive counsels, so that `AS PrimPrhbtCnsl p,e,`P',`A'' abbreviates `(AS Prim- PrhbtPrcpt `P',`A' . Pp . Ae)'. More general forms of these definitions, with variables in place of the constants `P' and `A', may also be given. Clearly, corresponding with Pr 9, we should have that Pr 11. |_(x) (a) (b) (x PrimPrcpt a,b (x = AS . (y) (a Den y Per y) . (y)(b Den y Per y))), when `Per' is the predicate for persons. Also where `p Oblg a' expresses deontically that p is obliged to be a person of the kind denoted by a, we whould have that Pr 12. |_(a)(b)(p) (AS PrimPrcpt a,b, . a Den p) p Oblg b). This principle assumes that whatever is primordially precepted, so to speak, is deontically obliged. This at least should hold, but not the converse. There are surely obligatory acts not determined so primordially. No doubt much takes place in the cosmos that is primordially neutral, in hte sense of being neither the result of an operation not operationally prohibited. Thus, where `PredConna' express that a is an n-place predicate constant, "AS PrimNtrlOPa,x1,...,xn' nay abbreviate `(PredConn a . ~AS PrimOp a,x1,...,xn . ~ PrimPrhbtOP a,x1,...,xn)'. And similarly for human actions that are neither covered by precept nor preseptwise prohibited. Thus also

`AS PrimNtrlPrcpt `P',`A'' abbreviates `~AS PrimPrcpt`P',`A' . ~AS PrimPrhbtPrcpt `P',`A')'. Here too, a more general definition may easily be given. Note that in the foregoing only `PrimOp' and `PrimPrcpt' have been needed as primitives, in addition of course to `Manif', `Emb', and `AS'.All the other primordial predicates have been defined within the linguistic framework embodying quantification theory, identity, nereology (or the calculus of individuals), and of course some semantics and event theory. The deontic notion `Oblg' is also presumed avaiable, either primitively or by definition, but it is not a purely primordial notion, beint relative always to a given social group and a specific deontic code. There is also the all-important notion of a primordial permission, to which we now turn. XII It is clear, if nothig is done other than its being done either by the Almighty or being permitted by him, that the operations and permissions exhaust the divine will and that the other "signs" are to be handled as subdivisions.The operations and permissions are thus to be mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive. Under the primordial operations are included the manifestations, embodiments, operations proper, and the operational prohibitions. These operations are all such that their results, so t speak, must obtain if our cosmos is to be the way it is. All the other primordial notions are included inthe permissions, whose results may be violated in our cosmos. Note the implicit distinction here between the operations and permissions, on the one hand, and their "results," on the other. The results of the one must obtain, but those of the other need not. On the other hand, the operations and permissions themselves sonstiltute the necessary activity of the AS, if our cosmos is to be what it is. The prohibitions include just the three kinds, operational, preceptual, and counsel-wise, the precepts both the proper and prohibitive ones, and similarly for the counsels. The primordially neutral comprise the operationally neutral and the preceptually so. The primordial permissions, as already noted, then comprise all the primordial activities not included in theoperations, i.e., the prohibitions, the precepts, the counsels, and the primordially neutral. These comments may all be summarized by means of three additional definitions. We may let `PrimOp e' abbreviate `(Ea)(Ex1)...(Exk) (e veve vAS, PrimOp,a,x1,x2>e v ... ve v e ve ve ve v ... ve v e)', and `PrimPrhbtn e' abbreviate `(Ea)(Eb(Ep)(Ee')(Ex1)...(Exk) ( e v ... ve ve ve). These definitions introduce the notions of being a primordial operation, permission,or prohibition, respectively. Note the use of the variable `e' for an act or state. And recall that the expreseeions enclosed in the half-diamonds are event-descriptive predicates. Thus `e', for example, expresses that e is an act or state of x1's being manifest by AS. Extensive use is make of such predicates within event logic. 19 REcall also the special use of the parameter `k' for the degree of the primitive predicateof greatest degree needed as a primitive, and where there are assumed to be primitive predicates of each degree n where 1 <= n <= k. The notion of the divine will may be thought to be jully analyzed in terms of the disjunction of thise three. Thus `DW" may be short for `{e (PrimOP e v PrinPrmsn e v PrimPrhbtn e)}'. The DW is thus merely the virtual class of all primordial operations, permissions, and prohibitions. A few principles over and above Pr l-Pr 12 above that should presumably obtain are

as follows. Pr 13. |_(a)(x1)...(xn)(AS PrimOp a,x1,...,xn (PredConn a . ~x1 = AS. ... .~xn = AS)), Pr 14. |_~(Ea)(Ex1)...(Exn)(AS PrimOp a,x1,...,xn . AS PrimPrhbtOp a.x1,...,xn), Pr 15. |_~(Ea)(Eb)(AS PrimPrcpt a,b . AS PrimPrhbtPrcpt a,b), Pr 16. |_(a)(b)(x1)...(xn)(AS PrimOp (a b) ,x1,...,xn = (AS PrimOp a,x1,...,xn . AS PrimOp b,x1,...,xn)), Pr 17. |_(a)(b)(x1)...(xn)((AS PrimOp a,x1,...,xn v AS PrimOp b,x1,...,xn) AS PrimOp (a b) , x1,...,xn),20 Pr 18. |_(a)(b)(x1)...(xn)((AS PrimOp a,x1,...,xn . AS PrimOp (-a b) ,x1,...,xn) AS PrimOp b,x1,...,xn).21 Some of the various principles given may need some modification in the light ofa more thorough presentation. The whole theory of primordiality in fact cries out for further elaboration and development, being still in its infancy. XIII The analysis of the primordial valuations and hence of the divine will, given above, agrees with that of St. Thomas to some extent. A few additional points of parallel are as follows. Thomas notes that "there is no reason why the same thing should not be the subject of precept, operation, counsel, prohibition, or permission." Clearly one and the same human act can be the result of a prohibitional operation as well as a prohibitional counsel, and hence of a prohibitional permission. St. Thomas contends also tht "God ordains rational creatures to act voluntarily and of themselves. Other creatures act only as moved by the divine operation; therefore only operation and permission are concerned with these." This contention agrees with the foregoing, permission here being taken in the sense of the primordially neutral. "All evil of sin," St. Thomas notes also, "though happening in many ways, agrees in being out of harmony with the divine will. Hence, with regard to evil, only one sign of will is proposed, that of prohibition." The evil of sin is precisely what is primordially prohibited by precept. (There is no sin as the result of a primordial operation, all such constituting the primordially good). "On the other hand," St. Thomas goes on, "good the humanly good stands in various relations to the divine goodness, since there are good deeds without which we cannot attain to the fruition of that goodness, and these are the subject of precept" italics added. The primordially good is the subject of precept, and counsel above was taken as instantial of precept. But St. Thomas construes counsel here rather differently, "for there are other goods," he says, "by which we attain to it the fruition more perfectly, and these are the subject of counsel." Here counsel seems to be concerned rather with supererogation. But even some precepts might be stipulative of the supererogatorily good, so that even this last remark could be seen to accord with the foregoing. Any philosophical discussion of God's will must perforce be speculative, as indeed is the foregoing. There would not seem to be much point in discussing it at all, however, without some analysis of what the phrase is supposed to designate. At best we can merely hypothesize what this might be, and thus we never could be said to know it in any more direct sense. Even so, hypothetical constructs are useful in theology just as they are in theoretical science.22 Note that the foregoing hypothetical reconstruction of some features of metaphysical idealism has been given is a semantical metalanguage incorporating a theory of acts. It would seem very doubtful that a more restricted kind of logical framework would suffice for this purpose. Note also that the primordial notions have been handled intensionally. These are given by reference to a predicate rather than to a (virtual) class or relation the predicate might designate. The reason for this is the familiar one concerning the intentionality of obligation, to which the primordial notions are akin. It would not do to say, in a deontic logic, for example, that one is obliged to be an F, for F might be equivalent with some G, with respect to which one is not obliged. Reference to the predicate `F' here instead of to the virtual class F prevents any such unwanted consequence.

Hence the intentional treatment, within a semantical meta-language, of the primordial notions throughout, in terms essentially of Frege's Art des Gegebenseins. XIV An alternative, more sophisticated way of handling manifestation and embodiment, and even some of the promordial relations, suggests itself if a numerical measure is introduced. We may think of the AS as manifesting itself in x to just such and such a degree. All entities manifested to the same degree would then be of essentially some same kind. The very difference between manifestation and embodiment could then be handled in terms of difference of degree. Embodiment would be low degree of manifestation. Let `AS Manifi x' express that x is a manifestation of AS to just degree i. If i = O, we could let x be the null entity, and if i = 1, we could let x be AS itself. AS then manifests itself to maximal degree. Physical objects have low degrees attached to them, and highly mental ones have high degrees. And similarly for the primordial precepts, some of which are more binding than others. Here too it might be of interest to introduce a numerical degree. Whitehead speaks of the degree of a primordial valuation, as noted above. No one, it would seem, has ever developed such a theory in any detail, however, for natural theology and the use of numerical measures are not ordinarily thought to go hand in hand. A quite sophisticated view would result if a suitable numerical measure were introduced, and no doubt some interesting notions would be forthcoming in terms of it. Nothing has been said thus far concerning physical time, space, casuality, and the like. Any attempt to locate the AS with respect to any of these is quite foreign to the foregoing. It is rather the other way around, all objects of the physical world themselves being embodiments of the AS. Hence the foregoing theory is all couched in the Fregean tense of timelessness, so to speak, as in that of spacelessness, causalitylessness, and so on. Of course, only the barest logical maquette of the full theory concerning AS has been given here. Indeed, to flesh out the foregoing in adequate detail would be a formidable task indeed. Nonetheless, certain general features of what the fuller development would be like should be evident. In particular it would comprise foundations for a theory of objective value as contained in the primordial precepts. Thus, as far as this scheme goes, there is no essential dichotomy between fact and value, but each is handled in its separate way. Nor is there any easy reduction of one to the other. Each is given its proper dignity and the way is left open for discriminating all manner of interconnections between the two. Note also that there is here no illicit dichotomy between reason and faith. Again, it is rather that a rational scheme is available in which a theory of faith may be incorporated. Indeed, it may be that faith, in a suitable sense, is our highest rational activity, for it is always reasonable to let one's mind wander to an O altitude! The task of natural theology in fact may be thought to be just this. But faith is nothing if it does not issue in action, as many writers in the tradition of philosophia perennis have eloquently affirmed. And indeed the notion of the AS is of such staggering grandeur and magnitude, that it seems eminently rational that we should "shape the whole conduct of our life . . . into conformity" with it. To do this, in fact, should be our whole aim, everywhere and always, as the great writers of that tradition have been continually affirming across the centuries. "To interpret the absolute we must give all our time to it." The pursuit of science, of beauty, and of goodness are alike here given their proper role in this endeavor. There is something compelling about human feeling at what we take to be its highest, in the full experience, say, of a great work of art. It is doubtful that such feeling can be suitably and fully explicated on any other basis than one such as the foregoing. We can go a long way in analytic aesthetics without it, but always with a most essential human ingredient left out--the depth and quality of authentic aesthetic feeling at its best.

The positive contribution of the present paper is merely to have made seem tentative suggestions towards giving the philosophia perennis the logical backbone it is often thought to lack. Usually in discussions of the AS there is too much logically irresponsible misstatement. But so lofty a topic would seem best served by using such clean-cut logical notions and techniques as are now available. Surely we should let idealism, along with other metaphysical views, grow with the advance of knowledge. Milton, Mass. NOTES 1. Cf. Zellig Harris, "The Two Systems of Grammar: Report and Paraphrase," in Papers in Structural and Transformational Linguistics (D. Reidel, Dordrecht: 1972). 2. Cf. the author's Belief, Existence, and Meaning (New York University Press, New York: 1969), Chapter VI. 3. See the author's Events, Reference, and Logical Form (The Catholic University of America Press, Washington, D.C.: to appear) and Semiotics and Linguistic Structure (The State University of New York Press, Albany: to appear). 4. For further details, see the author's "On the Logic of the All-Soul in Plotinus," to appear in a volume edited by P. Morewedge (The State University of New York Press, Albany). 5. See the author's "On the Logical Structure of the Ontological Argument," in Whitehead's Categoreal Scheme and Other Papers (Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague: 1974). 6. J. Salamucha, "The Proof `Ex Motu' for the Existence of God: Logical Analysis of St. Thomas' Arguments," New Scholasticism XXXII (1958), 334-372 (first published in Polish in 1934). Cf. also J. Bediek, "Zur Logischen Struktur der Gottesbeweise," Franziskanischen Studien, XXXVIII (1956), 1-25; and L. Larouche, "Examination of the Axiomatic Foundations of a Theory of Change," Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, IX (1968), 371-384 and X (1969), 277-284 and 385-409. 7. See the author's "Some Thomistic Properties of Primordiality," The Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, to appear. 8. Process and Reality (The Macmillan Co., New York: 1936), p. 46. Cf. also Whitehead's Categoreal Scheme and Other Papers, Ch. III, "On the Whiteheadian God." 9. C.S. Peirce, Collected Papers (Harvard University Press, Cambridge: 1931-1958), Vol. VI, par. 467. 10. Richard Taylor, With Heart and Mind (St. Martin's Press, New York: 1973), Proem. 11. On the null individual, see especially the author's "Of Time and the Null Individual," The Journal of Philosophy LXII (1965), 723-736. To characterize the null entity we need of course the calculus of individuals. 12. Pars. 385 and 386. 13. For useful expository remarks, see especially H. Wang, From Mathematics to Philosophy (Humanities Press, New York: 1974). 14. See the author's "On Common Natures and Mathematical Scotism," to appear in Ratio and also in Peirce's Logic of Relations and Other Studies, Studies in Semantics, Vol. 12, ed. by Thomas Sebeok (Peter de Ridder Press, Nisse, The Netherlands: 1977). 15. Cf. the author's "Of `Of'" to be presented at the VIIth International Congress at Dusseldorf, 1978. 16. Summa Theologica, I, q. 19, a. 12. 17. PR8 is of course oversimplified, but a more general formulation and discussion is not needed for the present. 18. Cf. the author's Truth and Denotation (University of Chicago Press, Chicago: 1958), p. 106. 19. See again Events, Reference, and Logical Form and Semiotics and Linguistic Structure. 20. The ` ' and ` ' are the signs for the union and intersection respectively of

virtual classes. 21. Cf. an alternative treatment of the primordial relations in the author's "On God and Primordiality," The Review of Metaphysics 29 (1976), 497-522. See also "Some Thomistic Properties of Primordiality," and "On the Logic of Idealism and Peirce's Neglected Argument," to appear in Idealistic Studies and also in Peirce's Logic of Relations and Other Studies. 22. Cf. J. Bochen+ ski, The Logic of Religion (New York University Press, New York, 1965). See also the discussion in Whitehead's Categoreal Scheme and Other Papers, Chapter IX. COMMENT On Richard Martin, "On Some Theological Languages" JAN Van der VEKEN The value of Professor Martin's contribution lies especially in his serious and thorough application of current logico-linguistic theory to the study of religious language. What he intends to show is how logico-linguistic theory can help shed more light on the principles and structures of the main philosophical systems. For this purpose, and by way of central paradigm, he attempts a hypothetical reconstruction of at least some characteristics of metaphysical idealism in a semantic metalanguage. An essential feature of metaphysical idealism is that God is identified with being and that being is conceived as absolute Spirit. One can therefore speak of a monism of the Spirit. The wider purpose, however, is to offer a meta-system that can serve to formalize various philosophical and theological systems such as those of Plotinus, Anselm, Aquinas, Hegel and Whitehead. A few critical remarks are in order here. 1. From a theological point of view there arises the question of identifying the metaphysical absolute (Absolute Spirit, hereinafter referred to as AS) with the religious absolute (called God). AS has at least several characteristics of the Thomistic God and Whitehead's "primordial nature." Nevertheless, Thomas employs a different category as the ultimate and all-encompassive notion, namely, being, whereas Whitehead speaks of "creativity." This would appear to be a point worth noting in formalizing metaphysical idealism. What is to be said about God cannot be deduced from the basic category AS. 2. A second question that can be raised concerning the project itself of formalizing religious language is that before any logical analysis one must first decide which type of philosophy is to be developed. This applies also to the project of formalizing religious language. Which language shall be formalized? Clearly, a prior decision has to be taken here. Popper's distinction between "context of discovery" and "context of justification" can be insightful here. The expression "justification" can be substituted in this case by "articulation." A logico-linguistic method can therefore only be of service on the level of articulation, not that of justification and not from a heuristic viewpoint. But whence come the fundamental insights of the great philosophical systems such as absolute idealism? First, there are important themes which continually arise in the history of philosophy and which have brought some people to speak of "philosophia perennis." Thus Martin says: "that being is one and identical with God the creator . . . is rediscovered in every age and in every corner of the world." It is in this context, however, that caution should be observed before identifying the problem of God with the problem of being. Secondly, in a certain sense the religious notion of God serves as a touchstone for the great philosophical systems. Even Hegel has said that religion can do without philosophy but philosophy cannot do without religion. Philosophy as the reflective critical moment presupposes man's pre-reflective understanding of being as totality (Heidegger speaks of vorontologisches Seinsversta¦ ndnis). There is likewise a precritical notion of God that is present in religion before it is taken up again and thought in philosophy. A third element of the "context of discovery" in connection with religious

language is our actual experience of the universe. "If our cosmos is to be what it is . . . ." The relation between facts in the world and a view on the totality is one of implication or incompatibility. 3. With regard to formalizing religious language, it must be said that a so-called scientific theology has to comply with the same rules as those which hold good in the formation of scientific theories in other fields. First, theoretical constructions are useful in theology just as in other disciplines. It should be noted however: theology looks for relations of the type p--> q and not for the less complex p-->q (in other words theology looks for necessary conditions of possibility and not for conditions of the type p-->q). In the latter case reasoning from the consequence to the cause is not justified (the problem of verification and the reasons why falsification is to be preferred to verification in the formation of theories). In the case of a necessary condition it is permissible to deduce from the givenness of q the givenness of p. Secondly, a theology which intends to speak scientifically must insist on being as systematic as possible, that is, it must systematize as many statements as possible with the aid of as few fundamental principles as possible. Martin indeed succeeds in formalizing the principles of absolute idealism with the aid of a few basic concepts (AS, Manif., Emb., Prim. Prcpt.). All the other primordial predicates are defined within the linguistic framework with the aid of the theory of quantification, identity, the calculus of individuals, and ultimately with the aid of some semantic rules and principles of the "event theory." The question that now arises is whether this formalizing contributes anything from a strictly heuristic standpoint. It would seem that such a method, while able to shed more light on the coherence of certain theological principles, nonetheless actually fails to provide any new insights. Thirdly, not only logico-linguistic systems but the insights of current theories of science can teach us rather a lot concerning the relation between the data of experience and the paradigms we employ to grasp the data of experience in a coherent and systematic conceptual framework. Paradigms are employed in theology as well as in natural science. Kuhn especially has pointed out that science usually develops with the aid of paradigms. In other sciences, too, Kuhn accepts the presence of irrational, dogmatic components. Lakatos wanted to mitigate Kuhn's "irrationalism," while Feyerabend stands more on Kuhn's side. For Kuhn "normal" science is the cumulative process in which transmitted principles of a scientific community are schematized, articulated and generalized. Martin's project fits into the context of this theory of science. The extensive awareness that there is, in any case, something which transcends man is rooted in experience as interpreted by religious language. The systems of Platinus, Anselm, Aquinas, and Whitehead, as well as that of so-called absolute idealism (Parmenides, Spinoza, and Hegel) can then be seen as so many paradigms to clarify in a conceptual manner what is given in metaphysical and religious experience, taking into account the demands of logical coherence and adequacy to experience. Though we do not consider the strength of the logico-linguistic method to be found on the level of content, it is nevertheless a useful instrument whereby the current achievements of the socalled formal sciences can be integrated into the study of religious language. CHAPTER V THE HINDU METAPHYSICAL TRADITION ON THE MEANING OF THE ABSOLUTE JEHANGIR N. CHUBB In order to give an adequate exposition of the Hindu metaphysical tradition it is necessary to clarify some important preliminary issues. Of Hinduism, more than of any other religion, it may be said that it is not a monolithic creed. Within Hinduism one has come to expect some variety in ways of thinking and speaking of the Supreme Being and an even greater diversity of theories concerning man's relation to the Supreme Being. Added to the difficulty of this bewildering diversity of creeds is the reminder of one important trend in Hinduism which points beyond all creeds and concepts to that "from which speech falls back and

the mind retires baffled, unable to reach it." Hinduism is both credal and noncredal. This itself would present some difficulty in talking about the Hindu religious tradition. The difficulty is aggravated owing to the fact that its many creeds do not, at least at first sight, cohere to form a single, unified body of teachings concerning the ultimate Reality. This situation naturally raises the problem of identification. How shall we define Hinduism? Is Hinduism in any sense one or is it merely the name of a conglomeration of doctrines, aproaches, spiritual practices, and forms of worship exhibiting a rich diversity or, as some would say, a chaotic multiplicity? Is Hinduism one religion or a miscellaneous group of religions with nothing more than a geographical unity to bring them under a common label? One of the purposes of this paper is to show that Hinduism is the name of a unified whole, but that in traditional Hinduism this unity is only a potentiality and a promise that has been realized only partially and imperfectly, leaving a number of tensions and conflicts unresolved. The question, what constitutes the unity of Hinduism has come to the fore in recent times and it is my belief that in the massive and luminous writings of Sri Aurobindo the final unity of Hinduism has not merely been indicated but actually accomplished. As I have said in my article: "Sri Aurobindo as the Fulfillment of Hinduism,"1 "Sri Aurobindo has added a new dimension to Indian philosophy. He has brought to fruition its penetrating but imperfect search for unity and has raised the spirit of Hinduism to a full and liberated consciousness of itself." I am aware that this view would be contested by many who could claim to speak with authority on Hinduism and whose views deserve respect. I shall presently consider alternative answers to the question, what constitutes the unity of Hinduism, assuming that it is possible to interpret Hinduism as a system that can comprehend in a coherent unity all its diverse manifestations. But it should be noted that the controversy here is not over the question, what do the different schools of Hinduism teach, but how are these diverse teachings to be correlated and what principle of interpretation or synthesis should we employ to bring order out of apparent chaos? We may say that the question, what is the Hindu metaphysical tradition on the Absolute is at the first order level of reflection. The difficulties of exposition which I have raised above will carry us to a second order level. This should make it clear that the method to be used for giving an exposition of the Hindu conception of the Ultimate is not purely a historical one, not a matter of correct exegesis alone. I do not mean merely that presentation must include interpretation and critical evaluation. This would still keep the inquiry at the first order level. What is further needed is an explanatory hypothesis, a vision of an emerging unity, in the light of which the materials provided by historical study are to be interpreted and unified. It is similar to the difference between recording facts of history and interpreting them in the light of a philosophy of history. The facts could be correctly presented and yet seen in a new light. Thus in giving an exposition of the Hindu concept of the Ultimate one has to answer not only the question, what is Hinduism but, more importantly, what is Hinduism trying to become? It is obvious that the answer to this question cannot be found by merely examining "the Hindu metaphysical tradition" understood as an already developed set of doctrines which are accepted by all enlightened Hindus as forming the core of Hinduism. We may, however, understand "Hindu tradition" not only in terms of a tangible body of doctrines but also, more etherially, in terms of a spirit seeking embodiment. The latter refers to the characteristic form which the spiritual quest has taken in India and which may be described as a search for Truth in its fullness, a search that intends to leave no possibility unexplored and is undeterred by the apparent conflicts and contradictions in its many findings. Undoubtedly, Truth in its fullness must also be a self-consistent whole, but there is always the danger that by adopting a rigid and narrow idea of self-consistency, as most religious philosophies have done, including many schools of Hinduism, one may rest satisfied with a vision of Truth that is partial and truncated. The Hindu

tradition is nebulous and elusive with respect to its content but more fully articulate with respect to its spirit and inspiring impulse. Its spirit dwells not in one body but in innumerable bodies, but also breaks out of them. It transcends its manifold expressions and remains doctrinally indefinable. It is with reference to its spirit that we must indicate how the unity of Hinduism is to be understood and how it is to be achieved, for in traditional Hinduism the unity is still submerged in a mass of conflicting claims and counter-claims. The religious mind of Hinduism aspires after a vision of wholeness in which, to use Meister Eckhart's words, "there is no denial except the denial of all denials." But in the history of Hinduism, particularly in the scholastic period, denial, partisan thinking, and the refutation of `rival' theories was the accepted procedure. It would, however, be a mistake to regard the strongly polemical writings of the great Acaryas and their followers as entirely out of line with the spirit of Hinduism. The ideal of unity is that of a richly diversified oneness. The diversity is no less important than the unity. To achieve this richness of content each element of the diversity must first be allowed to develop along its own lines in isolation from the other elements, and even in opposition to them, in order that it may discover its own potentialities and articulate itself fully. The achievement of unity and harmony is a dialectical process in which tensions and oppositions must be allowed to develop almost to the breaking point before they can be resolved and embraced in a healing oneness. This perhaps explains why, though in the Gita we are presented with an admirable structured, comprehensive synthesis of all the major strands of Hindu spiritual experience, the unity was not preserved but was broken up in the succeeding centuries into several contending schools of thought. The unity of Hinduism in the Gita was in a way too premature, since the nisus within each of its elements to develop along its own lines and find its own specific mode of self-fulfillment, had not yet been appeased. It is in recent times that the problem of discovering the underlying unity of Hinduism has come to the fore. In conformity with the spirit of Hinduism one should adopt a non-partisan approach to this problem. There are broadly two conceptions of unity or universality, the missionary and the non-missionary. The former, paradoxically, sustains itself through exclusion and offers at best a procrustean type of universality, universal by the very force of its narrowness. Truth is here walled in and cast into a more or less rigid mold and what lies outside it is dismissed as error and darkness or the dim twilight of half-truths. Or, taking a more liberal attitude, what is outside it is regarded as below it, representing a partial or lower truth whose sole value is that it is a preliminary stage to something beyond it, helpful, at best to the individual to rise at last to the highest stage--one's own--where Truth abides in fullness. Precisely such a move was made by Vivekananda and is, I believe, largely accepted by the monks of the Sri Ramakrishan Order. Hindu theories concerning the Supreme Being are broadly divided into three groups: dvaita (dualism), vis+i.stadvaita (qualified non-dualism) and advaita (non-dualism). These include in-between theories like those propounded by the Gaitanya school and the S+aiva and S+-akta philosophies. For Vivekananda, dvaita and visistadvaita represent the Truth stepped down to meet the requirements of less developed souls and are to be regarded as stages through which the seeker passes on his way to the highest Truth which is taught in S+amkara's Advaita. A Christian writer, assuming (mistakenly, according to me) that the Vivek-anandian approach represents the generally accepted standpoint of the modern Hindu, remarks discerningly, "The Hindu view is not as tolerant and comprehensive as at first sight appears. It represents a particular understanding of the nature of religious truth and this understanding is dogmatically asserted against any other view." Besides, such a paternalistic and patronizing resolution of conflicting truth-claims would be totally unacceptable to the non-Samkarites who are regarded as the "lesser breeds" within Hinduism. In an approach that is free of any suggestion of partisanship and condescension

the ultimate reconciliation of the seemingly opposed viewpoints must be sought in an integral and all-embracing Whole in which all the positive contents in the diverse competing elements are held together and harmonized, not by being arranged hierarchically as representing ascending steps to the highest truth contained in one of them, but as concurrent and complementary poises of an indivisible Reality that dwells indivisibly in each and all of them while at the same time remaining transcendent and indeterminable. Hinduism, according to me, is the Spirit of Truth revealing itself through a slow, evolutionary and dialectical process and finally bursting forth fully in the integral vision and experience of Sri Aurobindo. Before considering the question of how we are to justify the ascriptions of what would seem to be incompatible predicates to the same Reality it will be worthwhile to look into the Hindu metaphysical tradition concerning the Ultimate insofar as this represents concepts and theories shared by all orthodox Hindus. There is first the acceptance of scripture (s+ruti) as infallible. This, however, will help us only to a limited extent in discovering what the Hindu doctrine is. The scriptures are not systematic treatises, but rather the outpourings in the language of poetry of diverse spiritual experiences of the Rsis who were not unduly concerned about their mutual consistency. Therefore, what the scriptures teach is largely a matter of interpretations, as indeed has been the case, leaving us, at least in Hinduism, without any court of appeal which can decide which interpretation is the right one. All we can do, therefore, is to inquire whether there are any doctrines which are, as a matter of fact, shared by all orthodox schools of Indian thought. I think we may safely say that it would be generally agreed that the Supreme Reality, Brahman or Purushottama, is eternal in the sense of being timeless (ku.tastha nitya), self-existent and the source of all that exists. Brahman is the All and inclusive of everything. "All this is verily Brahman." Further, it is agreed that Brahman is Sat, Cit, Ananda (or Being, Consciousness, Bliss).2 There is also general agreement that Brahman is partless or indivisible so that it would not be correct to say that the being of Brahman is partly cit and partly -ananda. Sat, cit, -ananda are so related that each includes and is included in the other two. I shall show later how this important notion of the indivisibility of Brahman helps us to answer the objection that in attempting to integrate on an equal footing, as it were, divergent views about the nature of Brahman we are guilty of predicating contradictory attributes to the same Reality. The Indian view of Brahman and of the universe may be called pantheism. Pantheism is an ambiguous term and one must hasten to add that Indian pantheism is a view which is compatible with panentheism which, while recognizing the immanence of Brahman in the universe (which is Brahman itself in self-manifestation), also insists on affirming the transcendence of Brahman. Pantheism as presented in the G-it-a, for instance, is the view that there is nothing outside the being of Brahman. The Upanisads declare "All this is verily Brahman" and "As from a blazing fire sparks fly forth by the thousands, so also do various beings come forth from the imperishable Brahman and unto Him again return." It should be pointed out here that Indian dualistic philosophies occupy a position half way between the G-it-a pantheism and Christian dualism according to which the universe and human souls are not only outside the being of God but are created ex nihilo, i.e., individual souls are not eternal since in some sense they have an origin. All schools of Indian philosophy, however, regard individual souls, jivas, as eternal. But in my opinion such a view can be held consistently only within a pantheistic framework, since it is unthinkable that there could be anything outside the being of Brahman which is coeternal with it. Brahman is and must be "One without a second."3 In the Upani.sads, what may be called the essential as distinct from the integral nature of Brahman is indicated in the question, "As from the knowledge of one lump of clay all that is made of clay is known, so what is that knowing by which all things become known?" This is consistent with pantheism according to which the Supreme is not only the efficient cause but also the material cause of the universe. But there is no single picture of Brahman that emerges unambiguously

from the Upanisadic texts. Brahman is referred to as personal, saguna, as the Lord of the universe. "Him one must know, the supreme Lord of all lords, the supreme Godhead above all godheads." "From fear of Him both Indra and Wind and Death as fifth do speed along." Brahman is also spoken of as impersonal, differenceless and relationless, nirguna. "There is here no diversity. Death after death is the lot of one who sees in this what seems to be diverse." Activity and dynamism are attributed to the saguna Brahman. "Supreme too is his Sa+kti and manifold the natural working of her knowledge and her force." The nirguma Brahman is naturally spoken of as beyond all action. But there are passages in the Upani.sads which describe Brahman as simultaneously static and dynamic. "Though sitting still It travels far; though lying down It goes everywhere." "One, unmoving, that is swifter than Mind. . . ." "That moves and That moves not." Again Brahman is described as both immanent and transcendent. "He who is dwelling in all things is yet other than all things. . . ." "That is far and the same is near; That is within all this and That is also outside all this." The concept of Brahman in the Upanisads and in Indian philosophy generally is basically non-anthropomorphic. By this I mean that Brahman is regarded as the Transcendent Being which differs both in existence and nature from the purely phenomenal or finite being, not merely in degree but essentially in kind. There is a qualitative distance between the purely finite and the Infinite. But here it is important not to overlook a radical difference between Christian dualism and Hindu pantheism. According to the latter the human individual in his true nature belongs to the Transcendent and not to the phenomenal order or the order of created beings. There dwells within "the cave of his heart," to use an Upani.s-adic simile, a hidden divinity or a hidden Self which has connaturality, not with the mundane and the perishable, but with the Divine and the Everlasting. This hidden reality is not something that we have to become or grow into; we are that eternally. Brahman, however, is transcendent to the finite intellect and its concepts. It is in an important sense incomprehensible. This raises the difficult problem: how is it possible to think of Brahman at all, as we undoubtedly do in philosophy, and how can we speak intelligibly of that which is beyond speech? Does the recognition of the ineffability of Brahman launch us on a via negativa culminating in the position of the Advaitin and the Buddhist for whom That (Tat) transcends and ultimately negates all concepts and categories, including the category of personality and the qualities of Creativity and Love and is Empty (S+unya), not in itself but of all that we positively ascribe to it? Such a view would clearly be one-sided and not compatible with an integral outlook whose maxim is: a place for everything and everything in its place. And yet this very demand for integrality will compel us to find a place for Advaita and S+unyav-ada, not as the whole Truth or even the highest Truth, but as an important and inalienable aspect of the integral Truth. But how is this to be reconciled with the statement that Brahman is ineffable? The notion of ineffability has not been properly understood and has led to much confusion in rational theology. The ineffable is usually identified with the unconceptualizable. That is only one aspect of the ineffable and it is this aspect which lends support to the (partial) truth of Sa+.mkara's non-dualism and of the Buddhist s+unyav-ada. The ineffability of Brahman is a consequence of the infinite qualitative distance between Brahman and the phenomenal world. This means that the existence and nature of Brahman are in a mode incomprehensible to the intellect, and hence to know Brahman directly (aparok.sa jn+ -ana), as it is in itself, one must go beyond the level of concepts. But to transcend a concept is not necessarily to negate it. Our concepts of Brahman need be neither false nor inadequate. It is misleading to say that the intellect can know God only inadequately. The real distinction is not between inadequate and adequate knowledge but between conceptual knowledge (apar-a vidy-a) and direct knowledge (par-a vidy-a). At their own level our concepts are both true and adequate, but

direct knowledge of Brahman belongs to a different dimension altogether. It does not lie in the direction of greater and greater adequacy of conceptual thinking. Each advance in conceptual penetration merely "shuts us off from Heaven with a dome more vast." In the direct knowledge of Brahman the truth of our concepts is simultaneously confirmed and transfigured. Since the mode of transfiguration is beyond the comprehension of the intellect one would be justified in venturing the paradox that Brahman simultaneously confirms and cancels the predicates that we ascribe to it. There is, however, an aspect of Brahman from which all thoughtdeterminations are totally and uncompromisingly rejected. "There sight travels not, nor speech, nor the mind. . . . It is other than the known." It is "neti, neti," "not this, not this." We may say, therefore, that at the core of the ineffable Brahman there is a point which is sheerly ineffable. It may be represented as the center of a circle turned in on itself and totally absorbed within itself; or as the Face of the Supreme that is turned away from the whole sphere of manifestation. It is into this zero of the sheer ineffable that the S+a.mkarite and the Buddhist enter and mistakenly declare to be the whole truth. But the circle does not collapse and vanish into its own center, though the individual may choose to merge in it without a remainder. We have here, in the words of Sri Aurobindo, a choice: Either to fade into the Unknowable Or thrill with the luminous seas of the Infinite. There are insuperable objections to the claim that Advaita represents the sole truth or even the highest truth. If Brahman is multi-faceted there can be no hierarchy of aspects within it, for that would mean that Brahman can be greater or lesser than itself. We must therefore examine the claim made by the S+a.mkarites that advaita is the whole truth. According to S+a.mkara Brahman is differenceless and relationless, and the world, including individual souls, is non-different from the non-dual Brahman. This identity, however, is not identity in difference; it totally negates all differences. Plurality as such, therefore, can only be an illusion, m-ay-a. As K.C. Bhattacharyya puts it, "S+am-kara's doctrine of M-ay-a is the logical pendant to his doctrine of Brahman as the undifferenced, selfshining truth." This is true provided Brahman is equated with "the undifferenced Brahman"; but if the latter is held to be just one aspect or poise of Brahmam then it would be possible to separate advaitav-ada from m-a-y-av-ada and accept the former as true or partial truth and reject the latter as false. Not only Sri Aurobindo, but some other schools of Indian philosophy as well, affirm advaita to be true but deny that the truth of advaita entails the view that the world of manifestation is an illusion. The first objection to S+amkara's view is that not only is the fact of illusion not explained but, consistently with the doctrine of adviata-cum-m-ay-a, it can have no logical explanation. R-am-anuja pointed out that it is logically impossible for a S+amkarite for whom the undifferenced Brahman is the only reality to determine the locus of Ignorance (Avidya) on which the illusion of plurality is said to depend. The advaita view that m-ay-a is anirvacan-iya (inexplicable) must be taken not as an answer to this objection but as a confession that the objection is unanswerable. "The theory of Illusion," says Sri Aurobindo, "cuts the knot of the world problem, it does not disentangle it; it is an escape, not a solution. . . . This eventual outcome satisfied only one element, sublimates only one impulse of our being; it leaves the rest out in the cold to perish in the twilight of the unreal reality of M-ay-a." The second objection to S+a.mkara's doctrine arise from the fact that according to him the function of language is not to describe Brahman--for Brahman, being devoid of all qualities, is indescribable--but merely to indicate it. Talking about Brahman is comparable to a finger pointing to the moon. The finger does not describe that to which it points. But how shall we interpret the metaphor of the pointing finger? What corresponds to it in philosophy is a proposition or a set of propositions with Brahman as the subject term. But if Brahman is totally indescribable how is it possible to indicate what we are talking about? What does

the term `Brahman' mean? It is no answer to this difficulty to suggest that `Brahman' is like a proper name which denotes without connoting anything. A proper name is bestowed on an individual whom we perceive or, at least, whom we can think of through a description. Besides, in the absence of the individual, the use of the proper name does call up some quality or characteristic that belongs to that individual, and it is only through such a descriptive content that the individual can be identified. In integral Hinduism Brahman must be regarded as both saguna, personal, and nirguna, impersonal and relationless. For S+amkara Brahman is only the latter, and yet he speaks of two Brahmans, the higher, nirguna Parabrahman and the lower, saguna Brahman (or Is+vara, the Lord of the universe). Taken in conjunction with S+a.mkara's doctrine of the three satt-as (orders of being), pr-atibhasika (illusory), vyavah-arika (practical), and the p-aram-arthika (transcendent) one may get the impression that S+a.m kara does not after all totally deny the world of plurality and change or its omniscient and omnipotent Ruler (Is+vara), but accords them a temporary reality or a reality of a lesser and relative kind. Such an impression would, however, be totally false. The criterion of reality according to S+amkara is "that which cannot be sublated." As the illusory snake is sublated on the perception of the rope so the vyavah-arika satt-a, the world of plurality, is also sublated on the perception of Brahman. As regards -Is+vara, the so-called "lower Brahman," this is what S+a.mkara has to say in his commentary on Brahma Sutras ii.i.14. "Belonging to the Self, as it were, of the omniscient Lord, there are name and form, the figments of ignorance. . . . Hence the Lord's being a Lord, his omniscience, his omnipotence, etc., all depend on the limitations due to the adjuncts whose self is ignorance; while in reality none of these qualities belong to the Self whose true nature is cleared, by right knowledge, from all adjuncts whatever." Should we then say that the metaphysical statement "Brahman is the Ruler of the universe" is outright false? This would not be an accurate representation of S+amkara's view. It would not explain why he uses the expression "the lower Brahman" or why he thinks that certain descriptive statements about Brahman are (provisionally) permissible and valid. The clue to Samkara's interpretation of metaphysical statements that ascribe personality or qualities to Brahman is in his view that all such statements are up-asan-artha, for purpose of worship and meditation. These statements are not to be taken literally as true. They are not true, but they are not false either. They have no truth-value. In fact they are not statements in the straightforward sense. They are intended to be "as if" statements. For example, the "statement" "Brahman is the Ruler of the universe" must be interpreted to mean, "Meditate on Brahman as if Brahman were the Ruler of the universe." These statements have pragmatic value. Contemplation of Brahman as the Ruler of the universe is a kind of heuristic device. Mok.sa or liberation is realized through knowledge of the Parabrahman. But the birth of knowledge requires a period of preparation or spiritual practice (s-adhana) which consists partly in the purification of one's nature. In view of the devotional hymns that S+amkara himself composed it is likely that he regarded the practice of love and adoration (bhakti) of the Supreme Being as the most efficacious way of purifying one's nature and destroying ignorance and the illusion of duality. This may well be the case, but it leaves unexplained how an untrue or not-true supposition concerning Brahman on which the practice of bhakti is based can be efficacious in acquiring knowledge of Brahman. Another way of stating this objection is to point out that it is totally unintelligible how a descriptive predicate can point to or indicate the parabrahman if the predicate is pure fiction and has no ontological correlate whatever. Further, and this is what the theistic schools of Hinduism emphasize, love of God is its own justification and leads to its own characteristic mode of self-fulfillment, which is in no way inferior to a liberation in which individuality is sponged out and the sweetness of relationship is cast aside and one chooses to "fade into the Unknowable." Sri Caitanya, while not denying the possibility of thus merging into the undifferenced Brahman, regards it as a low

form of salvation. The j-iva (individual soul) according to him is "the eternal slave of K.r.s.na." What I have called integral Hinduism finds full expression in the Bhagavad Gita as far as the nature of the Transcendent Being is concerned. It does not, however, succeed in bringing out the full significance of the immanence of the Divine in the universe and his providence or reveal the secret of his evolutionary selfmanifestation. That final dichotomy between the here and the now in the world of time and the Transcendent beyond time is resolved only in the philosophy of Sri Aurobindo. But in the G-it-a one does find a reconciliation of the meditative Atman-Nirv-ana non-dualistic experience, on the one hand, and the devotional experience of the Lord of infinite auspicious qualities, on the other. These two experiences influence and complement each other. A combination of bhakti and jn+ -ana unveils the Antary-amin, the immanent Divine seated in the hearts of all beings. When the Lord of the universe is seen through the eyes of an inner selfenlightenment He appears, or rather discloses Himself, as the Absolute, the Purushottama within, above and beyond all manifestation. This double spirituality, personal-impersonal, devotional-contemplative, is the essential original Indian experience, which throughout the long history of Hinduism, one or another side of it was emphasized. At certain times the fullness reached its conceptual and expressive form in the very foreground. For instance, the -Is+a Upanisad and the G-it-a in ancient times and those later schools, particularly Kashmir S+aivism, which emphasize the reality of S+akti, the creative energy of the Supreme, combine in a single but complex experience the sense of essential identity with the Purushottama and the relationship, presupposing distinction, between the human lover and the Supreme Beloved. I have so far given an exposition of the supreme and timeless ineffable Being, Brahman, in its transcendent poises of personality, impersonality and sheer ineffability, according to the spirit and underlying intent of the unwritten Hindu metaphysical tradition. I shall now consider the relation of Brahman to the cosmos, the world of changing, developing and perishable things. On the pantheistic view there can be nothing outside of the being of Brahman. But if the being of Brahman is eternal in the sense of being timeless, how can change, coming into being and passing away, which are characteristics of the phenomenal order, be ascribed to Brahman? In Indian philosophy two different and contrary views have been presented to account for the phenomenon of change. They are vivartav-ada and parin-ama-v-ada. The former is the doctrine of the S+amkarites who cut the gordian knot by saying that change is an illusory appearance and hence can in no way be predicated of Brahman. This, as we saw earlier, leaves unanswered the question, to whom or what is the phenomenon of an illusory appearance of change to be ascribed? The alternative view, parin-amav-ada, also runs into insuperable difficulties. The timeless and perfect Brahman cannot change. Hence it is said that change (parinama) occurs in Nature (Prak.rti) or in the body of God, but not in God himself. This, of course, is no way out of the difficulty because if there is nothing outside the being of Brahman then a change in Nature or the body of Brahman is also a change in the being of Brahman. Parin-amav-ada runs into difficulties because of a mistaken assumption which it does not question that there must be a temporal link between the timeless Brahman and the temporal phenomenal order. Sri Aurobindo does not commit this mistake. For him timelessness is only one of the multiple poises of the Infinite. In this connection he mentions two poises of the Transcendent or Eternity, TimelessEternity and Time-Eternity. To these we may add the poise of Eternal Duration. Timeless-Eternity is, in the words of Sri Aurobindo, "the non-manifest timeless, utterly eternal and an irreducible absolute self-existence." Timeless-Eternity articulates itself, as it were, as Time-Eternity in preparation for projecting out of itself the field of manifestation and for bringing into being the phenomenal order. The language of time and succession which is used to state the relation between these two poises is only a convenient way of speaking and not to be taken literally. Time-Eternity, says Sri Aurobindo, is "the Infinite deploying itself

and organizing all things in time." It is a simultaneous Eternity of time in which past, present and future are forever together. The Infinite then moves to still another poise of its being --Eternal Duration. The Divine here is fully personal and knows things not in an all-at-once vision, as in his poise of Time-Eternity, but successively, as they unroll themselves in time. He can thus respond with love and compassionate wisdom to man caught on the wheel of birth and death and suffering. The supreme Divine Will, however, is not part of the temporal order. The Will of God, the S+akti of S+iva, is to be understood as the dynamic aspect of God's being which is the same as EternalDuration which includes the order of creation. Creation, therefore, is not something brought about by the antecedent will of God, but is itself the unfolding of the dynamic aspect of God in manifestation. God's creative will is not at the origin of the created order but expresses itself through it. God wills all in the sense that what manifests or is manifesting and will manifest is included in the Time-Eternity of God's being. On the pantheistic view we do not have a relation between the world and God considered as two different things. The world is God; it is God in the process of self-manifestation. But it should not be forgotten that there is no temporal relation between the three poses of the Transcendent. Timeless-Eternity, TimeEternity and Eternal Duration cannot be brought together into a common temporal framework. It is time to consider a rather obvious objection which the concept of integral Hinduism I have tried to present has to face. Such a view apparently ascribes irreconcilable predicates to the same Reality, such as `personal', `impersonal', `static', `dynamic', `ineffable but conceptualizable', `sheerly ineffable'. It may be said that one in each of these pairs of predicates may be true but not both, for they cancel each other out and their simultaneous affirmation would be in flagrant violation of the law of contradiction. It would be pertinent to ask what precisely the law of contradiction forbids us to say. I suggest that what it forbids is not a statement of any particular kind but a mode of utterance which uses two sentences both of which are intelligible, but in such a way that in the result nothing whatever has been said. The statements of transcendent metaphysics that ascribe apparently incompatible predicates to the Infinite are not such empty utterances in which something is asserted and denied simultaneously in such a way that in the end result nothing at all is either asserted or denied. They are genuine statements and the problem arises only when we ask how the two predicates in each pair are to be accommodated in the same subject. As a first step towards answering this question it will be necessary to show that the Infinite does, as a matter of fact, accommodate within its being all the apparently incompatible predicates mentioned above. This raises the question, on what principle shall we select predicates which can truly be ascribed to God? The answer is: only those predicates can be considered which are compatible with divine perfection. Thus it would seem plausible to say that God is good but not that God is evil, that he loves us but not that he hates us, that he is selfexistent but not that he is dependent for his being on another. The next question is, how do we make a selection among predicates which are compatible with the divine perfection so as to decide which of these are to be ascribed to God and which are not? The answer to this question is crucial to our understanding the simple or indivisible and yet multi-faceted nature of the Supreme Being. The answer simply is that no selection need or indeed can be made among the possible predicates that can be ascribed to God. This is because in God there are no `accidental' qualities, nothing that is but may not have been. We can give no meaning to the statement that a predicate is compatible with God's being except that it represents a mode of divine perfection. In the case of a finite subject what is compatible with its nature may or may not be actualized. This is because the actualization of possibilities in the case of finite beings depends partly on conditions and circumstances outside their being and essence. The

Infinite in contrast to the finite does not depend on anything outside itself for any quality of its being. Hence whatever is compatible with God is in God and is God. It will not be difficult to discern in this statement echoes of the ontological argument. But there is an important difference in my argument which enables it to preserve its validity even when the ontological argument is shown to be invalid. My argument does not claim to prove the existence of God but merely to prove that God does possess all those attributes which our intellect sees to be compatible with the divine essence. The passage is not from concept to existence, but from concept to the nature of that whose existence is not being called in question. The argument may be stated in the maxim: in the case of God's nature or being the possible is the actual. It remains to show that all the predicates in the three pairs mentioned above are compatible with God's being, that each represents a possible mode of divine perfection and that therefore all of them can truly be ascribed to God. Consider first personality and power. There is nothing in the concept of personality or in the concept of dynamism or power which would lead us to say that they are incompatible with divine perfection. More positively, love and omnipotence which are attributes of personality are perfections in which the divine essence (partly) realizes itself. Hence we may say that God is the supreme Person and his being is active and dynamic (S+iva-S+akti). Similarly in the notions of immutability and a mode of being in and for oneself, a universal impersonality (kaivalya of the Samkhya-Yoga and the Ak.sara purusha of the G-it-a) one cannot detect anything that is incompatible with divine perfection. In fact immutability is something that must belong to a being which is eternal and self-existent. The impersonal poise of the Infinite is, I think, a consequence of its total freedom. The Infinite can freely relate itself to individual souls, and indeed it does, but it is not bound by this particular exercise of its freedom; it is also free to remain unrelated to individual souls in an impersonal universality, like an ocean of consciousness without ripples or waves. The Infinite therefore is also impersonal and immutable. Let us now consider the third pair of predicates or the distinction between the ineffable which is conceptualizable and the sheer ineffable. The truth of the former has already been established in showing that the different poises of the Infinite, static-dynamic, personal-impersonal, are modes of divine perfection. But how shall we show that a poise of the Supreme which is totally inexpressible in concepts, words and images, the Void of the Buddhists, is also a possibility compatible with divine perfection and therefore necessary to the total divine perfection: Such a poise of the Infinite would not be coordinate with its other poises since it is not another determination of the Infinite, but points to the Infinite as the Indeterminable. It would, therefore, be better to call it, as I have done above, the core of the Ineffable; or we may call it the super-essential being of God. Like impersonality, indeterminability may also be explained with reference to the freedom of the Infinite. If the Infinite freely determines itself in a number of ways it is not tied to its own self-determinations. As Sri Aurobindo puts it, "It is perfectly understandable that the Absolute is and must be indeterminable in the sense that it cannot be limited by any determination or any sum of possible determinations, but not in the sense that it is incapable of self-determination." It would be in conformity with the spirit of Hinduism to point out that the above deliberation on the nature of Brahman does not reply solely on a conceptual analysis or on a theoretical consideration of abstract possibilities. In Hinduism, if logic does not actually follow spiritual experience, its pronouncements are nevertheless not regarded as authoritative or well-established unless they are confirmed by spiritual experience. The conceptual analysis which I have given above gains strength and support from the fact that all the self-determinations which I have ascribed to Brahman, as also the reference to Brahman as the indeterminable, have been directly verified over and over again throughout the history of Hinduism, from the Vedic times to the present.

One last and perhaps the most important step has to be taken for the solution of the problem of the so-called conflicting truth-claim. We have still to show how the diverse and seemingly incompatible affirmations we have made concerning Brahman are to be reconciled. Or, to put it differently, we must indicate how the seemingly incompatible predicates or poises are held together in the being of Brahman. Can the intellect indicate or make intelligible how things are held together in the Supreme or throw any light on the intrinsic possibility of the union of modes of perfection in God? Here we come to the boundary of reason beyond which it cannot penetrate. We saw that because of the qualitative distance between the Infinite and the purely finite we have to acknowledge that the modes of divine existence and nature must remain incomprehensible to the intellect. This is true equally of the mode of union of attributes in the divine Substance. At this stage Logic, without abdicating, opens the door to Mystery, not the Christian-type sheer Mystery which has to be accepted on faith alone, but a Mystery continuous with logic though transcending it, and erected on the pedestal of reason. It is a Mystery not thrust upon the intellect but one that is affirmed by the intellect itself, reflecting autonomously on the nature of the Supreme Being. In short we have here Mystery within the heart of logic. Let me make this point in a more analytic and less mysterious way. The different poises of the Infinite are unified in its being in a way that is utterly unique and therefore totally incomprehensible to the intellect. But this is something that the intellect itself can understand and endorse. The Mystery is a consequence of a unique characteristic of the Infinite, so unique that it defines its very status and which it, therefore, does not share with any finite existence. This characteristic is postulated by reason and is not received by us through a takeit-or-leave-it supernatural revelation. I am referring here to the fact--and this is recognized by Christian thinkers as well--that God's being is simple and indivisible. `Simplicity' is itself a rather complex notion, but I shall try to simplify it insofar as it affects the question under discussion. The Infinite is simple or indivisible in the sense that its being is totally integrated such that it could never be true to say of the Infinite that it is partly something and partly something else. If such a move were possible there would be no `mystery' and no serious problem of reconciling incompatible predicates. This can always be done by making a distinction within the being of the subject to which the predicates are applied. One could then say that in one aspect the Infinite is personal and, in another aspect, impersonal; dynamic in one aspect and static in another, and so on. Such a differentiation of aspects within a common subject is possible only in the case of a finite, temporal being, since, being finite, he can shift the center or stress of his consciousness from one part of his being to another, while the rest of his being remains subconscient and unattended to. The Infinite is eternal and hence not concentrated sometimes in one part of itself and sometimes in another, but is always and simultaneously `all-there'. It is fullness of being and fullness of consciousness and therefore whatever it is it is indivisibly. No distinctions need or can be made in the Infinite subject to accommodate predicates like personal and impersonal. We may here reverse the Berkeleyian maxim, to be is to be perceived, and say that in the case of the Infinite, to perceive is to be. What is eternally in the consciousness of the Infinite, that the Infinite is. The contrast of subject and object disappears and since knowledge here is what Sri Aurobindo calls "knowledge by identity" the knower (jn+ -ata) and the known (jn+ eya) become indistinguishably one. The Supreme does not know; it is Knowledge (Jn+ -ana). In all this we are speaking on the authority of reason and not faithfully echoing the voice of revelation. Logic and Mystery divide between themselves the `that' and the `how' of the divine perfection. Though we must remain con-tent to recognize that the `how' or the actual mode of union of the diverse elements in the divine being is incomprehensible to the intellect, we may perhaps get a distinct and oblique hint

of it when we reflect on an analogous situation that obtains in the sphere of the purely finite. Such a situation arises when we make assertions about the world which are not empirical but categorical. Thus we may have two views concerning the way in which the world of our experience is to be described or interpreted. On one view the world consists of a series of events and there are no permanent or even semi-permanent substances (the Process view). The second view holds that the world consists of things undergoing changes and that events are precisely these changes that take place in substances (the Substance view). The next question would be, which of these two incompatible views is true? My answer is that both these views are true and that they do not contradict each other. This is because the two views, though distinct, are not mutually related with reference to the question of determining their truth-values. They cannot be brought into a common logical framework in which they can be compared with respect of truth or falsity. The reason for this is that each view contains and absorbs the other. In terms of what is empirically verifiable neither view denies anything that the other asserts; or to state this more positively, each accommodates in its perspective all the claims made by the other that can be empirically tested. Hence the two views cannot be coordinated or placed side by side. It would, therefore, not be correct to say that one is true and the other false. They are both true, alternatively, depending on which view we start with. But whichever view we start with the other view is al-ready taken up in it and therefore cannot present itself as a separate and rival view. Each contains and is contained in the other. Similarly we may say that there is no real distinction between the many poises of the Infinite and they cannot be coordinated or brought together within a common logical framework where they confront each other in mutual and irreconcilable opposition. We may bring this discussion to a close with a quotation from F.H. Bradley who holds that his Absolute is `somehow' a non-relational unity. We have shown that reason itself points to Mystery and have given an example of an analogous mystery within finite experience. Hence we may conclude in the words of Bradley, "What must be and what in a particular case is shown to be, that certainly is." Finally, we must raise the question, what, according to Hinduism, is the purpose or explanation of the self-manifestation of Brahman as the seemingly imperfect order of evolutionary Nature? In traditional Hinduism only two answers are given. They are m-ay-av-ada--the whole phenomenal order is a vast illusion--and lilavada, the view that the Lord creates the universe without any purpose, as pure sport (lila). I have already shown the logical incoherence of m-ay-av-ada. Lil-avada is true in the limited sense that the Lord, being perfect, can have no unfulfilled purpose which he needs to accomplish through the process of creation. This in itself does not lead to a denial of teleology within the universe. Just as time is not at the origin of creation and yet the created order is temporally structured, so also, though an unfulfilled purpose cannot initiate the selfmanifestation of the Divine, a purposive, evolutionary movement towards a divine fulfillment in time may well be the secret and final aim of the Divine's selfmanifestation. Lila does not contradict telos and may well contain it within itself. Indeed, without an immanent purpose the Divine `sport' would, in view of the intense and universal suffering which is so strikingly a feature of it, become, in the words of Sri Aurobindo, "a cruel and revolting paradox." It is in the integral vision of Sri Aurobindo that one finds the full significance of the immanence of the Divine in, and the secret of, cosmic existence. We can here give only a very brief glimpse into his solution of the riddle of human existence. Sri Aurobindo sees the divine manifestation in an evolutionary perspective whose goal is, in part, the transformation of human nature as such, for which mok.sa or union with the Divine is only a first decisive step, leading eventually to the perfection of human society on earth. Man is not the last term of the evolutionary series. The mental being (manomayapuru.sa) will be replaced or himself evolve into the gnostic being (vijn+ -anamayapuru.sa), thus opening the way for a divine life here on earth in a divine body. Sri Aurobindo calls this the

"supramental transformation" which will "carry with it a lifting of mind, life and body out of themselves into a greater way of being in which yet their own ways and powers would not be suppressed or abolished, but perfected and fulfilled by the self-exceeding." "The Supramental," says Sri Aurobindo, "is a truth and its advent is in the very nature of things inevitable. . . . I believe the descent of this Truth opening the way to a development of divine consciousness here (on earth) to be the final sense of the earth evolution." NOTES 1. International Philosophical Quarterly, June 1972. 2. Although it is true that S+amkara does characterize Brahman as saccid-ananda, it is doubtful if, logically, he is entitled to do so since for him Brahman is featureless, nirguna, and beyond all descriptions. See below. 3. St. Thomas holds the curious view that one can assert without any conceptual incoherence that God created a world that is eternal. But in what sense could God have created it? Clearly the being of an eternal world would not be dependent on God. At best one could say that the continued existence of the world depends on God but not its original existence. Even this partial dependence would not be intelligible unless God is thought of as a temporal agent, which he is not according to St. Thomas. COMMENT On J.N. Chubb, "The Hindu Metaphysical Tradition on The Meaning of the Absolute" MARGARET CHATTERJEE It might be both disconcerting and necessary to begin by saying that the concept of the Absolute is absent in the majority of the schools of Indian philosophy. The thought of the sub-continent does, however, include three forms of absolutismspiritualistic or that which derives from the Upanishads, theistic, and nihilistic. Hindu thought shows an interesting pendulum, from an elaborate cosmogony in Vedic times to Upanishadic absolutism, then to various forms of theism, on to reformist types of monotheism in the nineteenth century. All these diversities show that Indian thinkers were always interested in the destiny of man, the metaphysical foundation of human freedom, detachment rather than attachment. Three other things must also be stressed: (1) that it was believed that liberation could be attained by a diversity of paths; (2) that the special experiences of special people were as relevant as logical arguments to the discovery of the supreme Being; and (3) that intellectual exercises must be backed up by yogic practices. The types of locutions used in elucidatory discourse about the Supreme being in the Hindu tradition are threefold: (1) the neti neti path or via negativa (2) metaphorical language (3) paradox. Professor Chubb's paper, I suggest, unwittingly faces us with the question whether there is a difference between the metaphysical and religious import of absolutism. Hindu thought sees no difficulty in conflating the two. In the thinking which stems from Greek cum Judeo-Christian origins it has been stressed time and time again that the philosopher's concept of the absolute can by no means provide a focus for religious consciousness. The Advaitin, however, adheres not merely to a particular form of philosophic absolutism, but this constitutes for him a form of "religious belief". However, Professor Chubb regards Advaita as being wanting in some way, otherwise he would not project Sri Aurobindo's philosophy as going beyond Advaita in a desirable manner. He claims both that Aurobindo belongs to the Hindu tradition and that in his philosophy he raises "the spirit of Hinduism to full and liberated consciousness of itself". He thus sees Aurobindo as a kind of apex or terminal point. This is also referred to by him as a spiritual quest described as a quest for unity. But there seem to be two quests for unity mentioned by him. There is the "problem of discovering the underlying unity of Hinduism"--he significantly speaks of `unity' and 'universality' interchangeably. There is also--again according to Chubb--the unity which the Hindu is alleged to be seeking: his search for the

Truth, for wholeness. The truth is said to burst forth, be it noted, not in a system, but in an "integral vision and experience" of a particular person. Regarding these two senses of unity, Chubb's language at times resembles that of thinkers like Bhagwan Das and Radhakrishnan who maintained a universalistic thesis about san-atan dharma-- the inspiration of which was a pre-independence nationalist impulse. One of India's most original theologians, P. D. Devanandam, on the other hand, has spoken of Hinduism as a `family of religions'. If we take this line we are under no obligation to produce an essence, a reified something as the alleged unity underlying the members of the family. We need not even invoke family resemblance in the style of one of the twentieth century prophets. I would myself hold the view that the unity of Hinduism (including under this the specific cultural factor of religion) is found at the level of practice--rituals, pilgrimages, institutions etc.--and not in philosophical content. As to the second sense of unity to which Chubb refers, the alleged quest of unity, we need not adhere to this stereotype any more than we need adhere to the stereotype of `otherness' which it is customary to associate with the so-called religions of transcendence but which has been criticized so ably especially by Rabbi Abram Heschl, among scholars in recent times. Chubb is sympathetic to the Advaita form of Vedanta and speaks of this as pantheistic. Although the point is somewhat a verbal one, and a matter of definition, it seems difficult to maintain the pantheistic thesis if we say, as he does, that according to Advaita there is (I quote) "qualitative distance between the purely finite and the Infinite". More tenable is his point about ineffability. It is notoriously paradoxical to speak of the ineffability of Brahman and yet maintain the possibility of aparoksa jnana, to speak of what is anirbacaniya or unspeakable as Sat-cit-ananda. Now what Chubb suggests is this. Here we find not a collision of logic with experience or that experience takes us beyond logic (and these are two of the possible answers offered by others) but we have he says, and I quote, "a Mystery continuous with logic though transcending it, and erected on the pedestal of reason". No doubt here we are certainly aware of the inadequacy of concepts. But how can mystery be continuous with logic? What Chubb has in mind, I think, is the notion of a transformed sort of consciousness as advocated by Aurobindo, which would be able to do precisely that - take one, so to say, where reason left off. We need to know now why Chubb should regard Aurobindo as in some way or other 'fulfilling' the Hindu tradition. His main merit, in Chubb's view, is in accepting Advaita minus the theory of mayavada. The Gita, he says, brings out the nature of divine transcendence, a kind of transcendence, I would be inclined to say, not too different from the early conception of Yahweh in Judaic thought. But the full significance of divine immanence in his view is brought out in the divine descending movement - a redemptive process - proclaimed by Aurobindo. Chubb raises the question of God's attributes, saying that these are such as are "compatible with divine perfection". This way of putting it is more in line with Leibniz's phrase "the compossibility of positive predicates" than with anything in the Hindu tradition. Aurobindo's absolutism is open-ended, the openness stemming from human possibilities (something quite compatible with a loose form of karma theory) and the possibilities of divine initiative. It is also clearly a form of absolutism, which looks upon the destiny of man with hope, which thinks in terms of an evolutionary perspective which would transform human nature and therefore human society. Aurobindo's goal was no less than the divinization of man upon earth - a plurality of individual ascents with the pilgrims all returning to illumine the cave - that is to say a model with many levels and movement both upwards and downwards. Let me fasten on six points. (1) The first is a warning about regarding Advaita Vedanta as the crown and summit of the Hindu tradition. The way in which Aurobindo himself draws on many diverse strands of religious thought in the sub-continent is good evidence of the diversity within Hinduism. From Tantra he derives the concept of shakti which he

puts in place of cit. The idea of centres of consciousness is also a Tantric idea. From the Mahayana Buddhist concept of Bodhissatvahood he derives the motion of redeeming humanity. From Sankhya he adopts the idea of an evolutionary process directed towards the liberation of man. From popular religion in Bengal he takes the idea of the Divine Mother. The Hindu tradition encompasses all these and more. This encompassing is expressed by Aurobindo himself in his use of the word `integral'. Aurobindo departs from the Advaitic tradition in more ways than he conforms to it. There is no time to spell this out now, but one of the key points which illustrates my contention is his treatment of the gap between sacchidananda and the phenomenal world. He sees this not so much as a metaphysical divide but as a challenge. The param-arthika and the vyavah-arika are to be brought closer together by the s-adhak who, in the words of another tradition, returns to the cave. If we are to fasten on to the most provocative contribution of Advaita to our theme it will be no doubt the concept of nirgun Brahman, the idea that attribute language will always be inappropriate with reference to what is ultimate. The inexhaustibility of the divine is to be experienced and not fitted into the straight-jacket of our human intellectual categories. But here of course we run into the risk of pitching the experience in so high a key, to use a musical metaphor, that not only is it beyond reach, but the very use of the word `experience' loses its justification. (2) The second issue concerns evolution. Aurobindo understood evolution not in terms of becoming more and more saintly or more and more intelligent but in terms of becoming more and more conscious. What is interesting here is that mind is not regarded as the terminal point. Beyond mind is spirit. The cultivation of inwardness--something which is the mark of the advance toward spirit--enables man to act as the spearhead of the cosmic evolutionary process. Supra-mental rationality is the top rung of a Jacob's ladder which cannot be thrown away. In terms of the Hindu tradition we have also to note another departure on the part of Aurobindo. The new order will arise not from the destruction of the old, from the ashes of great conflagration, from pral-aya, but from a process of transmutation. Upanishadic tradition had spoken in terms of realizing what one is. Aurobindo states emphatically in Life Divine, "It is in his human nature, in all human nature to exceed itself by conscious evolution, to climb beyond what he is." (3) The third issue concerns transcendence/immanence. To my mind what Aurobindo brings into the Hindu tradition is a conception of man as a self-transcending being. Built into the very fabric of things are possibilities between which men can choose, as if there were a divine conspiracy involving man, so that the world could be made nearer to the heart's desire. Man himself is understood as a tool of the immanent power at work in the universe - a power risen to self-conscious awareness. This highlights a new dimension of the transcendence/immanence issue-the dimension that concerns, not the question of cosmic origin and dependence, but the role and destiny of man. (4) The fourth issue concerns lila as a principle apparently vastly different from that of telos. Both lila and telos are anthropomorphic ideas. Each, however, has different resonances. In Aurobindo's thinking, as in the thinking of the shakta, divine creativity is understood not in terms of antecedent will but as an outpouring of dynamism. Even the word `emanation' does not put us on the right track. The divine cosmic dance of Shiva is the most potent symbol of this energy in Indian art. The image symbolizes both energy and delight. While Aurobindo had hailed in Heraclitus a fellow-devotee of divine energy he had found the element of ananda, of joy, lacking in Heraclitus. Lila then should be understood as an outpouring of creativity, not as an arbitrary activity which is antithetical to eschatology. It is significant that Aurobindo abandoned the cyclical analysis of change given by the ancient Hindus, making room not for a linear view of change so much as a spiral where joy and sorrow each have their place. The crossfertilization between Heraclitus and the Hindu tradition in Aurobindo produces strange results. For example, Aurobindo speaks of the soul as a spark which is not merged in the fire. His conception of the destiny of man is certainly not one of

`merging', but of an order of consciousness where individuality is retained, something consonant with the splendid image used by Professor Findlay at the close of his paper. (5) A fifth and tough metaphysical problem centres on the place of contradictions. Shankara deals with this by resorting to level language with movement in one direction so to say, the higher cancelling out the lower. It must be stressed that, in facing the problem of contradiction, Hindu thought resorts neither to sublation nor to antinomies of choice. Aurobindo seems to resort to two ways: in terms of philosophical discourse he resorts to poetic language and in terms of religious experience to the inner realization of the s-adhak. The Hindu religious tradition accommodates surd elements into a view of life conceived of as made up of various states. Tantric thought encourages a deliberate espousal of the grotesque, the unclean, etc. All this of course is not to come to terms with logical contradiction. Hindu religious thought tends less to analogical reasoning than to parable and poetry. The fragmentary view of truth provides sanction for saying not only that each man is partly wrong but that each is partly right. This is the metaphysical basis of nonviolence and perhaps prevents whatever absolutist elements there may be in the Hindu tradition from being tied up with statism. If the verdict of logic and the s-adhak's experience diverge from each other, the Hindu religious tradition favours the latter rather than the former. It would be generally expected that intellectual exercises cannot take one far once human ignorance, the Hindu counterpart of finitude, is admitted. (6) Sixth, and finally, I would like to mention some of my own reservations about the concept of `realization' which provides perhaps the biggest stumbling-block in Hindu religious thought--a stumbling-block especially if one is used to thinking of the Supreme being in terms of "sum qui sum": the mah-av-akya of the book of Exodus. There must always be a major divide between those who speak in terms of the quest of a supreme religious experience and those who speak in terms of the quest of a supreme Being. One might wonder if there is such a thing as a paradox of realization pertaining to the former. Have not yogic practices perhaps been aimed at providing some sort of safeguard against this? My other reservation is whether the concept of realization can admit of progress in spiritual life. Can there be a further growth in identity? Aurobindo is able to think in terms of spiritual growth precisely because he avoids the language of merging and draws on the Vaishnava tradition in no small measure. These considerations take us beyond metaphysics. But we have already seen that there is no hard and fast line between metaphysics and religion in some of the thought- systems of Indian origin and in such systems one is adrift in a flooded monsoon territory where it may not be easy to find our bearings. Delhi University Delhi, India CHAPTER VI METAPHYSICAL TRADITIONS AND THE MEANING OF THE ABSOLUTE: THE LOCUS OF THE DIVINE IN CHINESE THOUGHT ELLEN M. CHEN INTRODUCTION: What, according to the Chinese, is the divine, where is it located, and how does man partake of it? In Western philosophy such questions are treated in metaphysics. But the term metaphysics1 presents itself as a problem when we apply it to the Chinese terrain. For the Western man knowledge and consciousness are identified with the divine. Plato's divided line (Republic, 509-511) shows that the realm of science, taking mathematics as the paradigmatic science, is already removed from the physical realm, being intermediary between the natural world of change and the divine world of changeless forms.2 In the Western tradition down to the seventeenth century, metaphysics or natural theology meant the study of subject matter beyond and transcending the physical realm.3 But the Chinese had a very different notion of what was divine and where the

divine was located. In Chinese metaphysics, there was no negation or transcendence of the physical realm as such; the divine was always conceived as in nature or nature itself. In the Western tradition influenced by the Greeks the divine was beyond nature, to be identified with thought or intellect. The Chinese had always identified the divine with life or creativity; it was no other than tzu-jan, the self-creative power of nature itself.4 This difference in the understanding of the divine is crucial in grasping the cultural and spiritual dimensions of the Chinese. Metaphysics, as the science of the divine, is man's search for the highest values and his effort to embody these in his person and activities. Hence, a different understanding of what constitutes the divine and where it is located results in very different manifestations of realizing the divine in human life. The main purpose of this paper is to show that major religious philosophies in the Chinese tradition--philosophical Taoism, Confucianism, religious Taoism, and sinicized Buddhism--all share in this affirmation and devotion to the physical realm as divine.5 PHILOSOPHICAL TAOISM: The Divine as Cosmic Creativity, Immortality Through Universal Change In the allegory of the cave (Republic, 514-520) Plato portrays man as pitifully oblivious of his existential plight. Only through an arduous process of ascent could he manage to leave the dark imprisoning cave, emerge into the light of the day, become acquainted with clear and distinct objects in the real realm, and finally recognize the sun as the Father, generator of life and intelligence of all beings. Whether Plato propounded a two-world theory is a matter of debate.6 At least most scholars agree that ontologically, the divine is not to be identified with the physical realm of our sense experience. Things in this world participate in the separate divine exemplars which are never fully embodied in this world of generation and corruption. The physical world into which mortals are born and in which they conduct their lives is not the locus of the divine. To rise up to the divine we must ready our mind's eye for a greater influx of light and vision. In contrast, for the Chinese, the union with Tao is through a process of descent. The Chuang Tzu (6:14) speaks of dropping one's body and limbs, repudiating intelligence, departing from one's physical form and getting rid of consciousness. The divine is Hun-tun, the faceless one; and Hun-tun dies when it is opened to consciousness (7:7); Complete Works, p. 97. The myth of four stages of consciousness in the Chuang Tzu (2:15); Complete Works, p. 41, serves best to illustrate the Taoist approach to the divine. The best and most blessed state is when consciousness is yet unconscious of itself; this is the undifferentiated continuum, a unity-without-multiplicity. The second is when things come to be, yet interpenetrate; there is consciousness of the existence of things, yet there is no consciousness of the lines of demarcation among them--this is the state of multiplicity-in-unity. The third is when consciousness of the boundaries of things appears. Thus names7 standing for different entities come to be. However, because there is yet no consciousness of the distinction between good and evil, the world is still without internal strife--this is the state of multiplicity-and-unity. The last state arrives with the awareness of the distinction between good and evil. At this point strife enters the world, thus the unity of the world is irretrievably lost--this is the state of multiplicitywithout-unity. From this myth it is clear that in Taoism consciousness is not the pathway to the divine. Hun-tun,8 the unconscious state, is the divine state, while consciousness as a movement away from the divine is the cause of alienation, strife, and death. Thus Taoism also presents a two-world theory: the divine world of original nature and the superstructure created by human intelligence. Man's return from the conscious human realm to the sacred natural realm is through a relaxing of consciousness, it is a return from the dazzling light of the sun to the soothing dimness of the moon. In Plato, forms are bits of immutable and immortal beings by virtue of their

perfection and self-identity. The immortality of anything consists in either being an imperishable self-identical form or having the capacity to be assimilated to such a form. While the body with its senses grasps only perishable objects and thus is perishable, the intellect is capable of apprehending immutable forms.9 Man's hope for immortality, therefore, rests with his mind. This is through identifying first man with his soul, then his soul with his mind--taking thinking to be the most excellent activity of the soul--and finally, his mind with the imperishable forms. The conviction is that mind, which has no nature of its own, derives its nature from the object of its knowledge,10 for the knower becomes what is known. Man's anchorage onto the unchanging, self-identical, immutable forms through his mind guarantees the immortality and permanence of his soul. In Taoist metaphysics, change alone is immortal. Change means renewal which guarantees continued life and perpetual youth; immortality belongs to what can change continuously without ever exhausting itself.11 Within this perspective the individual who identifies his life with his own fixed and limited form which circumscribes its change is destined to perish. Immortality consists in shedding one's form, individual or specific, in repudiating the intellect and breaking the shell of individuality which rigidly determines and separates the self from others,12 in sinking down and expanding the self so that it eventually becomes merged with the universal life force--this matrix which gives rise to all forms and individuals is alone immortal. The Taoist sage is not an independent form capable of subsisting by itself. His umbilical cord with the All unsevered he "values drawing nourishment from the Mother."13 The Taoist yogi situates himself at the meeting point of the conscious and the unconscious. His dying is at the same time a resurrection; one moment he is emerging into the being and determination of individual existence, another moment he reverses to the non-being of universal becoming.14 In such a metaphysics, forms as specific and individual determinations are passing expressions of the universal process of becoming. Immortality consists not in holding on to these passing expressions, but in becoming one with the all transforming life force itself. Death happens to him who has reached an awareness of the self cut off from the totality.15 He who can render his life fluid, who can be indifferent to this form or that, who can assume any form any time, passing from one form to another with ease, is capable of long life.16 The Taoist does not hold on to his self-identity, but rejoices in becoming the butterfly, bird, fish, indeed all forms of life.17 The philosophical Taoist concept of immortality is clearly modeled upon the natural world itself. The natural world, devoid of consciousness of self, assumes endless transformations, and thus is long lasting. The Tao Te Ching says: "Heaven and earth are long lasting. . . . Because they do not live for self, therefore they live long." (Chap. 7) In Aristotle, divine immortal substances do not have their seat in the sublunary realm18--which explains the lowly position assigned to the physical realm in Aristotle's metaphysics. In Taoist metaphysics, Tao as the principle of change underlying all is the life pulse of the physical world itself, thus the affirmation of the physical world as divine in Taoist metaphysics. CONFUCIANISM: The Divine as Creator of Life, Immortality Through the Species Life In Confucianism the divine is life and what is creative of life: the I-ching speaks of I as a power that `gives and furthers life without end.'19 The main difference between the Taoist and the Confucian is this: the Taoist abandons himself to the divine as cosmic life, thus he returns to and blends with the natura naturans; the Confucian steps forward to take upon himself the burden of caring for the world of ten thousand beings, thus he devotes himself to the wellbeing of the natura naturata. In the Teachings of Confucius and Mencius, we witness thought emerging from life, the conscious issuing forth from the unconscious, and man stepping forward from nature.20 But what happened in Greek philosophy--where intelligence, once emerged from the matrix of life, claimed its independence from life--never happened in China. Confucius did not exalt reason over life. What was aimed at was the mean in

perfection. Confucius said: I know why the Way does not shine.21 The intelligent goes beyond it, The stupid falls short of it. I know why the Way does not operate.21 The capable goes beyond it, The incompetent falls short of it.22 That the intelligent and capable can go beyond, and thus eclipse the light of the Way and render it inoperative, shows that for Confucius the Way is still the Way of nature. We have seen that Taoism regards intelligence as the unholy element, a useless outgrowth of nature.23 The Taoist perfect man is in the state of Hun-tun, transcending knowledge and virtue. In Confucianism, if nature is holy, man is also holy--his intelligence and moral insights are genuine endowments from Heaven.24 In their right measure human thinking and action should not break the boundary of nature; for man to go beyond nature would be as undesirable as if he were to remain in complete ignorance. The goal is the harmony and balance between man and nature, between thought and life. Thought plays its proper role in Confucianism, but it is not for its own sake; it must always bend back to be in the service of life. In Aristotle thought as divine is its own end: "The excellence of the reason (nous) is a thing apart."25 In the Aristotelian system theoretical sciences take precedence over practical and productive sciences, and contemplation is higher than action.26 The Confucian vision of the divine, however, does not transcend the practical realm: "Tao is not removed from man, he who in perusing Tao becomes removed from man cannot be said to be in pursuit of Tao."27 For Confucius words are meant to produce deeds and studies are undertaken only after one's moral duties have been discharged. Learning (hsu¦ eh) always means learning how to be a human being, it is never pure intellectual pursuit, but the practical wisdom of how to live a virtuous life. In Confucianism there is a real unity and continuity between Heaven, earth and man. To a Confucian the entire universe is one holy family, with Heaven and Earth as the great Father and Mother generating all beings in between. Since I am given life and provided with life's sustenance, my response to my existence is one of gratitude to Heaven and Earth, and a deep sense of fellowship and devotion to all beings in the world. This means that ethics is the most holy concern in man's spiritual union with the divine. The whole conception of Confucian ethics is built upon an affirmation of the goodness and holiness of life, nature and natural inclinations.28 This is opposed to Kantian and certain strains in Christian ethics according to which virtue, as the autonomy of the moral will, is at war with the inclinations of nature. In Confucian ethics good and evil are understood to be what furthers or destroys life on earth.29 A good ruler imitates heaven and earth by acting as father and mother to his people; he has compassion for them, eases their hardships, assists in their planting and harvesting which sustain their lives and livelihood.30 A reckless ruler prevents growth and destroys life on earth, imposes public works or military duties at harvest time.31 Such a ruler loses his `Mandate of Heaven' (t' ien-ming).32 If we reflect on the meaning of ming, the mandate, we immediately see the connection between ming meaning `command' and ming meaning `life.' The power to command is vested in him who holds the power of life and death: the ruler commands by holding the life and death of his subjects in his hands. But in this capacity he is merely imitating the rule of heaven--the Li chi33 says that the ruler is called `Son of Heaven' because he is the representative of Heaven on earth. In Confucianism Heaven as the yang, the ultimate source of life, holds the power of conferring or withdrawing life from any earthly ruler. Only the ruler who obeys and carries out the commands of Heaven is blessed with continued life and power on earth, while he who displeases Heaven shall have his physical and political life cut short.34 The political empire is verily a divine vessel which must be borne by

the ruler with the utmost care and reverence. Only as long as the earthly ruler submits himself to the will of Heaven does he continue to hold the Mandate of Heaven.35 The intrinsic connection between life as divine and virtue as rooted in, and in turn as sustaining nature, determines the Confucian understanding of what is immortal. Since each individual owes his life to his family and society, his immortality is premised on the furtherance of his family and societal life. There is a way of immortality for the public person. The best are those who have established virtue, the next best are those who have established deeds, and still the next best are those who have established words. When these accomplishments last through the ages, they may be called immortal.36 For the superior man (chu¦ n-tzu) as a public person, immortality consists in his contribution to the health, expansion and continued life line of his society. One imitates the bright virtue of Heaven if through public actions and policies one brings about peace, harmony, prosperity and culture to his people, like in the figures of Yao, Shun and the Duke of Chou.37 Or one may secure immortality through deeds by making heroic personal sacrifices in overcoming tribal enemies or natural disasters, as in the case of the Yellow Emperor's defeating Chih-yu, or the great Yu¦ 's curbing the Flood. But if one is denied these opportunities, as in the case of Confucius himself,38 one could still achieve immortality by committing to writing39 those ancient teachings which shall serve as ideal inspiration for future generations. Immortality for the private person consists in furthering the life line of his family. The Confucian sense of personal morality revolves around this central obligation. One's parents, having given one life and love and thus participated in the creative and nurturing act of Heaven and Earth, deserve one's special reverence. In the same way one must also participate in this creative act by giving birth to a male heir who will perform the sacrifices and carry on the family line after one's departure. When Mencius says: "There are three unfilial states, the greatest among them is to die without a (male) heir,"40 he meant that the extension and continuity of the family line on earth is the most sacred duty of a filial son. Such a statement, needless to say, had led to great injustices to women and inflicted mortal sufferings on wives who failed to produce a son. What it showed was the blind Confucian will to live and give life. To a Confucian life flows from Heaven, but the concrete life activities are manifested on earth; thus in a sense everything depends on what happens on earth where the divine drama of life unfolds.41 RELIGIOUS TAOISM: The Pursuit of Physical Immortality Religious Taoists range from those who merely aim at long life to those who fervently affirm their belief in the possibility of physical immortality.42 The fact that religious Taoism enshrines philosophical Taoist texts among its sacred canon43 shows that at least scripture-wise there is continuity from philosophical to religious Taoism. Of course, for those religious Taoists who believed that man's summum bonum consisted in physical immortality, the same texts must be interpreted to suit their religious needs.44 Here we shall not expound the techniques involved in internal and external alchemy,45 but merely try to point out the theoretical presuppositions of the elixir seeker and use as our main text the Pao P'u Tzu. In its insistence on physical immortality in this very life and body as the only acceptable mode of man's participation in the divine, religious Taoism presents a theory unique in the history of religions.46 The desire for long life and immortality have always been the deepest desire of the Chinese. The Tao Te Ching (chap. 59) aspires to "the way of long living and lasting seeing." Yet because it does not see a way to physical immortality as such,47 its ideal is to live as long a life as nature permits. The Chuang Tzu strikes a tragic note in the face of death. Then, rising to the occasion it affirms the marvelous transformations that all things constantly undergo. Intoxicated with this vision of cosmic change, the tragedy of personal death is overcome. The Chuang Tzu not only accepts life and death equally, but it

identifies them forthrightly and laughs at those who observe various regimen in hopes of prolonging life.48 In the thoroughly relativistic universe of the Chuang Tzu, in which one starts a journey today to arrive at one's destiny yesterday and in which to live one second is considered equal to the life-span of Methuselah, even the delaying tactics employed in the Tao Te Ching are abandoned. In Confucianism the divine and creative is identified with Heaven, the yang principle which fertilizes the earth and gives rise to all beings. Confucianism fixes its gaze upon the living universe of ten thousand things. The individual's duty is to further the species life of man, participation in which constitutes his immortality. Religious Taoism also identifies the yang as the divine.49 But, unlike the Confucian, the religious Taoist so affirms his individuality that he wants to keep himself alive indefinitely. In the Mencius (3A:5) we are given the origin of the burial custom as another example that filial piety, as all other virtues, is rooted in the feeling component of man. Because humans could not bear the sight of their parents' bodies being devoured and mawed by foxes and wild cats, they started the custom of interring the dead. Now this unbearable feeling is applied to himself by the religious Taoist when he visualizes himself as dead. He simply abhors the thought of his own death, with or without proper burial. Now deep underneath the Nine Springs, in a long night that never ends--first providing sustenance for ants and worms, ultimately fusing into one body with dust and the earth--the very thought of this makes one burn with restlessness and shiver with anxiety. One cannot help but groan and sigh!50 The religious Taoist identifies himself with the coming out process. Refusing to be re-absorbed into the ground he must look for a way to maintain his body permanently separate from the body of the earth. It is not that he repudiates the physical universe, but this is the very way he affirms its goodness and divinity. If life is good and immortality is the desire of all, then man must find a way to attain immortality. To him the position of philosophical Taoism is inconsistent and untenable. By accepting the inevitability of perishing it negates its own thesis: this physical world can be recognized as good and divine only if the subject-object, ego-world relationship is maintained. Reabsorption of the ego by the world, which abolishes the ego, also abolishes the significance of the world for the ego. The Pao P'u Tzu criticizes the Tao Te Ching and particularly the Chuang Tzu for identifying life and death.51 This only shows the loss of heart on the part of these authors. While the philosophical Taoist accepts fate passively, his religious counterpart, James Ware remarks, "was Confucianist enough to insist upon doing something to achieve personally a share in God's permanency."52 Thus religious Taoism comes to fulfill the desideratum of philosophical Taoism. The true man (chen jen) is not one to accept the fate of other beings. Universal perishing, which swallows up all others, need not apply to him. Although most things in nature are doomed to perish, man can do ordinary nature one better by finding a way to be exempted from the fate awaiting all others.53 Indeed, nature is full of exceptions and man, endowed with intelligence by heaven, is already an exception to other beings. Perhaps taking a hint from the Lieh-Tzu54 which says that to enrich oneself by stealing from nature one can get away with impunity, the religious Taoist sets out to steal the secret of immortality from heaven and earth. For those courageous, persevering, rich and fortunate few who are willing to follow through the regimen, immortality or at least extremely long life can be attained. The religious Taoist's priority is shifted to discovering and appropriating the secrets of the universal creative power for the purpose of nurturing and making immortal his own body. This consists in recognizing that the immortality of the physical universe and the immortality of the physical individual are premised on two different principles. The universe is immortal by virtue of its cyclical movement by which yin, yang and all opposites generate each other, thus life leads to death which in turn leads to new life. In contrast, individual life is associated with yang alone, yin being exactly what leads to death and perishing. Thus in order to maintain himself in

existence, the individual must not hold on to the universal Tao which exacts his death, but to the yang principle within him which alone guarantees his continued life. Already, the Pao P'u Tzu believes, there are in nature substances such as gold and other precious elements which, due to their predominance of yang, can last as long as heaven and earth. Such substances, once extracted from the womb of the earth, are not reabsorbed into the earth. If man can find a way to ingest such substances and make them reconstitute his blood, sinews and organs, he shall so strengthen the yang in him that he will be immune from the encroachment of yin,55 There is no room to explore the interesting question of body-soul relationship in Chinese Taoism and contrast it with Western and Christian views,56 or to discuss the role of moral and spiritual perfection in the make-up of the Taoist immortal.57 We do wish to point out that in his search for freedom and immortality the religious Taoist seeks to transcend the limitations of a corruptible body. Yet it is still an immortality not away from, but within the physical universe. There is transcendence of the social order, with its interminable relationships which weigh down the free spirit. But the immortal who can rise above the earth to roam in any part of the vast universe has no inherent objection to making his abode on earth. In the Orphic-Pythagorean tradition immortality was conceived through identifying man with his soul and then through liberating his soul from entanglements with the body and the physical world. Immortality was based on the soul's renunciation of, and liberation from, the body.58 The religious Taoist, however, identified the seat of his life with his body and believed that only when his body was made strong enough would the spirit it housed not be dispersed and perish for lack of proper dwelling.59 SINITIC BUDDHISM: Immortal Land with All Her Creatures The religious Taoist wants to keep the candle of his life burning without end,60 the Buddhist nirvana is exactly the blowing out of this candle. There is no greater antagonism to the Chinese love for life than Buddhism in its original teaching. Buddhism's overall influence on China has been to produce a negative attitude toward life and the world.61 It also introduced into the Chinese psyche a note of rebellion against the sufferings and evils in life. Though these were experienced by the Chinese, they were neither clearly articulated nor fully confronted within Taoism or Confucianism.62 Yet the Chinese over long years had adopted Buddhism and made it a part of their spiritual heritage. We shall ignore the doctrinal differences of various schools of Buddhism that arose and disappeared in China. Instead, we shall mention those elements in Chinese Buddhism which demonstrate the continuity of our theme. In our view the metaphysics of T'sen-t'ai, Hua-yen and especially Ch'an, carrying on the Chinese vision in the unity and harmony of man and nature, were the result of the intellectual assimilation of Buddhism by the Chinese. Pure land, stressing sincerity, filial piety, love, and salvation for all, may be considered the Confucian branch of Chinese Buddhism; it was the result of the emotional assimilation of Buddhism by the Chinese. The language of Chinese Buddhism remains negative. Yet through a strange kind of logic it turns negation in the service of affirmation. Thus, through a negative language a most positive doctrine emerges.63 Two points can be mentioned. In Christianity man's union with God is understood to be a vertical ascent, moving away from creatures and things to rise up to God.64 In Chinese Buddhism, salvation involves a process of going back to the non-differentiation of man from other beings in nature. If transiency, the root of sorrow and suffering, is the character of all existing beings, living or non-living, sentient, or insentient, rational or irrational--this is the doctrine of dependent origination (pratityasamutpada)--man is in the same situation as all other beings. Thus, if man finds salvation, it is not his salvation away from the rest of nature, but together with all nature. The Mahayana Buddhist discovers Buddhahood in himself through discovering Buddhahood in all things. Instead of lifting himself above nature, love for all is premised on the individual's identity with all in the

Tathagata-garbha.65 The important question for the Mahayana Buddhist is not so much his own salvation as the need to transcend his deluded consciousness.66 Through the doctrine of noego Buddhism enables the believer once for all to comprehend the message of the Buddha, namely, that salvation does not aim at the fulfillment of the self distinct and apart from others--as with the doctrine of substance in Western philosophy--but is mainly an integrative process. There is no such thing as the salvation of the `I' alone, there is only the salvation of the `I' in solidarity with the `all' in the Tathagata-garbha. The buddhisattva must refuse salvation until all is saved, because there can be no entrance of Nirvana for him without the `all,' this `all' which includes all sentient and even all non-sentient beings. But if all must enter and none is to be forsaken, then samsara is nirvana and nirvana is samsara.67 The doctrine of no-ego in Mahayana teaching is the complete antithesis of the doctrine of substance as self-sufficiency and selfidentity in Hinayana and Western philosophy.68 Even the Absolute of the Tathagata is not a substance.69 The Chinese Buddhist does not merely sink down and identify himself with all beings which are marked by transitoriness, he sinks down and identifies himself with this very transitoriness which constitutes Buddhism's definition of evil and suffering. True to the Taoist insight,70 for the Chinese Buddhist the truth and reality of all things is exactly this birth-death, generation-extinction, appearance-disappearance, being-non-being that we find in the world. Salvation does not consist in the separation of one of these correlatives regarded as value from its disvalue, as in Western metaphysics in which the divine is conceived through the severance of form from matter, act from potency, life from death, being from non-being . . . etc. Rather, transcendence is attained by identifying and yielding oneself unconditionally to this dynamic naturalness (tzu-jan)71 which accepts and embraces all opposites, because this dynamic naturalness is no other than the Absolute itself.72 Mahayana, by positing a pantheon of Buddhas and Buddhisattvas and by affirming the efficacy of grace in salvation, is the negation of Hinayana as a doctrine of selfhelp. Ch'an is the negation of Mahayana to the extent that it so affirms the samsaric order and everything in it that the need for salvation is completely overcome. Sooner or later one must realize that there can be no true liberation by running away from anything. Wu (satori) is this very awakening that Buddahood is not anywhere else, but immediately within oneself; thus there is no need to search for anything. Further, if Buddhahood is in everything, everything is as holy and dignified as Buddha himself. This entails that any subordination of one being to another or one value to another is a needless bondage. The Ch'an Buddhist bows to neither the Buddha nor the Patriarch.73 "Kill the Buddha if you happen to meet him."74 On the devotional side, the identity with and compassion for all beings means that the Mahayana Buddhist aims not at transcending physical life as such, but man together with all beings must transcend evil, suffering, and alienation. Thus a new orientation begins. The devotee prays not for the end of rebirth. Instead, he prays that he be reborn in the Pure Land where life without suffering is interminable.75 That Nirvana in Pure Land is conceived as entrance to a special land shows the deep-seated Chinese attachment to the land. That the Pure Land is understood to be situated in the west is even a clearer indication of what the Chinese conceive to be divine and immortal. If the sun represents consciousness, value and distinction, the Western Land as the land of sunset belongs to the unconscious. Salvation in Pure Land means reentrance into the primordial womb wherein all things are yet pure and undefiled.76 In Christianity nature as physical world is always what is yet to be redeemed.77 For the Chinese, nature, land, and sleep78 redeem man from sufferings and evils. The Pure Land of Limitless Life is the answer to the deepest desires of every Chinese. While the Indian is obsessed with ways which will liberate him from

rebirth, while the Western man aspires to immortality in a transcendent realm which is the total opposite of this physical order,79 the Chinese aspires to immortality in a land in which all forms of being, men, animals, even inanimate things, are preserved.80 In retrospect Buddhism through its mahakaruna teaching81 supplied a much needed salvation doctrine to the Chinese mass. Both Confuciansim and Taoism are elitist in character. The insight that Buddha nature is in all things has its precedence in the Confucian notion of jen as the heaven endowed seed of virtue and sagehood in all men which should never go untended for a single moment.82 But in practice Confucius' doctrine of rites and rules of propriety did not extend down to the common people.83 The vision of universal salvation is certainly closer to philosophical Taoism which repudiates the Confucian one-ordered hierarchical universe: we read in the Chuang Tzu that Tao is in all those things that humans consider lowly and valueless.84 Yet the Chuang Tzu repudiates love. Since fishes swimming in the ocean forget themselves as well as all other things, love or compassion is quite unnecessary.85 The religious Taoist is not only an elitist, he is an egotist. Such salvation as he conceives it precludes universal applicability.86 Indeed, while consigning the vast majority of mankind to perishing, his appeal is to exceptions in nature, even exceptions among men. Pure Land is more true to the Chinese aspiration because it is a pure faith. Philosophical and religious Taoisms and Confucianism are strictly speaking faiths seeking understanding which had to look for evidence in the face of lived experiences. But faith, unhampered by such considerations, simply declares the heart's desire. The Pure Land vision is the consummation of the Chinese vision of the divine, which, as it was in the earliest consciousness, reaffirms itself throughout successive stages of religious evolutions in China. Today the Chinese are still inspired by this faith in the goodness of land and life, though under a very different ideology and thus through very different expressions. CONCLUSION: In this paper we have tried to show that for the Chinese the physical universe is the locus of the divine. In China the opposition between the spirit and the flesh is not couched in the imagery of the opposition between man and nature. Rather, because for the Chinese the natural world is the locus of the divine, all major forms of Chinese thought have taken nature to be the ultimate standard. In that regard we may say that Taoism has served to articulate the Chinese aesthetic ideal, art is man's transcendence of self toward the creativity in nature. Confucianism, as the ethical ideal of the Chinese, takes virtue to be rooted in nature, and the highest ethical ideal being the harmony among humans and nature. Buddhism in China transformed itself into a world-affirming religion and, instead of renunciation of life, the Chinese Buddhist prays for unending life. Even the Chinese notion of science in religious Taoism did not go beyond imitating nature by capturing nature's secrets to immortality, and the Chinese theory of law and government is flatly an effort to imitate the effectiveness of nature which governs by non-action. Unlike the Greek mind, the Chinese mind never declares its independence from nature, but bending back it models itself upon nature, always holding nature up as its norm. St. John's University Jamaica, New York NOTES 1. The term `metaphysics' was coined by Andronicus of Rhodes (60 B.C.) who in arranging Aristotle's corpus found a body of treatises without a title. After reading the contents he decided that these treatises pedagogically had to be studied after the study of Aristotle's physical treatises. Thus he called this body of work Ta meta ta physica, hence metaphysics. 2. In Pythagoreanism and Plato, the power for abstract thinking as exemplified in mathematics is a requisite in man's ascent to the divine. This is the origin of the division of sciences into physics, mathematics and metaphysics in Aristotle (Meta. 1026a16-20), although unlike Plato, Aristotle was not keen on mathematics.

This emphasis on the power of abstraction as a liberation from matter colored classical theory of knowledge. The same classification of the hierarchy of the sciences, with obviously less justification, continued into the Middle Ages. See St. Thomas Aquinas, The Division and Methods of the Sciences, trans. A. Maurer (Toronto: The Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1958). 3. Christian Wolff (1679-1754) in his Philosophia sive Ontologia (FrankfurtLeipzig, 1729) divided metaphysics into three special branches: ontology or natural theology, cosmology, and psychology, each with its distinct subject matter. 4. The Tao Te Ching, chap. 25: `Tao fa tzu-jan.' 5. Neo-Confucianism as both an affirmation and negation of the basic Chinese reverence for the physical order occupies a unique place in the development of the Chinese psyche. It deserves a full treatment at a separate time. 6. John N. Findley, Plato: The Written and Unwritten Doctrines, (New York: Humanities Press, 1974); Charles P. Bigger Participation: A Platonic Inquiry, (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1968); Eduard Zeller, Outlines of the History of Greek Philosophy, (New York: The Humanities Press, 1931); and Werner Jaeger, The Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers (Oxford, at the Clarendon Press, 1947). The first two affirm while the last two deny the existence of a two-world theory in Plato. 7. In later developments, with the formal arrival of consciousness, naming was no longer regarded, as in Taoism, the last stage of safety. Instead it was considered the first requisite for the peaceful and orderly organization of the world. In the philosophies of Shen Pu-hai, Confucius, Hsu¦ n tzu and Han Fei, the conviction was that if only names were properly designated and applied, everything would have its rightful place, thus we may be spared the conflicts and strifes of a chaotic world. 8. I have avoided translating Hun-Tun as Chaos. Chaos in Western philosophy understood as the `unordered given,' `an antecedent irrational surd' has a negative content entirely alien to the Taoist term. However, since the publication of two pioneering volumes, David L. Hall's The Uncertain Phoenix: Adventures Toward a Post-Cultural Sensibility (New York: Fordham University Press, 1982) and N.J. Girardot's Myth and Meaning in Early Taoism: The Theme of Chaos (hun-tun) (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), I am ready to drop my reservations. 9. Phaedo, 78-80. 10. Aristotle, De Anima 429a20-28. 11. The I-ching, The Great Appendix, II, chap. 8. See James Legge, trans. The I Ching (New York: Dover Publications, 1963), p. 399. 12. In the Chuang Tzu, these are called `sitting forgetfulness' (6:14), `fasting the mind' (4:2), and `today I have lost myself' (2:1); Watson's translation, pp. 90-91, 57-58, and 36 respectively. 13. The Tao Te Ching, chap. 20. 14. The Chuang Tzu, 2:3; Watson's translation, p. 39-40. 15. According to the Chuang Tzu (1:3), `The ultimate man has no self, the spirit man has no accomplishment and the sage has no name;' Watson's translation, p. 32. 16. The Lieh Tzu, chap. 1. A.C. Graham's translation, The Book of Lieh-tzu, (London: John Murray, 1960), p. 20. 17. The Chuang Tzu 1:1, 2:11; Watson's translation, pp. 29, 49. 18. Aristotle discovers three kinds of non-sensible immortal substances: God, the Unmoved Mover (Meta. XII, 7), the intelligences which move the planetary spheres (Meta. XII, 8) and the human reason which upon death exists apart from the body (Meta. XII, 1070a24-26; De Anima III, 5). 19. The I-ching, The Great Appendix I, chap. 5. Legge's translation, p. 356. 20. Mencius, IIIA:4. 21. See Wing-tsit Chan, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), p. 99, note 14 regarding interchanging this line with the fourth line. 22. The Doctrine of the Mean, chap. 4.

23. The Chuang Tzu, 8:1; Watson's translation, p. 98. 24. Mencius, VI.A:15 & 16. 25. Nicomachean Ethics, 1178a22-23. 26. In every subject matter of study, whether physics, metaphysics, ethics or politics, solitude or self-sufficiency is finally the highest value for Aristotle. See Whitney J. Oates, Aristotle and the Problem of Value (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), p. 316. 27. The Doctrine of the Mean, chap. 13. Max Weber's statement in The Religion of China (New York: The Free Press, 1951), p. 155, that Confucianism had no metaphysical foundation is misleading. Such a statement is based on the biased view that metaphysics, which is man's search for the divine, must be equated with other-worldliness. 28. Mencius, IV.B.12 & 26, VI.A.7. 29. See Mencius, VI.A.8. 30. Analects, I:5. 31. See the Book of Documents, trans. Bernhard Karlgren (Stockholm: Reprinted from the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Bulletin 22, 1950), p. 59. 32. See Analects 2:4; Book of Odes, Ode number 267, 33. See Li Chi, trans. James Legge (New York: University Books, 1967), Vol. 1, p. 107. 34. See Karlgren, p. 26. 35. C.K. Yang remarks that "the Confucians fully endorsed the divine character of political power by supporting the concept of the Mandate of Heaven. Mencius' (ca. 372-288 B.C.) reinterpretation of the concept of Heaven's will in terms of the people's interest and public opinion resulted in a redefinition of the duties of the ruler, but did not offer a secular theory on the origin of power." Religion in Chinese Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), p. 108. See also Herrlee G. Creel, The Origins of Statecraft in China, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1970), vol. 1, pp. 44-45. 36. The Tso Chuan (Tso's Commentary on Spring and Autumn Annals), Duke Hsiang, 24th year. 37. See The Book of Documents, 1:1 `The Canon of Yao'; V:6 `The Metal-Bound Coffer'. See Karlgren, p. 1 ff, 35ff. 38. Unlike the Taoist, the Confucian individual desires name and fame that accrue to the self. See Analects 1:1; The Doctrine of the Mean, chap. 11. 39. For the Chinese, writings and words possess the numinous quality of the holy and the spiritual. Mencius treats speech and spiritual power as belonging to the same category (The Mencius 2A:2). Confucius regards the words of sages to be as awe-inspiring as the Mandate of Heaven (Analects 16:8). 40. Mencius 4A:26. 41. In Confucianism, the honor of the ancestors comes from their living descendants; the dead is promoted or demoted according to how his posterity is doing on earth. Thus rank or achievement in this world is a deadly serious matter. Filial piety prescribes not only paying respects and procuring comforts for parents while they are alive and observing the proper rites when they have departed, it requires that one be an achiever, inasmuch as a man who is a failure is by definition an unfilial son. See The Doctrine of the Mean, chaps. 16, 17, 18. 42. Nathan Sivin in "Chinese Alchemy and the Manipulation of Time" delivered at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, January 25, 1976. (This is a summary of Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China [Cambridge, England: At the University Press, 1954-1974], V, Part 4). "The dominant goal of Chinese alchemy was contemplative, and even ecstatic. . . . The alchemists constructed their intricate art, made the cycles of cosmic process accessible, and undertook to contemplate them because they believed that to encompass the Tao with their minds--or, as they put it, with their hearts and minds (comprised in one word, `hsin')--would make them one with it." 43. See Ch'en Kuo-fu, Tao-tsang yua¦ n-liu k'ao (Peking, 1915, 1963). 44. Ho-shang-kung's commentary on the Tao Te Ching is full of these examples. See

Ho-shang-kung's Commentary on Lao-Tse, trans. Eduard Erkes (Ascona, Switzerland: Artibus Asiae Publishers, 1950), especially chaps. 5 and 6. 45. See Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China (Cambridge, England: At the University Press), Vol. II, pp. 139-164; Vol. V, Part 2; Nathan Sivin, Chinese Alchemy: Preliminary Studies (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968). 46. The origins of philosophical and religious Taoisms will be dealt with elsewhere. From a study of the thought sequence it is clear that historically philosophical Taoism as a distinct school of thought arose as a rebellion against the emergent rationalism in Confucianism. Thus it harked back to a mythical past prior to the emergence of consciousness, reason and morals, when man and nature were not yet separate. Religious Taoism, on the other hand, originated from ancient shamanism. Their vision and some of their practices could have been from time immemorial. But shamanism, as Professor Mircea Eliade pointed out in Shamanism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964), p. 449, already marked man's emergence from, and his effort to control, nature. Thus to the extent that philosophical Taoism's central insight is the seamless unity of man and nature, whereas both Confucianism and religious Taoism entered the stage when man became conscious of his distinct existence in nature, religious Taoism is on the same side as Confucianism. 47. See my paper `Is There A Doctrine of Physical Immortality in the Tao Te Ching?', History of Religions, Vol. 12, No. 3 (February, 1973), 231-249. 48. The Chuang Tzu, 15:1. Watson's translation, pp. 167-68. 49. See Fung Yu-lan, A History of Chinese Philosophy, trans. Derk Bodde (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953), Vol. II, p. 431. 50. The Pao P'u Tzu, 14:3a by James R. Ware, trans. Alchemy, Medicine, and Religion in the China of A.D. 320, (Cambridge, Mass.: The M.I.T. Press, 1966), p. 229. 51. The Pao P'u Tzu, 8:5a; 14:9b. 52. Ware, p. 2. 53. The Pao P'u Tzu, chap. 2. 54. The Lieh-Tzu, chap. 1. Graham's translation, pp. 30-31. 55. Fung Yu-lan, p. 431. 56. Cf. Needham's Science and Civilization in China, Vol. V, Part 2, pp. 71-126, "The drug of deathlessness; macrobiotics and immortality-theory in East and West." 57. In the outer chapters, the Pao P'u Tzu addresses itself to these issues. See also Mircea Eliade, Immortality and Freedom (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958), pp. 284-292. 58. Paul Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967), p. 287ff. 59. The Pao P'u Tzu, 5:1b. Cf. Needham, Science and Civilization in China, Vol. V, Part 2, p. 85ff. 60. `That-which-is' is the palace of `that-which-is-not.' The body, being the abode of the inner spirits, is like a dike. When the dike crumbles, water is no longer retained. It is also like a candle. When the candle is at its end, fire no longer dwells there." The Pao P'u Tzu, 5:1b. 61. See Hu Shih "The Indianization of China" in Independence, Convergence and Borrowing (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1937). To counter Hu Shih's position, Kenneth Ch'en in The Chinese Transformation of Buddhism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973) points out those aspects of Chinese culture that have influenced Buddhism in China. 62. Perhaps due to this very affirmation of nature as good, and human nature as but an extension of physical nature, in China there was never a real head-on confrontation with the problem of evil. In this it differed from classical Western philosophy, which by locating the divine beyond the physical realm, readily identified evil with matter, and Christianity, which by taking the soul as ordered to God and the body as ordered to the soul, distinguished between physical and moral evil, the seat of which was in the soul. In the Neo-Confucianism of Chu Hsi, ch'i, translated by Wing-tsit Chan as `material force', was taken to be the principle of evil. But this position was never consistently worked out.

63. See the Heart Sutra (Prajna-Paramita-Hrdaya), the Diamond Sutra (Diamond Prajna-paramita), and The Awakening of Faith (Mahayana sraddhotpada-sastra). 64. That the Christian mystical universe is a hierarchical one is evident from the titles of treatises by the mystics. Dionysius the Areopagite, who wrote the very influential "On the Celestial Hierarchy" and "On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy," was probably the first one to coin the word hierarchy in Christian theology. Walter Hilton, a fourteenth century English mystic, wrote "The Ladder of Perfection" which reaches from earth to heaven. From St. John of the Cross, the mystic's mystic, we have "The Ascent of Mount Carmel." See William Ralph Inge, Christian Mysticism (New York: Meridian Books, 1948). 65. See The Lion's Roar of Queen Srimala, a Buddhist Scripture on the Tathagatagarbha Theory, trans. Alex & Hideko Wayman (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974). 66. The Awakening of Faith, trans. Yoshito S. Hakeda (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967), pp. 32-33. 67. Nagarjuna (2nd Century A.D.) was the first one to enunciate this doctrine in the Madhyamika-karika, XXV, 19. 68. Cf. Aristotle's description of God in Metaphysics, XII, 7. 69. See D.T. Suzuki, Studies in the Lankavatara Sutra (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., 1930, 1957), p. 136. 70. Walter Liebenthal says: "The Chinese Buddhist were all Taoists whenever they wrote philosophy." Chao Lun, trans. Walter Liebenthal (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2nd edition, 1968), Preface, p. xii. 71. See `The Recorded Conversations of Shen-hui' in Wing-tsit Chan, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, pp. 443-444. 72. Hui-ssu (514-577) of the Tien-t'ai school says: "Owing to the accomplishment of concentration, one knows that the cycle of life and death is the same as Nirvana, and owing to the attainment of insight, one knows that Nirvana is the same as the cycle of life and death" (Ibid., p. 405). This paved the way for Shenhui (670-761) of southern Ch'an to declare that enlightenment "means entering Nirvana without renouncing life and death." (Ibid., p. 441). 73. Original Teachings of Ch'an Buddhism, trans. Chang Chung-yuan (New York: Vintage Books, 1971), p. 120. 74. Chan, p. 447. 75. The three sutras of the Pure Land sect in China and Japan are the Larger Sukhavati (vyuha), the Smaller Sukhavati, and Kuan-Fo-ching. 76. We suggest that the Tathagatagabha performs the same function as Hun-tun in Taoism. 77. In Christianity physical nature as the given has to be purified and exalted to enter the realm of spirit. See a miniature from the 15th-century French Book of Hours, showing Mary with the Holy Trinity, in C.G. Jung, Man and His Symbols (New York: Dell, 1964), p. 226. This picture shows that even when Mary, as nature and body purified, is elevated to Heaven, she still sits demurely alone in a corner, subordinated to the Trinity which occupies the center of the painting. 78. Mencius, 6A:8. 79. Traditional arguments for the immortality of the soul is premised on its rationality. Thus irrational beings are inadmissible to the divine realm. Even the Christian world with its celestial and terrestrial hierarchies, with saints and angels singing praises to God, pales before the richness of the Pure-Land terrain wherein animals and even stones attain immortality, not as means of enjoyment for gods or men, but on their own account. 80. See P'eng Chi-ch'ing, Ching-tu sheng-hsien lu (Records of Saints in Pure Land) (Taipei, 1974). 81. Buddhism teaches that the divine, whether as Buddha, Amitabha or Kuan-yin, is mahakaruna, unbounded love which crushes all barriers. See D.T. Suzuki, The Essentials of Zen Buddhism (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1962), p. 345. 82. Mencius, 6A:8, 11. 83. See Kuan Feng and Lin Yu-shih, "Third Discussion on Confucius," in Chinese

Studies in Philosophy, 2 (1971), 246-263. 84. The Chuang Tzu, 22:6. 85. Ibid., 5:5, 6:3 & 5. 86. Hsiao, T'ien-shih, Ju shih ho ts'an, Tao-chia yang- sheng-hsueh kai-yao (Essentials of the Taoist Way of Nurturing Life, Integrated with Confucian and Buddhist Teachings) (Taipei, 1962), argues that the perfection of an immortal requires intellectual, moral and spiritual perfection. Otherwise what is the value of immortality or in what way is an immortal man better than an immortal ass? Well, in the Pure Land, there are immortal asses. CHINESE GLOSSARY Chen-jen Ch'en Kuo-fu Ch'i Ch'ih-yu Chun-tzu Han Fei Ho-shang-kung Hsin Hsun Tzu Hua-yem Hui-ssu Hun-tun Kuan-fo-ching Hsiao T'ien-shih Pao P'u Tzu P'en Chi-ch'ing Shen-hui Shen Pu-hui Tao fa tzu-jan T'ien-ming T'ien-t'ai Tso-chuan Tzu-jan Wu Yu CHAPTER VII GOD - TO WHAT, IF ANYTHING, DOES THE TERM REFER? AN EASTERN CHRISTIAN PERSPECTIVE METROPOLITAN PAULOS GREGORIOS If I were to treat simply "The Christian View of God," I would have more or less to read out the title, go into a fairly large period of silence, and then conclude with "thank you, friends, for sharing with me the Christian view of God." For in your silence, you would also have expressed the Christian view of God. Please do not imagine that the length of the silent period would have been due to my going into a trance or something of that sort. It simply happens to be the case that silence would be the best way to speak about our ignorance of God, and it takes time to give adequate expression to that ignorance. The ignorance can, however, be of two kinds, one natural, and the other taught. The natural ignorance is not to be regarded as somehow superior to the taught or acquired one. In this particular case, the movement from natural ignorance to taught ignorance (docta ignorantia) is itself a process of growth and selfrealization which makes the acquisition of the knowledge of the unknowability of God itself a creative process of considerable value. But religious leaders do a lot of talking about God, not always knowing what is being talked about. In this paper, I shall treat three questions, mainly: (a) Is God a comprehensible reality? what of God is a legitimate subject for discourse?

(b) To what does the Christian doctrine of the Triune God refer? (c) What is really meant by speaking about God's transcendence and immanence? The perspective from which I write is that of an eastern Christian trained in the west. That may in itself lead to contradictions, which my friends may be able to detect and point out to me. But the basic ideas are from a tradition which Eastern Christians regard as the authentic Christian Tradition. This tradition does not follow the thought of an Augustine, of a Thomas Aquinas, or of a Karl Barth. It was shaped through the centuries, and formulated to a fair extent by the three Cappadocian Fathers--St. Basil of Caesarea, (died ca. 379 A.D.), his younger brother St. Gregory of Nyssa, (died ca. 395 A.D.), and their friend and colleague St. Gregory Nazianzen, (died ca. 390 A.D.). They were Asians from what is today the north-eastern part of Turkey. On the foundation which they formulated subsequent eastern Christian thinkers have built-- among the Byzantines Maximus the Confessor and Gregory Palamas, among the Slavs Khomiakov and Soloviev. The foundation still remains adequate to the needs of this modern age, and what I say here owes much to this eastern heritage. THE COMPREHENSIBILITY OF GOD St. Gregory Nazianzen, in his second Theological Oration, quotes Plato who had said that it is difficult to conceive God, but that to define him in words is an impossibility.1 The Christian Father then goes on playfully to say that this is clever of the philosopher in that he gives you the impression that while Plato himself has been able with difficulty to conceive God, he has no responsibility to tell us what he has conceived since in his view it is impossible to define God in words. The Nazianzen then goes on to say: "But in my opinion it is impossible to express Him, but yet more impossible to conceive Him."2 He continues in the next paragraph: "It is one thing to be persuaded of the existence of a thing, and quite another to know what it is."3 It was Gregory of Nyssa who made this point philosophically clear. The Nazianzen was of the view that it was the feebleness of our equipment, the limited nature of our mind, that causes the incapacity to comprehend. He even hoped that some day we will overcome this incapacity and know God, so that we would know him as we are known.4 His colleague Nyssa went further, and made certain basic clarifications: a) that God is of a different order of being than anything else, and that his incomprehensibility is related, not so much to the limits of our mind, as to God's nature itself; b) that there is a difference between God's ousia or his is-ness, and his energeia or operations in the creation; and c) that the knowledge of God, when it comes, is never strictly intellectual nor simply mystical, but a form of self-knowledge when that self has become more truly the image or created finite manifestation of God. Nyssa agrees that we can have faint and scant apprehension of the nature of God through our reasonings about what God has revealed of Himself, but that this does not amount to any comprehension.5 However, this unknowability is not a unique characteristic of God alone. The creation itself shares this unknowability. For example, can we claim to know, exhaustively, notions like space or time or even the human mind, Gregory asks. We can have notions about them, but we also know that these notions have to keep changing again and again in the light of experience. Nyssa insists on the basic distinction and difference between the Self-existent and the Contingent, or the Uncreated and the Created. The Platonic assumption of the co-eternity of Creator and Creation is explicitly rejected by Nyssa as well as by the other Cappadocians. Basil stated that the universe had a beginning, that this beginning is also the beginning of time, and that time and the world as we now know it will also come to an end.6 Even heaven is not co-existent with God, but was created and therefore has a beginning. Nyssa made the same distinction between "He who is" and "the things that are" (ho ontos on and ta onta). The "one whose being is" is not in the same class with "those that merely exist." In fact Gregory has three classes:

1. the Being who has being by His own nature,7 2. non-being, which has existence only in appearing to be,8 (and in between these two), 3. those things which are capable of moving towards being or non-being.9 The latter two are dependent on the negation of, or derived from, the first, i.e., He who is. The distinction between the Uncreated and the Creation, in Gregory of Nyssa, may be summarized as follows: Uncreated Being 1. Self-derived 2. Self-generating 3. Self-subsistent 4. Not subject to non-being 5. Perfectly good 6. Is what it wills and wills what it is, hence does not move from arche to telos, nor is in process of becom- ing 7. Simple Created Existence Other-derived Other-generated Contingent upon the will of the Creator Capable of moving into being or non-being Capable of good and evil Always has to become what it is, or move into non-being, hence always becoming or perishing. Compound The simplicity of God does not, however, preclude either conceptual distinctions or distinction of persons. One of the conceptual distinctions made classical for Eastern thought by Gregory of Nyssa is the distinction between ousia and energeia. It was not a distinction created by him. Most likely it was created by his adversary, Eunomius of Cyzicus. He used the distinction as a major tool in vanquishing his adversary, the Arian heretic. Eunomius had developed the distinctions among being, operative power, and operated effect, i.e., ousia, energeia, and erga. The distinction had an epistemological function, namely that human reason could deduce the nature of the operative power from an understanding of the operated effect, and from the understanding of the operative power move to the nature of its being. The erga or operated effect can be an object of our understanding, which then becomes the first step to ascend to the second step of understanding of the energeia and then ascend to the third step of understanding the ousia. This is what Gregory refuted. He held that there was no clear road from erga to energeia or from energeia to ousia. The wind is the energeia which creates the ergon of a sand-dune. But if you did not know what the wind was, how can you move from the knowledge of a sand-dune to the knowledge of the wind? Or in today's terms would a photograph and a green leaf constitute sufficient ground to understand the nature of light? Can you understand a human being from his excretions and from a ship which are both his erga? Gregory thus denies the assumption that we can move from the knowledge of Creation to the knowledge of the Creator. He rejects also the principle of analogia entis or analogia fidei. The only analogy he concedes is the analogia metousias, but this does not lead to a knowledge of the ousia of God. The analogia metousias helps only to compare the degree of participation in the energeia of God. The degree of participation is measured by the degree of conformity to the good by the impulsion of the will of each towards the good. The energeia thus does not lead to knowledge of God's being. It is only God's energeia which we can know or apprehend. Words about God can serve a useful purpose in so far as they lead to the worship

of God, or to greater participation in the good.11 But they cannot capture or conceive God nor can they adequately express His being. As Gregory of Nyssa says: After all, God is not words, neither has He his being in sound and speech. God is in Himself as He is ever believed to be, but he is named by those who invoke Him, the name not being the same as what He is (for the nature is ineffable); but He has names given to Him in accordance with what is believed to be His operations in relation to our life.12 To sum up then, words about God are certainly not descriptive but evocative. Their main purpose is not to provide knowledge, but to lead to worship. His names as well as any descriptions we make about Him are our creations, related to our experience of His operations. His ousia or being remains beyond all grasp. For He is not like the things that make up the created order. His being is sui generis and no analogy or reasoning can comprehend it. There is no concept adequate for apprehending the Truth of God. THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY All doctrines are verbal. This applies also to the Doctrine of the Trinity, a doctrine composed, after all, of words. It is a human creation, developed out of the understanding of the energeia of God that reaches out to us. The central energeia that has reached out to us is the person of Christ, Christians believe. The central form in which God's ousia impinges upon us through His energeia is the form of a man who was born in Palestine 2000 years ago. This is the heart of the Christian faith and experience; it is from this that the doctrine of the Trinity takes shape. But this doctrine is much misunderstood, not merely by Muslims and Jews with their more strict monotheism, but also by very many Christians. St. Basil makes it clear that one cannot attribute any kind of number to the Godhead, because Divinity is without quantity and number relates to quantity. In reply to those who slander us as being Tritheists, let it be said that we confess one God, not in number but in nature (ou toi arithmoi, alla tei phusei). For not everything that is called one in number is one in reality nor simple in its nature, but God is universally admitted to be simple and uncompounded. Yet God is therefore not one in number. . . . Number pertains to quantity; now quantity is joined as an attribute to corporeal nature; therefore number is an attribute of corporeal nature.13 Here our logic comes to a standstill. The Cappadocians insist that they are not Tritheists, and yet they do not want to ascribe the number One to God without qualification. A heroic effort is made to explain this problem in the famous Epistle 38 attributed to St. Basil, but which was probably from the pen of his brother, St. Gregory of Nyssa. Yet another vigorous effort is made by St. Gregory in his oration, "On Not Three Gods," to defend himself against the charge of Tritheism. But the result seems to me unsatisfactory. If the Unity of God is in the same genre as the unity of the gold in three gold coins, then we are justified, by the ordinary use of language, to speak of three Gods, as we speak of three coins. But this certainly is not the intention of the Cappadocians. A more mature point of view is expressed by Nyssa in his first book against Eunomius. He had already made a distinction between the operation of God ad extra14 and the mutual immanent relations within the Godhead. There he also makes clear that enumeration is possible only for circumscribed finite realities. The Divine life has no parts or boundary. The names which we give God, including those of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, have "a human sound, but not a human meaning."15 There is nothing by which we can measure the divine and blessed life. It is not in time, but time flows from it. . . . The Supreme and Blessed Life has no time extension accompanying its course, and therefore no span or measure.16 Or again, In whom there is neither form (eidos) nor place, no size, no measure of time, nor anything else of those things which can be comprehended.7 No number, no measure, no duality or non-duality, no monism or non-monism--all our

usual categories have to be folded up and laid away. You must forgive me therefore if I fail to give you a satisfactory metaphysical account of the Three-in-One. I do not have any understanding of the mystery, of that mystery I am sure because of my faith. But I have no concepts, analogies or illustrations by which to explain the Holy Trinity. Three things I derive from that doctrine: that God is love, and that in the divine being there are three persons or centers which respond to each other in freedom and love; that God is a community of freedom and love; that in this freedom and love is also the good, the true being of all that exists.18 The patristic tradition has examined all efforts to explain the Trinity in terms of analogies in creation, and have rejected them as inadequate. Even the Nazianzen who sometimes used the analogy of the human mind and human word to denote the relation between the Father and the Son, had to say: I have very carefully considered this matter in my own mind, and have looked at it from every point of view, in order to find some illustration of this most important subject (the Holy Trinity), but I have been unable to discover anything on earth with which to compare the nature of the Godhead.19 He mentions expressly the course, the fountain and the river, the sun, the ray and the light, and then concludes: Finally then, it seems best to me to let the images and the shadows go, as being deceitful and very far short of the truth. Gregory Nazianzen, as well as Gregory of Nyssa, who had both a fairly high view of the use of philosophy, would both admit that philosophical language is not at all suited for the discourse about God. It is better to be silent, or if you must give utterance, to use the hymns of praise. And the Nazianzen himself has given us many such hymns, for example, this translation by Bossuet: Tout demeure en vous, tout court apres vous; Vous e-tes la fin de toutes choses; Vous e- tes un, vous et- es tout; Vous n'e- tes rien; vous n'e- tes ni un ni tout; Comment vous appellerai-je, O Vous, A qui tout nom peut convenir et le seul qu'on ne peut nommer.20 GOD'S TRANSCENDENCE AND IMMANENCE If God is not a body, then there is already something awkward about speaking about God's transcendence and immanence because these have to do with location, and location for non-spatial entities is inconceivable for us. Whitehead's effort to find a non-spatial or temporal transcendence has not quite yet succeeded. The kingdom that is always in the future denotes only the transcendence of history itself. Those who speak about the future of God as the future of history commit the double iniquity of identifying God with human history in a manner that is not legitimate and of taking human history to be the whole of the universe. On the other hand, those who claim that God's being is independent of the being of the universe, shoulder the heavy burden of explaining the state of that independent being in relation to the universe. The difficulty for me is to understand words like `independent' or `self-sufficient' in relation to God. Sufficiency and dependence are terms that belong to quantity and relation in a created world; to apply these, even in a negative sense, to the Uncreated Being seems difficult. In the first place, as Gregory of Nyssa says, to be infinite is to transcend all boundaries, whether of conception or of time and space. The infinite cannot stop at any boundary and must by necessity transcend all--whether the boundaries be intellectual, quantitative or qualitative. Gregory insists that every finite being must of necessity come to the boundaries of its finitude, whether in concept or being, and the infinite always extends beyond. The definition of the infinite being is not that beyond its boundaries there is nothing, but that beyond every boundary, being is. The transcendence of God is thus not merely conceptual or qualitative or temporal

or spatial. It is in transcending every boundary that the infinity of God is manifested. But let us beware about the false statements: a) that God is beyond the creation, as if God was nonexistent this side of the boundary of creation; or b) that God is "wholly other," so that the creation can exist along-side of God as His "other." Both ideas, to which Professor Boyce Gibson refers in the slender volume of essays edited by Professor John Smith, i.e., the idea of God's self-sufficiency and nondependence, on the one hand, and his "wholly otherness" with occasional sorties into the universe, on the other hand, are in that form unacceptable to the Eastern tradition. Neither an "immobilist" view nor an "interventionist" view of God is acceptable.21 Boyce Gibson completely misunderstands the authentic Christian tradition of creation when he asserts: It is just not possible to say that creating makes no difference to the creator for the something which is there, and formerly was not there, is in relation to Him; He is related where formerly He was unrelated.22 Gibson's mistake is in using the adverb "formerly," for the authentic tradition holds that time has its beginning only from creation, and that there was not, to parody the Arian formula, a "then when the Creation was not," though it has come from non-being into being. Perhaps his bigger mistake is his direct insistence that theology "is committed to getting the analysis straight."23 What presumption! The analysis of God's transcendence and immanence cannot be straightened out in such categories as apply to relations within the creation. Gregory of Nyssa does the trick more dialectically than most modern philosophers. The principles of logic applying to the spatio-temporal creation cannot be applied to the Godhead. There we can only say that from the side of the Universe, we experience both discontinuity with and participation in God. What it would be like from God's side we cannot conceive. God's immanence also is understood by Gregory in a fairly sophisticated way. We can only indicate that understanding in fairly quick short-hand. God's operative energy is the ground of the creation. It begins, it moves, and it reaches its appointed destiny, only by virtue of God's will and word. The creation is God's will and word, and that is the principle of immanence. Existence is always by God's will and word, and when the will-and-word is withdrawn, there is only nonexistence. Thus the authentic Christian tradition does not regard the cosmos as the body of God, or as something outside of God, for outside God there is only non-being. It is in God's will-and-word that the universe has its existence, and it is by will-and-word that God is immanent in Creation. THE CONCEPT AND THE REALITY Reason or ratio is always a proportionality between reality and knowledge. The dualism between reality and knowledge is itself grounded in the other dualism of subject and object, which in turn generates the concepts of the pour-soi and the en-soi, the object-in-consciousness and the object-in-itself. All these dualisms cry out to be overcome. But they will not be overcome by reason or ratio, which is what generates the dualities. The irrationality of reason, exemplified by the classical antinomies of Kant, cannot be overcome by reason. The concept as such belongs to the realm of reason and stands in need of overcoming. It is a kind of puerile naivete that drives logicians and philosophers to capture reality in a net of concepts. We are part of that reality, and no equipment we have is capable of subducting reality from our minds. Let us give up that wild-goose chase. For a thinking person, the word God should not stand for a concept. It is a symbol pointing to many things: a) an affirmation of the contingent, therefore, un-selfsufficient and dependent character of our own existence as well as of the reality in which we participate--the reality we call the universe; b) an affirmation that the cause of all causes is of a different genre than the links in the causal chain;

c) an affirmation that all created things have to move towards a goal which is ultimately good. This is also what the Cappadocian Fathers meant by the term Creator. The Creator, who does not owe his being to someone else, has caused this universe to begin, keeps it going and will lead it to its destined end. The one who does that is personal, i.e., capable of responding in freedom to others. He/ she is also love and wisdom. He/she cannot be captured in concepts. But he/she can be loved and united with. There all duality gives place to the union of love. In fact it is God's freedom which makes him/her beyond the reach of our finite grasp. The human person with a great capacity to understand, has also the great capacity to bring that which he/she understands under his/her control. Every science generates its own technology. If we could comprehend God, we would also devise the technology to control Him and use Him, i.e., to enslave Him. The freedom of practically everything else is such that despite its freedom, it can be subdued by our analytic reason, at least to a certain extent. Even humanity, the highest and most evolved element in creation, we so seek to understand, control and manipulate. Do philosophers expect that God would place him/herself as an object of our comprehension, so that he/she too can be enslaved by us? Ask love for the answer. Dr. Paulos Mar Gregorios Metropolitan of Delhi and the North President, World Council of Churches NOTES 1. The English Translation of Timaeus 28 E, by John Harrington reads: "To discover the maker and father of this universe is indeed a hard task, and having found him it would be impossible to tell every one about him." Timaeus, Everyman's Library, 493 (London, New York, 1965), p. 14. See the Greek text which is itself somewhat different. 2. Second Theological Oration: IV. 3. Idem: V. 4. Idem: XVII. 5. Contra Eunomium II: 130, PG 45:953.B. 6. Hexaemeron I:3. 7. To on, ho tei heautou phusei to einai echei. 8. To me on, ho en toi dokein einai monon estin. 9. See De Vita Moysis, P.G. 44:333, Gregori Nysseni Opera vol. VII:I:40. 10. Contra Eunomium I: 274-275. PG 45:333D, GNO I:106-107. 11. Contra Eunomium II:136. PG 45:956. 12. Ibid. II:149. PG 45:956. 13. Epist VIII: Tr. Roy J. Deferrari, St. Basil, The Letters, Loeb. Classical Library, (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1926), vol. I. p. 52. 14. On Not Three Gods NPNF. Vol. V, p. 334. 15. Contra Eunomium BK I:39 NPNF, p. 93. 16. Contra Eunomium I:26 NPNF, p. 69. 17. C.E. I:26 NPNF, p. 69. 18. My own formulation. 19. Oratio Theologica V: XXXI NPNF. Vol. VII p. 328 A. 20. Cited by J. Plagnieu, S. Gregoire de Nazianze, Theologian, p. 333 note. (Paris: Editions Franciscaines, 1951). 21. A Boyce Gibson, "The Two Ideas of God," in John E. Smith (ed.) Philosophy of Religion (New York: London, 1965), p. 61 ft. 22. Ibid., p. 65. 23. Ibid., p. 67. CHAPTER VIII GOD, PHILOSOPHY AND HALAKHAH IN MAIMONIDES' APPROACH TO JUDAISM DAVID HARTMAN and ELLIOTT YAGOD INTRODUCTION

This paper on the absolute in the Jewish metaphysical tradition does not pretend to do justice to the variety of approaches, both mystic and rationalistic, found in the Jewish tradition. Although Judaism has generally revolved around a common normative tradition, there has never been an officially recognized Jewish theological or philosophical approach to God. One finds, then, parallel movements of diversity of views on theological issues, on the one hand, and attempts at gaining consensus of behaviour regarding the legal patterns of Jewish spirituality, on the other. Leibovitch appeals to this important historical fact in order to deny that theology has significance in Judaism and to argue that law alone constitutes the essence of Judaism.1 While sharing his concern with neutralizing the importance of factual judgments in Judaism, we nevertheless believe that the relationship between empirical and metaphysical assertions, on the one hand, and the Halakhah (Jewish law), on the other, is considerably more complex than the position he expounds. In this paper, we shall attempt to focus on a strand within the Jewish metaphysical tradition, namely that which emerges out of the Maimonidian tradition. To understand why we chose Maimonides, it must be noted that striving for consensus of practice regarding the law was a vital feature of the Jewish tradition. One may even claim that theology entered the Jewish tradition via its influence on practice. Scholem has argued that the esoterric teachings of the mystics were able to capture the minds of the broad community because this theology offered one a symbolic approach to practice. Mystic theology transmuted the meaning of practice and turned halakhic practice into symbolic mystical experience.2 In other words, theology entered into Jewish spirituality only if it could transform, in some way, the nature of practice. It is the law which mediates the theological in the Jewish tradition. Maimonides was a rare figure who was a recognized master in both Halakhah (Jewish law) and philosophy. Maimonides is the great codifier of Jewish law. While his influence on the development of Halakhah was unique and outstanding, he was, also, one of the great teachers of philosophy and metaphysics in the Jewish tradition. His work, The Guide of the Perplexed, influenced the development of Jewish philosophy. There were other serious Jewish philosophers who did not threaten the anti-philosophic strand in the Jewish tradition because they did not command the enormous respect, halakhically speaking, which Maimonides had in the community. Maimonides' great talmudic erudition made him a threat in philosophy. You had to confront Maimonides' philosophic views because you could not ignore his halakhic views. Secondly, what makes Maimonides important in our study is that as an individual he was an archetype of the halakhic mind who embodied the entire scope of the halakhic discipline. No facet of the law was unknown to him. One can not claim that he was not a legalist; yet, on the other hand, he was seriously engaged in philosophy. Pines claims that, in contrast to many other Jewish philosophers, Maimonides' approach to philosophy was not apologetic. There was a genuine openness and commitment to the philosophic tradition. His concern with philosophy was a concern with truth and not simply with demonstrating the merits of the Jewish tradition.3 Professor Efraim Urback in his recent work on rabbinic thought repeatedly emphasizes that in the rabbinic tradition the primary concern was practice.4 In attempting to formulate theological notions or a metaphysics of history, the rabbinic mind always asks the important question, "How does this theory relate to practice, how does it affect practice?' Urbach states that the rabbis were not interested in a coherent metaphysical tradition per se. Their major question was with what view of the universe and God would inspire one to observe the commandments with greater devotion. The emphasis was upon love and fear of God; theoretical speculation was introduced as a way to motivate practice. This view is shared by many rabbinic scholars as well as by students of the biblical tradition. The Jews are anchored to practice. Both the biblical and rabbinic traditions relate man to God, not via a metaphysical philosophic system, but through forms of

practice embodied in the life of the committed person: not the mind, but the will; not thought, but action. This practical tendency in the biblical and the rabbinic traditions led Spinoza to criticize Maimonides' placing philosophy within the biblical tradition.5 Spinoza was critical of Maimonides' claim that the prophet must necessarily be a philosopher. For Spinoza, Moses had a gifted imagination but did not ground his teachings on universally valid principles. The Bible is a book of laws and Spinoza goes so far as to claim that universal morality is beyond the scope of the Bible. The Bible is shot through with legal particularism so that to maintain that one finds in the Bible a philosophic conception of God is to distort both the spirit and the content of the Bible. The major figure of whom Spinoza was most critical was Maimonides, because if Maimonides were right then philosophy and revealed law could merge. If Spinoza were right then the primacy of law in the Jewish tradition would displace any tendency towards metaphysical speculation. The Spinozistic criticism of Maimonides was continued by the contemporary historian of philosophy, Isaac Husik, who claimed that Maimonides was unaware of the enormous gap separating the tradition that emerged from Athens and the tradition that emerged from Jerusalem. The Bible was concerned with morality, the Greeks were concerned with theoretical truth. This polarity between theoretical and practical perfections also influenced Leo Strauss' approach to Maimonides.6 The major critique of Maimonides, then, focuses on his being a master halakhic legalist who maintained that the metaphysical tradition was intrinsically rooted in the Jewish tradition. The task of this paper is to show how Maimonides was able to integrate what appeared to Spinoza, Husik and others to be two incompatible traditions. Let us now examine some of Maimonides' statements which characterize his approach to the relationship of practice and theory in the Jewish tradition. Maimonides, in the Guide, III, 27, states: The law as a whole, aims at two things: the welfare of the soul and the welfare of the body. As for the welfare of the soul, it consists in the multitude's acquiring correct opinions corresponding to their respective capacity. . . . The second thing consists in the acquisition by every human individual of moral qualities that are useful for life in society so that the affairs of the city may be ordered. . . . Know that as between these two aims, one is indubitably greater in nobility, namely, the welfare of the soul--I mean the procuring of correct opinions--while the second aim--I mean the welfare of the body--is prior in nature and time. To Maimonides, the uniqueness of Torah as distinct from other legal systems is that whereas nomos is concerned solely with social well being, Torah is also concerned with knowledge of God, i.e., with imparting correct beliefs.7 The primacy of metaphysics is mentioned not only in The Guide of the Perplexed, but also in his codification of Jewish law, the Mishneh Torah. In "The Laws of the Foundations of the Torah" IV, 13, Maimonides states that the study of the law is "a small thing" and the study of physics and metaphysics is "a great thing": Although these last subjects were called by the sages "a small thing" (when they say "A great thing, Maaseh Mercabah; a small thing, the discussion of Abaye and Rava"), still they should have the precedence. For the knowledge of these things gives primarily composure to the mind. They are the precious boon bestowed by God, to promote social well-being on earth, and enable men to obtain bliss in the life hereafter. Moreover, the knowledge of them is within the reach of all, young and old, men and women; those gifted with great intellectual capacity as well as those whose intelligence is limited. Although the study of metaphysics is primary and of greater value (we shall soon indicate in what sense), nevertheless the study of the law is prior in time because practice of the law leads to social well-being and thus creates the social and political conditions necessary for enabling many people to engage in the study of metaphysics.8 Placing study of metaphysics above study of the law upset the religious sensibilities of many halakhists.9 They were far more perturbed by this

statement in the Mishneh Torah than by The Guide of the Perplexed. Placing the study of philosophy above the study of talmud was perceived as undermining the very primacy of the legal tradition. Yet, this statement was made by the great master of the legal tradition. The primacy of philosophy is mentioned again in the Mishneh Torah at the end of "The Laws of Repentance" as well as in Chapter 2 of "The Laws of the Foundations of the Torah." There the claim is made that only through metaphysical knowledge of God can one arrive at the goal of love of God. Worshipping God out of love is made possible only by philosophy. The law does not create love, it creates social well-being. Metaphysical knowledge of God, i.e., following the path of the study of physics and metaphysics, creates in man the capacity to love God. In the Guide, III, 52, Maimonides repeats the claim which pervades his total philosophic world view: practice creates reverence for God whereas knowledge creates love: For these two ends, namely love and fear, are achieved through two things: love through the opinions taught by the Law, which include the apprehension of His being as He, may He be exalted, is in truth; while fear is achieved by means of all actions prescribed by the Law, as we have explained. The critique of Maimonides for having elevated philosophy to so high a level had two features. First, it appeared to be a distortion of the tradition since the tradition emphasized practice. The tradition's concern with study always had as its goal the study of law. Guttman and Scholem, who relate the contemplative tradition in Maimonides to the talmudic emphasis upon study, are only partially correct since when the talmudic tradition spoke of the importance of study it always had in mind the study of the law.10 It did not refer to metaphysical contemplation of God. Therefore, Maimonides appears to undermine the basic Jewish emphasis on the primacy of practice and on the primacy of the study of the legal tradition. This was typical of medieval critiques of Maimonides. Secondly, Maimonides seems to be indifferent to the centrality of history. Maimonides' attempt at understanding God in ontological terms, as the perfect necessary being and not as the God who freely reveals Himself in events in history, appears to negate the God of the Jewish tradition. The primacy of anevent-based theology, of open-textured events, and of the spontaneity and the radical freedom of God to reveal Himself in events stand in utter contrast to a theology of the God of metaphysics, the absolute, self-sufficient God who draws man to worship Him in virtue of His perfection. It is in great historical events that one finds the living God of the Bible. In Maimonides' thought, history appears to play a very limited role in mediating the religious passion for God. Maimonides, therefore, is alien to the Jewish tradition because his approach a) undercuts the centrality of legal study and b) neutralizes the centrality of events and of history in one's relationship to the absolute.11 We shall cite examples of how Maimonides completely turns around certain obvious currents within the Jewish tradition. 1) In the creation story in Genesis the obvious direction of the story is that of days leading up to the creation of man and of the Sabbath. Man's being created last points to an anthropocentric creation. God's creation of nature is meant to serve His unique creation, i.e., man. In fact, one of the most popular classical commentaries on the Bible quotes a midrash which asks why the Bible began with the account of creation since the Bible is essentially a book of law. The answer given is that the creation story has a didactic point, namely, to teach that since God is the creator of the world, He has the right to give the land to whomever He pleases. Therefore, Israel's justification for the land of Canaan comes from the story of the creation of the world. According to the spirit of this midrash, were it not for a moral-practical justification, the account of creation would appear pointless. Maimonides, however, does not see in the account of the creation of nature (and in reflecting on the God of nature) the centrality of man. He sees rather a theocentric universe in which man is insignificant in comparison with the intelligences and with the richness of the infinite Being, who creates a universe

as a consequence of the overflow of His infinite power and perfection.12 2) The story of the encounter between Moses and God, where Moses asks for the divine name, also reveals Maimonides metaphysical perspective. The midrashic approach to `Ehyeh-Asher Ehyeh' (I will be who I will be) [Exodus III, 14] reflects a God who announces to Moses and to the people that He will be present in their struggle. He is a God who can be relied upon to be responsive in history.15 Buber remarks in his essay, `The Faith of Judaism': Not "I am that I am" as alleged by the metaphysicians --God does not make theological statements--but the answer which his creatures need, and which benefits them: "I shall be there as I there shall be" [Exod. 3:14]. That is: you need not conjure me, for I am here, I am with you; but you cannot conjure me, for I am with you time and again in the form in which I choose to be with you time and again; I myself do not anticipate any of my manifestations; you cannot learn to meet me; you meet me, when you meet me: . . . 14 Buber's approach is similar in spirit to that of the midrash. Maimonides, however, in the Guide, I, 63, writes: Accordingly when God, may He be held sublime and magnified, revealed himself to Moses our Master and ordered him to address a call to people and to convey to them his prophetic mission, [Moses] said: the first thing that they will ask of me is that I should make them acquire true knowledge that there exists a god with reference to the world; after that I shall make the claim that He has sent me. For at that time all the people except a few were not aware of the existence of the deity, and the utmost limits of their speculation did not transcend the sphere, its faculties, and its actions, for they did not separate themselves from things perceived by the senses and had not obtained intellectual perfection. Accordingly God made known to [Moses] the knowledge that he was to convey to them and through which they would acquire a true notion of the existence of God, this knowledge being: I am that I am. This is a name deriving from the verb to be [hayah], which signifies existence, for hayah, indicates the notion: he was. And in Hebrew, there is no difference between your saying: he was, and he existed. The whole secret consists in the repetition in a predicative position of the very word indicative of existence. For the word that [in the phrase "I am that I am"] requires the mention of an attribute immediately connected with it. For it is a deficient word requiring a connection with something else. . . . Accordingly Scripture makes, as it were, a clear statement that the subject is identical with the predicate. This makes it clear that He is existent not through existence. This notion may be summarized and interpreted in the following way: the existent that is the existent, or the necessarily existent. This is what demonstration necessarily leads to: namely, to the view that there is a necessarily existent thing that has never been, or ever will be, non-existent. To the midrash and to Buber, Israel requires the knowledge that God will be present with them in their suffering. To Maimonides the slave people, who are beginning their pilgrimage to become a holy covenant people, must know that the God of being is a necessary existent and that the predicate, I am, is identical with the subject, I am. What a change in spiritual climate! How could Maimonides take a dramatic statement rooted in history, a promise to be ever present--"I shall be there"--to be a statement of the proposition that God is the necessary existent?15 3) In the first commandment, `I am the Lord thy God who brought Thee out of the land of Egypt', where the central focus is the liberating power of God in history, Maimonides' interpretation is that God is a necessary being not dependent on anything other than Himself. Divine self-sufficiency, perfection, and autonomy, are the content of the first commandment. To Maimonides, the first half of the sentence is intelligible without the second half. One can understand the meaning of `I am the Lord they God' independent of the description `who brought thee out of the land of Egypt.' For Yehuda Halevi, as for the Mekhiltah, the liberating experience of the exodus from Egypt and reflection on God's power in history confirm the reality of God for Israel.16

4) What characterizes Jewish prayer is the feeling of divine presence and responsiveness to man's suffering condition. The Halakhah gives expression to this vital element in the structures of the amidah prayer: three blessings of adoration, followed by thirteen petitional requests, concluded by three blessings of thanksgiving. Fundamental to this experience is the feeling that man can pour out his needs to God, that man can bring his needs to a God who is called Our Father, Our King. The God to whom one prays is the God who is with me in my suffering, the God whose shekhinah (indwelling) suffers with Israel during their entire galut (exile). In contrast to the profound intimacy and expressiveness felt by the praying Jew before God, one ought to consider the religious atmosphere and the tone of Maimonides' treatment of negative theology (Guide I, 50-60), where the fundamental point is that there is no comparison between God and man. In these chapters of the Guide one discovers that language is necessarily deficient regarding God. One can never talk about God's essence, one can only talk about God's action. Any statement which aims at asserting anything about God must be transformed into a negative statement. God is existent becomes He is not nonexistent. God is alive becomes God is not dead. God knows becomes God is not ignorant. Statements describing God's compassion, feeling, and mercy are but human projections in no way attributing affect to God: God, may He be exalted, is said to be merciful, just as it is said, "Like as a father is merciful to his children," and it says, "And I will pity them, as a man pitieth his own son." It is not that He, may He be exalted, is affected and has compassion. But an action similar to that which proceeds from a father in respect to his child and that is attached to compassion, pity, and an absolute passion, proceeds from Him, may He be exalted, in reference to His holy ones, not because of a passion or a change. [Guide, I, 54]. The gap between a religious world view coming out of the Bible and the midrash, and Maimonides' world view is obvious in Maimonides' treatment of negative theology, and, above all, in his statement that true prayer consists in silent reflection. Language is a compromise and the ultimate religious ideal is to express adoration not through poetic description of God but through contemplative silence: The most apt phrase concerning this subject is the dictum occurring in the Psalms, "Silence is praise to Thee" [Ps. 65:2], which interpreted signifies: Silence with regard to You is praise. This is a most perfectly put phrase regarding the matter. For of whatever we say intending to magnify and exalt, on the one hand we find that it can have some application to Him, may He be exalted, and on the other we perceive in it some deficiency. Accordingly, silence and limiting oneself to the apprehensions of the intellect are more appropriate--just as the perfect ones have enjoined when they said: "Commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still. Selah" (Ps. 4:5). [Guide, I, 59].17 Maimonides, the great master of the Jewish halakhic tradition, was an honest and coherent thinker. How could he have missed so obvious a difference in emphasis and in outlook between the religious experience of the absolute which comes through in his legal and his philosophic writings and that of the Jewish tradition? Our concern is not to discover the historical philosophic influences on Maimonides' world view. This has been done by Professor Pines in his introduction to The Guide of the Perplexed. Our concern will be to indicate internal religious concepts emanating from the Jewish tradition which may have influenced Maimonides' philosophic religious outlook. THE METAPHYSICAL AND THE JEWISH TRADITIONS The two internal principles which may have led Maimonides to his profound embrace of the metaphysical tradition were a) the principle of idolatry and b) the notion of love of God. These two central categories of the Jewish legal tradition may account for Maimonides' metaphysically oriented descriptions of God, the insistence on negative theology, and his statement that Moses taught the notion of God as necessary existent to the Jewish community immediately after their departure from Egypt.

Maimonides, both in the Mishneh Torah and in the Guide, claims that "the foundation of the whole of our Law and the pivot around which it turns, consists in the effacement of these opinions from the minds and of these monuments from existence" (Guide III, 29). Maimonides has in mind the idolatrous opinions of the Sabians. Likewise, in the Mishneh Torah, "Laws of Idolatry," II, 4, Maimonides writes: The precept relating to idolatry is equal in importance to all the other precepts put together, as it is said, "And when ye shall err and not observe all these commandments" (Num. 15:22). This text has traditionally been interpreted as alluding to idolatry; hence the inference that acceptance of idolatry is tantamount to repudiating the whole Torah, the prophets and everything that they were commanded, from Adam to the end of time. . . . And whoever denies idolatry confesses his faith in the whole Torah, in all the prophets and all that the prophets were commanded, from Adam till the end of time. And this is the fundamental principle of all of the commandments. Maimonides codifies the halakhah that the prophet has the right to temporarily suspend any norms of Jewish law. There is only one case where suspension, even temporarily, is not permitted and that is with regard to the laws of idolatry.18 The uncompromising demand to reject idolatry is the central concern of the law. Toleration of anything that may lead, in any way whatsoever, to one's embracing idolatry undermines the essential purpose of the law. Maimonides, therefore, codifies the laws of idolatry in the first book of the Mishneh Torah, the Book of Knowledge. In his introduction to the Mishneh Torah Maimonides explains the purpose of the first book: I include in it all the precepts which constitute the very essence and principle of the faith taught by Moses, our teacher and which it is necessary for one to know at the outset; as for example, acceptance of the unity of God and the prohibition of idolatry. In "The laws of Repentance," III, 15, Maimonides wrote regarding the definition of the heretic: Five classes are termed Heretics; he who says that there is no God and the world has no ruler; he who says that there is a ruling power but that it is vested in two or more persons; he who says that there is one ruler, but that He is a body and has form; he who denies that He alone is the First Cause and Rock of the Universe; likewise, he who renders worship to anyone beside Him, to serve as a mediator between the human being and the Lord of the Universe. Whoever belongs to any of these five classes is termed a heretic. Maimonides classifies together in the same law one who claims that there is no God, one who believes in polytheism, and one who believes that God has a body and a form. This decision evoked the rage of the Rabad: Why has he called such a person an heretic? There are many people greater than and superior to him who adhere to such a belief on the basis of what they have seen in verses of Scripture and even more the words of those aggadot which corrupt right opinion about religious matters.19 The gist of the disagreement is that the Rabad cannot understand Maimonides' insistence on calling an otherwise pious, halakhic person a heretic. How can one who lives sincerely by the law, who follows all the commandments and who is committed passionately to every detail of the discipline of Halakhah, be classified together with one who is an idolater? How can the great enemy of Jewish spirituality, idolatry, be found in the heart of one who is totally loyal to the Halakhah? Maimonides was undoubtedly aware of the likelihood of such objections, yet his opposition to false notions of God was uncompromising. Essential to understanding Maimonides' metaphysical treatment of God in the sections on negative theology in the Guide, are chapters 35 and 36 in part one. Maimonides claims there that although he realizes that the study of physics and metaphysics are esoteric disciplines requiring great preparation and great maturity and are not disciplines capable of being studied by the masses, nevertheless one should not withhold from

the multitude knowledge of the fact that God is incorporeal and that He is not subject to affection. Maimonides writes: For just as it behooves to bring up children in the belief, and to proclaim to the multitude, that God may He be magnified and honored is one and that none but He ought to be worshipped, so it behooves that they should be made to accept on traditional authority the belief that God is not a body; and that there is absolutely no likeness in any respect whatever between Him and the things created by Him; that His existence has no likeness to theirs; nor His life to the life of those among them who are alive; nor again His knowledge to the knowledge of those among them who are endowed with knowledge. They should be made to accept the belief that the difference between Him and them is not merely a difference of more and less, but one concerning the species of existence. I mean to say that it should be established in everybody's mind that our knowledge of our power does not differ from His knowledge or His power in the later being greater and stronger, the former less and weaker, or in other similar respects, inasmuch as the strong and the weak are necessarily alike with respect to their species and one definition comprehends both of them. . . . Now everything that can be ascribed to God, may He be exalted, differs in every respect from our attributes, so that no definition can comprehend the one thing and the other. (Guide I, 35) A central motif in Maimonides' writings are his repeated arguments for teaching the masses about God's incorporeality. In the same chapter, Maimonides writes: For there is no profession of unity unless the doctrine of God's corporeality is denied. For a body cannot be one, but is composed of matter and form which by definition are two; it also is divisible, subject to partition. Maimonides concludes the chapter with the same principle he used in the Mishneh Torah to categorize the different forms of heresy: But it is not meet that belief in the corporeality of God or in His being provided with any concomitant of the bodies should be permitted to establish itself in anyone's mind any more than it is meet that belief should be established in the nonexistence of the deity, in the association of other gods with Him, or in the worship of other than He. Maimonides was philosophically convinced that false belief regarding the nature of God is idolatry.20 Hence he had to face the halakhic implication of this claim. Idolatry is not only mistaken forms of worship, but is, as well, a mistaken conception of the object of worship. Idolatry is constituted not only by how I worship but, more importantly, by whom I worship. False belief, e.g., belief in divine corporeality, entails idolatry in that instead of worshipping God, one is worshipping a figment of human imagination. Hence, correct belief (philosophy) is crucial in order to correctly identify and describe God and thus avoid worshipping false gods.21 The purpose of the law, however, is to correct mistaken forms of worship: The essential principle in the precepts concerning idolatry is that we are not to worship any thing created--neither angel, sphere, star, none of the four elements, nor whatever has been formed from them. Even if the worshipper is aware that the Eternal is God, and worships the created thing in the sense in which Enoch and his contemporaries did, he is an idolater. ("Laws of Idolatry," II, 1) The law protects Israel from the mistake idol worshippers made in developing intermediary worship. The Halakhah provides a correct way of worship which will not lead to removing God from the consciousness of man through mistaken forms. Essential idolatry, however, involves not only mistaken forms of worship but mistaken conceptions of God. This is only corrected by understanding how unity and corporeality are contradictory. Only by understanding physics, the nature of change, the relationship between potentiality and actuality, the structure of nature, etc., can one root out an idolatry based, not upon wrong practice, but upon mistaken belief.22 Maimonides considered mistaken practice to be a lesser sin than belief in corporeality. In Guide I, 36, Maimonides writes: Now the idolaters thought that this prerogative [being worshipped] belonged to

that which was other than God; and this led to the disappearance of the belief in His existence. . . . For the multitude grasp only the actions of worship, not their meanings or the true reality of the Being worshipped through them. . . . What then should be the state of him whose infidelity bears upon His essence . . . and consists in believing Him to be different from what He really is? . . . Know accordingly, you who are that man, that when you believe in the doctrine of the corporeality of God or believe that one of the states of the body belongs to Him, you "provoke His jealousy and anger, kindle the fire of His wrath," and are "a hater, an enemy, and an adversary," of God, much more so than "an idolater." In other words, Maimonides says to the Jewish community, who have a defined way of worshipping God which distinguishes them from pagans, that, if they lack a philosophic understanding of God's otherness, idolatry will reappear in the house of Jewish Halakhah. Paganism will grow in Jewish soil if man does not understand how unity and incorporeality entail one another. Maimonides then argues that, if you want to excuse Jews of this mistaken notion because the Bible itself may be responsible for teaching men that God has a body and that He is subject to affections, you ought to hold a similar attitude with regard to a gentile idolater, for he worships idols only because of his ignorance and because of his upbringing. Maimonides does not allow a double standard. He does not allow the tradition's rage against idolatry to be turned outward and not inward. The philosophic knowledge that Maimonides gained from the Greek philosophic tradition was of central importance for his understanding of the Jewish belief in the oneness and uniqueness of God. Wolfson correctly points out that the Bible taught only that God was other than the world. The notion of divine simplicity and the notion that corporeality is a negation of the concept of unity are not biblical, but rather philosophic.23 Maimonides' knowledge of philosophy gave him a new understanding of idolatry. Maimonides, however, was not only a philosopher. As a committed halakhic Jew he could not keep this knowledge from the community. He knew that the law did not allow any compromise regarding idolatry. He did not follow the path of many medieval philosophers, like Averroes and those within the Jewish tradition, in allowing the masses to believe that God was corporeal .24 Were Maimonides only a philosopher and not a halakhist, he would surely have refrained from evoking the wrath of the Jewish community by claiming that pious halakhic Jews with incorrect theological beliefs were idol worshippers. If, as Leo Strauss claims Maimonides only sought a justification for philosophy but not an interpenetration of philosophy and law, he should never have codified the principle that he who believes that God has a body is an idolater and an heretic. His insistence that the whole community accept certain basic truths of metaphysics even if only on the basis of authority is grounded in his "halakhic" commitment to the community and to the halakhic principle of not allowing any compromise regarding idolatry. Metaphysics, then, for Maimonides is a complement to the law. Philosophy continues the battle of the law to uproot the last vestiges of idolatry in the world. Moses, therefore, had to teach the community about the nature of God in order to uproot idolatry from within the Jewish people. It is not arid philosophical rationalism that inspires Maimonides. The motivation is not that of the esoteric elitist intellectual, but that of the observant Jew committed to the principle that "he who rejects idolatry accepts the entire Torah."25 The goal of Torah which makes it unique among legal systems, is its concern with developing love of God. Love of God, according to Maimonides, is nurtured only by philosophical knowledge. Even though Maimonides recognized the limitations of the intellect and restricted the scope and nature of knowledge of God, he still believed that only knowledge, comprised of the intellectual discipline of physics and metaphysics, would lead man to love of God. This God, honoured and revered, it is our duty to love and fear; as it is said "Thou shalt love the Lord, thy God" (Deut. 6:35), and it is further said "Thou shalt fear the Lord, thy God" (Deut. 6:13). 2. And what is the way that will lead to the love of Him and the fear of Him? When

a person contemplates His great and wondrous works and creatures and from them obtains a glimpse of His wisdom which is incomparable and infinite, he will straightway love Him, praise Him, glorify Him, and long with an exceeding longing to know His great Name; even as David said "My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God" (Ps. 42:3). And when he ponders these matters, he will recoil affrighted, and realize that he is a small creature, lowly and obscure, endowed with slight and slender intelligence, standing in the presence of Him who is perfect in knowledge. And so David said "When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers--what is man that Thou art mindful of Him?" (Ps. 8:4-5). In harmony with these sentiments, I shall explain some large, general aspects of the Works of the Sovereign of the Universe, that they may serve the intelligent individual as a door to the love of God, even as our sages have remarked in connection with the theme of the love of God, "Observe the Universe and hence, you will realize Him who spake and the world was." (M.T., Hilkhot Yesodei ha-Torah, II, 1-2). In chapter ten of "The Laws of Repentance," chapter four of Hilkhot Yesodei haTorah, chapter fifty-two in The Guide of the Perplexed, part three and throughout the Guide, Maimonides expressed his conviction that theoretical knowledge and opinions make possible the love of God.26 Why are the disciplines of physics and metaphysics unique in enabling a person to achieve love of God? Why are the practice and the study of the law only necessary and not sufficient conditions for achieving love of God? In order to comprehend philosophy's unique contribution in producing love of God, one must compare Maimonides' understanding of creation with his approach to revelation. Creation, to Maimonides, reflects the overflow of God's perfection. Olam hesed yebaneh, the world is an expression of God's love and power. Central to Maimonides' understanding of God's revelation in nature and of man's relationship to the universe is the realization that man is not the center of God's creation. The world does not exist for man; God's creative power and wisdom were not exclusively focused on the creation of man. Hence, a most important function of metaphysical reflection is to heal man from feelings of grandiosity. Man realizes, when reflecting on the cosmos, that he is insignificant in the light of the hierarchy of beings. Metaphysics and philosophy, then, from a religious perspective, create humanity. Philosophy heals human egocentricity. Philosophy locates man in a theocentric universe where he cannot but realize his modest and humbling place in being.27 Maimonides' treatment of Job in the Guide III, 22-24, is placed after he established clearly man's place in the hierarchy of being. One can tolerate suffering if one gains a proper understanding of one's significance in being. Reorienting one's place in being is Maimonides' explanation of the conclusion of the book of Job. Job did not receive an answer to the problem of evil; he received a different perception of being and of himself which enabled him to continue living despite his suffering: This is the object of the Book of Job as a whole: I refer to the establishing of this foundation for the belief and the drawing attention to the inference to be drawn from natural matters, so that you should not fall into error and seek to affirm in your imagination that His knowledge is like our knowledge or that His purpose and His providence and His governance are like our purpose and our providence and our governance. If man knows this, every misfortune will be borne lightly by him. (Guide III, 24) Maimonides was not referring to theodicy, but, rather, to a way of transcending suffering by gaining another perspective on being. Philosophy's presentation of an objective world independent of man, where man occupies a most modest position in a hierarchy of perfections culminating in the awesome, ineffable perfection of God, transports man from an anthropocentric to a theocentric universe and thereby gives man the strength to cope with human suffering. This insight is also present in Maimonides' treatment of the akedah, the binding of Isaac. Maimonides analyses the story of Abraham only after treating of the human implications of the study of physics and metaphysics (Job). Abraham, the

founder of belief in the God of history is asked in the command to sacrifice his only son Isaac (history), to express a relationship to God which, in fact, negates the significance of history: As for the story of Abraham at the binding, it contains two great notions that are fundamental principles of the Law. One of these notions consists in our being informed of the limit of love for God, may He be exalted, and fear of Him--that is, up to what limit they must reach. For in this story he was ordered to do something that bears no comparison either with sacrifice of property or with sacrifice of life. In truth it is the most extraordinary thing that could happen in the world, such a thing that one would not imagine that human nature was capable of it. Here there is a sterile man having an exceeding desire for a son, possessed of great property and commanding respect, and having the wish that his progeny should become a religious community. When a son comes to him after his having lost hope, how great will be his attachment to him and love for him! However, because of his fear of Him, who should be exalted, and because of his love to carry out his command, he holds this beloved son as little, gives up all his hopes regarding him, and hastens to slaughter him after a journey of days. (Guide III, 24, pp. 500-501) Abraham's going through the experience of the akedah symbolically demonstrated that the ultimate goal of Torah lies beyond history. The archetypal act of love of God is constituted by the ability to abandon history. Maimonides' treatment of Abraham and of Job reveal his belief in the liberating power of philosophy to direct man to live in history, after having discovered meaning beyond history.28 In chapters eight through twenty-four of the third part of the Guide, Maimonides elaborates the practical implications of negative theology. Job and Abraham dramatically represent the radical implications of divine otherness which is the central notion of the theory of negative theology. Maimonides attributed a liberating function to philosophy. For disinterested love to be possible, man's understanding of himself, the world and the essential purpose and meaning of life must undergo radical transformations. So long as man is anchored solely in history and is concerned exclusively with human needs, he cannot recognize and therefore love a God who does not exist for the sake of man. Philosophy creates the conditions for love because it enables man to appreciate an objective reality independent of human needs. As mentioned above with regard to idolatry, a central biblical motif is God's otherness and difference from the world. Philosophy, e.g., the analysis of unity, non-corporeality and negative attributes, offers a more exact and rigorous understanding of God's otherness. This movement to revealing the implications of divine otherness is the movement of the one seeking love of God. Love is expressed in the confirmation of the independent worth of the beloved. It is only philosophy which gives meaning to man's affirmation of God's independent existence. In Maimonides' writings, the yearning quality of love finds expression in knowing how the universe reveals the actions of God. Love becomes passionate when the universe is perceived from a theocentric perspective. Knowing what God is not and how He is radically other than and separate from the world provides man with the intellectual tools for self-transcending relational love.29 While philosophy points to divine perfection and to divine manifestations which are indifferent to and independent of human needs, the revelation of the law is substantially different. In the Guide III, 32, Maimonides explains how to interpret the meaning of many laws in the Torah. Reminiscent of Hegel's notion of the cunning of reason, Maimonides argues that God utilizes the given conditions of history to further His purpose. God does not ignore the given context of history. The revealed law is not indifferent to the limited capacities of people. The law reflects the patience of the divine teacher who works with the actual materials of history. Although, logically speaking, God could change the nature of man to accord with the practices of a perfect law, God, argues Maimonides, chose not to. God chose to adopt the role of the teacher patiently seeking to overcome the limitations and shortcomings of the people of Israel.

For example, at the time of the giving of the Torah, animal sacrifices constituted the accepted form of worship. No one, claims Maimonides, thought it reasonable to worship a god other than by offering animal sacrifice. God accepted this pattern of worship, even though this pattern of worship was characteristic of paganism, and He permitted its use in Jewish worship. Because, Maimonides argues, man cannot be expected to change suddenly or to completely give up patterns of behaviour to which he has become accustomed, He restricted animal sacrifices to specific places and to be administered only by certain people, i.e., priests. Prayer, a higher form of worship, was permitted by anyone and in all places. In other words, there is a hierarchy of forms of worship. While legitimizing sacrifices, the law's intention was that man will eventually transcend this form, and will adopt a higher form of worship. Similarly verbal prayer is a stage meant to be superceded by the highest form of worship, i.e., contemplative silence. Silent prayer reflects man's ability to be moved by God's perfection independent of His responding to human needs. There are, then, three stages of worship in history: 1) the stage of eradication of idolatry by limiting animal sacrifices; 2) worship grounded in God's responsiveness to human needs, i.e., verbal petitional prayer; and 3) silent adoration of God because he is God. Revelation of God's wisdom in the law, as distinct from His revelation in nature, is a response to an imperfect human condition. Study of the law reveals God's legislative involvement with men. The study of the law reconfirms for historical man his central importance in the divine scheme. "The Torah spoke in the language of man." God is perceived in the law from the perspective of human needs. Maimonides was very comfortable claiming that there are human purposes for the commandments. In contrast to a mystical approach, to Maimonides, commandments reflect what is good for man.30 They have no meta-historical significance. The cosmic significance that mystics attributed to the commandments is alien to Maimonides' attempt to make the law totally earth bound.31 Besides focusing on divine absolute perfection, philosophy leads to love of God by healing of the imagination. To Maimonides, imagination is the great enemy of religious development.32 Human imagination is both the source of idolatry and of inauthentic love. At the end of the Guide, III, 51, Maimonides proclaims that individuals whose knowledge of God is based on imagination, and not on knowledge of objective reality, are outside the palace of the king. Only the philosopher enters into the palace of the king, i.e., is able to love God, because only the philosopher has some grasp of the reality of God independent of human imagination: As for someone who thinks and frequently mentions God, without knowledge, following a mere imagining or following a belief adopted because of his reliance on the authority of somebody else, he is to my mind outside the habitation and far away from it and does not in true reality mention or think about God. For that thing which is in his imagination and which he mentions in his speech does not correspond to any being at all and has merely been invented by his imagination, as we have explained in our discourse concerning the attributes. (Guide III, 51.) For love to be real, the object of one's love must be recognized in itself. Imagination creates a narcissistic love, a love of one's own creation and not of an independent reality. Man is liberated to love only when the passion of love emerges in response to an objective reality and not to a subjective projection of what one imagines God to be. One loves another human being only if one can respond to another as another and not as a projection of one's needs and imagination. PHILOSOPHY, THE HALAKHAH AND DISINTERESTED LOVE OF GOD The central question which will be dealt with now is whether the disinterested love of God which results from the study of philosophy can be legitimately identified with the highest goal of the Halakhah. Martyrdom was traditionally considered to be the purest expression of love of God.33 How can disinterested love of the absolute become the paradigm of the most valued achievement of this religious way of life? Is this not simply a hellenization and hence a distortion of Judaism? In the biblical and rabbinic traditions, one confronts the primacy of

history and law. God, in the Bible, is fundamentally the lord of history. His autonomy consists in his freedom to break into history miraculously and spontaneously. Scholem correctly observed that Maimonides neutralized the pathos of the messianic yearning, for, in principle, messianism is unnecessary in Maimonides' thought.34 Contemplative love of God is possible, though rare, without redemption in history. To Maimonides, messianism is merely a shift in political conditions. Human nature remains the same. There is no rupture or new creation in history.35 Guttman claims that Maimonides ignored the important difference between contemplative communion and moral communion.36 Husik says that Maimonides was deceived in not realizing that the Bible is fundamentally practical and not theoretical. Were we to accept the implications of the aforementioned views, we would be compelled to conclude that Maimonides, the great teacher of the law, was unaware of the fact that his profound religious passion to become a lover of God was essentially foreign to and a gross distortion of the Jewish tradition. Scholars have argued that this is the great puzzle of Maimonides. This, however, is not the only possible orientation to Maimonides. Maimonides' neutralization of the religious significance of history and of divine miraculous interference in the fixed structures of reality, and his emphasis on cultivating a passionate love for a God who draws men in virtue of His perfection, and not in virtue of His ability to satisfy human needs and requests, may have their roots in various features of talmudic Judaism. While Judaism's preoccupation with abolishing idolatry justifies and explains Maimonides' interest in philosophy, this does not imply that the ethos and the religious orientation of philosophy ought to become dominant for the Jew. In identifying the disinterested love of God of philosophy with love of God of the Halakhah, Maimonides was giving expression to certain features of talmudic Judaism which, we believe, both explain and justify his radical move. Our use of the terms "certain features of talmudic Judaism" is due to the fact that the aspects of talmudic thought chosen for discussion do not constitute the dominant orientation of rabbinic Judaism. As Professor Urbach has shown, there are many diverse schools of thought in rabbinic Judaism. In this paper, we present a particular strand that is characteristic of an important aspect of the talmudic tradition. This strand provides the grounds for the development of a spiritual orientation which enables one to live with the gap between the biblical world of divine immediacy and the post-biblical world, which is silent and unresponsive to man's moral condition. Nature becomes neutralized and, so to speak, demythologized, and the biblical passion is reinterpreted so that men's relationship to God is no longer sustained by the visible and public interference of a moral God in the processes of nature and history. The following passages in the Talmud exemplify this spirit: Our Rabbis taught: Philosophers asked the elders in Rome, "If your God has no desire for idolatry, why does He not abolish it?" They replied, "If it was something of which the world has no need that it was worshipped, He would abolish it; but people worship the sun, moon, stars and planets; should He destroy the Universe on account of fools! The world pursues its natural course, and as for the fools who act wrongly, they will have to render an account. Another illustration: Suppose a man stole a measure of wheat and went and sowed it in the ground; it is right that it should not grow, but the world pursues its natural course and as for the fools who act wrongly, they will have to render an account. Another illustration: Suppose a man has intercourse with his neighbor's wife; it is right that she should not conceive, but the world pursues its natural course and as for the fools who act wrongly, they will have to render an account." This is similar to what R. Simeon b. Lakish said: The Holy One, blessed be He, declared, not enough that the wicked put My coinage to vulgar use, but they trouble Me and compel Me to set My seal thereon! (T.B., Abodah Zarah, 54B) To fully appreciate the radical shift in sensibility from biblical thought, compare this with several biblical passages: To Adam He said, "Because you did as your wife

said and ate of the tree about which I commanded you, `You shall not eat of it,' Cursed be the ground because of you; By toil shall you eat of it All the days of your life: Thorns and thistles shall it sprout for you. But your food shall be the grasses of the field; By the sweat of your brow Shall you get bread to eat, Until you return to the ground-For from it you were taken. For dust you are, And to dust you shall return." (Genesis III, 17-19) Do not defile yourselves in any of those ways, for it is by such that the nations which I am casting out before you defiled themselves. Thus the land became defiled; and I called it to account for its iniquity, and the land spewed out its inhabitants. But you must keep My laws and My rules, and you must not do any of those abhorrent things, neither the citizen nor the stranger who resides among you; for all those abhorrent things were done by the people who were in the land before you, and the land became defiled. So let not the land spew you out for defiling it, as it spewed out the nation that came before you. (Lev. XVIII, 24-28) If, then, you obey the commandments that I enjoin upon you this day, loving the Lord your God and serving Him with all your heart and soul, I will grant the rain for your land in season, the early rain and the late. You shall gather in your new grain and wine and oil--I will also provide grass in the fields for your cattle--and thus you shall eat your fill. Take care not to be lured away to serve other gods and bow to them. For the Lord's anger will flare up against you, and He will shut up the skies so that there will be no rain and the ground will not yield its products; and you will soon perish from the good land that the Lord is giving you. (Deut. II, 1-17) A key expression in the talmudic passage quoted above, is "did hu shelo titzmah" (it is right that it should not grow). Stolen wheat or grain ought not grow; a raped woman ought not become pregnant. Nature ought not respond and give of its strength and bounty to the consequences of evil. In other words, the expectations that nature and morality are organically related, and that the lord of history and the lord of nature are one are legitimate and worthwhile expectations. Yet, although the talmudic author legitimizes this biblical sensibility, he realizes that it does not accord with what in fact happens. This is another form of the generalization, "olam ke-minhago noheg" (the world maintains its natural course). There is a natural minhag, literally a custom. (Strauss remarks that the term used

is minhag, custom, and not tevah, nature).37 One cannot live expecting nature to reflect the moral law. One is trained to have an organic sensibility in the sense of believing that the world should" express moral distinctions, yet, one is taught to accept the non-realization of this organic relationship. This demythologization, this learning to live in a universe that is strange and unresponsive to my deepest moral yearnings is very definitely a characteristic of talmudic Judaism. There are other texts which also reveal this sensibility: Raba said: This latter agrees with R. Jacob,who said: There is no reward for precepts in this world. For it was taught: R. Jacob said: There is not a single precept in the Torah whose reward is (stated) at its side which is not dependent on the resurrection of the dead. (Thus:) in connection with honouring parents it is written, that thy days may be prolonged, and that it may go well with thee. In reference to the dismissal of the nest it is written, that it may be well with thee, and that thou mayest prolong thy days. Now, if one's father said to him,"Ascend to the loft and bring me young birds," and he ascends to the loft, dismisses the dam and takes the young, and on his return falls and is killed-where is this man's happiness and where is this man's prolonging of days? But "in order that it may be well with thee", means on the day that is wholly good; and `in order that thy days may be long', on the day that is wholly long. Yet perhaps there was no such happening?--R. Jacob saw an actual occurrence. Then perhaps he was meditating upon a transgression?--The Holy One, blessed be He, does not combine an evil thought with an (evil) act. Yet perhaps he was meditating idolatry, and it is written, that I may take the house of Israel in their own heart?--That too was precisely his point: should you think that precepts are rewarding in this world, why did the (fulfillment of these) precepts not shield him from being led to (such) meditation?" T.B., Kiddushim, 39B) The struggle with acknowledging the discrepancy between the biblical promise and the given reality finds expression in the talmud's asking "Perhaps there was no such happening?" How do we know that a child who listened to his father and sent away the mother bird really died? The text then simply says: "Rabbi Jacob saw an actual occurrence." The text, however, continues to ask, "Perhaps he sinned?" Perhaps he sinned in his thoughts? How can one ever know if a person is truly righteous? How can one know that the person who died really didn't deserve his death? What we notice, then, is an attempt in the text not to give in too easily to an empirical reality which falsifies religious expectations. Yet, in the end, one cannot ignore the evidence Rabbi Jacob brings which negates biblicallyinspired expectations. Rabbi Jacob, however, doesn't conclude that there is no God. Rather than claim there is no reward, he concludes, "sekhar Mitzvah behai aimah lekah" (there is no reward for precepts in this world). While biblical anticipation remains, it is transferred to another time. In the present reality, one must live with the gap between what the bible promises and what one actually experiences: In the West (Palestine) they taught it thus: R. Giddal said: (And Ezra praised . . . the) great (God): i.e., he magnified Him by pronouncing the Ineffable Name. R. Mattena said: He said: The great, the mighty, and the awful God. The interpretation of R. Mattena seems to agree with what R. Joshua b. Levi said: For R. Joshua b. Levi said: "Why were they called men of the Great Synod? Because they restored the crown of the divine attributes to its ancient completeness." (For) Moses had come and said: The great God, the mighty, and the awful. Then Jeremiah came and said: Aliens are destroying His Temple. Where are, then, His awful deeds? Hence he omitted (the attribute) the `awful'. Daniel came and said: Aliens are enslaving his sons. Where are His mighty deeds? Hence, he omitted the word `mighty'. But they came and said: On the contrary! Therein lie His might deeds that He suppresses His wrath,that He extends long-suffering to the wicked. Therein lie His awful powers: For but for the fear of Him, how could one (single) nation persist among the (many) nations! But how could (the earlier) Rabbis abolish something established by Moses?--R. Eleazar said: Since they knew that the Holy

One, blessed be He, insists on truth, they would not ascribe false (things) to Him. (T.B., Yoma 69B) This text also reflects the difference between the historical reality of the talmudic period, i.e., the destruction of the temple and the exile, and the reality depicted in the Bible. In the prayer of Moses, God is great, mighty and awful. This is accepted as a correct description of God. Moses is the highest authority for halakhic jurisprudence. His authority embraces not only normative behaviour but also what is to count as correct descriptions of God. The crisis of religious language begins during the time of Daniel and of Jeremiah. Descriptions of divine power appear at odds with a reality where the children of Israel are enslaved by foreign nations. "God is awesome" does not accord with the Temple being destroyed and pagans fornicating in the holy of holies. One could have said, "I do not fully understand Moses' prayer because I'm not a Moses. Moses' language is correct and I shall use it even though my own reality offers disconfirming evidence. Who am I to Judge?" There were (and are) those who continued to believe in reward in this world. Perhaps the righteous are "rewarded" by suffering and the wicked "punished" by prosperity so that in the world to come each one will fully receive his due, i.e., the righteous only rewards, the wicked only punishments.38 In the above text, however, the author did not negate his own perception of reality, but he did not claim that Moses' language was false. The biblical description as reflected in Moses' prayer is placed in suspension. A new response to the gap between my reality and the authoritative normative reality is adopted, i.e., silence. You continue praying but you do not utilize that language which is disconfirmed by reality. The men of the great assembly widen the range of the meaning of language, by widening the range of experience relevant for confirming this language.39 The word "mighty" in the biblical context refers to God's victorious power in history. Prophets defeat kings, pharoahs submit to the overwhelming might of God. The reality of the talmudic writers did not confirm a God who was powerful and victorious and, therefore, they were compelled to reconsider the meaning of divine power.40 The men of the great assembly interpret power to mean the compassion and the long-suffering mercy of God. Self-control in the face of blasphemous provocation constitutes the new meaning of power: Vespasian sent Titus who said, Where is their God, the rock in whom they trusted? This was the wicked Titus who blasphemed and insulted Heaven. What did he do? He took a harlot by the hand and entered the Holy of Holies and spread out a scroll of the Law and committed a sin on it. He then took a sword and slashed the curtain. Miraculously blood spurted out, and he thought that he had slain himself, as it says, Thine adversaries have roared in the midst of thine assembly, they have set up their ensigns for signs. Abba Hanan said: Who is a mighty one like unto thee, O Jah? Who is like thee, mighty in self-restraint, that Thou didst hear the blaspheming and insults of that wicked man and kept silent? (T.B., Gittin, 56b) In God's self-control, Israel, in exile, finds a way of continuing to use biblical language. Biblical divine power continues to be present, but in a neutralized form. A most important statement in the text, besides the shift in meaning of biblical language, is the question how did Daniel and Jeremiah have the right to remain silent and not submit to Moses' authoritative and hence correct description of God? The short and simple answer was that God loves the truth and therefore they would not lie. Believing that God insists on truth enabled them to be honest to their own experience, and not to allow Moses' language to define their altered reality. The three examples discussed above reveal the tension in talmudic thought between the organic mythic consciousness of the Bible and the sober realism of talmudic Judaism. In talmudic Judaism, one encounters the world of divine responsiveness and mutuality ("If you will hearken to my command, I will . . . ") not in everyday reality but in institutionalized memories, e.g., the biblical readings and the

ambience of the Sabbath and the festivals.41 The talmudic Jew inhabits two worlds: one where history and nature reflect God's power and judgments and another world where violence and corruption yield wealth and prosperity. Titus enters the holy of holies with a prostitute and mockingly challenges God to dare strike him down. In response to this event, the talmud points out that Titus failed to realize that divine power often takes the form of divine silence. The talmudic age testified to divine silence and to the tragic dimension of Jewish approaches to history. A major concern of talmudic Judaism was how to continue as a spiritual people in a world that does not confirm biblical expectations. The talmudic sages never give up the biblical organic consciousness. They retained the belief in God's power to reveal Himself openly in history, but tried to restrict and to confine it to past memories and to eschatological hopes. The crucial question facing any analyst of talmudic Judaism is how effective was this attempt at restricting the biblical mythic consciousness? Was it successfully neutralized? Did it cease being, in Jamesian terms, a live option? Or did it remain constantly just below the surface threatening to explode in the face of rabbinic sobriety and realism? This is a difficult but inescapable problem to resolve. One must examine currents in Jewish mystical and philosophic thought to discover the various forms that the interrelationship of biblical and rabbinic thought assumed in Jewish history.42 One thing, however, is clear. One who internalizes talmudic suppression of biblical consciousness can build a spiritual life in the absence of responsive historical events. The everyday spiri-tual existence of the talmudic Jew is characterized by loyalty to the law. To rabbinic man, God is present in history because His law is present. Because the Torah and the covenant are eternally binding, God's presence for man is confirmed. The law, and not events in history, mediates divine concern. Instead of seeking instances of God breaking into history, the rabbinic teachers expand and elaborate biblical law to cover enormously wide ranges of experience. As more of reality falls under the authority of the law, God's will and influence become more deeply felt. The receiving of the Torah was not perceived as an event of the historical past, but as an ever-present challenge. "When you study My words of Torah, they are not to seem antiquated to you, but as fresh as though the Torah were given this day" (Psikta d'Rab Kahana, piska 12, sec. 12). The written law was not perceived as a closed system of law. Elaboration and expansion of the Torah made the revelation at Sinai a contemporaneous event for students of Torah.43 The passion of the encounter with the living God of the Bible is retained but is expressed in uncovering new layers of meaning in Torah. Though he is silent regarding the tragic dimension of history, talmudic man is extremely articulate and confident about his ability to understand the range of meanings contained in the revelation of the law: Rab Judah said in the name of Rab, When Moses ascended on high he found the Holy One, blessed be He, engaged in affixing coronets to the letters. Said Moses, "Lord of the Universe, Who stays Thy hand?" He answered, "There will arise a man, at the end of many generations, Akiba b. Joseph by name, who will expound upon each Tittle heaps and heaps of laws". "Lord of the Universe," said Moses; "permit me to see him." He replied, "Turn thee round". Moses went and sat down behind eight rows (and listened to the dis-courses upon the law). Not being able to follow their arguments he was ill at ease, but when they came to a certain subject and the disciples said to the master "Whence do you know it?" and the latter replied "It is a law given unto Moses at Sinai" he was comforted. Thereupon he returned to the Holy One, blessed be He, and said, "Lord of the Universe, Thou hast such a man and Thou givest the Torah by me!" He replied, "Be silent, for such is My decree." (T.B., Menabot 29b) The student of Moses, Akiba, uncovers dimensions in Moses' Torah which Moses himself does not understand. Yet it is Moses' Torah that is the basis of Akiba's legal inferences. Akiba is dignified and articulate; he has mastered the complexities of divine speech coming out of the Torah. Nevertheless, though

articulate in the realm of the law, halakhic man lapses into utter silence when trying to understand the Lord of history: Then said Moses, "Lord of the Universe, Thou hast shown me his Torah, show me his reward." "Turn thee round", said He; and Moses turned, round and saw them weighing out his flesh at the market-stalls. "Lord of the Universe," cried Moses, "such Torah, and such a reward!" He replied, "Be silent, for such is My decree." To the questions, "Why choose Moses and not Akiba to stand at Sinai?" and "Why does Akiba, the illustrious genius of Halakhah, end his life in so horrifying and shocking a manner?" the answer given is, "Be silent, for such is My decree." Rabbinic halakhic man, however, feels dignified and confident in the academy of learning: We learnt elsewhere: If he cut it into separate tiles, placing sand between each tile: R. Elisezer declared it clean, and the Sages declared it unclean; and this was the oven of `Aknai. Why (the oven of) `Aknai?--Said Rab Judah in Samuel's name: (it means) that they encompass it with arguments as a snake, and proved it unclean. It has been taught: On that day R. Eliezer brought forward every imaginable argument, but they did not accept them. Said he to them: "If the halachah agrees with me, let this carob-tree prove it!" Thereupon the carob-tree was torn a hundred cubits out of its place--others affirm, four hundred cubits. "No proof can be brought from a carob-tree," they retorted. Again he said to them: "If the halachah agrees with me, let the stream of water prove it!" Whereupon the stream of water flowed backwards. "No proof can be brought from a stream of water," they rejoined. Again he urged: "If the halachah agrees with me, let the walls of the schoolhouse prove it," whereupon the walls inclined to fall. But R. Joshua rebuked them, saying: "When scholars are engaged in a halachic dispute, what have ye to interfere?" Hence they did not fall, in honour of R. Eliezer; and they are still standing thus inclined. Again he said to them: "If the halachah agrees with me, let it be proved from Heaven!" Whereupon a Heavenly Voice cried out: "Why do ye dispute with R. Eliezer, seeing that in all matters the halachah agrees with him!" But R. Joshua arose and exclaimed: "It is not in heaven." What did he mean by this?--Said R. Jeremiah: That the Torah had already been given at Mount Sinai; we pay no attention to a Heavenly Voice, because Thou hast long since written in the Torah at Mount Sinai, after the majority must one incline. R. Nathan met Elijah and asked him: What did the Holy One, Blessed be He, do in that hour?--He laughed (with joy), he replied saying, "My sons have defeated Me. My sons have defeated Me." (T.B., Baba Mezia 59 A.B.) Prophecy may not decide a problem of Jewish law. "Heaven" may not interfere in the development of Torah. In order to sustain the emergence of the halakhic process talmudic man proclaims the priority of human reason before the intrusions of revelation in his use of the biblical phrase "(Torah) is not in heaven." (Deut. XXX, 12) God gave the Torah to man, and man, with the use of reasoning and argumentation, is autonomous in guiding its development. In a text reminiscent of Spinoza's comparison of the prophet with the philosopher, the midrash compares the scribe, i.e., the scholar of Torah, with the prophets: They (the scribes and prophets) are like two agents whom a king sent to a province. With regard to one he wrote: If he shows you my signature and seal, trust him, but otherwise do not trust him. With regard to the other he wrote: Even if he does not show you my signature and seal, trust him. So of the words of prophecy it is written, If there arise in the midst of thee a prophet . . . and he gives thee a sign (Deut. XIII, 2), but of the words of the Scribes it is written, According to the law which they shall teach thee (Deut. XVII, 11). (Midrash Rabbah, The Song of Songs, I, 2) In the talmudic development of the law, one does not need prophecy or the intervention of God to confirm the legitimacy of a legal argument. In supplanting the prophet as leader of the community, the scholar presents the credentials of intellectual competence to reason and argues persuasively about the law.44 These features of rabbinic Judaism, i.e., the preeminence of human legal reasoning above prophecy, the neutralization of the mythic-organic passion of the Bible, and

the attempt at curbing the expectation of divine confirmation in history, create the conditions for the emergence of a spiritual outlook in which one's relationship to God is not spiritually nurtured by the miraculous presence of God in History. The God of the Halakhah is similar, mutatis mutandis, to the perfect God of Aristotle. For the Halakhah, God is perfect and his wisdom is reflected in the structure of the law; for Aristotle God is perfect, and His wisdom is reflected in the structures of reality. In the former case, human reason is adequate to uncover divine wisdom in the Torah, in the latter case, human wisdom can understand God's wisdom in nature. One is drawn to God through the development of His Torah without the aid of revelation or other non-rational intrusions in history. The passion of the talmid hakham (the talmudic scholar), like the passion of the philosopher, involves a movement from man to God, i.e., the passion of eros. Aristotle's God, who attracts man in virtue of his perfection, can be loved by rabbinic Jews insofar as eros and the neutralization of dramatic historical events have become part of their religious sensibilities. Yehuda Halevy clearly understood the profound difference between a tradition grounded in revelation and one grounded in reason.45 The battle between philosophy and revealed religion was not only a question of competing truths; it involved, as well, questions of human adequacy and the legitimacy of human reasoning. Eros and agape characterize the poles of the profound conflict between a tradition grounded in revelation and one nurtured by human initiative and creativity. The talmudic tradition that we have isolated is a tradition which neutralized the religious need for grace, for miracles and for the idea of a God who breaks into history. This particular tradition may have influenced Maimonides to assimilate the Greek metaphysical tradition into rabbinic Judaism.46 Maimonides did not regard history as being the principal location of the relationship of man and God. As Urbach has shown, Maimonides went very far in banishing the prophet from having any relationship to the development of the law.47 Maimonides was personally averse to magnifying the place of miracles in the tradition.48 He did not believe that history will ever offer a permanent solution to the human condition.49 The law will be present and needed in (his conception of) the messianic world. Human freedom and susceptibility to sin are unchanging features of life. "Olam ke-minhago noheg" (the world maintains its natural course) is the quintessence of Maimonides' theory of history. He rejects the eschatology of a new creation and only insists on belief in creation. Eternity a parte ante is rejected in order to introduce a theology of will, which, in turn, makes possible the giving of the Torah.50 Maimonides did not require a theology of history where history would end supernaturally or otherwise. He, therefore, accepted eternity a parte post and rejected eternity a parte ante: I have already made it clear to you that the belief in the production of the world is necessarily the foundation of the entire law. However, the belief in its passing-away after it has come into being and been generated is not, in our opinion, in any respect, a foundation of the Law and none of our beliefs would be hurt through the belief in its permanent duration. (Guide II, 27) Maimonides' philosophical orientation did not seek to restore God's miraculous interference in history in the messianic world. He required the notion of God's will to justify the authority of Halakhah. Yet, after introducing a theology of will and hence making sense of the revelation of the Torah, Maimonides undermines the prophetic, eschatological passion by accepting eternity a parte post. Maimonides, like his talmudic predecessors, sought to cultivate a passion for God grounded in disinterested love of God. No doubt the above is not the only way to make sense of the rabbinic tradition. Many great masters of the mystic tradition were talmudic scholars. The movement from the talmudic tradition to the Greek metaphysical tradition is certainly not a logically inevitable one. Yet, one ought to be very cautious when analyzing the notion of the absolute in the Jewish tradition. The problematic and interesting nature of this theme results from the fact that the Jewish tradition considered the biblical and the rabbinic traditions to be one tradition. The written Torah

(Bible) and the oral Torah (Mishnah, Talmud, etc.) are one. Once the Jewish spirit united both traditions into one single revelation, it became possible and intelligible to interpret Ehyeh asher Ehyeh as ~I am that I am"--I am the necessary being--and not as "I will be with you in your suffering." Because Maimonides was the great master of talmud, he was bold enough to introduce his legal codification, the Mishneh Torah, with four chapters dealing with the primacy of the metaphysical tradition and to claim, in Hilkhot Talmud Torah, that the discipline of "talmud" included both the study of law and of philosophy.51 Surprising and unpredictable spiritual orientations and sensibilities emerge in a tradition where one of its respected teachers, R. Johanan, can say: God made a covenant with Israel only for the sake of that which was transmitted orally, as it says, "For by the mouth of these words I have made a covenant with thee and with Israel."52 (T.B., Gittin, 60B) Hebrew University and Shalom Hartman Institute Jerusalem NOTES Quotations from The Guide of the Perplexed are from the Shlomo Pines translation (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1963. Quotations from the Mishneh Torah are from the Hyamson translation (Jerusalem, 1965). Quotations from the Bible are from The Torah: The Five Books of Moses (Philadelphia: J.P.S., 1962). Quotations from the Talmud are from The Soncino Talmud. 1. See Y. Leibowitz, Yahadut Am Yehudi U'medinat Yisrael (Tel Aviv: Schocken, 1975), p. 15. 2. Gershom G. Scholem, On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, trans. by R. Manheim (New York: Schocken, 1965), pp. 94-100, 122-130. 3. Shlomo Pines, "The Philosophic Source of The Guide of the Perplexed," in The Guide of the Perplexed (Chicago and London: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1963), pp. CXXXIII-CXXXIV. 4. Emphraim E. Urbach, The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs, translated by I. Abrahams (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 1975), pp. 17, 18, 36, 65, 284-5. See Julius Guttman, Philosophies of Judaism, trans. by David Silverman (New York: Anchor, 1966), pp. 30-43. 5. B. Spinoza, A Theological-Political Treatise, trans. by R.H.M. Elwes (New York: Dover, 1951), chaps. 1, 2, 7 (pp. 115-119). See S. Pines, "Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, Maimonides, and KanNt," Scripta Hierosolymitana, xx (1968), pp. 3-54; Leo StrausNs, Spinoza's Critique of Religion, trans. by Elsa M. Sinclair (New York: Schocken, 1965), chap. 6; D. HartmaNn, Maimonides: Torah and Philosophic Quest (Philadelphia: J.P.S., 1976), p. 237, n. 6. 6. Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing (Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press, 1952), pp. 78-94; D. Hartman, Maimonides, introduction and chap. V. 7. Guide II, 40. 8. Ibid. III, 27, Mishneh Torah, "Laws of Repentance," chap. IX. 9. See comments of the Kesef Mishneh to Hilkhot Yesodei HaTorah, IV, l3; Isadore Twersky, "Some Non-Halakhic Aspects of the Mishneh Torah" in Jewish Medieval and Renaissance Studies, ed. A. Altmann (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1967). 10. See D. Hartman, Maimonides, pp. 44-45; J. Guttman, op. cit., p. 177; G. Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism and Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality (New York: Schocken, 1971), p. 25; T.B., Kiddushin 40b, Baba Kama 17A. 11. See the passionate yearning for Olam Haba (an ahistorical relationship to God) in Maimonides' introduction to Helek, M.T., "Laws of Repentance," VIII, and in Guide III, 51. 12. See Rashi's commentary to Genesis I, 1 and Midrash Tanhuma, Berashit II. See Guide III, 13-14; Leo Strauss, "Jerusalem and Athens," The City College Papers, VI (New York: 1967), pp. 8-10, 20, for an analysis of the differences between the place of man in the hierarchy of being in Greek and in Biblical thought.

13. "Ehyeh-Asher Ehyeh. The Holy One, blessed be He, said to Moses: Go and say to Israel: I was with you in this servitude, and I shall be with you in the servitude of (other) kingdoms." (T.B., Berakhot 9b). See Midrash Raba, Exodus III, 6. 14. Martin Buber, Israel and the World: Essays in a Time of Crises (New York: Schocken, 1948), p. 23; see M. Buber, Moses: The Revelation and the Convenant (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1958), pp. 39-55; Kingship of God, trans. R. Scheimann (New York: Harper and Row, 1967), pp. 103-106; Emil L. Fackenheim, God's Presence in History (New York: N.Y.U., 1970), pp. 3-34, for a serious attempt at making sense of God's presence in history in the modern world. 15. See Strauss, "Jerusalem and Athens," p. 17. For earlier interpretations of Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh as making a metaphysical and not a historical statement, see H.A. Wolfson, Philo: Foundations of Religious Philosophy in Judaism, Christianity and Islam (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1929), vol. 1, pp. 19, 210: C.H. Dodd, The Bible and the Greeks (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1964), p. 4. For critical textural analysis, see B.S. Childs, The Book of Exodus: A Critical Theological Commentary (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1974), pp. 60-77 and Moshe Greenberg, Understanding Exodus (New York: Behrman House, 1969), pp. 78-84. 16. "`I am the Lord thy God': (Ex. 20:2), Why were the Ten Commandments not said at the beginning of the Torah? They give a parable. To what may this be compared? To the following: A king who entered a province said to the people: May I be your king? But the people said to him: Have you done anything good for us that you should rule over us? What did he do then? He built the city wall for them, he brought in the water supply for them, and he fought their battles. Then when he said to them: May I be your king? They said to Him: Yes, yes. Likewise, God. He brought the Israelites out of Egypt, divided the sea for them, sent down the manna for them, brought up the well for them, brought the quails for them. He fought for them the battle with Amalek. Then He said to them: I am to be your king. And they said to Him: Yes, yes" (Mekhilta). Trans. J.Z. Lauterbach (Philadelphia: J.P.S., 1933), tractate Bahodesh, V). See Yehuda Halevi, Kuzari, I, 11, 25, 83-89; IV, 3. 17. Guide I, 64, p. 157; II, 5, p. 260; III, 32, p. 526, 51, p. 623. See F. Heiler, Prayer: A Study in the History and Psychology of Religion, trans. S. McComb (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1932), chap. IV. 18. M.T., Hilkhot Yesodei HaTorah, IX, 3, 5. 19. Isodore Twersky, Rabad of Posquieres (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1962), pp. 282-6. 20. See Leo Strauss, "How to Begin to Study the Guide of the Perplexed," in The Guide of the Perplexed, op. cit., pp. 20-24. Wolfson claims that declaring openly, as opposed to simply accepting "in one's heart," belief in divine corporeality constitutes idolatry. See his interesting discussion in "Maimonides on the Unity and Incorporeality of God," JQR, 56 (1965), pp. 112-36. 21. "Hilkhot Abodah Zarah" deals with practices that were prohibited in order to protect the community from pagan and idolatrous influences. The laws of idolatry, therefore, begin with an account of how mistaken forms of worship were responsible for the growth of idolatry and the disappearance of monotheism. In chap. I of "Hilkhot Yesodei HaTorah," Maimonides deals with idolatry based upon a false understanding of the notion of the unity of God. 22. Guide, I, 55. 23. H. Wolfson, "Maimonides on the Unity and Incorporeality of God," and Philo, II, pp. 94-101. 24. See D. Hartman, Maimonides, p. 294, n. 92. 25. See Guttman, op. cit., p. 159. 26. Guide I, 39; III, 28; see D. Hartman, Maimonides, p. 265, n. 6l. See Pines' introduction to The Guide of the Perplexed, pp. xcv-xcviii, cxi, cxv; "Spinoza's tractatus Theologico-Politicus, Maimonides and Kant," p. 26, and his forward to D. Hartman, Maimonides, for the changes in Pines' approach to Maimonides' understanding of knowledge of God. Pines' present position is that Maimonides seriously doubted the possibility of metaphysical knowledge of God. 27. See M.T., Hilkhot Yesodei HaTorah, IV, 12.

28. The description of Abraham of the akedah should be balanced by other texts describing his efforts to establish an historical community dedicated to the belief in the unity of God: Book of the Commandments, positive commandment III: M.T., Laws of Idolatry, I; and Guide III, 51, p. 624. 29. See Guide, III, 51, pp. 620-623; I, 59, p. 139. 30. See Guide, III, 26, 28, 31. 31. See G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken, 1941), pp. 25-37; On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism (New York: Schocken, 1965), pp. 95, 127, 130. 32. Guide, I, 52; II, 12. 33. Mishnah Berakhot IX, 5. See Urbach, op. cit., chap. XIV, and p. 443. 34. "Toward an Understanding of the Messianic Idea" in The Messianic Idea in Judaism, p. 30. 35. M.T., The Book of Judges, "Kings and Wars," chaps. XI, XII. 36. Guttman, op. cit., pp. 177-8. See I. Husik, A History of Medieval Jewish Philosophy (New York: Meridian and Philadelphia: J.P.S., 1958), p. 300. 37. "Notes on Maimonides' Book of Knowledge," in Studies in Mysticism and Religion Presented to Gershom G. Scholem (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 1967), p. 273 and Natural Right and History (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1965), pp. 81-3. See Maimonides' Eight Chapters, VIII; Notes by Prof. Louis Ginzberg to I. Efros, Philosophical Terms in the Moreh Nebukim (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1924), pp. 134-5. 38. T.B., Kiddushin 39b. See Urback, op. cit p. 268-271; 436-444. 39. See different versions of this midrash in T.J., Megillah, III, 7. In the Babylonian version, the prophets, Daniel and Jeremiah, initiate the problem. The men of the great assembly offer a solution by reinterpreting the categories. In the Jerusalem version, the prophets themselves indicate the direction of the solution. 40. See Mekhilta VIII, for examples of the wide range of uses of notions of divine power. Rather than offering a strict definition of divine power, the Mekhilta collects a variety of correct uses of the concept. 41. See G. Scholem, On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, pp. 95, 120-1, 132-3, 130135. 42. See G. Scholem, "Toward an Understanding of the Messianic Idea," especially, pp. 17-24. 43. See Gerson D. Cohen, "The Talmudic Age," in Great Ages and Ideas of the Jewish People, edited by Leo W. Schwarz (New York: Random House, 1956), pp. 143-212. 44. See D. Hartman, Maimonides, pp. 102-126. 45. Kuzari, I, 1-13, 98, 99. 46. See Urbach, op. cit., pp. 303-4, for a discussion of the relationship of grace (hesed) and law. Our exposition supports Urbach's interpretation of the bold statement in T.B., Pesahim 118a: "To what do these twenty-six (verses of) "Give thanks" correspond? To the twenty-six generations that the Holy One, blessed be He, created in His world, and did not give them the Torah, but sustained them by His grace." "There was need of grace," comments Urbach, "so long as the Torah had not been given." For a different approach which emphasizes the need for grace in Maimonides' quest for knowledge of God, see Simon Rawidowicz, Studies in Jewish Thought, edited by Nahum N. Glatzer, chapter 7, Philadelphia, J.P.S. 1974. 47. E. Urbach, "Halakhah u-Nevuah," Tarbiz, 18 (1946), pp. 1-27. See D. Hartman, Maimonides, pp. 116-122. In contrast to Maimonides' approach, see Yehudah Halevi III, 41. This difference is not unrelated to differences of their overall philosophic world views. 48. See D. Hartman, Maimonides, IV. See Maimonides' "Treatise on Resurrection" and "Eight Chapters," chap. VIII; D. Hartman, Maimonides, chap. IV. 49. M.T., "Laws of Repentance," IX, and "Kings and Wars," XII. 50. Guide, II, 25. 51. M.T., Hilkhot Talmud Torah, I, 11-12. See I. Twersky, "Some Non-Halaklic Aspects of the Mishneh Torah," pp. 111-118.

52. Urbach, The Sages, chap. XII. COMMENT On David Hartman and Elliott Yagod, "God, Philosophy and Halakhah in Maimonides' Approach to Judaism" ISAAC FRANCK Dr. Hartman devotes a very substantial part of his paper to an exposition of the dialectical tension in the millennial mainstream of Jewish theological and metaphysical thought, between the two ideas of God: on the one hand the Biblical Halakhic - liturgical - psychosocial - anthropocentric - emotive - personal mitzvah oriented idea of the God of human history and of the history of Israel; and on the other hand the contemplative - speculative - conceptual - theoretical analytico-logico-philosophical - abstract idea of a "wholly other," distant, imperturbable God, Whom one loves disinterestedly, with a metaphysical and intellectual love akin to Spinoza's amor dei intellectualis. Where I would be inclined to question Dr. Hartman is: First, on his philosophical claim that this dialectical tension can be resolved and that a disjunction between these two God-ideas can be avoided. Second, on his historical claim that a critical analysis of the post-Biblical Rabbinic, mitzvah-oriented tradition shows this tradition to have successfully accommodated within itself the idea of God as the "wholly other"--the purely intellectual, non-anthropocentric idea of the God of the philosophers--and thus to have reduced the tension and eliminated the disjunction between the two. Third, his claim that Moses Maimonides in particular believed that he had succeeded in his own writings, and that he had in fact succeeded in resolving that tension completely and in having incorporated the philosophical idea of a nonanthropocentric God into his philosophy of Judaism, for the mainstream of the tradition. The fact of course is that the tension between these two God-ideas has persevered throughout the centuries, and is very much a dynamic focus in the thought and writings of such 20th century philosophers of Judaism as Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, Abraham J. Heschel, Mordecai M. Kaplan, Emil Fackenheim, Louis Jacobs, and in Israel, Yeshayahu Leibovitz and others. But perhaps the most cogent evidence of the continuing tension is conspicuously discernible (l) in the spirited and ever self-renewing controversies around the philosophical views of Maimonides that have punctuated without abatement the history of Jewish thought from the l3th century to our own day; and (2) in Maimonides' own assessments of his philosophical idea of God. It was not only Isaac Husik1 and Julius Guttman,2 preeminent historians of medieval Jewish thought, who saw the disjunction between Maimonides the philosopher in The Guide of the Perplexed, and Maimonides the Halakhist in his Code (the Mishneh Torah) and his other works in Halakhic Judaism. Maimonides' contemporaries and those commentators who wrote about his work during the two centuries immediately following him--men like Shem Tov Falaquera,3 Kaspi,4 Narboni,5 Shem Tov,6 Anatoli,7 Ephodi,8 and others--had many ambivalences and evidenced many dialectical tensions about the Maimonidean doctrine of God. They perceived in the idea of a remote, wholly other God--who is totally unaffected by human feelings and conduct, who does not respond with anger or joy to human transgression or worship, and whom the philosopher truly worships only through detached contemplation--a threat to the received idea of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the Jewish people's traditional God of history, Giver of the Commandments, and Dispenser of reward and punishment, and to civil and political tranquility. One of these very early commentators, J. Kaspi, wrote: "If the people were to find out about this doctrine, they would not be able to tolerate this truth, and would grow wild and uncontrollable in their conduct."9 It is thus not to be wondered that in some Jewish communities the study of The Guide of the Perplexed was banned, and in many of the Yeshivot, the Talmudic Academies in Eastern Europe, the study of The Guide was forbidden. As for Maimonides himself, it seems clear to me--and in this I follow the

interpretation of the late very great scholar, Leo Strauss,10 and also of a short and neglected work, in Hebrew, by an Israeli scholar, Yaacov Becker11--that Maimonides had in mind two distinct, though over lapping, audiences for the Code (i.e., the Mishneh Torah) and for The Guide, respectively. He wrote the Mishneh Torah principally for the masses and teachers of the Jewish community with the objective of strengthening, elevating, deepening, enriching their commitment to Torah Judaism, their faith in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and their dedication to a life of inspired ethical rectitude and nobility, and to a society of justice and mercy. For that audience, the fulfillment of the commandments and a sense of reciprocal personal relationship and involvement with the God who was the source of these commandments were the methodologies for the pursuit of these goals. The Guide was written for a select audience of religiously committed Jews who had been exposed to philosophical and scientific ideas, analyses and speculations. They were struggling with doubts and perplexities which science and philosophy raised in their minds about aspects of their faith, and were in search of a cogent philosophical frame of reference for their Judaism. In The Guide Maimonides hoped to provide answers to those troubled by these doubts and perplexities, erect for them a firm philosophical foundation for Judaism, and thus strengthen their commitment to it. He hoped that there could be a steady and even accelerated increase in the overlap of the two groups, facilitated in part by exposing the small number of the philosophically-minded intellectual elite to a searching analysis of "the reasons for the commandments" - ta'amei hamitzvet - in relation to the Maimonidean philosophical God-idea. Contained in The Guide, at times explicitly pointed to and at other times hinted by indirection, was what Maimonides preferred to have remain a secret doctrine, not to be revealed to the community, a doctrine of a distant, totally different, imperturbable God, true worship of Whom takes the form of intellectual love and contemplation. Maimonides distinguishes in several places in The Guide between "true belief" and "necessary belief," "Emunah Amitit" and "Emunah Hekhrahit." True belief is the philosopher's belief in the philosophers' God, a God Who does not need customary worship, Who is totally unaffected by whether or not the Halakhah or the Commandments are fulfilled, Who does not get angry and does not rejoice (these are only anthropomorphic metaphors). On the other hand, belief in the God of traditional Halakhah, the God of the Commandments, Maimonides calls necessary belief, necessary for the people, for the maintenance of social tranquility, for a civilized social order, and for humane conduct toward each other on the part of humans. The careful reader of The Guide will note how often Maimonides refers to the "Ormah elohit," i.e., "God's shrewdness" in having ordained the ritual laws and observances, not because God has any need for them, but as a "ruse" (Shlomo Pines' translation), a kind of trick in order to reduce cruelty and injustice and achieve just and humane relationships among humans. For example, the cult of animal sacrifices was ordained in order to wean away the people of Israel from human sacrifices, a barbaric cult that was widespread among the pagan idol worshippers who surrounded Israel at that time.12 Other such "Divine Ruses" are referred to in The Guide. The obvious question that confronts us is, why should this Maimonidean, detached, wholly other, imperturbable God be sufficiently perturbed to have any concern for the justice and tranquility of the social order among humans, or for the fulfillment of Commandments generally? And why should the philosopher, who understands the true belief and the passion for the intellectual contemplation and love of God, be concerned with fulfilling the Commandments? In the text of The Guide, using an example, the question takes this form: "For God, and for the philosopher, what difference does it make whether the animal to be eaten is slaughtered by the prescribed, ritual, humane method, or whether its meat is simply cut from the flank of the living animal13--(again a widespread practice among the pagans of the time)?" Permit me to defer the answer to this question while I turn to a very brief consideration of the second theme in this commentary.

In characterizing the Philosophical God-Idea of Maimonides, Dr. Hartman quite properly and vigorously stressed the AntiIdolatry motif constantly reiterated throughout Jewish teaching about God, and especially the forceful and aggressive Anti-Idolatry of Maimonides. One surpassingly important element in the Philosophical God-Idea developed at length in Maimonides' Guide is the utter unknowability of God by the human mind.14 God's essence is completely unknown to man; only His existence is known. No affirmative attributes can be attributed to God. God is completely, utterly unknown and unknowable. "Our knowledge of God," says Maimonides, "consists in our knowledge that we are unable to comprehend Him."15 The Guide's theology is a radical Negative Theology. What is known to man is necessarily known to him in terms of human knowledge, as he knows the world of his existence. Now, God can not be known to man because essential knowledge of God is available only to God himself. According to Maimonides, for man to try to know God is as if man tried to be God.16 This doctrine is summarized in a sort of precept: "Ilu y'dativ, he-yitiv," "If I knew Him, I would be He," a precept found in Joseph Albo's "Ikkarim."17 The doctrine of the utter unknowability of God is ancient in Jewish Philosophy. It was well developed by Philo,18 reiterated by Saadia19 in the l0th century, and by Maimonides, Albo, and later philosophers of Judaism. But Maimonides espoused a radical negative theology. He formulated the vigorous warning that ". . . he who affirms that God has positive attributes . . . has abandoned his belief in the existence of God without being aware of it."20 No wonder then that Maimonides admonished the reader of The Guide that the doctrine of God's unknowability "Should not be divulged (or revealed) to the masses,"21 and that Leo Strauss suggested that this teaching ". . . contradicts the teaching of the law . . . and is even subversive."22 But this doctrine, though apparently heterodox, is of even more ancient vintage. The prophet Isaiah is quoted by Maimonides in the course of his exposition of the unknowability of God, and in support of this doctrine. Isaiah declared, in the name of God: "Lo mahshvotai mahshvoteikhem, v'lo darkeikhem d'rakhai . . . ." "My thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not my ways . . . ."23 However, my own interpretation is, though I believe it to be hinted by Maimonides, that this doctrine of God's unknowability dates back even further, to Moses. When Moses inquired of God, "Who shall I say sent me?" the reply Moses heard was the incomprehensible and awesome words, "Ehyeh asher ehyeh . . . ,"24 generally translated as "I am who I am,' or "I will be who I will be," the words confronted him with a double incomprehensibility. First, the meaning of the words, simply as words, was incomprehensible. Second, the Being to Whom the words ostensibly referred was incomprehensible. Moses later pursued the enigma by asking God to show him His (God's) nature. In the reply that Moses received to this later question are provided implicitly the unravelling and separation from each other of the two earlier enigmas. For in hearing God's reply, "Ki lo yir'ani ha'adam vahai . . . ," ". . . for man cannot see me and live . . . ,"25 Moses learned that the Entity or Being to which "Ehyeh" refers is indeed, and must forever remain, incomprehensible. But he also learned that the linguistic problem is resolved, and that the meaning of the words "ehyeh asher ehyeh" perhaps ceases to be impenetrable. Though God gives it as the answer to the question about His identity, the locution "ehyeh" is not substantival, it is not the equivalent of a noun; it is not a name of anything; least of all is it a proper name, like Socrates. The locution is an admonition, a directive, which says "Do not inquire into what I am, because I am incomprehensible. I am what I am, ask no further. Man cannot know me, I am wholly different." This doctrine of God's utter unknowability is the ultimate anti-idolatry. It is possible for us to know only what God is not, and what is not God. "Only God is God."26 Anything known or knowable is not God. God is utterly different and unique. To worship anything known or knowable is idolatry. To give one's ultimate and absolute allegiance or loyalty to anything but God, to any known or knowable thing, to any person, or aggregate of persons, or to any human institution, is

idolatry. It is only that wholly other, utterly unknowable God of Philosophy that is worthy of contemplation and of pure, disinterested, intellectual love. Now, you may ask, isn't this radical Negative Theology barren of consequences, morally vacuous, tantamount to a vague mysticism, and destructive of any Rational Theology? I think not. It is not Mysticism, because it does not itself claim to have, and radically rejects all claims to the possession of, any access to some intuitive mystical insight into the essential nature of God. The fact that God is unknown is a mystery, but this does not make the doctrine of God's unknowability a doctrine of Mysticism. The doctrine is not destructive of Rational Theology, because it is not a Theology of silence, akin to the Wittgensteinian precept: "Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must be silent." On the contrary, this Theology imposes on the theologian who espouses it the duty to do a lot of talking, by way of "unsaying,"27 morning, noon, and night, all the many things that humans have said and will continue to be saying in their talk about God, even when they claim that God is unknowable. It is not an ethically vacuous doctrine. It does have ethical consequences. Which leads me to my third and final theme, namely the answer to the question I mentioned earlier, as to why the Imperturbable God, and the philosopher who contemplates and disinterestedly loves Him, should be at all concerned about the traditional commandments. Here I complete the circle, and come around to an agreement with one aspect of Professor Hartman's thesis, though I arrive at it from another direction. It is perhaps paradoxical, but in Judaism even the nonanthropocentric, philosophical, idea of an utterly different God converges toward the Halakhic, socio-ethical, Commandment-oriented traditional mandates for social existence. l) For Maimonides, the highest, most noble pursuit of the philosophical Jew is indeed the contemplative love of God. However, a necessary condition, that may make possible this kind of contemplative life for an increasing number of philosophically minded persons, is a Torah-society. Its norms and adherence to Commandments will assure the tranquil, just, and civilized order that maintains the conditions for a philosophical life. 2) If only the unknowable God of Radical Negative Theology is worthy of worship-of the highest, ultimate, absolute loyalty and allegiance--this has consequences for social ethics, for norms and prescriptions by which to govern interhuman relationships. In all human societies there is an unavoidable, inescapable need for the exercise of authority, for superordinate and subordinate relationships and positions of humans in the social order. A traffic light system is an exercise of the authority, and a police system enforces this authority. What are the limits of authority of humans and human institutions in a society? Therefore, in the perspective of Radical Negative Theology, what are the limits of the authority of humans and human institutions when they perform necessary superordinate roles in relation to other human beings? It seems to me immediately and most obviously entailed by this doctrine that no human being(s), no human institution, no human law, may demand or expect or coerce the supreme, ultimate, and total allegiance, loyalty, or obedience on the part of any other human being. No human being(s) or institutions may "play God" toward, or "Lord it over" any other human being. No human(s) may exercise any absolute authority over any other person. The exercise of such absolute authority over other humans is selfidolization; it is the "absolutization of the relative;" and it also coerces the victim who accepts such absolute authority to in fact practice idolatry: ". . . for unto Me are the children of Israel servants, not servants to servants."28 Thus, the otherness and unknowability of God in the Maimonidean, philosophical God-idea, the true God-idea which Maimonides wished to keep secret from the masses, does entail a system of social ethics. But the masses were not prepared to understand and accept the true beliefs about God and live by them. Indeed, these true beliefs would be likely to lead the masses to violent and disorderly conduct. They need the necessary beliefs, e.g., that God is a dispenser of reward and punishment, not because they are true, but rather as a means to an end, in order

to maintain a civilized society. Maimonides does not provide a traditionalist resolution between these two divergent God-ideas, nor does he claim to have done so. The disjunction between these two God-ideas seems to me irresolvable in traditionalist terms, and while the attempt so to resolve it is an interesting exercise, its product strikes me as only an addition to almost 800 years of tension and confusion, rather than as a contribution to clarity. This tension will continue, and, not withstanding the tension, the spiritual and intellectual vocation of Judaism will struggle on as heretofore. Philosophically, what is important is not resolution, but rather clarification, a very modest adumbration of which I have tried to contribute in this brief commentary. Kennedy Institute of Ethics Georgetown University Washington, D.C. NOTES 1. Isaac Husik, A History of Medieval Jewish Philosophy (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1941). 2. Julius Guttmann, Philosohies of Judaism: The History of Jewish Philosophy from Biblical Times to Franz Rosenzweig (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1964). 3. Shem Tov Falaquera (1225-1290), Commentary on the Guide of the Perplexed (Moreh Hamoreh). 4. Joseph Kaspi (1279-ca.1340), Commentary on the Guide of the Perplexed, and Amudei Hakessef Umaskiyot Hakessef. 5. Moses Narbeni (R. Moses Yosef of Narbonne) (died after 1362), Commentary on the Guide of the Perplexed, Goldenthal, ed. (Vienna, 1852) (See Husik, Fn. 1 above, p. 449.) 6. Shem Tov Ben Joseph (ca. 1461-1489), Commentary on the Guide of the Perplexed. 7. Joseph Anateli (ca. 1194-1256), Malmad Hatalmidim. 8. Ephodi, (a Hebrew acronym for Profiat Duran) (died ca. 1414), Commentary on the Guide of the Perplexed. 9. Joseph Kaspi Amudei Hakessef Umaskiyot Hakessef, p. 8. 10. Leo Strauss, "The Literary Character of the Guide for the Perplexed," in Persecution and the Art of Writing (Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press, 1952), pp. 38-94. 11. Yaacov Becker, Mishnato Haphilosophit Shel Rabbenu Moshe Ben Maimon (Tel Aviv: J. Shimoni Publishing House, 1955). 12. Moses Maimonidos, Guide of the Perplexed, Shlomo Pines, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), III, 32 (pp. 526, 530-531 in Pines' translation) and III, 47 (p. 593 in Pines' translation). On the "Divine ruse," see e.g., Guide III, 32, especially pp. 526-529 in Pines' translation. 13. Guide, III, 26, pp. 508-509 in Pines' translation. 14. Guide, I, 51-60. 15. Ibid., I, 59, p. 139. 16. Ibid., I, 60, and III, 21, p. 485 in Pines' translation. 17. Joseph Albo, Sefer Ha-Ikkarim (The Book of Principles) Isaac Husik, trans. (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1946). Volume II, p. 206. 18. Harry Austryn Wolfson, Philo: Foundations of Religious Philosophy in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1948), Vol. II, Chap. 11, pp. 94-164. 19. Gaon Saadia, The Book of Beliefs and Opinions, Samuel Rosenblatt, trans., (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1948). 20. Guide, I, 60, p. 145 in Pines' translation. 21. Ibid., I, 59, p. 142 in Pines' translation. 22. Leo Strauss, "How to Begin to Study the Guide of the Perplexed," in Moses Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed, Shelmo Pines, trans., pp. xlviii ff. 23. Isaiah, LV, 8-9. 24. Exodus, III, 14.

25. Ibid., XXXIII, 21. 26. Elliott E. Cohen, in an article in the early 40's. 27. Anton C. Pegis, "Penitus Manet Ignotum," in Mediaeval Studies, XXVII (1965), pp. 212-226, especially pp. 219 ff. 28. Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Kiddushin, 22b. CHAPTER IX PHILOSOPHY, MAN AND THE ABSOLUTE GOD: AN ISLAMIC PERSPECTIVE BAHRAM JAMALPUR It is necessary to clarify the precise meaning of four fundamental concepts: philosophy, independence, man and God. Philosophy, by its very nature, is the reflection upon reflection; as the reason of all reasons, philosophy is the primordial search for the ultimate horizon of meaning. In intellectual history, there are two fundamental definitions of philosophy: 1. Philosophy as the Love of Wisdom 2. Philosophy as the Possession of Wisdom What most concerns the Eastern world, and particularly the Islamic tradition, is the philosophy as the possession of wisdom. No matter which definition of philosophy appeals to us, however, we are talking about human philosophy and not philosophy as such. Whatever the ultimate and the Divine ground of philosophy may be, philosophy as a human phenomenon begins with man and is essentially related to humanity in general. Philosophy does not belong to any particular man, race, society, nation, language or religion. By the grace of God, it is the outcome of human understanding which calls itself into question and so transcends all conceivable categories. Most certainly and on contrast to what the late Professor M. Heidegger has claimed, philosophy is not Western in its essence, nor is the only proper philosophical language not Greco-German. Philosophy is not the slave of any race, language or religion, because Wisdom in its very essence transcends all traditions. Philosophy begins with the presence of man in the world, encompasses all cultures and hopes for the transcendence of man in order to comprehend the Ultimate Mystery. Independence is a mystery that unfolds itself throughout man's history but never reveals itself in any perfect form since for man, as a limited being in the world, there can be no Absolute Independence. Note that by independence we do not mean liberation. Independence is above and beyond liberation. One attempts to liberate one's self in order to become independent and yet one may become liberated without achieving true independence. Liberation as a political concept by necessity assumes a prior period of its negation, but independence as a positive ontological phenomenon must itself be independent; thus it is a self-asserting concept. For men of Wisdom there can be no true independence without an authentic philosophy of independence and there can be no genuine philosophy of independence without the veritable independence of philosophy itself. The ground of independent philosophy is man's self-consciousness in time and in history. Therefore we must unfold the notion of man in the light of self-consciousness and within the mystery of time and the context of history. What is man? Man is a being in space and time: the former accounts for his material dimension whereas the latter constitutes an essential dimension of his spirituality. Man, in truth, is a temporal being; he is a-being-in-the-world who experiences the process of becoming, which conditions his very being. This conditioning is so fundamental that it manifests itself in his entire system of thought. As an objective being in the world of becoming he experiences a collection of factual events which we call the objective or the quantitative sense of time. However, due to his reflective power of consciousness man, as an internally dynamic being, is able to go beyond the objective perspective and condition his environment through what we may call the subjective or the qualitative sense of time. It is the subjective interpretation of the objective

world of temporal events that creates history. Man is an historical being. In the light of quantitative time, history creates man and, in the light of qualitative time, man creates history. Matter, in the sphere of body, is the symbol of the will to power. Spirit, in the sphere of consciousness, is the symbol of the will to love. The ontological unity of power and love is the symbol of the will to justice which constitutes humanity within society and history. In substance, "spirit" has two essential dimensions: first, the inner selfidentity or "I" which asserts itself from within and by means of reflection upon itself; and second, the qualitative manifestation of the ego in time and through history. Both aspects of the phenomenon of history are truly necessary and complementary for the everlasting search for meaning in the realm of selfconsciousness. The first aspect is the ground of self-identity so that the spirit may be identified by human consciousness and retain its ego throughout history. The second aspect is the ground of the temporality of spirit which permits it to unfold through the mystery of time, and to leap beyond factuality in order to comprehend the transcendental aspect of history. If "spirit" were limited to the ego it would have lacked the necessary "elan vital" for its conscious unfoldingness, and if it were limited to pure manifestations then it would have lost its self-identity. Therefore, spirit by nature must possess both ego or reflection upon itself, and manifestations or the unfolding through time and history. The ultimate hope of any spirit is to become truly and completely conscious of itself, and this is completely realized only when the implicit unity of the spirit becomes explicit. The ontological assertion of the explicit unity of spirit can be observed when the will to power and justice are united in and through love. In the light of the spirit, the qualitative interpretation of time, which constitutes history, provides us with the possibility of authentic self-consciousness, which in the form of philosophy is the ground of independence. We must remember that man can become politically free yet remain philosophically dependent. In order to become philosophically free, philosophy itself must experience independence. In truth, it is the destiny of philosophy to experience independence and gain freedom. Philosophy as the possession of Wisdom calls itself into question and for this reason after confrontation with various other disciplines asks about itself in a manner that transcends all limitations. In fact, it is the duty of philosophy, not only to confront other disciplines but also to confront itself and provide us with a critique of its own. In the beginning religion based on revelation, science based on the study of facts, mysticism based on intuitive illumination, and philosophy based on reason, were all unified in their search for Truth as it revealed itself on the human horizon. But in the course of history, a necessary yet only a temporal separation took place, so that philosophy might have a chance to reflect objectively upon other disciplines while developing its own self-awareness. Despite this fundamental separation, we must never forget that the call for the harmony of religion, science, mysticism and philosophy has been with us from the very beginning. The foundation for such assertion is the belief in the ultimate Unity of Being (Wahdat al-Wujud). The ultimate recall of Eastern Wisdom in general and Islamic Philosophy in particular is the awareness of various levels of human understanding despite the unity of the whole. This is the ultimate reason why philosophy, after its early separation, must return to the state of togetherness with religion, science, and mysticism. Philosophy at the level of self-awareness through independence, becomes completely conscious of this primordial duty. According to this line of reasoning, this discussion does not center about a purely exclusive philosophy, but rather is devoted to the spirit of independent philosophy within the Islamic tradition. There are two basic schools of thought within the Islamic tradition, namely, Falsafa and Irfan. Unquestionably Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and Malavi (Rumi) are the best representatives of these Islamic movements. Consequently, we will devote the

rest of our discussion to a comparison of their notions of the Absolute God. The most fundamental presupposition of Islamic thought is that God and Man are so essentially related that, for us, the full understanding of one demands the full knowledge of the other. Man cannot know man if he does not know God, and man cannot know God if he does not know man. We must not forget, however, that such assertion does not deny the absolute priority of God's Being and the knowledge of God over man, since such claim is valid only in relationship to man and not in itself. God has created man in His image, which implies that man possesses the image of God. Furthermore, since God does nothing in vain and there is nothing accidental about His divine intentions, God must have great love for man, whom He has created in His image. This love by its very nature encompasses man's being and overflows from his inner being; in the final analysis it must return to its origin. In short, God has a unique love for man and man, as the image of God, has a unique love for God. According to Islam, God's love for man, which is ontologically prior to the creation of man, is a mystery, even to the angels. The angels ask God why He wants to create man as His own representative on earth rather than angels, since man shall commit sin whereas angels will not. God's answer to such a common sense objection in The Holy Quran is that "I know what you do not know."1 A mystery even in the angels, God's love for man is a mysterious reality, even to man. Whatever the reason behind such a gift, man's love for God, which in the beginning under the grace of God was in harmony with God's love, is ontologically dependent upon God's love for man. The temporal break of this mysterious relationship, according to The Holy Quran, is based on disobedience which is attributed, first of all to Satan2 as the personification of evil and second, to man who possesses a weakness for evil as a separation from God.3 If religion is taken to be what The Holy Quran tells us, namely, "The Way to God," then the purpose of Islam as the universal religion becomes clear. It is to awaken man and restore the temporally interrupted relationship so that, through submission to God's will, man can possess his unity with the whole creation, know himself, and finally, love God for whom he has been created. This is a well-understood objective of Islam which has been accepted by almost all Muslim thinkers. Therefore, the Muslim philosopher has one ultimate purpose in mind, namely, to make explicit the mystery of the God-man relationship which is expressed so implicitly in the highly symbolic language of The Holy Quran. Performing such a noble task, the philosopher must know, not only God, but also man. Knowing that he is inwardly related to himself and existentially so involved in the mysterious relationship to God, the philosopher may begin with himself, and then in the light of the divine grace, seek to know God. But the real knowledge of man comes after the philosopher becomes aware of the divine reality and realizes the image of God. Only then can he make explicit the implicit mysterious relationship of God and man which ontologically are never separate, yet whose relationship is temporally broken. Let us now begin with the notion of God, which has the utmost priority in the Islamic world, and focus our analysis on the comparison of Inb Sina and Molavi's understanding of God in terms of Being. The philosophies of the Sina and Molavi both center around Being, since without Being Ibn Sina's esoteric metaphysics would not make any sense. Therefore, we may say that there is an implicit fundamental agreement between Ibn Sina and Molavi that Being is the mystery of Hikmat. Our aim in this section is to present a view of Being which through synthesis can encompass the essential assertions of both the esoteric approach of Ibn Sina and the mystical approach of Molavi, and yet point to the dialectical tension between two Muslim thinkers. Whatever the mystery of Being may be, both Ibn Sina and Molavi agree on the following four main points: First of all, Being cannot be reduced to merely a notion in our mind, since it implies reality in itself, and reality cannot be reduced to a sheer subjective notion. Therefore, any philosophical system that reduces the meaning of Being simply to an abstract term that can exist only in man's mind stands outside this

tradition. Second, man does not begin his search from non-being but rather from an implicit awareness of Being, and this is not acquired through abstraction but is given to man. Third, whatever the implicit meaning of Being may be, it cannot be defined,4 since it is most primordial. Fourth, man must seek to make explicit the notion of Being, not by sheer conceptualization and abstraction, but through "intuition" and in the light of illumination.5 One of the fundamental presuppositions of Ibn Sina is the implicit assumption of his ontology that there is a correspondence between the transcendent Being in reality and being as the transcendental concept. On the one had, Being in reality which transcends all beings is intelligible in itself, since its origin is Thought Thinking Thought. On the other hand, Being is the first transcendental concept, which transcends all concepts and comes into man's intellect as the root of his intelligibility. Being in the objective world of reality is the most real and so the most intelligible, which gives reality and meaning to all other beings. Being, in the subjective world of man, is the most universal and so the most intelligible idea which gives reality and meaning to all other concepts. Since every true concept corresponds to a real being, the hope of man is to reach an understanding of the transcendental concept of Being which would mirror the real transcendent Being in reality. Man can accomplish this task, only because he is a bridge between the objective world of reality, since he is a being in the world, and the subjective world of intellection, since he is in the possession of his own intellect. Man must seek to make explicit the implicit notion of Being so that he may realize The Pure Being of God, which is Thought Thinking Thought.6 Although Ibn Sina never loses sight of conceptualization and argumentation, in his more esoteric writings7 he not only points to the limitations of logic but emphasizes the utmost importance of "intuition" which comes from the Divine Illumination through the Agent Intellect. According to Ibn Sina, in the light of two fundamental logical notions that man's intellect acquires without any inference, namely, "necessary" and "possible," man realizes the meaning attached to the Necessary Being and the Possible Being.8 Being, in the fullest sense, refers to the Necessary Being or God. Therefore, once the meaning of God as the Necessary Being in and through itself is understood, then its denial involves a necessary contradiction.9 Thus, in the fullest sense, Being, the first transcendental concept, refers only to the Necessary Being in itself, which transcends all beings. Now insofar as Being represents the being of a created world, namely, the possible being, whether it be necessary through another or possible in and through itself it points not only to the emanation of God in the possible world, but also the presence of the meaning of Being in every possible concept. On this level, on which the term Being is applied for ten categories, one substance and nine accidents, Ibn Sina warns us against the view that Being is simply a name which, not on the basis of one meaning, is shared by ten categories. For if this were the case, then the meaning of "substance is" would be the same as "this is a substance," and to assert that "substance is" would be the same as "substance substance," which are absurd consequences. If Being would not be used for ten categories, according to one meaning, then we would have ten meanings of being and then ten meanings of nothing, which is absurd, since we would not be able to say that an entity either is or is not.10 Then Ibn Sina tells us that Being is not a genus because, unlike a genus which is applied equally to all of its species, the meaning of Being in the created world refers first to a substance and secondly, to accidents; and in the realm of accidents, first to quality and quantity and secondly, to other more dependent accidents. Molavi, however, does not quite agree with the parallel hierarchy of beings and concepts in Ibn Sina's ontology, where Being as reality transcends all beings and Being as "Idea" is the first transcendental over all concepts. Molavi has no quarrel with Being as reality. He agrees with Ibn Sina that Being, insofar as it points to Reality in its most primordial sense, refers to God. Being in itself is God, and God in Himself is Being.11 But Molavi disagrees with Ibn Sina on three

accounts: First of all, Molavi denies the possibility of man ever having a concept that may mirror God.12 Of course, there is no disagreement between the two thinkers as to the impossibility of a finite being such as man ever being able to perceive The Infinity.13 Molavi opposes Ibn Sina's construction of a positive notion of the Necessary Being in itself, which though, it transcends all of our concepts, yet as the first transcendental, can reflect God. Molavi insists that any true awareness of God, which is mystical in its nature, is by no means bound either to an ordinary or a transcendental concept. Man possesses no concept of God, since God is understood in terms of "The Vision" which provides no ground for an image or a direct rational concept. Man becomes aware of God in terms of what we may call Beyong Being--a Pure Non-Conceptual Vision of Truth--that only "The Great Silence" can communicate.14 Second, based on the denial of the positive concept of God, Molavi disagrees with Ibn Sina that the discursive philosophy, by its very nature, can gain any Divine Insight. Of course, Molavi takes the discursive philosophy to be nothing but a system of rational construction founded on a limited tool called logic which, in fact, is taken to be a barrier against the true vision. Molavi's objection at this point, which appears a number of times in Masnavi,15 is quite unfair and misleading since, as we indicated before, Ibn Sina's metaphysics is so related to the esoteric ontology that by no means can it be reduced to a simple logical system. In the theology of Isharat va Tanbihat,16 Ibn Sina claims that there are two different, yet related, channels to truth. One is "The Discursive Method," which provides a system of knowledge, and the other "The Intuitive Method," which provides the vision of Truth. Ibn Sina points to the beginning and the end of human knowledge as the sphere of "intuition," which implies that although logic is used, its application is limited to a sphere between two realms of "intuition." Yet in a rare occasion in Danishnamah-i `Ala'i17 he asserts that all knowledge is first found by "intuition" and that the discursive method is limited to teaching. Thus, he admits not only the possibility but even the actuality of a mystical knowledge when all is seen through "intuition."18 Also, the language of The Recital of Bird bears witness that when it comes to the vision of Truth, man acquires a different mode of consciousness.19 On the basis of these remarks, it seems that Molavi has misunderstood Ibn Sina's philosophy by reducing the system to the surface of Shifa; yet it is fair to note that the difference between the two thinkers still remains, since Molavi totally denies the value of any discursive thinking and asserts that only Intuition provides us with the vision of God. Third, Molavi, unlike Ibn Sina, applies to the world a paradoxical statement, namely, that on the one hand, the world is real insofar as only God is Real. It seems that what Ibn Sina conceives about the notion of "Matter" Molavi applies to the created world. "The Prime Matter for Ibn Sina is not nothing but a `negative potentiality' that possesses no form."20 This, of course, leads to two basic problems: First of all, how can God create what possesses no form? Second, since creation is understood as the outcome of God's knowledge, how can God know that which has no actuality? Whatever the possible solutions to these unsolvable problems may be, it is clear that "the Prime Matter" is so far removed from the Divine emanation that one may say that it possesses no being.21 Molavi, who does not believe in the Aristotelian notion of matter,22 applies a similar paradox to the created world, namely, that when it is taken to be Being, then God is Beyond Being, and when God is seen as true reality, then the world, though it is the manifestation of God, possesses no being of its own; and in truth, the world qua world is Nothing.23 In order to grasp Molavi's understanding of God, we must focus our attention on the notion of the Absolute. The Absolute, by definition, is the unconditional reality that conditions all reality since it transcends Being, and so we may call it Beyond Being. In its "ultimateness" it stands above the logical, the epistemological, and the existential dichotomy of subject and object. The unconditional Absolute, by virtue of being the Absolute, can neither be considered

an object nor a subject. The Absolute is not an object, since it is not a nonreflective entity. The Absolute is not a subject, since for every subject there is an object that stands outside of its realm, whereas the Absolute is such that none can stand outside of its sphere. In truth, the Absolute encompasses the subject and the object, Being and nonBeing. The Absolute, on the one hand, is above the subject and object dichotomy and, therefore, cannot be approached either as an object or a subject; on the other hand, the Absolute is so close both to the object and the subject that "knows" them qua object and qua subject through "love." This is because, although the Absolute in itself is beyond and beyond, owing to its ultimate desire to be known through love, it manifests Itself, which constitutes the world of subject and object dichotomy. The world is a mirror that reflects God implicitly whereas man in the world is a polished mirror that reflects upon this reflection and becomes the explicit mirror of God. Since without man the world is nothing but an unpolished mirror; then we may say that without man the world cannot love God. Man then not only completes "the circle of existential manifestation," but by loving God, gives meaning to the world. Because nothing stands outside of the Absolute, man as knowing God through love, is nothing but the highest manifestation of The Absolute Loving The Absolute.24 Thus, Molavi rightly claims that through love as true union, all are absorbed by and through the Absolute. Therefore, the mystic can "see" that, in truth, there is no other reality but the Absolute. For the sake of comparison, let us once again reflect on the fundamental notion of God in Molavi's mystical ontology and Ibn Sina's esoteric metaphysics. First of all, both thinkers agree that there is a reality named God who is the Absolute One. God is the Absolute because He stands above the object and subject dichotomy and, therefore, can be considered neither a thing nor a limited consciousness. The Absolute God is One because there is none like God. We must note at this point that although both Ibn Sina and Molavi make use of non-Platonic language concerning God, their notion of God cannot simply be identified with Plotinus. For Plotinus "The One" has no duality, and since knowledge implies the duality of the subject and the object, One is taken to be above thought, so that It cannot know itself or any other being.25 As we indicated before, Ibn Sina defines The Absolute as Thought Thinking Thought and Molavi, although he admits to the unmanifested simple Absolute which is totally present to Itself, claims that the Absolute in Its manifestation is thought which seeks to be known through Itself. This brings us to the first seed of disagreement, namely, when Ibn Sina uses the term "One" he means the absolute simplicity of God's unconditional reality, which necessitates that from "One" comes only "one." Molavi, however, has no quarrel with "the unconditional," since he also believes that, with the exception of man, none can condition God. But Molavi cannot admit to the absolute simplicity of God in the sense that Ibn Sina uses this rather complex terminology because, for Molavi, there are two dimensions of the Absolute, the not-manifested and the manifested. When Molavi applies the term "One" to God, he means a non-composite being who encompasses all and through many reflects His oneness. In short, Molavi is not forced to assert the Greek idea that from One comes only one. Molavi believes that man as the image can condition God except insofar as He relates Himself to Himself through the manifest world. When it comes to the mystery of God's creation, Ibn Sina, based on two doctrines that from the pure One only one can come into being, and that from the pure Thought only thought can appear, asserts that from God the absolute Thought emanates a Separate intellect.26 Ibn Sina describes the descending line of creative emanation which constitutes the world of many, primarily in terms of the dual aspects of the first intellect that, on the one hand, is aware of God and on the other hand is aware of itself. When the descent arrives at the tenth separate intellect, we are faced with the Agent intellect which, on the one hand, provides "Forms" to the sublunary world and, on the other hand, provides man with the intelligible forms which prepare the image of God for

ascension. Molavi, although through his poetry he points to the first intellect and the Universal Soul, never asserts a systematic model of creation and nowhere does he agree with the emanation of intellects from God. But he finds no difficulty in asserting that the world is nothing but the direct and the indirect manifestation of God and, in truth, that the world is nothing but God Manifested. This brings us to another crucial point of disagreement. Although both thinkers agree that the world is not created out of nothing,27 Ibn Sina provides a theory of holy emanation that at least accounts for some degree of separateness of beings, whereas Molavi insists totally on the ontological togetherness of all beings. Ibn Sina's theory of holy emanation on the one hand claims that the Being of all beings is in the mind of God, since the first created intellect is nothing but an idea in God's Mind and also in Isharat va Tanbihat28 insists upon "continuous creation," yet on the other hand points to the separateness of possible existential beings. But Molavi claims nothing but a continuous-all-encomassingmanifestation of God which constitutes the world as nothing but God manifested. Ibn Sina and Molavi both agree that all of reality depends upon God, not only in its Being but also in its intelligibility. It is God the Absolute that must explain the possibility, the existence, and the intelligibility of the world and not the other way around.29 They both agree that, owing to God's goodness, He loves man and, in turn, it is due to His love for man that He creates the world. Therefore, God is not the world and this is the meaning of Transcendence, which is described as Thought, or Thought Thinking Thought. But God is present in His Act and so He must be present in the world, and this is the meaning of immanence which is described as love, or Love Loving Love, Molavi, however, goes a leap further and claims that the world is nothing but the unity of the manifestation of God or God's unity manifested, which implies that the world has no reality of its own, and there is only One Being, namely, God. University of Utah Salt Lake City, Utah NOTES 1. The Holy Quran, Sura II, Ayat 30. 2. Ibid., Sura II, Ayat 34. 3. Ibid., Sura XIX, Ayat 115. 4. Ibn Sina, Danishnamah-i `Ala'i (Theology), ed. M. Mo'in, pp. 7-11. 5. Molavi, Masnavi, Tehran Edition, Bk. V, p. 428. 6. Ibn Sina, Danishnamah-i `Ala'i (Theology), ed. M. Mo'in, p. 108. 7. Ibn Sina, Danishnamah-i `Ala'i (Tabi'yat), ed. S.M. Mishkat, pp. 141-143. 8. Ibn Sina, Isharat va Tanbihat (Iranian Translation), p. 181. 9. Ibn Sina, Najat (Cairo, 1938), p. 224. 10. Ibn Sina, Danishnamah-i `Ala'i (Theology), ed. M. Mo'in, pp. 36-77, 11. According to Molavi, "The Absolute Unity of Being" is the ground of the unity of vision. 12. When the spirit became lost in contemplation, it said this: "None but God has contemplated the beauty of God." The Divana Shamsi Tabriz, tr. R.A. Nicholson, Poem XXIII, p. 91. 13. Ibn Sina, Risalah dar Haquiqat wa Kaifiyat-i Silsilah-Mawjudat, pp. 4-6. 14. Molavi, Masnavi, Tehran Edition, Bk. IV, p. 377. 15. Ibid., Bk. I, p. 56. 16. Ibn Sina, Isharat va Tanbihat (Iranian Translation), pp. 247-257. 17. Ibn Sina, Danishnamah-i `Ala'i (Tabi'yat), ed. S. M. Mishkat, pp. 141-143. 18. Ibn Sina, Isharat va Tanbihat (Iranian Translation), pp. 254-256. 19. "As God is my witness: it falls to your hidden being to appear, while it falls to your apparent being to disappear." H. Corbin, Avicenna and the Visionary Recital, tr. W. Trask, p. 187. 20. Ibn Sina, Isharat va Tanbihat (Iranian Translation), p. 101. 21. Ibn Sina, Khutbat al-Gharr-a', tr. K.M.K. Akhtar, "A Tract of Avicenna," Islamic Culture (Hyderabad-Daccan, 1935), Vol. 9, pp. 221-222.

22. According to Molavi, the so-called material world is constituted by unlimited particles that in some sense can see the Absolute Truth. "Air, earth, water and fire are worshippers. To us they are dead but to God they are alive." Tehran Edition, Bk. I, p. 23. 23. Q. Ghani, Tarikh Tasawuf dar Islam, p. 421. 24. "We are even as shadows, He is all who seek, Lo, by Him is spoken every word we speak!" Molavi, Divana-i Shams, Tabriz Edition, p. 137. 25. Plotinus, The Enneads, Tr. S. MacKenna, Ennead VI, Tractate 9, Section 3. 26. Ibn Sina, Danishnamah-i `Ala'i (Theology), ed. M. Mo'in, pp. 111-112. 27. In this respect they both have been accused by the orthodox theologians to be infidels. Ibn Sina strongly condemned such an impurtation in the following poem: "It is not so easy and trifling to call me a heretic No belief in religion is firmer than mine own I am the unique person in the whole world and if I am a heretic Then there is not a single Musulman anywhere in the world." S.H. Barani, "Ibn Sina and Alberuni," Avicenna Commemoration Volume, p. 8. 28. Ibn Sina, Isharat va Tanbihat (Iranian Translation), p. 179. 29. Ibid., p. 177. COMMENT On Bahram Jamalpur, "Philosophy, Man and the Absolute God: An Islamic Perspective" FRANCIS KENNEDY Dr. Jamalpur's paper makes a doubly significant contribution. First, he brings the very important element of a specifically Islamic strain of thought. In addition, he has chosen to focus on an area whose clarification is a vital pre-requisite to any discussion of God, the divine nature, our knowledge thereof, etc. The paper suggests to me a developed harmony between non-dualist Hindu concepts of maya and the position of Molavi that only God is real. I suspect that there is a rich vein of questions of historical fact and philosophical nuance which merits investigation. The main point at issue in Dr. Jamalpur's paper is its contrast of two figures. One, Ibn Sina, or Avicenna, is closer to the ideal of the classical philosopher stressing the importance of discursive, rational approaches to human knowledge. He would, however, not deny an important role within his schema for in- tuition as a (necessary?) means if we are to know God--though that phrase, `to know God' may be overly naive and misleading. The other figure in the paper, Molavi, would rule out conventional philosophical knowledge in the area of knowing God and rely instead on intuition or on its religious counterpart, mysticism. (For reasons of brevity, "intuition" and "mysticism" are used here with a greater degree of interchangeability than I could theoretically justify). Each of the main figures in Dr. Jamalpur's paper thus points us to the very delicate question of the relationship between philosophy and mysticism especially when, as in this case, the mysticism is informed and shaped by a specific, welldefined, positive revelation. The question of this relationship is one which underlies much of the paper. Thus we read: In the beginning, religion based on revelation, science based on the study of the facts, mysticism based on intuitive illumination, and philosophy based on reason, were all unified in their search for Truth as it revealed itself on the human horizon. The theory for such a unity is well expressed: God and man are so essentially related that, for us, the full understanding of one demands the full knowledge of the other. Man cannot know man if he does not know God; and man cannot know God if he does not know man. The task which is laid before philosophy is almost an integral part of theology. Thus:

the purpose of Islam . . . is to awaken man . . . so that . . . man can possess his unity with the whole creation, know himself, and finally love God for whom he has been created. . . . . . Therefore, the Muslim philosopher has one ultimate purpose in mind, namely to make explicit the mystery of the God-man relationship which is expressed so implicitly in the highly symbolic language of the Holy Quran. . . . . . But the real knowledge of man comes after the philosopher becomes aware of the divine reality and realizes the image of God. What then is the place in philosophy of mysticism--or of intuition--bearing in mind the comment made above about their relationship? I would like to sharpen this question with a few thoughts from Aquinas. In that tradition, philosophy has an important but limited--indeed, self-limiting--role to play. It can provide knowledge that God exists, offering also some content, however tentative, to the idea 'God'. It can show that God is an essential-perhaps better, existential--point of reference for us as noted in one of the quotations from the paper. Philosophy would, however, locate the question of mysticism in the theological, i.e., non-philosophical, camp. It would say that mysticism--and revelation - is important, even hypothetically necessary (i.e. if we are to know God, then . . .), but not philosophical. Even the Augustinian tradition of Bonaventure, Roger Bacon, Henry of Ghent, even Scotus, while allowing more room for mysticism and revelation, would do so almost at the expense of philosophy. In the present context they might find themselves closer to Molavi than to Ibn Sina. There is, therefore, an a-symmetry present: philosophy needs, demands, a mystical/revealed/intuitional element, without being able to supply that need. If I may be allowed to jump 800 years, we are essentially `Hearers of the Word', to quote the title of one of Karl Rahner's early works. Our philosophical structure is such as to make us open to the gift of mysticism, or of revelation should that gift be offered. Further than that philosophy cannot go. There is a void which is able--ought--to be filled by revelation, if revelation exists. Philosophy can at most show that revelation is not a self-contradictory idea. (There is, of course, a place for philosophy not in its own right but as a technique for explaining, elaborating etc. the data of revelation once such data have been accepted as revealed. That, however, is a separate question.) From that position a philosophical position which does go further--which does seem to have a place for intuition, for mysticism--is of special interest. The same question might might be posed briefly from a different angle, providing almost by a counter-argument an indication of the fundamental importance to Western thought of the philosophy/mysticism, philosophy/revelation separation. Is Heidegger right to claim that Western philosophy has forgotten Being? Is it the case that Western philosophy has shunted Being, or the knowledge of Being, off to the area of mysticism and theology, as opposed to the area of philosophy? If so, is the undoubtedly mystical atmosphere of at least his later writings a sign that his proposed de-struction of Western metaphysics is having more positive results than some of his critics allow? St. Peter's College Glasgow, Scotland CHAPTER X ORIGIN: CREATION AND EMANATION RICHARD V. DeSMET THE NOTION OF ORIGIN For the scientist the notion of origin designates the state of affairs which conditions the arising of a new phenomenon. It implies not only the general disposition of the universe and its material energy at the initial moment of this arising, but more properly the immediate antecedents, conditions, factors and the decisive instant of the change which initiates that phenomenon. The arising of the

latter is an event--eventus--an observable novelty, but within a basic continuity of matter and time and becoming generally considered as evolutionary. Such an origination is specific, not universal; and relative, not absolute. Even if the scientist seeks the origin of the whole universe, he can only seek it through a mental journey backwards toward a primary state of matter--as extremely condensed energy, for instance-beyond which he can, nevertheless, assume a prior, though undeterminable, state of the same matter. The metaphysician, on the contrary, undertakes a more radical investigation concerning the very being of the universe and all its components, including matter itself in any of its states. How is it that there exists a universe rather than no universe? This question is forced upon him by the general contingency of all the existents which through their connections make up the universe. Whether our universe has a first instant or is beginningless in its duration--alternatives which both boggle our imagination--it ever appears unable to account for its existence. Hence, we are presented with the question, not of its temporal, but of its ontological origin. This question is not to be answered through a backward journey in time but through an ecstasis in the etymological sense of the term, a reaching of the mind beyond itself and the whole universe towards a Reality which cannot be less than Being itself (Esse, Sat), Self-existent and Selfcommunicative. This is generally designated as God or the Absolute--the Brahman of Vedanta. My purpose here is not to prove its existence but to speak as correctly as possible of the origination of our universe from this Absolute. THE NEED FOR LAKSHANA OR ANALOGY In all matters regarding the Absolute, language must be adapted and appropriated to a difficult task. Our everyday language is shaped by our experience of the relative which it normally endeavours to express. But besides its power of expressing, it possesses various capacities of evoking, alluding to, indicating, conveying or even signifying indirectly, yet correctly enough, what it does not or cannot express directly. In India, its power of indirect signification or indication is called lakshaanaa- (distinct from laksha.na: definition or characteristic mark). Of the three chief types of laksha.na-, the one directly useful to the metaphysician is the jahad-ajahal-laksha.na- which corresponds closely to the intrinsic analogy of the Christian Schoolmen which itself originates in Aristotle and Pseudo-Dionysius. It permits making sense of theological language or God-talk. For instance, when Shankara or some of his disciples explain that "Satya.m jn+ anam-anantam" (Taittiri- ya Upani.sad, 2,1) is a valid definition of Brahman, they use that laksha.na- and display its process. The sentence means that the Absolute is RealityKnowledge-Infinite. The pupil who naively understands the first term Satyam (Reality) in its primary and expressive meaning as `concrete material substance' such as solid earth is told that he must correct this misleading superimposition (adhya- sa) since the second term Jn+ a- nam (Knowledge) immediately negates it. Similarly his primary understanding of Jn+ a- nam (Knowledge) as a contingent activity or quality of the knower is to be corrected because the third term Anantam (Infinite) debars such an understanding. Jn+ anam, says Shankara, must be infinitised on the basis of the pure root jn+ a (know), not of any of its derivatives The Absolute is not infinite Knowledge, Know-ing or Know-er, but pure Know in the most elevated sense. And it is similarly parama- rthata.h Sat, i.e., Being in the supreme sense of the term. Here he uses the participle sat (be-ing) instead of the verbal root as because of an exigency of his Sanskrit language, but his intention is similar to that of St. Thomas Aquinas when the latter says that God is eminently Esse (Be). Although two terms are used, their infinitisation implies that they merge in identity without, however, losing their sva- rtha, the positive meaning of their roots, as Shankara is careful to point out. Thus their laksha.na- is intrinsic analogy and the divine Absolute which they define as infinite Be and Know is yet simple (akhanda, undivided, incomplex). This example shows how in all theological topics our mind must and can transcend the anthropomorphism innate to language through a

processing in three steps: adhya- sa, superimposition; apava- da, negation, removal of all limitations; and parama- rtha- patti, assumption of the supreme sense which alone is consistent with Absoluteness. APPLICATION TO THE NOTION OF CREATION Let us now start from an `adhya- sic' assertion of divine creation, such as we find in the Upanishads or elsewhere. `Brahman is the Root of the world' or `Brahman is that omniscient, omnipotent Cause from which proceed the origin, subsistence and dissolution of this world' or `God is the Creator of all things, visible and invisible' or `Consider the heaven and the earth and all that they contain; know that God has made all that from nothing and that the race of men is born in the same manner.' All such formulations affirm that the one God, the Absolute, is the unique intelligent Source or Cause of the totality and entirety of all other beings. But the terms they are made of are liable to many misinterpretations and a decantation of their anthropomorphism is to be effected by the metaphysician. Hence, we come to a negative definition of creation, such as the classical one formulated by Aquinas: Creation means a production of reality out of nothing of itself or of any matter (productio rei ex nihilo sui et materiae). This will be elaborated and completed presently. Provided this purification is complete, the mind is ready to climb up to the level of eminence (the Dioysian Hyperoche- or Shankarian parama- rtha- patti) and to say, for instance, with Aquinas: Creation is the emanation of the whole universe by and from the universal Cause (emanatio totius universi a causa universali). THE STEP OF PURIFICATION THROUGH NEGATIONS (APAVA- DA) All models of production fail to give us an adequate support of representation for the idea of creation. Creation is unique and transcends them all. Like God himself, it pertains to no genus. Hence, we have to ascend to it by way of negations (apophasis, apava- da). In order to reconcile the two ideas of `divine' and `production' we have to eliminate the ordinary connections of `production' with either pre-existing object or preexisting matter or pre-existing time, with necessity or want, with transformation and instruments of transformation, with mutability of the creator or his self-improvement, and with relationship that would be a reality in the Creator. No Independent Pre-existence of the Created Let us, first, eliminate the weak sense of `production' as `mere manifestation'. It does not arise from a state of latency, dormancy or concealedness, but from its own antecedent absence (pra- g-abha- va- t), for it has no independent preexistence; it never exists except as divinely produced. Virtually, however, or, to use Shankara's terminology, as still undifferentiated, it pre-exists in the power of its Cause, just as it is eternally known by it independently of its production. "And so," writes St. Thomas, "a creature as preexisting in God is the divine Essence itself" (Et sic creatura in Deo est ipsa Essentia divina." De Potentia, III, 16, 24). This is an important application of the theory which the Indians call sat-ka- rya-va- da, namely, of the virtual preexistence of an effect in the being of its cause. The statement of Bhagavadgi- ta, ii, 16: Na- sate vidyate bha- va.h (out of nothing, no thing can arise) is true for an Aquinas or a Bergson as much as for the Indian schoolmen. No Pre-existence of the Matter of the Created Unlike any production of nature or man, creation neither needs nor presupposes any pre-existing matter or other constitutive element. This is due to its character of total origination. Neither is there a pool of pre-existing forms from which the creator would draw. What is created is the universe of existents in which and with which their matter is co-created as well as any other possible constituent. Whether matter is energy or something else should not concern us here. What counts is the realization that the totality of the universe derives immediately from the Creator. This ontological origination of all finite existents qua beings does not preclude

the temporal originations that take place within the becoming of the universe. Matter is the permanent stuff of all transformations and generations. This prime matter is an ubiquitous component of the beings of the material universe and never a distinct and complete existent apart from them. As a component it is not the term of any special creation, but shares in the ontological origination of the material existents of the universe. A question raised in Veda- nta philosophy is whether the Absolute itself is not the material cause of the universe. The term used is upa- da- na which may be rendered etymologically as `subdatum' (upa+a+da- na). It is indicated by the ablative case `yata.h' and is thus the `whence' of the effect, that `from which' the effect derives its substantial reality. On the level of material transformations, that `whence' is a material stuff, for instance, clay in jars or steel in scissors, etc. On the basis of such examples, some Indian systems have assumed the existence of an eternal stuff, the Pradha- na or Prak.rti of the Samkhya system or the primordial atoms (parama- .nu) of Vaishes.ika, as the upa- dana of the universe. Nevertheless, the denotation of the word upa- da- na transcends such specific meanings. That which provides the substantial reality of effects need not be a material cause. In Vedanta, it is the Brahman-A- tman which is said to be the upa- da- na of the universe and this Brahman is surely not material since it is Spirit (Cit) or pure `Know' (Jn+ a) as we have seen earlier. If it were the material cause or stuff of the universe, it would have to produce it through self-mutation (pari.na- na) or atomic vibration, but any such process is excluded from the Absolute. Yet, as its total Source, it is its immanent and reality-giving Cause, i.e., its Upa- da- na. Some quotations from Shankara will throw further light on this problem. The causation of the world presupposes "no independent matter, unreducible to the Atman, such as the Pradhana of the Sa- mkhyas or the primordial atoms of Kana- da" (Aitareya Upani.sad Bha- .sya, 1,1,1). "What the Shruti calls aja-, i.e., the causal matter of the four classes of beings, has itself sprung from the highest Lord" (Veda- nta Su- tra Bha- .sya, i,4,9). Brahman alone is "that from whence these beings are born," i.e., their upa- da- na, as denoted by the ablative yata.h; "there is no other substance from which the world could originate" (Ibid., 1,4,23). But how can this divine Upa- da- na provide the reality of the universe? Because, "in the beginning, before creation, when the differences of namesandforms (na- ma-ru- pa, the specific essences) were not yet manifested, this world was but the one A- tman" (Ait.Up.Bh., 1,1,1.). These na- ma-ru- pas pre-existed only "in the manner of something future" bha- visyena ru- pe.na), i.e., virtually, as effects to be preexist in the actual power of their cause. "These na- ma-rupas, which are identical with the A- tman in their unmanifested state, can become the causal elements (upa- da- na-bhu- te) of the manifested universe. Hence, it is not incongruous to say that the omniscient (A- tman) creates the universe by virtue of his oneness with causal elements, namely, names-and-forms, which are identical with himself" (Ibid., 1,1,2). Their manifestation, however, does not mean that the partless A- tman undergoes a process of diversification: "the case is rather like that of a clever magician who, independent of any materials, transforms himself, as it were (iva), into a second man seemingly climbing into space" (Ibid.). No Need of Instruments or Demiurge Considering that the creative Power need not be applied upon a pre-existing material which it would have to shape, St. Thomas concludes that it needs no instruments. Similarly, Shankara asserts that "the absolutely complete power of Brahman does not require to be supplemented by any extraneous help" (Ved.S.Bh., 2,1,24). **** THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR METAPHYSICS STUDIES IN METAPHYSICS, VOLUME IV THE NATURE OF METAPHYSICAL KNOWLEDGE

Edited by GEORGE F. McLEAN HUGO MEYNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS OF AMERICA INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR METAPHYSICS TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction PART I. APPROACHES AND METHODS 1. Metaphysics as a Discipline: Its Requirements by Ivor Leclerc 3-22 2. Metaphysics and the Architectonic of Systems by Reiner Wiehl 23-50 3. Truth, Justification and Method in Metaphysics and Theology by Richard Martin 51-68 4. Some Principles of Procedure in Metaphysics by Charles Hartshorne 69-75 Comment: James W. Felt 77-81 5. Metaphysical Knowledge as Hypothesis by Richard L. Barber 83-92 Comment: Errol E. Harris 93-96 PART II. IMPLICATIONS AND TASKS OF METAPHYSICS FOR SCIENCE, ETHICS AND HISTORY 6. Metaphysics and Science by Andre Mercier 99-103 7. Metaphysics and Science: Affinities and Discrepancies by Evandro Agazzi 105-121 8. Some Tasks for Metaphysicians by Mario Bunge 123-128 9. The Problem of Metaphysical Presupposition in and of Science Kurt Hubner 129-134 10. Cosmology and the Philosopher By Ernan McMullen 135-148 11. Metaphysics and the Foundations of Ethical and Social Values by Johannes Lotz 149-161 12. Metaphysics and History by T.A. Roberts 163-176 INDEX 177-180 INTRODUCTION The preceding volumes in this series--devoted respectively to Person and Nature, Person and Society and Person and God1--progressively delineated the basic issues of human and, indeed, of all existence. They took work on these issues beyond the horizon of the physical and social sciences, as well as beyond such philosophical methods as those of pragmatism and positivism. In this process the questions raised regarding the method of metaphysics--not unknown to Aristotle and Kant--were seen to be in urgent need of attention: Is metaphysics a discipline; if so, what are its requirements; and how can these be met? Answers to such questions are needed in order that metaphysics be able effectively to assimilate recent developments in human reflection, to evolve a rigor and insight in proportion to its task, and to plan its research agenda for the proximate future. With this in view the present volume is divided into two parts. The first concerns approaches and methods for metaphysics: Is metaphysics a discipline; if so, what is its relation to truth, justification and the architectonic of systems? The

second part concerns the implications of such a conception of the nature and work of metaphysics for its relation to science, to ethics and to human history. Upon completion of its series of studies on the person, the International Society for Metaphysics (ISM) undertook a series of investigations regarding society in terms of its issues of unity, truth and justice, and the good. Further, having studied intensively both person and society it seemed appropriate to extend the investigation to the field of culture and cultural heritage understood as personal creativity in community and in history. In this manner the work of the ISM has constituted a cohesive and coordinated investigation of metaphysics as a living discipline in our day. NOTE 1. George F. McLean and Hugo Meynell, eds. (Washington: Wniversity Press of America and The International Society for Metaphysics, l988). CHAPTER I METAPHYSICS AS A DISCIPLINE: ITS REQUIREMENTS IVOR LECLERC INTRODUCTION: THE ISSUE The issue of the requirements for metaphysics as a discipline faces us today with particular urgency. It is not primarily or merely because metaphysics in our time is strongly under positivistic and other attack. This issue must be given primary attention for the sake of the enterprise of metaphysics itself if it is to achieve the efficacy which, in the context of present- day thought, is required of it and indeed necessitated by virtue of its fundamental position among fields of inquiry. This issue has always had to be faced anew in times of great changes of thought, because metaphysical fundamentals are ineluctably involved in them. A change of this order occurred in the late Hellenistic age as a result of religious developments, which brought theology into primacy for the intelligibility of those developments, and theology indispensably required metaphysics in the accomplishment of this task. Another such change occurred in the seventeenth century with the momentous development of modern science on the basis of a radically new conception of the physical, for the proper intelligibility of which metaphysics was necessarily involved. In this century once again a change of thought of this magnitude is occurring consequent upon scientific developments which have eventuated in conceptions of the physical profoundly divergent from those of the preceding three centuries. The role of metaphysics in respect of the understanding of the nature of the physical is now again as indispensably requisite as it was in the seventeenth century. In these times of great change of thought it is not only that metaphysical fundamentals are involved, but also that the very conception of metaphysics itself--of its nature as an inquiry, of its object and of its method--is basically affected. The recognition of this is important from the point of view of the problem of the requirements for metaphysics as a discipline, for it is not possible to deal with this problem in abstraction or in disconnection from the question of the nature of metaphysics, and this question in turn cannot be considered apart from the issue of the relation of metaphysics to the other disciplines of inquiry. The significance of that relation is evidenced in the very name "metaphysics": the preposition with the accusative connotes sequence or succession, a going beyond, and in this name indicates an inquiry of peculiar width, its object extending beyond, and thus being general to, that of every special inquiry -- the term itself originated after Aristotle under the influence of the prominence in Aristotle's work of the inquiry into physis, but the term has been correctly understood in the tradition as fully general, i.e. as going beyond every special inquiry, to embrace all which is. But the connection with the special inquiries is vital to metaphysics, and in different ages different special inquiries have received pre-eminent emphasis in respect of this connection. Thus in the middle ages it was theology which had this

prominence, and since the seventeenth century it has been what is usually called modern science which has enjoyed this preeminence. Accordingly in the medieval period the conception of metaphysics was fundamentally affected by theology, and since the seventeenth century the conception of metaphysics has been as deeply affected by modern science. We today continue in this respect under the influence of modern science, as we shall see in some detail later. METAPHYSICS AND THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE As an enterprise of inquiry metaphysics is an endeavour to seek and obtain knowledge. The same of course holds for every other inquiry: each aims at knowledge. Thus the concept of "knowledge" is implicated in every inquiry, and is accordingly basic and general to all inquiry. Because it is general, the question or issue of what is "knowledge" is one which goes beyond each of the special inquiries and cannot be the concern of any one of them. It has therefore to be the concern of that inquiry whose object goes beyond all special inquiries, namely metaphysics. The issue of what is "knowledge", of what is meant by the term, is neither selfevident nor is it one which can be settled antecedently to all inquiry. On the contrary, it has necessarily itself to be an object of inquiry. Thus metaphysics has as a primary task the inquiry into the problem of what is "knowledge." However, this cannot be an inquiry prior to and in disconnection from all the other issues of metaphysical inquiry; these issues are necessarily all interrelated, and the solution to the issue of knowledge must emerge as part of a whole solution to the combined metaphysical issues. This means that the conception of "knowledge" which is the outcome of the inquiry into the issue of what is knowledge, must be consistent with that involved in all the rest of metaphysical inquiry, as well as with the conception of knowledge involved in the special inquiries. We cannot here enter into details of the long history of the metaphysics of knowledge; we shall concentrate on the outcome of historical developments specially relevant to our present situation. Medieval thinkers inherited from Greek philosophy the conception that the term "knowledge" necessarily connotes and entails certainty and truth. This conception was taken over and maintained in the seventeenth century and on through the eighteenth--as is clear in Hume and Kant--and the nineteenth. This conception was by no means restricted to philosophers and with regard to philosophy. In the seventeenth century the inquiry into nature was referred to both as "natural philosophy" and "natural science--the term scientia, "science", meaning "knowledge". The latter designation came increasingly to prevail as the conviction grew that the new empirico-mathematical method was that which demonstrably led to certainty and truth in the inquiry into nature, i.e. that it was that which led to genuine or real "knowledge", scientia. This genuine science or knowledge stood in contrast to the putative knowledge of philosophy and metaphysics particularly. Philosophy consequently came to be extruded from concern with the realm of nature and relegated to that of mind and the moral alone. With this division effected, the inappropriateness of the phrase "natural science" came increasingly to be felt--since the science of nature was in fact the only genuine science, i.e. knowledge in the strict sense of true and certain--so the phrase gave place in usage, from the nineteenth century on, to the single word "science."1 The important point in this is that the basic conception of "knowledge" as entailing certainty and truth had been taken over by "modern science", by scientists themselves as by theorists of science--the position of the latter being epitomized in the doctrine of "positivism", i.e. that what is "positive", "sure", "certain", and thus constituting genuine knowledge, is that which is attained by the empirical method of modern science. In this century scientific developments have led to a change in the conception of "knowledge" which is indeed far- reaching. Since the seventeenth century it had been held that the "knowledge" sought by the new empirico-mathematical science was constituted by the discovery of the "laws of nature", epitomized by the laws of

motion--it was in terms of these that nature was understood. These laws were what pertained with complete generality throughout nature, and as such were constant and unvarying. Accordingly when they were discovered one could be assured of certainty and truth, i.e. "knowledge" of nature. What has happened in this century is an increasing wavering in respect of the absoluteness of natural law. After the seventeenth century the earlier conception of natural law as divinely imposed was gradually replaced by the conception of natural law as empirical description. The crucial change came in this century when the previously supposed absoluteness of the Newtonian laws of motion was found to consist in statistical regularities pertaining to vast numbers of entities. After that the conception of scientific law in general as being statistical in character came to be increasingly accepted. This abandonment of absoluteness pertaining to scientific laws entailed that these laws are merely probabilities. This implies that the "knowledge" which science seeks and attains is not "knowledge" in the earlier sense of certainty. This means that "scientific knowledge" today has come to have a new sense in which "probability" has replaced "certainty". Does it follow from this that present-day developments have landed thought in a contradiction in respect of the conception of "knowledge"-- the contradiction which Hume had sought to avoid by making a sharp distinction between "knowledge" and "probability"? It is evident that we have today run into a profound difficulty in respect of the conception of "knowledge", and this is one which affects not only so-called "science" but all inquiry, including philosophy. This means that philosophy today is faced with a task of the first order of importance, for all inquiry must be dependent upon philosophy in this respect. What is accordingly requisite is a renewed inquiry into the metaphysics of knowledge. THE ISSUE OF METHOD IN METAPHYSICS The problem of method or procedure in this inquiry immediately comes into prominence, and is indeed crucial in a respect in which this problem had not been so in the beginning of the modern period, nor indeed in the medieval epoch. In both of them fundamental presuppositions about the conception of "knowledge", of the essential meaning of the concept, had been taken over from the respective antecedent period. Whereas today it is precisely those fundamental presuppositions which have been revealed as somehow inadequate and which must now accordingly be subject to inquiry. Certainly in both those epochs the conception of "knowledge" had been rethought in terms of the general metaphysical schemes which had respectively been developed. This, for example, was what had been Descartes' concern in his Regulae (1628) and his Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason and Seeking for Truth in the Sciences (1637), which were written after the essentials of his metaphysics of nature had become clear to him. But in both of those epochs there had been the inheritance of the presupposition of "knowledge" as connoting and entailing certainty, a presupposition which was not brought into question. The conception of the method of metaphysical inquiry is closely bound up with the conception of knowledge. This is clearly exemplified in the two antecedent epochs which we have brought into consideration above. In the medieval one the earliest and, for most of the period, the most influential metaphysics adopted by theology had been the Neoplatonic. In this scheme it was held that knowledge could not have the characteristic of certainty and truth unless the conditions of knowledge, that in terms of which knowledge was possible at all, were constant and unchanging. These necessary conditions of knowledge, in this metaphysical scheme, were constituted by the exemplar forms, the requisite constancy of which was grounded in their derivation from God, the ultimate source of everything and thus also of that in terms of which there was knowledge. This was the metaphysics at the basis of Augustine's doctrine of "illumination". It was essentially this doctrine which was carried over in the seventeenth century by thinkers such as Descartes in their theory of "innate ideas" as that in terms of which there is knowledge. It was entailed in this metaphysical scheme, as Descartes, Spinoza and others clearly saw, that the method of inquiry, more particularly the method of

metaphysical inquiry, had to be a deductive procedure from ultimate certain premises. This determined the requirements of metaphysics as a discipline. The prime requirement was to find the ultimate premises, and this was possible only through an intuitive perception, their identity as ultimate and certain being recognizable by their clarity and distinctness. This metaphysics of knowledge seemed in the seventeenth century to be perfectly and admirably consistent with the new science which was fundamentally mathematical. Descartes indeed conceived thought per se, in so far as it proceeded soundly by deduction from ultimate premises, as essentially mathematical; this pertained particularly to philosophical, and especially metaphysical, thought in respect of which he developed the conception of a mathesis universalis, a conception which was taken over in its essentials by Spinoza and Leibniz-- and which inspired the development of mathematical or symbolic logic in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The credibility of this metaphysics of knowledge was undermined by the increasing recognition in the eighteenth century of the empirical component in scientific inquiry, and that in respect of this the procedure of scientific inquiry was inductive and not deductive at all. This situation generated a momentous crisis in philosophical thought, particularly keenly appreciated by Hume: proceeding deductively, as in logic and mathematics, evidently led to conclusions which were certain, thereby fulfilling the claim to knowledge. Such certainty, and thus knowledge in the strict sense was, on the other hand, not possible by the empirical procedure of science, which could at most give probability. Kant came to see that philosophy was faced with the urgent necessity of re-thinking the conception of "knowledge," that unless a more satisfactory conception were attainable the entire spectacular movement of modern science was doomed to be recognized as not "science," i.e., "knowledge" in the strict sense, at all. Kant's diagnosis of this crisis was that it was the outcome of an erroneous fundamental presupposition with respect to knowledge. As he put in the preface to the second edition of his Critique of Pure Reason2: "Hitherto it has been assumed that all our knowledge must conform to objects". What was necessary to resolve the crisis, Kant held, was a complete reorientation, in which the very opposite assumption had to be adopted, namely that "objects must conform to our knowledge", for only on this assumption would it "be possible to have knowledge of objects a priori, determining something in regard to them prior to their being given". His point is that knowledge, in the strict sense, of objects is not possible at all if it be a posteriori--that gives probability and not knowledge; hence knowledge must essentially be a priori. Only in this way could be secured, what Kant accepted from the tradition, that "knowledge" connoted and entailed certainty. Indeed he considerably enhanced this requirement by insisting on apodeictic certainty as the sine qua non of knowledge: "Only that whose certainty can be called apodeictic can be called science proper; cognition that can contain merely empirical certainty is only improperly called science.3 This held particularly for scientific knowledge of nature, since for it to be "science" or "knowledge" in the strict sense it had to consist in an understanding of nature in terms of "universal law", and there could not truly be such law if it were merely empirically derived, i.e. a posteriori. The Kantian reorientation turned on a reassessment of the "object". Traditionally the object had typically been identified with what was taken to be the physical being. Kant himself had done so in the physical monadology of his pre-critical period. It is this identification which Kant abandoned. If there were to be knowledge in the strict sense, then that identification of object known with physical thing-in-itself would have to be rejected, for only by that rejection would it be possible to secure the requirement of knowledge as a priori. What was necessary was that the object in knowledge be determined by the ultimate conditions of knowledge, by that in terms of which there is knowledge at all, and this must be grounded in the knowing mind. To know necessarily presupposed ultimate categories in terms of which there is understanding. Traditionally these had been regarded as derivative from God; Kant held them to be grounded in the

very structure of the mind as capable of knowing. But that alone, as was clear from Descartes' philosophy, was not sufficient for knowledge of the physical. Knowledge of the physical demanded an empirical component, but that seemed necessarily to entail the a posteriori. Further, the physical seemed to be essentially spatio-temporal, i.e. involving in itself a spatial and temporal structure, also cognizable only a posteriori. Carrying through the seventeenthcentury development which had removed from the physical the qualitative sensory features, locating these instead in the experiencing subject, Kant took the radical step of removing from the physical also the spatio-temporal, which had seemed absolutely intrinsic to it, assigning this too to the experiencing subject, as the a priori form of its perception--this was Kant's crucial innovation. Thus the physical thing-in-itself was left deprived of all features in terms of which it could be a known object. Instead in this new doctrine the known object was revealed to be a synthetic product of the mind's activity of knowing. This meant that the physical thing-in-itself was beyond knowledge, unknowable. This revision of the conception of knowledge had profound consequences for the conception of the nature of metaphysics, of its object and of its method. Traditionally the ultimate object of metaphysics had been "what is", in the strict sense that "what is" per se was the object, and as such was known. That is, in this view metaphysical knowledge had to conform to and be determined by "what is" as object. It followed from the conception of knowledge consequent upon Kant's reorientation that "what is" per se could not be the object of metaphysical knowledge. What was thus requisite for him was a rethinking of the nature of metaphysics as a discipline productive of genuine knowledge. Since the inquiry into knowledge is an inquiry which necessarily transcends all special inquiries it must belong to metaphysics. For Kant the inquiry into knowledge became the primary and essential concern and aim of metaphysics. That is, for him the object of metaphysics became knowledge per se. This then determined the requirements for metaphysics as a discipline. For Kant the primary task of metaphysics had to be a "transcendental critique" of knowledge, in other words an inquiry into the ultimate conditions a priori in terms of which there is knowledge. This meant that it had to be an inquiry into thinking per se as productive of knowledge, into the structure of thinking, and thus into the ultimate unconditioned grounds and sources of knowledge. The determinations regarding knowledge thus arrived at accordingly have a necessary priority to all other branches of metaphysics, such as the metaphysics of nature and the metaphysics of morals, and must be presupposed by these if these are to be accepted at all as constituting genuine knowledge. This means that upon the basis of these determinations respecting the ultimate conditions of knowledge it is then possible validly to proceed to the determination of the requisites of, e.g. scientific knowledge of nature--such as what is meant by "nature," by "natural law," etc.--and to the determination of the nature of mathematics--this, according to Kant, being crucial since mathematics is indispensable to the science, in the strict sense, of nature. Kant's transcendental inquiry led him to the recognition, on the one hand, of certain pure or a priori concepts or categories as the ultimates in terms of which there is understanding, from which derive certain ideas as principles of reason; and on the other hand, since knowledge is of natural things, to certain pure or a priori forms of sensibility as necessary for there to be experience of natural things. It will not be requisite for our purposes to enter into further details of this doctrine. The question has now to be raised respecting the method of this transcendental inquiry or metaphysics, and of its justification. Kant is quite explicit that he found his categories of the understanding by an examination of judgment; they were what he saw to be entailed in the logical forms of judgment. This means that his transcendental inquiry rested upon the presupposition of judgment as the fundamental act of the mind, comprising within it all other acts of the mind-again he is quite explicit about this.4 The point which is significant here is that this is a presupposition of his inquiry. What is more, his inquiry involves

some further presuppositions, namely those of certain "faculties" of the mind-such as the "understanding," "reason," "imagination," "sensibility." In other words, Kant's transcendental inquiry into the ultimate conditions of knowledge involves as a basic presupposition a particular analysis of the structure of the mind; that is, this analysis of the structure of the mind is not itself the outcome of inquiry, but is involved in his transcendental inquiry as a presupposition. We need accordingly to ask, what is the justification for this set of presuppositions? Can it validly be maintained that they are self-evident? Such a claim could hardly be plausible in view of the fact that other analyses of the structure of the mind are possible and have in fact been made. Alternatively it could be held that their justification is constituted by their coherently being required for the consistent explanation of the possibility of knowledge as entailing certainty--and this would indeed seem to be Kant's position. But what does this imply with regard to Kant's method in his transcendental inquiry? Evidently his method is not to start from a priori certainties; rather it starts from presuppositions--which as such, are not certainties, but are subject to justification. On the basis of these presuppositions he arrives at the categories in terms of which apodeictic knowledge is possible. Can it be maintained that having determined the categories in terms of which there is knowledge, we could then know, have certain knowledge of, "judgment," the "understanding," "reason," etc.? This cannot be, since for Kant knowing entails judging, as it entails the act of the understanding, so that none of these can themselves be "known"--they constitute the presupposed conditions of knowing. Moreover, the categories, according to Kant, are "pure concepts of the understanding which apply a priori to objects of intuition in general,"5 and "understanding," "reason," etc. are not "object of intuition"--for Kant "intuition" belongs solely to sensibility.6 I would submit that what is brought out by this examination of Kant's doctrine is that what we have in it is a particular theory, a theory of knowledge, one among possible theories, and as such standing in need of justification. Further, what is highly relevant to our consideration is that this theory of Kant's is based upon the presupposition of "knowledge" as entailing apodeictic certainty. It was the intent to secure that condition, as we have seen, which constituted the basic reason for Kant's philosophical reorientation and for his consequent theory of knowledge and his new conception of metaphysics. But it is precisely that presupposition respecting knowledge which has in our time come into question. Accordingly it is no longer tenable simply to assume it or accept it as a presupposition; it has itself to be subjected to inquiry. But if that conception of what knowledge is be brought into question, therewith also is Kant's basic reorientation brought into question; and this fundamentally affects all those subsequent philosophical schools of thought which have followed Kant, explicitly or implicitly, in that reorientation. KNOWLEDGE, SCIENCE, AND METAPHYSICS It has been developments in scientific thought in the last hundred years which have had the result of bringing into question the inherited presuppositions respecting knowledge. These developments, as we have seen earlier, had resulted in the abandonment of the conception of natural law as absolute. As long as that conception of natural 1aw persisted, it entailed that the discovery of natural law constituted knowledge in the sense of certainty. But if natural law be not absolute--perhaps being only statistical probability--then the discovery of natural law could not constitute knowledge in the sense of certainty. The consequence of this is that we are now being faced with the necessity of rethinking the entire issue of knowledge, and indeed in a more thoroughgoing way than has been done at any time since the classical period in Greece. The issue of knowledge, as we have noted earlier, is not separable from the issue concerning method of inquiry. Since the issue of knowledge has become crucial in respect of science, the question of scientific method has to be brought into special consideration with respect to the issue of knowledge. In fact appreciable

attention began being devoted, from the middle of the nineteenth century onward, to the understanding of scientific method and particularly of the logic of scientific method. The outcome has been the attainment of a vastly better comprehension than was had previously of the procedure and logical structure of induction. What especially became clear was the quite fundamental role of "hypothesis" in induction and in scientific thought as a whole. It is now well recognized that scientific inquiry proceeds by the postulation of certain features as general to a field of relevant data, and by the testing of that hypothesis in respect of its applicability and adequacy. When an hypothesis receives a certain degree of acceptance as established it usually becomes characterized as a "theory." The terminological change signifies the loss of the earlier degree of tentativeness involved in the procedure, and which is signified in the word "hypothesis." Further, the word "theory," with its etymological sense of "a looking at, a view," has come to have the connotation of a system or scheme of ideas, so that what is termed a "theory" tends to be something more elaborate and coordinated than what is usually termed a "hypothesis." However, there is no essential difference between the two, particularly with respect to their role in scientific inquiry. The procedure of scientific inquiry is that hypotheses or theories are developed in terms of which the relevant data are interpreted. The data being "interpreted" in terms of the theory means that the data are revealed as exhibiting the general features postulated by the theory or hypothesis; in other words, the data are exhibited as conforming to "general laws." It is this exhibition which constitutes scientific "understanding": those general features are what "stand under" the data, characterizing their nature, what they are. The theories which are accepted at any stage of scientific development are the best attainable at that stage in respect of their comprehensiveness, applicability, and adequacy. Further research usually reveals limitations and inadequacies, necessitating amendment of the theories in question or their replacement. With the recognition of theory as in this way fundamental in the method and nature of scientific inquiry, we can see that scientific theory, by virtue of its being "theory," is not something final, established, and beyond question; that is scientific theory, as "theory," does not connote certainty. This is to say that scientific theory does not constitute "knowledge" in the sense insisted upon by Kant; it is precisely that conception of knowledge as entailing and connoting certainty which is repudiated. Is the conclusion which is to be drawn from this that we have here a conception of knowledge which pertains peculiarly to science? This would seem improbably the case, for the following reason. There had earlier been a strong tendency to distinguish the method of natural science from all others--this is the tendency which had culminated in the doctrine of positivism. But that tendency has come in the last hundred years to be reversed. The recognition of the fundamental role of theory and hypothesis in scientific inquiry has gradually brought the realization that this role of theory is by no means confined to scientific inquiry. On the contrary it has become clear that theory is equally fundamental in a range of other inquiries, including for example, historical inquiry, theological inquiry, and philosophical inquiry in general and metaphysics in particular. It is now readily recognizable that earlier philosophers, such as for example those of the seventeenth century, despite their conviction and analysis of philosophy as a deductive procedure, in fact proceeded by the postulation of general theories--their deductive procedure being the elaboration of the implications of their general theories into consistent systems. Also, I have pointed out above that Kant's "transcendental critique" likewise was constituted by the postulation of a general theory of knowledge and a theory of the structure of the mind as requisite to his theory of knowledge. Since theory is fundamental in the method of all these inquiries, it follows that not only does scientific theory not constitute knowledge in the sense of certainty, but equally others, such as historical theory, theological theory, and philosophical theory, including metaphysical theory, do not constitute knowledge in the traditional sense of certainty. A conception of knowledge different from the traditional one

is requisite in all these other fields as well. THE THEORY OF THEORY The delineation in detail of this new conception of knowledge is the task of metaphysics, and it is one which is required to be undertaken with some urgency. In other words, metaphysics has to engage in a renewed inquiry into the issue of knowledge and of all that is involved in this issue. One most important factor in this, as we have been seeing, is that of method of inquiry. What is now especially pertinent in this respect is the question of method in metaphysics. Now we have seen that method in metaphysics is not essentially different from that in science: in both the procedure of inquiry is by the postulation of theory and the testing of that theory. But while science and metaphysics are fundamentally alike in that both are "theories" or "theoretical structures," yet there are some most important differences between them qua "theories." First, it is evident that they must differ in respect of subject-matter. Both are general theories, but in science the theory is general to certain restricted data, while in metaphysics there is no such restriction in respect of data--metaphysical theory must pertain to all which is. But there is another difference between them which is of basic importance; it could indeed by seen as a corollary of the former. The complete generality of metaphysics entails that it must pertain to not only all the special fields of inquiry, but also equally to itself. That is to say, metaphysics as a completely general theory must cover and apply to all special theories, and it must apply also to itself. In other words metaphysical theory, in contrast to scientific and other theory, must be self-reflexive theory. This requirement is one of the utmost importance, more particularly so in the light of metaphysics as "theory." This is specially pertinent to metaphysics in respect of its task of producing a theory of knowledge. That theory must cover, and be explicative of, knowledge in every domain of inquiry. That theory of knowledge, however, must hold equally for itself. That is, it must be able consistently to explain itself as a theory of knowledge, which means that it must exhibit itself in terms of its theory of knowledge as itself being an instance of knowledge. This requirement of self-reflexivity can perhaps most readily be illustrated by considering instances of its failure. I will take the Kantian metaphysics of knowledge as such an instance. In Kant's transcendental doctrine knowledge is constituted by apodeictic judgment, the doctrine itself specifying the conditions of apodeictic judgment, such as that it has to be in terms of the pure concepts of the understanding. But this doctrine is not itself a judgment, i.e., it is not an instance of judgment, it giving only the conditions for apodeictic judgment. This doctrine, rather, stands above judgment; this is the very meaning of its being "transcendental." Thus in terms of that doctrine, the doctrine itself cannot be an instance of knowledge; that is the doctrine cannot exhibit itself as "knowledge." Now we have seen that Kant's transcendental doctrine is in fact a "theory," and herein lies the fundamental difficulty in this doctrine. It is a "theory" of knowledge, and it includes a "theory" of judgment, but--and this is its basic deficiency--it has no "theory" of theory. The intention of this analysis of Kant's metaphysics of knowledge is both to make clear the requirement of self-reflexivity in metaphysical thought and theory, and to exhibit this requirement as a most important test of the coherence and applicability of a metaphysical theory. In this we have, I would submit, one most important requirement of metaphysics as a discipline. The elaboration of this requirement that metaphysics be self-reflexive theory brings out a further task of metaphysics. It has not only to formulate a theory of knowledge, but also, as part of that enterprise, to formulate a theory of theory.7 It is clear from what has been shown above that this theory of theory must also be self-reflexive; that is, this theory must explain itself as a theory. But what exactly is involved in this formulation of a theory of theory? First, it must be emphasized that this formulation of a theory of theory cannot be

undertaken as preceding all metaphysical inquiry--to do so would be to court failure in respect of the requirement of self-reflexiveness; rather, it must be an intrinsic part of the entire enterprise of metaphysics, and indeed of metaphysics in its fundamental aspect, that of ontology. This is to say, metaphysics must raise, as a basic issue, that of the ontological status of "theory." What kind of being is to be accorded to "theory"? Theory can be, and has been, accorded the status of essentially "ideal" being: that is, theory is regarded as an "idea" or "concept," a purely mental or thought entity. This would seem to be, implicitly or explicitly, predominantly the position of most modern metaphysics. This position, however, has the ineluctable consequence of severing theory from its object, unless, following Kant, the object itself be accorded the status of "ideal" being, i.e., of a thought entity. Thus on this view or theory a scientific theory, for example, would not have natural beings per se as its object. It is important to be clear that on this view scientific theory can give us no knowledge at all about the world of nature in itself. The question faces us: what alternative to this is possible? That is to say, what alternative is possible with respect to the ontological status of "theory"? Such an alternative, I would submit, is possible by turning from the essentially Neoplatonic ontology and its concomitant theory of perception, which has dominated philosophical thought since the seventeenth century, to an essentially Aristotelian ontology and theory of perception. Let us concentrate for the moment on the theory of perception. On the Aristotelian position, in perception there is an initial reception by the perceiver of the physical thing as object. From this develops a process of mental or thought activity, one outcome of which is the formation of a "thought," "idea," or "concept" about the object. To be validly a "thought" about the physical entity as object, the physical thing itself must be the object of that "thought." In other words, that thought must be attributed to or proposed of that physical thing; that is, the physical thing itself must be the subject of that "proposition." This means that the "proposition" must be a synthesis of the physical thing, as received in perception, and the mental "thought," "idea," or "concept." In this theory, contrary to Kant, the fundamental synthetic entity in knowledge is not the "object," but a "proposition." A "proposition" is not a "thought" alone--to use Kant's famous statement, "thoughts without content are empty";8 the "content" must be constituted by the physical thing as the subject of the "proposition."9 It is only in this way, by having the physical things themselves included as the subjects of "propositions" that it is possible to have knowledge of physical things. This constitutes the fundamental strength and importance of the Aristotelian position. Now "propositions" are the basis of hypothesis and theory. In fact, a "proposition" is the most elementary form of hypothesis or theory; for a "proposition" is a "proposal" of a certain predicative definiteness as characterizing a physical particular. "Judgment" concerns the correctness or incorrectness of that proposal; so that a judgment is exercised on a proposition, and thus on an hypothesis or theory. What we have here is a singular proposition, it having a single particular or set of particulars as its subject. A proposition will be "general" if its proposal extends to any set of a certain sort of sets of particulars; and it will be "universal" if the proposal covers all sorts of sets of particulars.10 In this last case we have a metaphysical proposition, or a metaphysical theory if the predicative proposal be sufficiently complex and comprehensive. It should be noted that conscious perception is an instance of a singular proposition. That is, conscious perception is not an "intuition," in the etymological sense of a direct "looking at";11 conscious perception is a proposal--a hypothesis or theory--of a certain selection of definitive features as characterizing a set of physical particulars, the selection being the product of mental activity. This means that the empirical method, in scientific and other inquiry, is shot through and through, from beginning to end, by theory. This metaphysical theory of knowledge cannot be elaborated in further detail here. I

will only point out that it conforms to the requirement of self-reflexiveness. For according to this theory the procedure of inquiry by which knowledge is attained is constituted by the postulation of theories, i.e. by the proposal of certain predicative features as characterizing particulars, and by testing those theories for applicability and adequacy. Integral and fundamental to this metaphysical theory is a theory of theory, a theory which must accordingly, as metaphysical, i.e., universal, apply to all instances of theory, including to itself as a theory. This latter applicability is achieved by the theory of theory including a universal theory, and by its being itself an instance of universal theory. One further point needs to be brought out with regard to this metaphysical theory of knowledge: it is respecting the conception of "knowledge" entailed in this theory. This theory places a fundamental emphasis on procedure or method: this theory is a theory respecting the procedure by which knowledge is attained, this procedure fundamentally involving the postulation of theory. Thus knowledge is the outcome of the procedure of inquiry. Since that procedure necessarily involves theory, the outcome cannot be absolutely certain and final--i.e., knowledge in the sense insisted upon by Kant and his predecessors, medieval and modern. The outcome of the procedure of inquiry is rather a gradual approximation, an asymptotic approach, to truth. That is to say, in the new conception "knowledge" does not connote a final state, but rather a process of attainment. THE DISCIPLINE OF METAPHYSICS With the foregoing clarification of the nature of metaphysics, its method, and of the conception of knowledge, we can deal relatively briefly with the most important requirements for metaphysics as a discipline. The word "discipline" here refers in one respect to metaphysics as a "system," in another to the method, the conduct of the inquiry, and in a third to the order and control appropriate to the inquiry. The last of these, it has been clear for centuries, needs most strongly to be insisted on, because much of what has been produced under this title has been rather "wild" and has tended to redound to the discredit of metaphysics. This has been the consequence not only of the failure to exercise the orderly control appropriate to the inquiry, but also of a failure to comprehend properly the nature of the enterprise--an example of the latter is the view of metaphysics which has gained some adherence in recent times, that of metaphysics as a species of poetry. In respect of all these senses of "discipline" and not only the last, in metaphysics as in the other disciplines of inquiry, the first and indispensable requirement is the logically consistent and coherent elaboration of the implications of the basic theory to the fullest possible extent, and then the unflinching facing up to those implications in respect to their applicability and adequacy. Neither of these requirements is without considerable difficulty with regard to their appropriate fulfillment, it sometimes taking generations of thinkers to achieve those requirements, positively or negatively. With regard to the first of these requirements, metaphysics is in a special situation vis-a-vis the other disciplines because of its nature as extending over all the others. This entails the necessity, as we have seen in the preceding section, that metaphysics be self-reflexive. This means that the test of selfreflexivity is in metaphysics a most important part of the testing of the theory for its internal consistency and coherence. As in every other intellectual discipline, so also in metaphysics the appropriate orderly control of the inquiry must be grounded in its method. In metaphysics, as in the special sciences as we have seen, the method is fundamentally the postulation of theory and its testing. In the special sciences the testing is to a considerable extent easier, because of the comparative restrictedness of the relevant data. The wider the generality of the theory the greater is the difficulty in assessing the applicability and adequacy of the theory under consideration, and it is most difficult in the case of theories of the widest generality or universality, namely those of metaphysics. But there is another, and very special difficulty with regard to the testing of

theory which confronts all inquires, and metaphysics no less than the others, though in the case of metaphysics this difficulty is even greater than in the others. This difficulty is grounded in the fact of all inquiries necessarily involving theory. The point is that the theory in terms of which the data are interpreted necessarily determines the relevance of the evidence, so that what does not accord with the theory is either not noticed at all, or in the extreme case is dismissed as irrelevant, or at most is construed into a conformity with the theory which is in fact only partial. Instances of these are legion in the history of science and of philosophy. This point is especially evident in the empirical inquiries, for as we have seen perception is shot through and through with theory. But in the end the empirical component is significantly involved in almost all inquiry,13 and quite definitely so in philosophy and in metaphysics particularly. Now that the basic role of theory in scientific and other inquiry has become ever clear, there is requisite the concomitant recognition of the necessity for special measures to overcome that difficulty involved in the very method of inquiry as such, the more so since, contrary to the widely-held supposition of the recent past, modern science and thought emulating science is no less susceptible to the formation of orthodoxies dominating the organization of inquiry (university departments, laboratories, professional associations, publication media, etc.) hindering or suppressing the airing of alternative viewpoints and theories, thereby seriously hampering inquiry and the search for knowledge and truth, and in particular obstructing the adequate testing of theories. For it is only by the sincere entertainment of theories alternative to our own, thereby enabling us to see evidence which our theory has missed or not properly taken account of, that there can be effective testing in respect of the applicability and adequacy of a theory. There is one other profound difficulty facing all inquiry, in the special sciences and in metaphysics alike. This is constituted by the fact that the theories postulated in the procedure of inquiry in some degree will inevitably involve tacit assumptions and presuppositions. It is one of the particular tasks of philosophy to inquire into and discover the assumptions and presuppositions tacitly involved in the theories of the special sciences; this is a philosophical task because the presuppositions in question are almost always ones which transcend the special sciences under consideration, which is to say that the presuppositions are essentially philosophical ones. But philosophy itself, and metaphysics in particular, has the task of discovering and critically examining its own presuppositions. This is a task of exceptional difficulty; since these presuppositions are tacit, they are detectable only by special methods. Fundamental in these must be comparison and contrast, for we can see and recognize only by contrast and difference. But it is not sufficient to compare and contrast only contemporary theories, for these could be exhibiting common presuppositions, and most probably do. To overcome this difficulty historical inquiry is indispensable. This, however, itself faces special difficulties, for it is extremely easy to interpret past theories in terms of present ones, thereby failing to find precisely what is being looked for, namely the inherited presuppositions. The historical inquiry requisite in this respect is an exceedingly difficult and exacting undertaking, demanding of the inquirer a high degree of awareness of the possible intrusion of tacit presuppositions in his own inquiry. This historical inquiry, especially in metaphysics, needs to be pushed back to the beginnings of philosophical inquiry, and indeed with particular emphasis on and attention to the tacit metaphysical presuppositions involved in the very language of the originators of philosophical theory.14 This historical inquiry is of the first order of importance to the discipline of metaphysics, for without it we cannot be sure of what exactly is involved in metaphysical theory at any subsequent stage. In other words, without this historical inquiry it is impossible to make an adequate assessment of any metaphysical theory.

It is only such a historical inquiry that will enable us to disentangle the strands of inherited presuppositions which enter into the constitution of a later theory--Heidegger's theory of being, for example, or Whitehead's theory of prehension. Only thereby will we be able effectively and adequately to assess theories for their consistency and coherence. For example, thereby we will be able to see that Whitehead's theory of prehension involves a significant incoherence in its combination, on the one hand, of an Aristotelian conception of the physical entity included as object in the prehender, with, on the other, a Neoplatonic conception of the act as belonging exclusively to the prehender. The importance of this historical inquiry is not, however, restricted to its value in respect of the assessment of theories for their consistency and coherence; it is equally valuable in enabling a more effective assessment of the applicability and adequacy of theories, since through that inquiry we are able to have so much greater a discernment of what exactly is involved in the theories under consideration. But there is another equally considerable advantage accruing from the historical inquiry into presuppositions. This in respect to the formulation of new theory. Not only are we, as a consequence of the clarification of what exactly is involved in concepts, rescued from falling into inconsistency and incoherence, but correspondingly, viable alternatives become all the more readily visible and available to us. In summary, I would urge that this historical inquiry should be seen as constituting a most important and highly valuable, indeed quite indispensable, requirement in the discipline of metaphysics. We need to build on and carry much further the great movement of historical inquiry begun in the nineteenth century, but which has tended recently to have rather diminished. I see the possibility, on the basis of this historical inquiry, of metaphysics in the future becoming a much more strictly disciplined inquiry than it has on the whole been in the past, with a consequent vast gain in respect of its rightful contribution to the entire world of inquiry and learning. Emory University Atlanta, Georgia NOTES 1. This has not been true of German, in which the word "Wissenschaft" has until recently retained the wider denotation. 2. The following quotations are from the Norman Kemp Smith translation of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, B xvi. 3. I. Kant, Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, tr. James Ellington (The Library of Liberal Arts, The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1970), Preface, p. 4. 4. Cf. Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, ed. Lewis White Beck (The Library of Liberal Arts, The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1950), Part II, par. 39, Appendix to the Pure Science of Nature, Of the System of Categories (p. 71). 5. I. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 105 (Kemp Smith, p. 113). 6. Cf. Prolegomena, Part II, par. 21a. 7. It was from conversations with Gottfried Martin shortly before his death that I first fully began to appreciate the importance of a theory of theory. He was then struggling with the problem, but I am not aware of his having arrived at a solution. 8. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A 51, B 75. 9. It will perhaps be recognized that I have here adumbrated Whitehead's theory of "propositions". Cf. Process and Reality, Part II, Ch. IX. 10. Cf. Process and Reality, Part II, Ch. IX, Sect. I. 11. Plato has been correct in rejecting the earlier sense of noein as a direct perceptual looking at, seeing the true state of affairs [cf. Kurt von Fritz, "nous -and NOEIN in the Homeric Poems" (Classical Philology, XXXVIII, 1943, pp. 79-93) and "nous, NOEIN and their derivatives in Pre-Socratic Philosophy" (Classical Philology, XL, 1945, pp. 223-242, and XLI, 1946, pp. 12-34; reprinted in The PreSocratics, ed. A.P.D. Mourelatos (New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1974, pp. 2385)], accepting from Parmenides that it is an intellectual insight or intuition.

12. The adequate demonstration of this is only possible by the elaboration of an entire metaphysical system, which is of course not possible here. 13. The most notable exception here is the kind of inquiry of which pure mathematics is the most prominent instance. The "theory" involved in pure mathematics is not a "proposition" as in scientific theory and philosophical theory, since it does not include physical entities as its subject--there has in the past been a great deal of confusion in thought as a result of a failure to make the requisite distinction. The clarification of the ontological status of mathematics is a most important part of the task of metaphysics. 14. A very good example of this kind of inquiry is that of Kurt von Fritz in the papers mentioned in note 11 above. CHAPTER II METAPHYSICS and the ARCHITECTONIC OF SYSTEMS REINER WIEHL METAPHYSICS AS THE SCIENCE OF SUBSTANCE I shall begin my observations with a very general and provisional definition of the concept of metaphysics: metaphysics is the theoretical preoccupation with the ultimately fundamental things. In saying this I speak intentionally of theory and not of science (scientia) and doctrine (doctrina). In this way I can, for the time being, exclude one of the most controversial questions, namely, whether metaphysics is a science and doctrine in any sense and on what conditions it could possibly become such. With this provisional definition I also avoid intentionally any talk of man as such. For this, too, would anticipate a major point of controversy in metaphysics, namely, whether as a particular being amongst others man is in any sense an object of metaphysical cognition, or whether such an object must be traced to something more fundamental whose concept forms the necessary condition for all human knowledge, and finally to man's knowledge of himself. According to the above formula for the concept of metaphysics, the definition of its nature requires finding a valid definition of what is fundamental and of the theory thereof. The following provisional description of what is fundamental may suffice here: it must be fourfold, namely, be most comprehensive, most general, most real, and finally most perfect. The manner of dealing theoretically with this fourfold fundamental may be characterized as thought. A more terminological version might say that metaphysics is the logic of substance, but it is more than the mental examination of this or that basic feature of things. Unity and Eternity It can be said with some justification that theoretical physics, as the science of the laws of nature, changes into a metaphysics of nature precisely when the established laws of nature can be seen to be the most general laws of this kind. Similarly, ethics, as the theory of human action and of successful human life, becomes a metaphysics of morals at the point at which it is concerned not only with the acceptance and rejection of certain currently operative norms of human conduct, but also with the absolutely perfect as the most comprehensive determining factor of human existence. Inherent in metaphysics' specific way of considering objects is a tendency towards unity, a drive towards examining the interconnection between the various single elements of things. Metaphysics, as the logic of substance, is the theory of the unity of substance, the knowledge of the fundamental connection between the elements of things. The corresponding attribute "metaphysical," when understood in this very general sense, is not a specific characteristic of ancient philosophy in contrast to modern philosophy. It describes just as well the early modern philosophical rationalism of Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz, and the speculative systems of idealism of Kant, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. Kant's famous proposition in the introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason is most certainly right: "In all men, as soon as their reason has become ripe for speculation, there has always existed and will always continue to exist some kind of metaphysics." (B 21) Our present

time too has a characteristic metaphysics which, however, hidden and repressed it might be, must somehow disclose its distinctiveness and permit its comparison with the familiar images of traditional metaphysics. That metaphysics as a whole presents an appearance which is diversely entangled, if not even full of contradictions, is not generally disputed by its "friends and foes," but noted repeatedly. It is equally indisputable that this inconstant appearance has repeatedly, and in many different ways, given cause for reflection. The judgment and the evaluation of change in metaphysics is in turn subject to change, and facilitates different intellectual conclusions. Scepticism as regards the possibility of metaphysical knowledge is one such consequence; the design of a new architectonic for a metaphysical system is another. If it is at all permissible to speak of a modern metaphysics, this distinguishes itself from the traditional metaphysics of the antiquity and of early modern times by its concomitant historical consciousness, that is, by consciousness of the constitutive character of its own temporality. That such a consciousness was lacking in the old metaphysics, or at least was not constitutive of it, both leaves its mark on that kind of metaphysics and makes possible via negationis a description of modern metaphysics. The old metaphysics conceived its object, substance, from the definitive viewpoint of timelessness, or being beyond time; to take Spinoza's famous formula: sub specie aeternitatis. This kind of observation seems on the one hand to be mapped out by the object, the absolute substance in its various essential features. The comprehensive whole, the general and the law-like, the actual and concrete, the perfect and best, when seen in its respective fundamental and substantial character, all seem to call inevitably for the idea of the everlasting, of the being able to be such and not other. This consideration of objects sub specie aeternitatis seems to be evoked just as necessarily by the types of investigation, i.e., the logic of substance. Thought in this type of investigation must be conceived as adequate to its object and related to it in a certain way. Accordingly, thought counts as substantial and even fundamental with regard to substance. Ancient and Modern Truth. Metaphysical knowledge, therefore,as the logic of substance and the theory of its unity, takes the form of an absolute foundation. However, this absolute foundation need not completely exclude the idea of change with regard to absolute substance. Rather, change belongs among the most evident essential features of things and must have a systematic place within the foundation. As a result the various essential features of substance as such and their unity reveal a correspondingly varying affinity to change. Thus, reality seems more probably to be compatible with change than with perfection, with the comprehensive whole than with the general and law-like. In considering objects sub specie aeternitatis in regard to the idea of absolute immutability the old metaphysics reaches only the boundary at which problems emerge; it does not move beyond this boundary to the concept of a metaphysics, which, in accordance with its essence, is changeable: this boundary is set by the truth in classical metaphysics. It is not merely that the object of metaphysical thought, namely, substance, was conceived sub specie aeternitatis, nor that the manner of metaphysical cognition as the foundation of substance arose in thought sub specie aeternitatis, but above all that the aim of the foundation, namely, truth as absolute and fundamental, was understood only in relation to the eternal. The main problem of the traditional logic of substance as founded sub specie aeternitatis was the basis of the obviously essential features of things, motion and rest. This foundation implied a quite analogous problem for the corresponding theory of the unity of substance, namely, the basis of truth and falsity. These problems were intensified by the distinctive character of an intellectual foundation in terms of eternity, in relation to which motion seemed especially problematic. Thus ancient philosophy attempted to solve these two basic problems by putting forward analogous paradoxes: that both motion and falsity are non-existent and their reality a mere illusion. Besides Scepticism, Eleatism and Sophism were the great challengers of ancient ontology and metaphysics, and one of

the great intellectual endeavors of classical Greek philosophy was to "save" motion as well as falsity and deception. Plato's Theaetetus is the impressive document of this rescue attempt. Classical ancient philosophy created paradigms for a foundation not only of motion and rest, but also of truth and untruth, the latter in conjunction with the development of a classical form of philosophical criticism. Truth is thereby absolutely distinguished from mere correctness of perception, opinion and certain conduct. This difference results on the one hand, from the direct relationship of truth to knowledge as the foundation of substance whence truth gains its specific characteristics of constancy and necessity. On the other hand, these criteria clarify why a distinction has to be made between truth and correctness. Human behaviour which is concerned with correctness must be possible even when the knowledge guiding this conduct is imperfect. Further, this knowledge must be applied to a certain situation and thereby be necessarily limited. The human knowledge guiding action need be assured only as provisional, not as fundamental knowledge. Correctness and incorrectness change from case to case and allow for examination in each case. The relationship between truth and untruth is something quite different. The possibility of a philosophical critique demands that untruth find its systematic place within a foundation of substance. The result of this for the relationship between untruth and truth that is this: 1) untruth is given only under presupposition of truth and in relation to it--and is defined as such (veritas est index veri et falsi); 2) untruth is both well distinguished from truth, and not distinguished from it, since it is truth not as such, but only when regarded from a limited and particular standpoint and on the specific conditions of this limitation; 3) accordingly truth relates to untruth, not as if the latter were something quite different, but as truth in a specific imperfection: a provisional truth, which has not yet been recognized in regard to the conditions of its specific limitation, and which therefore is not yet absolutely comprehensive, general, actual and perfect truth; and 4) the relationship between untruth and truth is to be conceived of under these fundamental conditions as the specific movement of truth itself, as the way and method which has as its goal a comprehensive, general and complete knowledge of truth. A movement is differentiated according to its various phases, a method is structured according to its single, constitutive steps. Each phase of the movement of truth, each of its methodical steps is determined by the following formal aspects or moments: a) positing a definite and limited standpoint, and the definition thereof; b) reflection on the essential conditions of this positing and the definition thereof in relation to the above definition of positing; c) the synthesis of both the given definitions and the definition of their correlation; d) positing this synthesis as of a limited standpoint and reflection on its relationship to the initially posited standpoint with a view to gaining a more general and comprehensive standpoint. As has already been said: not only did classical ancient ontology and metaphysics avoid Scepticism, it tried also to overcome the paradoxes of Eleatism and Sophism. Its most important discovery in this endeavour was that of the constitutive correlation of truth and method in the most general sense. In spite of this discovery it did not succeed in bringing the concepts of motion and truth into complete harmony with the idea of substance and its grounding. Nor was the tension between truth and correctness, knowledge and opinion resolved; this continued as tension between an ontology of substance and a pragmatic ethics in modern times. Metaphysics in the modern age has placed itself deliberately traditional in the context of ancient metaphysics and has attempted at the same time to reconcile this tradition with the spirit of modern scientism. This is especially true of Hegel's superb attempt to solve all the problems of traditional metaphysics by changing the contradictions in its appearance into constitutive phases of the movement of truth, into dialectical steps of the metaphysical cognition of truth. Hegel himself understood this systematic reconstruction as the completion of truth

and the end of the history of metaphysics. For this systematic reconstruction he coined the formula of the subjectivization of substance, and determined subjectivity as the principle by means of which the ancient idea of truth could be completed in the changed conditions of the modern age. That formula of the subjectivization of substance, as well as the principle of subjectivity, is exposed to obvious misunderstandings. It is not wrong to speak of a revision of the traditional ontology of substance in favor of an ontology of subjectivity, but it would be wrong to see in this revision a fundamentally new ontology. It is not as if the traditional logic of substance were replaced by a logic of motion and the idea of a grounding of substance in pure thought were invalidated. It would be more appropriate to speak not of such a revision, but of a reversion of the traditional priorities in the relationship of the object, method and truth of knowledge. Method and Knowledge. For ancient ontology and metaphysics it was almost self-evident that the object had the first priority in this relationship. Especially at those times when it wished to proceed methodically, knowledge had to orientate itself by the essence of the thing and its inner structure. It was exactly against these pretended essence of the thing that the degree of the compulsoriness of knowledge and its method was to be measured. The philosophy of early modern times reversed this relationship. It raised knowledge to the first principle and made its inner structure the methodical order according to which every possible objective order was to find its orientation. In his systematic construction of the perfectly completed metaphysics Hegel tried to combine the objective priority of ancient philosophy with the methodical priority of the modern. In this way, the thinking of the antiquity was to be reconciled with that of the modern age. This was to happen through holding the concept of truth to be the first principle just as the antiquity had in foreknowledge understood it, but by viewing this concept at the same time as inseparable from the method of cognition. Reflexivity, processuality and subjectivity became the supreme principles, because of the idea of truth in antiquity and in order to penetrate that idea conceptually in the philosophy of modern times. Reflexivity meant primarily the absolute relationship of completed truth to itself in each of its limited and conditional modes of appearance. Processuality meant primarily the movement of truth in its various constitutive phases, such that in each step the previous and the subsequent were also considered. Subjectivity was awareness of one's own external conditions, thereby becoming aware of one's own specific limit, and thus expanding the scope of one's effectiveness. Reflexivity, processuality and subjectivity belonged inseparably in the unity of the concept of truth and its methodical movement. In this context the essential features of truth itself were to provide the standard by which the essential features of things were to be measured, which were to be ordered according to their respective relationship to this standard. Thus, the methodical order of metaphysics looked in principle like this: the comprehensive whole becomes an absolute totality through the gradual expansion of its respective, limited entities; the conceptual-general becomes a concrete-general through a gradual concretization of the abstract; the real-actual becomes finally actual and actualized freedom through a phased actualization of more and more real possibilities; and the perfect is completed by the gradual, methodical completion of the unity of the comprehensive whole, the concrete general and the truly free in the absolute unity of thought. This construction of the system of completed metaphysics has, through its consciousness, brought the history of this metaphysics to a close. It is true that it has not produced the historical consciousness as such, but it has made a quite considerable contribution to the profound change which the function of this consciousness, in regard to the continuation of the metaphysical tradition, has gone through. The general concept and nature of modern historical consciousness constitutes an

exceptional paradox in connection with the idea of metaphysics. For, as the consciousness of a modern metaphysics, it is in no way simply the consciousness of the truth of a methodical movement, a history continually pressing for selffulfillment. Nor can this consciousness be interpreted as equivalent to the consciousness of an advance of metaphysics toward its necessary conclusion. Finally, neither is this historical consciousness an absolute scepticism towards the whole tradition of metaphysics or an awareness of its definitive end. Modern historical consciousness, by which metaphysics is bound, is as divisive as it is conflicting. It divides every possible metaphysical standpoint into one inside and one outside of metaphysics, and thus into a halved metaphysical standpoint. Thereby the respective specific limitations of this standpoint becomes, together with its ontological conditions, conditioned in two ways. It is no longer only a limitation made by another limited standpoint of metaphysics and its metaphysical requirements, but beyond this it is also and mainly a limitation by a certain nonmetaphysical standpoint and its definition. The Reduced Concept of Metaphysics. Metaphysics today seems to concern itself less directly with the general foundations of things and their grounding, than with this and that phenomenon as a mere phenomenon. For this metaphysical phenomenalism the understanding and interpretation of certain individual traits of metaphysics wins absolute priority, while what lies behind these metaphysical phenomena evades intellectual consideration. Historical consciousness is essentially related to relativity and scepticism. But this consciousness is not a certain scepticism, which would itself be based on a certain concept of truth, thus facilitating its constant connection back to an ontology and alethiology. Rather, the scepticism of the historical consciousness of modern metaphysics is based on withholding judgment in regard to the validity of this or that concept of truth, or even in regard to any conceivable concept of truth at all. Such scepticism is compatible with the idea of a system, but not with the implementation of a system as self-contained and final. It can only accept systems as provisional, and a temporal succession of such systems only as a manifold of alternatives of various intellectual-linguistic phenomena of expression of fundamental importance. The historical consciousness in metaphysics certainly contributes today to that extreme, intellectual reserve, which allows only a consideration of certain traits of a traditional metaphysical system with regard to particular qualities and their relations. Amongst these qualities, that of inconsistency plays an outstanding role, in part because a construction of partial traits appropriate to it is relatively easy to contrive. Also from such a construction conclusions for re-ordering can be drawn relatively easily without the inconsistency having to be sounded out and the consequences of the specific purge having to be thought through to a conclusion. Hand-in-hand with this withholding of judgment by the historical consciousness goes the doubt regarding the traditional idea of a grounding of substance through thought. This doubt leads in turn to a gradual reduction in previously binding form of the definition of the intellectual-linguistic expression in metaphysical thought. With this, the fundamental way of looking at a problem of metaphysics begins to change. Just as important, if not more important than the grounding of substance through thought, becomes the question of the understanding and interpretation of the varying forms of such a grounding. With that, the problem of the grounding of interpretation, especially with regard to traditional metaphysics, gradually begins to be of consequence; alongside a hermeneutics of metaphysics there emerges a metaphysics of hermeneutics. THE PLURALITY OF STANDPOINTS AND PHILOSOPHICAL CRITICISM With his systematic construction of the completion of the history of metaphysics, Hegel not only constructed the undertaking of thinking through from scratch antiquity's concept of truth in terms of the conditions of modern philosophy, namely, the principles of reflexivity, processuality and subjectivity. At the same time he sharpened beyond recognition the characteristic of ancient philosophy:

philosophical critique demanded that one "put oneself into the power of one's opponent." Ancient philosophy knew its external standpoints as partially opposite points of view. Such positions, running at least partially counter to philosophy, were: the standpoint of the natural attitude to life and of the common-sense knowledge of perception and experience, the standpoint of human ability and of the mastery of a particular technique, the standpoint of true knowledge as reached in science, and, finally, the standpoint of practical shrewdness and of moral insight. The Integration of Perspectives in a Fundamental Ontology. All these positions were so fundamental in ancient Greek philosophy that it did not wish to exclude them completely from the general grounding. It was more a case of bringing them into relation with the ontology of substance, of showing them their specific limit in the foundation and of letting them by degrees take their part in it. In this way, the above positions were by no means only opposite points of view or external standpoints; rather, they marked out points of transition into the philosophical grounding of substance. The ancient grounding of substance, its theory of the substantial unity of things, saw itself as the science ((episteme) of principles (archai), as a well-ordered, true knowledge of the foundations of the Being-that-truly-is (to ontos on, ousia). The first fundamental principles of this being are not regarded here as located exclusively in the philosophical grounding of ontology. Rather, the foundations of things are so conceived that as principles they pervade all areas of the world accessible to man; they establish the structure of the order thereof and thus also have their place in those positions which seem external to philosophical ontology. Thusfar, we have seen the principles as facilitating the transition and gradual integration of these positions into ontology. At the same time, however, the specific imperfection of the related area is revealed in the particular manner of the conception of these principles from such an external standpoint. Principles form the basis of natural perception and experience, but they are comprehended only sensuously, if at all, in this area rather than in their truly fundamental function. That is why this area is also an area of contingency and demands that its knowledge be secured through technique and science. A particular technique gives man the security of a specific ability which connects skill both with experience and with a particular knowledge of rules, regularities and causes. But a technique is aimed at a knowledge of causes, not for its own sake, but rather only insofar as this knowledge guarantees the security of ability. That is why the technical knowledge of causes remains in the end without a base and open to being revised and falsified. What first connects the individual science with the individual technique is the generality of the knowledge of causes. At the same time, it differentiates itself from technique by examining the causes of its own area for their own sake; in so doing it directs itself towards the most general and fundamental causes. That is why the philosophy of antiquity sees in the idea of science some constitutive reference to a science of principles, which, pursued for its own sake, seeks the first causes of the Being-that-truly-is. But above all principles determine the area of human action and conduct; and practical knowledge and moral wisdom also refer, as a knowledge of principles, to the unified general view of a science of principles. Accordingly, one can make this generalization: in relation to philosophical ontology there are as many external positions to be distinguished as there are basically varying principles, varying conditions, and kinds and modes of their conception. To the degree that philosophical ontology is able to integrate these external positions, the order of the external positions will be revealed through the order of principles. The ancient science of principles was able to regard itself as a fundamental science and so at the same time as the most universal science in relation to its external positions. At the same time, it also claimed thereby to be the most rational and well-founded science. The maximum of

rationality claimed was understood as a maximum knowledge of principles inasmuch as it no longer conceived of this from a special mode of access, as they appear for men (pros humas) and under specific, respective conditions of access, but in their true condition, actually, as the first elements (ta prosa, ta stooicheia) of the Being-that-truly-is (to alethes). Finally, that science of principles also saw itself as the highest and most perfect and most worthy science, not so much because it was able to demonstrate its maximum of universality and rationality in relation to its external positions, but as a science of the highest, most perfect and most worthy--as "Theology." This claimed maximum of good was given not exclusively as an activity for its own sake, but through the nature of the object as the Being-that-truly-is, namely, the divinity of this being and of its truth and beauty. The ancient science of principles was a theory of the fundamental, hierarchic order of things in relation to this fundamental science and its own inner order. But this hierarchic order is and remains a manifold one; it is diversely structured according to the many external standpoints and the corresponding manner of condition and mode of conception of its principles. The natural world, that of ordinary life (Lebenswelt),is ordered according to the hierarchy of the importance of its goods. To a certain degree this order is followed in the ordering of its techniques, but only to a certain degree. For a guiding, architectonic technique is defined as such in comparison to other techniques as having a superior goal, not only according to the standards of the generally accepted material order of goods, but also according to internal, "technical" criteria. The order of the sciences also touches the hierarchy of the other orders without being congruent with the order of technique regarding the essentials and causes, or with that of ethics regarding the norm of the end in itself. Finally, the hierarchy of values and goods in ethics and politics concerns all these hierarchies of values from the viewpoints of their possible realization and of truth, and thereby assumes an all-important function as a standpoint external to philosophical ontology. In their relations all these hierarchies orientate themselves according to the manifoldness of the value maxims of the science of principles. External and Internal Standpoints. Through the systematic construction of its completed history, Hegel posited ontology and metaphysics absolutely; by so doing he negated the multiplicity of possible, external standpoints. This absolute positing occurred on the deliberate condition that modern thought and its philosophy allows itself to be reduced to one single, essential, pre-ontological standpoint, which requires integration into modern ontology; namely, to the standpoint of a finite human consciousness and the inseparably connected ideas of an absolute and methodically self-organizing science. This modern integration of a pre-ontological standpoint into ontology proceeded in its methodology in a dialectical and epagogical way. Like ancient philosophical critique it used analogy in regard to the condition and modes of conception of identical principles. But the reduction of multiple possible standpoints external to ontology to a single one was necessarily combined with a reduction of the manifoldness of analogy in the use of principles to one single, absolute analogy; namely, to the analogy of the principles of consciousness and subjectivity in regard to the identical principle of truth. By means of this single and absolute analogy a pre-ontological theory of the history of consciousness was related to an ontology of the occurrence of truth. The necessary result of this was the singleness and absoluteness of one hierarchy, namely, that of the methodical steps of the explication of truth itself. Like all mediations of opposites, this unique attempt at a "reconciliation" of modern thought with that of the antiquity could not help, abstracting at least in some respect from the specific peculiarity of the opposing relata. This is as true of the peculiarity of ancient thought as for modern thought. However much Hegel's concept of truth is related to that of antiquity in regard to the essential features stated above, it is equally far from it in regard to the consequence of

having one single and absolute valid hierarchy of values (if one disregards the manifestations of late Platonism). Metaphysics and the Natural Sciences: Causality and Universality But the specific nature of modern thought is also insufficiently defined in this mediation. This peculiarity does not lie in making the principle of consciousness the unique principle, nor in binding this consciousness to the idea of an absolutely valid universal science, but in defining this as a mathematic, empirical natural science. One can say with a certain justification that in modern times it is precisely this science which forms the only relevant external position to ontology and metaphysics. But it can just as well be said that in terms of its conscious self-understanding this universal, modern natural science is nothing other than a modern metaphysics. In this twofold manner of speaking the dilemma of modern metaphysics becomes clear as resulting from the singleness of an external position to it. Either modern metaphysics regards itself with respect to the new universal natural science as the absolute foundation and tries by means of this, its own grounding, to integrate the other science as a pre-ontological knowledge according to its own standards of truth; or the opposite case occurs, and the modern universal natural science which makes of itself the absolute foundation and, if need be, appropriates elements of metaphysics according to its own methodology. The modern, universal natural science, when understood as metaphysics, distinguishes itself from the traditional science of principles first fundamentally in regard to its methodology. The method of the latter was based on a definition of the nature of pure thought, as for example that of the external on observation and experiment on the one hand, and the application of mathematics and geometry on the other. It is evident that this difference in the methodical basis was bound to imply a correspondingly fundamental difference in regard to the concept of rationality and to the standards of evaluation thereof. Above all however, the modern universal natural science, when regarded as modern metaphysics, is to be understood from the viewpoint of its reductive character. It reduces to a minimum not only Aristotle's theory of a diversity of modes of causality, but also the above-mentioned diversity of the essential features of things. Amongst these, first and foremost, only the element of generality and of maximum universality seems able to maintain its uncontested validity; with it the norm of true knowledge as of a universally valid and necessary one is preserved. Less uncontested, but nevertheless still valid, is the element of the comprehensive whole also in regard to the idea of a maximum totality and in the form of a concept of the extensive continuum, which can be conceived of both as a comprehensive whole and as the form of the absolute totality of being. Difficulties arise here from linking this concept to the corresponding idea of a maximum. On the other hand, in the metaphysics of modern, universal natural science the fundamental concept of the real and of actuality becomes precarious, first of all as such, and then especially the corresponding ideas of a maximum and of a hierarchy of realities. Finally, the element of perfection becomes quite dubious, which, in the form of the idea of the good and the causa finalis, played such an important role in the ontology of the ancients. There seems to be no autonomous place to be found for this element in the new metaphysics of natural science. Here the reductive character of this metaphysics emerges especially sharply, for perfection imagined in respect to the idea of a maximum here reduces itself to the function of a regulatively interpreted, relative maximum of generality, compulsoriness of validity and uniformity of theory of this universal science. But most importantly the consequence of the described reduction for Hegel's foundation of speculative ontology is none other than that there can only be one single and absolutely valid hierarchy, namely, the hierarchy of generality and universal validity. Only the interpretation of this single and absolute hierarchy

differs here and there: on the one hand, a hierarchy of degrees of freedom, on the other, a hierarchy of degrees of probability. The Idea of Reflection. Modern metaphysics constitutes itself as the antithesis between a metaphysics of nature and a metaphysics of freedom. But its modern character is at first only very superficially characterized by this antithesis. Hegel was not the last who tried to give metaphysics a new basis, and the manner of his new kind of grounding was not the only definitive one, despite its far-reaching effects. Amongst the previous attempts at providing a new foundation, undoubtedly those of Kant and Leibniz were especially important, above all because both were directly involved with the specific nature of this modern natural science. However, the manner of involvement was highly different. The so-called rational metaphysics of early modern times in its specific expression in Leibniz had its special characteristics in the fact that, so to speak in a countermove to empirical science, it gives first priority to the element of perfection of all other, varying substantial elements of things and thereby to the idea of a maximum of such perfection and to a hierarchy of objects oriented to this standard. Accordingly, it is also secondary to this basic concept that the norm of rationality of theory and the norm of its order are oriented. In this groundwork of a theory of substance a maximum of perfection means moral perfection of a highest being, in which a maximum of freedom is combined with a maximum of conceivable good (ens perfectissimum). By this maximum are measured the degrees of freedom and the sequence of goods. But perfection also defines the element of the actual and the real, both absolutely as well as in regard to the maximum of reality. Just as the highest perfection coincides with the highest reality (ens realissimum), so in each individual finite thing the degree of its reality corresponds to the standard of its perfection, measured by the standard of perfection and reality. Perfection also determines the comprehensive whole in its respective, unified totality: the highest monad, which takes into itself all other monads and which at the same time is the most real and perfect. And finally, the substantial element of universality also receives its determination by the element of perfection of an act of cognition: an act of knowledge is perfect as the adequate and complete act of cognition of a being with regard to the degree of its reality and perfection and in respect to the comprehensive whole as the maximum of the perfect unity. Consequently, the element of perfection (perfectio) carries above all in this modern foundation of ontology the burden of providing a basis for a rational science of principles in relation to the universal science of nature. Kant's critique of this foundation has many sides, but it can be especially understood as a critique of the fundamental function of the concept of perfection. According to that critique, this concept is not sufficient to fulfill all those functions, especially not to define the rationality of the fundamental science and to mark out the limit between it and empirical natural science. It is well known that on the basis of this critical recognition and for the first time in the history of modern philosophy, Kant put the real, critical question in regard to metaphysics: how is this possible as a science. One can best paraphrase the most important starting point of his observations as follows: he saw that as a science of principles metaphysics was clearly and evidently distinguishable from the empirical natural science, but in that regard to the norm of rationality it could not be fundamentally different. That was the reason for his undertaking to find a new ground for metaphysics as a science by examining the methodical foundations of the modern natural science, mathematics and empiricism with regard to their principal foundations. It was the reason also for his attempt, by means of a methodical distinction between analytical and synthetic knowledge on the one hand and knowledge a priori and knowledge a posteriori on the other, to find the requirements for an appropriate definition both of the rationality of metaphysics and at the same time of the modern natural sciences. In the answer to the question--how are synthetic judgments a priori possible--he thought he could find

the key to solving the whole cluster of problems. But was the last formulation of the question in itself sufficient to provide a new basis for metaphysics also and above all as a science? Had not this critique of the principle of perfection expressly put into question the possibility of an internal order of such a science? The Art of Construction. The second main part of the Critique of Pure Reason, "The Transcendental Doctrine of Method," in its third main chapter entitled "The Architectonic of Pure Reason," brings the importance of this formulation clearly to the fore: By an architectonic I understand the art of constructing systems. As systematic unity is what first raises ordinary knowledge to the rank of science, that is, makes a system out of a mere aggregate of knowledge, architectonic is the doctrine of the scientific in our knowledge, and therefore necessarily forms part of the doctrine of method. (Italics mine.) To the above, Kant adds something like a provisional philosophical definition of the concept of system: By a system I understand the unity of the manifold modes of knowledge under one idea. This idea is the concept provided by reason--of the form of a whole--insofar as the concept determines a priori not only the scope of its manifold content, but also the positions which the parts occupy relatively to one another. The scientific concept of reason contains, therefore, the end and the form of that whole which is congruent with this requirement. He explains this unity of form by means of an analogy with the animal organism: The whole is thus an organized unity (articulatio), and not an aggregate (coacervatio). It may grow from within (per intus-susceptionem), but not by external addition (per appositionem). It is thus like an animal body, the growth of which is not by the addition of a new member, but by the rendering of each member, without change of proportion, stronger and more effective for its purposes. But how is this system of pure reason to be realized, and thereby metaphysics to be a science? On what conditions does an art of systems stand at all? The critique of reason is needed, and it "in the end, necessarily leads to scientific knowledge; while its dogmatic employment, on the other hand, lands us in dogmatic assertions to which other assertions, equally specious, can always be opposed--that is, in scepticism." (Introduction, B22/23). It is, accordingly, this critique of reason, from which is to be expected, not only the answer to the question how metaphysics is at all possible, namely as synthetic knowledge from a priori concepts, but above all, how it is possible as a science. Kant described the relationship between the critique of reason and the science of metaphysics which has to be grounded anew by means of the concept of transcendental philosophy: "I entitle transcendental all knowledge which is occupied not so much with objects as with the mode of our knowledge of objects insofar as this mode of knowledge is to be possible a priori. A system of such concept might be entitled transcendental philosophy" (Introduction, B25; italics mine). But the critique of pure reason in no way coincides with transcendental philosophy. It only forms its beginning, because the latter "must contain, with completeness, both kinds of a priori knowledge, the analytic no less than the synthetic," while in The Critique of Pure Reason "we have to carry the analysis so far only as is indispensably necessary in order to comprehend, in their whole extent, the principles of a priori synthesis, with which alone we are called upon to deal." (Ibid). It is Kant's transcendental philosophy, that is philosophical ontology as the first part of the totality of metaphysics, which is to be given a new foundation by a critique of pure reason. This philosophy takes the form of a system and can thus claim scientific character. Accordingly, we will have to look for the key to the foundation of this character in The Critique of Pure Reason. Is it also the basis for something like an "art of systems" or might it presuppose this? The critique of pure reason should answer our question why metaphysics is possible

as a science. As we have shown in general, it must also answer the other two questions, how pure mathematics and pure natural science are possible because it is concerned to prove a unified concept of rationality (sensibility) in metaphysics and natural science. But, on the other hand, the critique of pure reason is concerned with the "idea of a special science" (Introduction, B24), which has in common with metaphysics as a whole and with transcendental philosophy as ontology (vgl. B873ff) the form of the scientific. But what is this metaphysics to be based upon: on a science, which is perhaps always provisional and preliminary, which we will call the critique of pure reason; or, on the other hand, on an art, namely an art of systems, which alone ensures for the critique of pure reason the to-be-ordered character of an initial, critical science? Is the new metaphysics based therefore upon science or upon art? A possible answer to this question should be sought by means of a more exact analysis of the relationship between the concepts of system and of schema. PRINCIPLES OF SYSTEMATIC UNITY The question whether metaphysics is possible as a science can be replaced, in accordance with the connection between the idea of system and of science, by another: how is metaphysics possible as a system and as the systematic unity of a general human fundamental knowledge? If it is true that metaphysics is the theoretical preoccupation with the "first principles of human knowledge," then the architectonic or the art of systems is for these principles, and it is exactly those principles which have to be connected in a scientific form. System and Schema In Kant's attempt, to answer the question he himself posed, one concept plays a key role at which the following observations are aimed, namely the concept of a schema: "The idea (i.e., the form of a systematic whole) requires for its realization a schema, that is, a constituent manifold with an order of its parts, both of which must be determined a priori from the principle defined by its end." (A833) In regard to the concept of a schema, is the nature of the unity of the whole of this manifold and of the order of its parts? How is it distinguished from the corresponding unity of system, the implementation of which it is supposed to help? Is its unity analogous to that of the system; does it already include in embryonic form all that is included in the other, and do schema and system represent only various phases of the "inner growth" of the idea, or of the system of knowledge? Is its methodological nature given along with it? Kant's concepts of schema and system are not inseparably bound up with the concept of metaphysics, but they are designed as a result of the question as to the possibility of metaphysics as a science. However, the connection of the above set of problems underlies certain theoretical conditions in his theory. To these belong among others: 1) the distinction between acts of cognition from principles, on the one hand, and acts of cognition from empirical principles on the other; in short, between pure knowledge of reason and empirical knowledge of reason; 2) the distinction between the philosophical and mathematical knowledge of reason on the basis of a unified ideal of rationality; 3) analogy in the relationship of the knowledge of reason and sense to their specific objects as the condition of a systematic unity of all knowledge of reason. The question is, whether these specific conditions of a system of metaphysics are to be regarded as valid or whether they are rather suitable for concealing general conditions in the use of schemata for the constitution of systems. The first of the above-mentioned requirements was, in Kant's eyes, so important that he linked it with a general methodical maxim, which one could really label the principle of his style of thought: "It is," he remarks in regard to the question of the system of metaphysics, "of the utmost importance to isolate the various modes of knowledge according as they differ in kind and in origin, and to secure that they be not confounded owing to the fact that usually, in our employment of them, they are combined." (A842) More definitely and directly in respect to metaphysics as a science he says "that the mere degree of subordination (of the particular under the general) cannot determine the limits of a science; in

the case under consideration, only complete difference of kind and of origin will suffice." It is well known that Kant claims to have connected for the very first time a standard principle and a methodical leitmotif for the fundamental distinction of these types of cognition and so to have created for the first time the conditions for a "scientific" metaphysics. Until then one "noticed not a special kind, but only a certain precedence in respect of generality, which was not sufficient to distinguish such knowledge from the empirical. For among empirical principles we can distinguish some that are more general, and so higher in rank than others." This distinction is not only absolute, but above all necessary to the condition for a system of reason: The schema, which is not devised in accordance with an idea, that is, in terms of the ultimate aim of reason, but empirically in accordance with purposes that are contingently occasioned (the number of which cannot be foreseen) yields technical unity; whereas the schema which originates from an idea (in which reason propounds the ends a priori; and does not wait for them to be empirically given) serves as the basis of architectonic unity; not in technical fashion, in view of the similarity of its manifold constituents or the contingent use of our knowledge in concreto for all sorts of optional external ends, but in architectonic fashion, in view of the affinity of its parts and of their derivation from a single supreme and inner end, through which the whole is first made possible, can that arise, which we call science, the schema of which must contain the outline (monogramma) and the division of the whole into parts, in conformity with the idea, that is, a priori, and in so doing must distinguish it with certainty and according to principles from all other wholes. Accordingly, only a schema which is designed with a view to the idea of reason itself, is capable of achieving systematic unity. Technical unities have, without Kant expressly noticing it, the scientifically insufficient form of a mere aggregate. It holds for the schema of reason, that it is the design of a whole and its division from one principle a priori. The second necessary condition for a possible system of metaphysics is the distinction between the philosophical and mathematical knowledge of reason. Both kinds of cognition have in common that they are a knowledge of reason a priori, which is organized in synthetic judgments a priori. Kant criticizes a certain distinction between both kinds of cognition with respect to the object which says that "the former, the philosophical, has as its object quality only, and the latterthe mathematical quantity only. In this kind of distinction "the effect is taken for the cause." This form of mathematical knowledge is regarded as the true cause for its being traceable to quanta. This difference of form is seen as that between a knowledge from concepts (philosophy) and "a knowledge gained by reasons from concepts" (mathematics). It is only from this difference of form that there results a difference in regard to the categorical determination of objects: "For it is the concept of quantities only that allows of being constructed, that is, exhibited a priori in intuition; whereas qualities cannot be presented in any intuition that is not empirical." The above-mentioned difference of form means that a mathematical concept, as, for example, that of the triangle, can be so constructed in pure idea, that the constructed figure not only makes clear the corresponding concept in an exemplary way, but also at the same time guarantees it "universal validity for all possible intuitions which fall under the same concept." On the other hand, "I cannot represent in intuition the concept of a cause in general except in an example supplied by experience." That is the reason why this concept requires beyond its clarification by such an example a proof of its necessity and universal validity. Mathematical and philosophical knowledge are, according to Kant, based on the condition of a schematization of their concepts. But the schematization of mathematical concepts in the construction thereof gives their objects, while the corresponding schematization of the philosophical fundamental concepts gives only the necessary condition for the concepts to be able to be brought into relation with the objects of experience. This basic difference in the form of philosophical

and mathematical knowledge has, however, important methodical consequences: definitions, axioms and proofs play here and there an outstanding role as methodical instruments. Kant did not demand that one completely do without these instruments in philosophical knowledge, but that one should become aware of their specific difference of performance in the respective knowledge of the object. Form and Object of a Science. So, he concludes, for instance, in regard to the definitions "that in philosophy one must not imitate mathematics by beginning with definitions, unless it be by way simply of experiment." For "neither empirical concepts nor concepts a priori allow of definition," the former do not "for since we find in it only a few characteristics of a certain species of sensible object, it is never certain that we are not using the word, in denoting one and the same object, sometimes so as to stand for more, and sometimes so as to stand for fewer characteristics." In the other case concepts do not a priori allow for definition "for I can never be certain that the clear representation of a given concept, which as given may still be confused, has been completely effected, unless I know that it is adequate to its object." The third condition for a possible system of metaphysics is directly connected to the above two. It demands not simply a fundamental distinction between the pure knowledge of reason and the empirical knowledge of understanding, in the sense that the first is to be attributed with an unconditional and absolute universal validity. Beyond that it demands also analogy regarding the respective relationships between objects and regarding the necessary conditions for the possibility of such relationships: The understanding is an object for reason, just as sensibility is for the understanding. It is the business of reason to render the unity of all possible empirical acts of the understanding systematic; just as it is of the understanding to connect the manifold of the appearances by means of concepts, and to bring it under empirical laws. But the acts of the understanding are, without the schemata of sensibility, undetermined; just as the unity of reason is in itself undetermined, as regards the conditions under which, and the extent to which, the understanding ought to combine its concepts in systematic fashion. But although we are unable to find in intuition a schema for the complete systematic unity of all concepts of the understanding, an analogon of such a schema must necessarily allow of being given. This analogon is the idea of the maximum in the division and unification of the knowledge of the understanding under one principle. The analogy says accordingly: The various categories in respect to the pure concept of the understanding a priori, allow themselves to be brought into relation to the unity of the extensive continuum (of pure intuition) under the condition of a principle of homogeneity and its application in the form of schemata, which respectively correspond to the categories. Analogously, the relation of reason to the unity of the understanding, or to the unity of a possible knowledge of the understanding, likewise demands principles after the analogy of those schemata in the form of principles or maxims: Reason thus prepares the field for the understanding: 1) through a principle of the homogeneity of the manifold under higher genera; 2) through a principle of the variety of the homogenous under lower species; and 3) in order to complete the systematic unity, a further law, that of the affinity of all concepts - a law which prescribes that we proceed from each species to every other by gradual increase of the diversity." (A657) Kant names these principles: "homogeneity, specification, and continuity of forms." They have the character of maxims, in respect to postulata, which apparently demand something contrary, but in fact they are only able to facilitate in mutual complementation the aim of reason, the completion of the systematic unity. So, the requirement that "rudiments (or principles) must not be unnecessarily multiplied (entia praeter necessitatem non esse multiplicanda)" must be combined with its complementary, namely, that the diversity of principles cannot be reduced without necessity (entium varietates non temere esse minuendas).

But the third principle, according to Kant, arises from the union of the other two, inasmuch as only through the processes of ascending to the higher genera and of descending to the lower species do we obtain the idea of systematic connection in its completeness. For all the manifold differences are then related to one another, inasmuch as they one and all spring from one highest genus, through all degrees of a more and more widely extended determination." (A658) Just as Kant had distinguished between images and schemata as different conditions of the relationship of concepts to intuitions, and had accordingly distinguished these relationships themselves, so, too, in relation to an analogon of schema a corresponding distinction was indicated. The analogon of a schema is to be imagined as the plan of a universal division of a single and highest genus, which, for its part, can be made visually imaginable. Let us now inquire about the function of this analogon of schema in the construction of a systematic unity of all knowledge of reason. The Architectonic Form of Knowledge. In preparation for a possible answer, let us take a look at the theory of metaphysics which chronologically immediately precedes Kant's, but which in systematic terms represents an interesting and relevant opposing concept. This is the theory of J.H. Lambert in his main work, "Conception for Architectonic or the Theory of the First and the Simple in Philosophical and Mathematical Knowledge" (Anlage zur Architektonik oder Theorie des Ersten und des Einfachen in der philosophischen und mathematischen Erkenntnis, 1771). Lambert intentionally chose the word "architectonic" as the title of his work. In doing so, he referred to Baumgarten's Metaphysics, where architectonic is equated with ontology, or with the metaphysica generalis. He justifies his use of the words: "It is an abstract from architecture, and, with its design on the structure of human knowledge, it has a quite similar meaning, especially in reference to the materials and their preparation and arrangement at all, and when the reference is such that one charges oneself with the aim of making an effective whole thereof." (XXIX) Let us at first ignore the question whether the procedure of building a house can be understood as a process of inner growth according to Kant's idea of the unity of system. Let us first ask about the position of Lambert's theory with respect to Kant's premisses regarding the possible unity of a system of reason. The first impression is that in Lambert's theory none of these conditions is fulfilled and that, measured by Kant's standards of science, the theory must be rejected as unscientific. There seems to be (1) no clear distinction between the knowledge of reason and of understanding, and even less a unifying principle and a methodical leitmotif to depict the unempirical concepts of human knowledge in their completeness. Thus, there seems to be (2) no definite distinction between philosophical and mathematical knowledge; the conditions for Kant's critique which opposes determining mathematical knowledge from its object, quantity, seem to be fulfilled here. So we see an apparently natural use made of those methodical aids, definitions, axioms and proofs, which in Kant's opinion are primary and really permissible only in mathematics. Finally, there is also (3) no theory of the analogy between the object relations between the pure knowledge of reason and the empirical knowledge of the understanding in regard to their conditions of a possible relationship to intuitions. However, on closer viewing, Lambert's "Architectonic" contains parts of a theory which can very well be brought into relation to those conditions of a system of metaphysics in Kant and can be compared with these. Thus, for example, (1) the methodical demand is made that a distinction must be made in ontology between simple and complex fundamental concepts, and so a demand of Kant's is met, that the concepts under examination are a priori "elementary concepts and be clearly distinguished from those derived or combined thereof." Further, there is (2) clearly a consciousness of the differences between philosophical and mathematical knowledge, not only in respect to the task of clarifying the first and simple concepts, but also in the critical evaluation of rudimentary definitions and above

all in regard to a methodically fundamental distinction between postulata and principles; and, finally, (3) in place of a schema there is a register and table, which make visually imaginable the possibility of the combination of the first and simple concepts to make a system of metaphysical "fundamental doctrines." Yet, throughout the whole "Architectonic" there is a fundamentally different methodical sequence. Thus, against the methodically fundamental principle of the metaphysics of Wolff-Baumgarten, which demands above all the definition of those first principles held to be unclear, Lambert has given priority to the answer to the question, "where the (first and simple) principles are from, how one reaches them and of what use they finally are." However, in this formulation one can at first see a direct parallel to Kant's inquiry after the origin and the function of elementary concepts, but not in the manner of the reply. Lambert also demands method in the answer to the question, but this method is fundamentally different from Kant's transcendental method which proceeds from the meagerness of the proof of the universal validity and necessity of the elementary concepts. What then does Lambert's method consist of in regard to the definition of the origin and usefulness of the fundamental concepts? It consists, in a word, in a diversity of methods, for which the Aristotelian dictum holds that basically every object in its own singularity requires its own singular and adequate method. Thus, Lambert requires, in accordance with his "provisional attempts, to at last find out, which of these methods would do," a provisional, exemplary idea of the methods themselves. The following procedures for the discovery of the origin of the fundamental concepts are named: (a) an abstraction from the manifoldness of examples, special cases, idioms, etc.; (b) a separation from the combination with other concepts, whether these are simple or complex, empirical or otherwise; (c)an examination of semantic fields and their histories in order to thus achieve grounds for the gaining of conceptually crucial parts; (d) the examination of the general imagery of language in regard to the distinction between the real meanings and their transposition, especially in the transference of the language of the physical world to the world of the intellect; and finally (e) the examination of the intentions and aims connected to the respective theory of concepts. The latter standpoint concerns not only the manner of the clarification of origin, but also the usefulness of the concepts. As there, so here also, the different kinds of usefulness and the corresponding procedures for their definition are to be distinguished. Such kinds are: 10 The indication of the special sciences and their parts, as to where the said propositions are applicable; 20 a quantity of examples taken from the special sciences, by which the announced announcements is elucidated; 30 the practical, insofar as the matters dealt with other tasks, which are concerned with dealing with something; 40 the practical, insofar as tasks emerge, which are concerned with finding, explaining or defining something, etc. It is precisely the last mentioned manner of usefulness, which we can elucidate by means of the key word heuristics, which plays an outstanding role in Lambert and "makes up a considerable part of the applied doctrine of reason." (XXVIII) If one compares the doctrines of reason of Lambert and Kant as theories of the origin and use of pure elementary concepts in regard to the manifoldness of the sense of origin and usefulness, then the first of the two seems necessarily the one which takes the manifoldness of the standpoints more adequately into account and through its intentional distinction; it also takes into account the methodical standpoint of a critical preparation of metaphysics as a science. In contrast to this, the distinction of Kant's theory lies in the combination of a specific theory of origin of the elementary concepts with a special theory of their use in a unifying theory, which, as a transcendental philosophy, should form the scientific foundation for a system of metaphysics. Lambert makes as a basic methodical demand that there is required, above all in the treatment of abstract concepts, "the distinction between the different kinds of origin, causes, intentions, natures, etc." As a result the "architectonic" remains in regard to the origin and usefulness of its basic concepts directly and intentionally

connected to experience. Further, in contrast to transcendental philosophy, which, as an unempirical science, wishes first of all to prove the reference of experience in the pure knowledge of reason, experience remains possible. System as the Unity of Inner Qualities. The comparison of both "architectonics" in regard to the area of possible experience leads, however, to a key problem which Lambert entitled that of a theory of qualities. If one "understands" by that "the true inner qualities," then according to Lambert these "are still far too unknown to be able to think of a real theory (of them)." In the most cases, in which the word is used, one thereby shows a mixture of qualities, relationships and combinations, but not true, individual qualities. This theory is further directed critically against the metaphysics of Wolff-Baumgarten. First of all it is against its general part, the ontology, insofar as this pursues a basic division of its object area into a theory of inner and outer predicates of the object as such (ens quatenus ens). It also touches the central area of metaphysics, the simple substances, on the theory of which is based the possibility of rational cosmology, psychology and theology. This problem of the true, inner qualities, and with it that of the simple substances has now, however, found expression in Kant's philosophy, especially in its definition of the relationship of transcendental philosophy and metaphysics. One aspect of this expression is the basic distinction between nature in its formal and material meaning: If the word `nature' is taken only in its formal meaning, as it signifies the first inner principle of all that belongs to the existence of an object, then there can be as many natural sciences as there are specifically different objects, of which each must contain its own singular inner principle of a definition pertaining to its existence. Otherwise, nature is also taken in its material meaning, not as a composition, but as the concept of all objects, insofar as they can be objects of our senses and `consequently' of our experience, by which therefore the whole of all appearances, that is, the world of the senses with the exclusion of all non-sensual objects is understood. Certainly, what Lambert noticed in respect to the possible progress of metaphysics holds true for all sciences: "that a science, of which one can claim to elucidate within a certain period of time or to straighten out at the Leipzig fair, having first made a settlement with a publisher, is no science." Kant also tried to sustain the idea of progress in metaphysics by referring to its school concept in relation to the truth. But at the same time he was in earnest concerning the idea of the inner growth of the idea, which already contains in its schema the whole according to its possible division. The position regarding the problem of the inner qualities and the simple substances forms a kind of preliminary decision about the concept of progress in metaphysics. Lambert has linked the progress to the progress in its individual, theoretical parts, as for example in the general theory of form of the theory of qualities. The latter, for its part, depends upon the continuation of empirical research. Kant, on the other hand, tried to make the continuation of metaphysics--at least on the level of thought--independent of the continuation of the empirical sciences. This aim was served particularly by the above-mentioned distinction between nature in its formal and material meaning. Transcendental philosophy forms the basis for metaphysics by its critical limitation to the object area of nature in its material sense. Accordingly, a scientific metaphysics constitutes itself as the system of phenomenology of the pure knowledge of reason. This scientific metaphysics is based accordingly on the bracketing of the concept of inner, true predicates and simple substances, to which those relate. The analogon of a schema in the form of the systematic unity of the principles of homogeneity of specification and affinity holds, for its part, only under the condition of this critical limitation. In Lambert's theory, too, we find a principle, which we can regard as corresponding to this analogon of schema. One can call this principle that of the optimum, that is, of the best possible number of data, that is, of conditions. Lambert interprets this optimum as the minimum of principles or of simple, primary

concepts: "Every science, (and, with that, metaphysics, also, inasfar as it wishes to be a science) should lead to one's being able to find, in any given case where it is applicable, from the smallest number of given parts, the remaining parts which are determined by or related to it." (par. 15) Accordingly, the "Table of the Fundamental Doctrine" contains a minimal register of basic concepts, but it illustrates beyond that a minimum of possible combinations amongst these elementary concepts (whereby not every combination and permutation is possible). In contrast to Lambert's "Minimal principle" Kant's analogon of schema combines an absolute minimum in the form of one single, general, and highest principle with a maximum of division of the whole for an optimum of systematic unity. According to Kant, this optimum makes possible a principle, which we can regard as a variant of the principle of coherency, the principle of the continuity of forms, which, on the basis of the principle of affinity, continually facilitates the transition from the genus to the species. In a negative characterization it is said: And since there is thus no void in the whole sphere of all possible concepts, and since nothing can be met with outside this sphere, there arises from the presupposition of this universal horizon and of its complete division, the principle: non datur vacuum formarum, that is, that there are not different, original, first genera, which are isolated from one another, separated, as it were, by an empty intervening space, but that all the manifold genera are simply divisions of one single highest and universal genus. From this principle there follows, as its immediate consequence: datur continuum formarum, that is, that all differences of species border upon one another, admitting of no transition from one to another per saltum, but only through all the smaller degrees of difference that mediate between them." (A659) But, as has been said, the above-mentioned limitation to nature in a material sense holds good, not only for the knowledge of the understanding, but especially for its hypostatization in the pure knowledge of reason. Therefore, there are no inner and true qualities of objects to be found in the system of reason and relatable to simple substances. One cannot simply say that the principle of coherence is damaged in Lambert's table. Coherence is, rather, defined definitely, not as the law of continuity of forms, but as the regulatively determined combination of the primary, simple concepts, which is defined more closely in general principles. This table leaves room at the same time for concepts of substance, of force, and for the Leibnizian calculus of qualities. Both theories, Lambert's and Kant's, have one thing in common in the dissimilarity of their effort on behalf of metaphysics. Their respective metatheory, serving the purpose of such a foundation as science, conceals, each in a different way, a basic question of metaphysics, namely the extent to which its concept is bound to a theory of simple substances and to the inner, true qualities of things. Universitat Heidelberg Heidelberg, Germany CHAPTER III TRUTH, JUSTIFICATION AND METHOD IN METAPHYSICS AND THEOLOGY RICHARD M. MARTIN So far as their constructive progress and development are concerned, metaphysics and theology are becoming increasingly difficult fields of study in these closing decades of the twentieth century. The simplistic views and formulations that satisfied philosophers in previous centuries have been tried and found wanting, even though they may be based on insights of permanent value. In their growth to maturity, these subjects are now becoming "hard" ones, akin to the "hard sciences," leaving their "soft" progenitors in the wake of history. More austere methods of thought and of writing than heretofore are now required. Prominent among these are those based on modern logico-semantics, which, as Whitehead observed prophetically many years back, will proceed to lay the foundation for aesthetics and to "conquer" ethics and theology.

Let us begin with a brief survey of some recent work aimed at harmonizing metaphysics and the sciences, and then go on to some general comments concerning certain current and widespread misunderstandings as to the use of logical methods. These latter will focus primarily on the semantic notion of truth and the problem of justification, which problem, it will be contended, is essentially the same for metaphysics as for the sciences. In his Forgotten Truth, Huston Smith makes much of the numerical character of mathematics, neglecting perhaps the fact that, in its type-theoretic or settheoretic format, quantity plays a relatively small role in mathematics.1 Further, he thinks that "numbers and their logical operators are the only symbols, or rather signs, that are completely unambiguous: 4 is 4 and that is the end of the matter." But much depends here upon the set theoretic structure provided, each different set theory giving rise to a different characterization of `4', indeed even to different "meanings." And if the underlying logic is taken as a manyvalued logic, say, there turn out to be many alternative numbers 4 to consider. Thus the situation in mathematics itself is not quite so clear-cut as Smith would have us believe. Now "the alternative to numbers is words," Smith contends. Where numbers are signs, words are symbols, and therefore by their very nature equivocal: their ambiguity can be reduced but never eliminated." Such a contention needs a considerable defense, especially in view of recent work on the logical form of natural-language sentences and the problem of "disambiguation."2 In fact, it is very doubtful that the language or languages of mathematics, and the "exact" sciences in general, differ very much from natural languages in the use of "signs" rather than "symbols" or in the matter of containing or not containing ambiguous sentences. In each case the ambiguous sentence presents itself for disambiguation--unless of course it is the very richness of ambiguity itself that is aimed at. The difference between numerals and words is less sharp than Smith would have us believe. Nor is it true that "logicians flee . . . [the] meanderings [of words] in favor of fixed and adamantine glyphs. The despair of logicians is the humanist's glory." In the logical analysis of language the meanderings are squarely faced and codified, and the humanist's glory is thus quickly becoming a subject for the logician's purview. The situation is similar to that concerning the language of mathematics a few generations back. One of the key differences between what Smith calls `the primordial perspective' and the contemporary one is, according to him, just that the scientist counts and measures and the humanist, more particularly, the metaphysician and theologian, does not. At several points in some recent papers, however, it has been suggested that the use of numbers in theology is not ill-advised.3 In fact, their use leads to a deeper, more subtle, and more sensitive characterization than has been available heretofore of certain topics concerned with the divine will. Of course, at this stage these are mere suggestions, but surely ones with a good deal of further heed. Whitehead contended, in a famous adaptation from Walter Pater, that "all science as it grows towards perfection becomes mathematical in its ideal." This is of course very questionable. Let us construe science in a broad sense, as with Whitehead, to embrace all domains of systematic knowledge or Wissenschaften. A safer historical description would then be to the effect that all Wissenschaften as they grow towards perfection become logistical in their ideal, and thus lend themselves to the application of a semantical predicate for truth. In particular, then, even the more or less traditional theism, which Smith refers to as the philosophia perennis, is of course included here. Elsewhere the attempt has been made to show in detail how some strands of the perennial tradition--the philosophia perennis is not just one view, but several woven a bit loosely together--may be formulated in a sufficiently precise a logistical way to allow a clear-cut notion of truth for the language-system involved.4 In discussing the forgotten truth of traditional theism, we should be sure not to forget the truthpredicate of modern semantics. "The multivalence of language enables it to mesh with the multidimensionality of

the human spirit," Smith continues, "depicting its higher reaches as numbers never can. Equations can be elegant, but that is a separate matter. Poems cannot be composed in numbers." These are not the words of a poet such as Vale+ ry or Berryman, both of whom spoke frequently of the exactitude in the use of words in writing poetry--as exact as that of the mathematician in his use of numbers, Berryman once remarked in one of his more sober moments. The multidimensionality of the human spirit need not be neglected if our discourse concerning it is to be suitably formulated or articulated in modern terms. According to Smith, science, in the narrow sense as practiced by professionals, is limited in its exclusion of discourse concerning values, purposes, life meanings, and quality. We cannot be sure in advance, however, that sciences allowing such discourse will not develop in the course of time. But even so, theological discourse accommodating such topics can be formulated in a relatively precise, even wissenschaftlichen, way to some extent as regards values, purposes, and life meanings, as has been shown in the papers referred to. As regards duality, surely the material of Nelson Goodman's, The Structure of Appearance,5 to which Smith makes no reference, is an important attempt to subject discourse about quality to cogent logical form. In all of these examples, a theory is formulated with sufficient precision to allow the application of a semantical truth-predicate. A similar point has been made by I.M. Bochenski in his The Logic of Religion (pp. 62-63).6 "But man is constituted in such a way that he always tends to axiomatize his discourse; and the religious man is no exception in this respect. There will be, consequently, a more or less pronounced tendency in believers to order . . . [their religious discourse] by axiomatizing it. Such an axiomatization is the field of what is called `theology' (or `Buddhology') in the strict meaning of the term . . . ." Under `axiomatization' here one can include partial formalizations also, about which more will be said below; in any case the applicability of suitable truthpredicates to the sentences of any such theory is assured. Once these and other such caveats to Smith's book have been registered, there is much that is admirable in his discussion of the parallels and divergencies between science and philosophia perennis as he conceives it. In calling attention to the parallels, he emphasizes general descriptive similarities rather than specifically methodological ones. For each (pp. 98 ff.), "things are not what they seem" at first blush unaided. In each "the other-than-the-seeming is a more; indeed a stupendous more." In each, "in their further reaches the . . . mores cannot be known in ordinary ways" but rather "admit of being known in ways that are exceptional." Further, "the distinctive ways of knowing which the exceptional regions of reality require must be cultivated," and such "profound knowing requires instruments." In science the instruments include both theoretical constructs and telescope, spectroscope, and the like, whereas in the philosophia perennis they are the "revealed texts, or scriptures or "ordering myths" of that tradition accepted as definitive. Smith's discussion of these parallels is illuminating and surely on the right track. As we go further along the track, however, sameness of ontology might be discovered, some one basic soul or mindstuff of which matter, mind, soul and spirit are all specific manifestations. But this is for the future perhaps, and Smith finds enough that is striking in restricting discussion to the results of contemporary science. On the methodological parallels between science and religious discourse, Bochenski is more enlightening. He notes (in The Logic of Religion, pp. 61-62) that "from the logical point of view, the situation in RD [religious discourse] is very similar to that which we find in the discourse of natural sciences. The P -sentences [the sentences of objective faith directly accepted by the believer] play in RD a role closely similar to that of experimental sentences in those sciences. The only question which may arise in both cases is whether the given sentence really does belong to the class under consideration, that is, whether it really is a P-sentence, or a duly established protocol sentence. . . ." Once this is determined, the parallel is evident. Bochenski gives (on pp. 64-65) a

"comparative table" as between methods in physics and theology. The physicist "starts (theoretically) with experimental sentences" just as the theologian "starts (theoretically) with P-sentences." The physicist then "explains the experimental sentences by other sentences from which the former may be deduced." The theologian similarly "explains the P-sentences by theological conclusions which are such that from them P-sentences may be deduced." The physicist "deduces from the explanatory sentences new ones which may be verified by experiment" just as the theologian "deduces from the theological conclusions new sentences, which may be verified by seeing if they do belong to P." Both the physicist and the theologian "explain the first-grade explanatory sentences by further explanatory sentences in the same way" and verify such sentences by examining their consistency with other sentences in the system." And finally, just as the physicist "introduces new `theoretical' terms not found in protocol sentences" the theologian "introduces new `theological' terms not to be found in P-sentences." The various items of this table are not intended to provide an exhaustive, or even wholly accurate, description of procedure in either science or theology. Such a description, it seems, has never been given for either, owing no doubt to the sheer difficulties involved. Nonetheless, the table is valuable in calling our attention to methodological parallels usually overlooked, and helps to supplement Smith's list of similarities. In the chapter, "Justification of Religious Discourse," in The Logic of Religion, Bochenski considers several theories concerning "the activity by which the acceptance of a (meaningful) sentence [of RD] is justified." These comprise in particular the "blind-leap" theory, the "rationalistic" theory, the "insight" theory, the "trust" theory, the "deductivist" theory, the "authority" theory, and the "theory of the religious hypothesis." It is clearly the last that he favors, but curiously gives it no more space than the others, which for the most part he dismisses as inadequate. Let us glance at Bochenski's theory of the religious hypothesis and then reflect how, one by one, the other theories may be viewed as contributing to it. The comments here, mutatis mutandis, concern scientific and metaphysical hypotheses equally well, as Bochenski himself observes. The gist of the theory of the religious hypothesis is that "the believer constructs before the act of faith, as an explanatory sentence, the very BD [basic dogma] of the religion concerned. This sentence--called here `[the] religious hypothesis'--serves to explain his experience." Formally, Bochenski goes on to note, "the procedure by which the religious hypothesis is established is closely similar to that used in reductive [abductive] sciences. The starting point is experimentally established sentences. The hypothesis is such that they may be deduced from it; it permits predictions and can be verified by new experimental sentences." It should be observed, however, as Bochenski notes, that the experimental sentences of a given science form a much narrower class than those relevant to the religious hypothesis, the latter including all manner of sentences concerning the personal life of the believer, sentences concerned with moral, social, and aesthetic values, and so on. All such sentences must be formulated in a sufficiently precise way, for the relevant semantical truth-predicate to apply. The very breadth of the sentences relevant to a religious hypothesis explains the difficulty of the believer's persuading someone else of its truth or acceptability; the other person's experiences may be very different. "No two persons have the same total experience and, consequently, a hypothesis which seems to be quite plausible to one of them does not need to appear to be plausible to the other . . . ." Also the difficulty in overthrowing someone's religious hypothesis by falsification is due to its very great generality. As Bochenski notes, "one must be very little instructed in the procedures of science to think that a dozen facts inconsistent with a great physical theory will lead automatically to its rejection. But the religious hypothesis seems to be far more general--that is, it covers far more sentences--than even the most general scientific theory. There- fore, it is much more difficult to overthrow it." The generality is not, however, that of containing "more sentences," for in both an

infinity of sentences must be allowed. It is rather that the religious hypothesis is more general in its relevancy to more kinds of sentences than in a science, or even in all the sciences put together. Bochenski goes on to reflect upon explanation and prediction on the basis of a religious hypothesis, but no crucial differences emerge as between these and explanation and prediction in the sciences. Of course the vocabulary of the religious hypothesis is broader, and a great deal of work needs to be done to characterize that vocabulary in a logically acceptable way. Some useful steps in this direction have perhaps been taken in some of the papers already referred to. There is enough germ of truth in the other theories of justification Bochenski discusses to suggest that some aspects of them may be incorporated in the theory of the religious hypothesis. In the blind-leap theory the believer makes a "leap" from "nothingness to full faith without any logical or experimental foundation." Well, not without any, but perhaps with very little. This need not matter once the religious hypothesis is firmly accepted. Some features of a "rationalist" theory are incorporated in the theory of the religious hypothesis, in particular, use of the methods of logical deduction-reduction or discovery also, if and when reliable rules of reduction or discovery such are formulated. Once a religious hypothesis is held, there is "trust" in it and in the objects it deals with. And of course "deductions" are made in particular from the general hypothesis to further experimental sentences. Also the role of authority may be helpful to some in calling attention to relevant experimental sentences, to the very nature and formulation of a religious hypothesis, and to its deductive consequences. In some such ways as these, then, there may be seen to be some little grain of truth in all of the other theories. Bochenski states most of them, it might be thought, in so severe a form as to make them unacceptable. There is also much in George Schlesinger's recent discussion of theism and scientific method that is admirable.7 He claims (p. 201) "that the traditional theist need not recoil from examining his basic propositions by a method of inquiry which adopts the standards employed in science. On a correct understanding of the essence of scientific method, Theism does not stand to lose from such an inquiry; in fact it gains, emerging from it with enhanced credibility." The author does not deny that (p. 2) the classical theistic hypothesis greatly differs from the kind of hypotheses advanced within science. . . . Yet the question whether all the laws of nature and the initial conditions are what they are without there being anything behind them, or that they are what they are because of the will of a minded, very intelligent, and powerful being seems intelligible in a very straightforward manner, no less than many questions asked by scientists and more so than some questions asked by metaphysicians. We are thus invited to view God as somehow incorporating the "laws of nature" and the "initial conditions." Finally, the implicit aim of the author is "to exhibit the richness of the philosophy of religion" and "to show that it impinges upon nearly every important topic in philosophy in general," especially upon some crucial ones in the philosophy of science concerning confirmation and confirmability. To give an even moderately accurate description of scientific method is no easy task, as already remarked, and it is far from clear that Schlesinger has done this. His description revolves around two "elementary principles," Principle A and Principle E. The latter is (p. 157) that "when a given piece of evidence E is more probable on H than on H' then E confirms H more than H'." Principle A is (p. 161) that "when H and H' are similarly related to all the available evidence, we regard H as more confirmed than H', if and only, H is more adequate than H'." Much is made of these two "principles," which the author contends "are inevitably to be employed [by scientists] when searching for any hypothesis." It is claimed that they are "justified" and that they characterize the very heart of scientific method. The principles cry out, however, for a clear-cut foundation in which such key terms as `more probable than', `confirms', `more confirmed than', and `more

adequate than' are fully explicated. In view of the immense difficulties encountered by all attempts at the explication of these notions as applicable to scientific language-systems of even comparatively simple a structure, it is unlikely that we should accept Schlesinger's principles at the face value he asks. Also they must be intimately related to the detailed characterization of observation, experiment, the making of hypotheses, testing, verification, and so on and on. Even if we remain within the domain of scientific languages, we are overwhelmed with the amount of work needed to "justify" these principles. But this is as nothing compared to what is needed if our language is augmented to enable us to state the thesis of theism. Schlesinger never states it, incidentally, nor does he explore the nature of the terms needed for such statement. He assumes apparently that this is all easy sailing. But it is not, as should surely be evident from the papers referred to. Not only the key notion of God, but such "analogical" words as `omnibenevolent' and `omnipotent', need exact definition. One could perhaps reply: the tradition tells us perfectly well what these terms mean. But this of course is not the case, if the thesis of theism is to be stated in sufficiently precise a way that the exact techniques of logic, semantics, and confirmation theory may be applied to it. Schlesinger frequently uses the terms `logically compatible', `logically possible', and the like, in ways that also need further clarification as to just what kind of a "logic" is being presupposed: a first-order logic? a higher-order one? one containing suitable meaning postulates? and so on. Schlesinger claims "that by employing the most elementary principles underlying scientific method we may construct certain aspects of the world as constituting empirical evidence confirming Theism." He never states how much evidence, however, nor is it clear from his account that the evidence for theism is actually greater than for some alternative. Also the use of the truth-predicate is essential in any clear delineation of a theory of confirmation, so that here too we should not attempt to justify "forgotten truth" without at least a passing glance at `true' in the semantical sense. In his recent Atheism and Theism8, Errol Harris also discusses the problem of "The Rational Basis of Theism" in a pivotal chapter with that very title. Although the metaphysical ambient of his discussion is very different from that of Smith, Bochenski and Schlesinger, there is a similar underlying aim. Harris, however, thinks that "formal logic"--and therewith presumably confirmation theory also--is not appropriate for attempting to delineate the rational basis for theism, it being (p. 67) "appropriate to only a certain level of thinking." Another kind of logic is needed "which is universal in its scope" (p. 68) and which "displays itself in specifically different phases of thinking, of which formal logic (in any of its forms) is only one." This universal or "dialectical" logic, Harris thinks, is sui generis and cannot be formulated as an applied formal logic in the usual sense, that is, with suitable non-logical constants as primitives and with appropriate meaning postulates concerning them. However, Harris has nowhere, either here or in his other writings, even so much as hinted at a single rule or principle of such a logic formulated with the necessary rigor in modern terms. It is therefore not clear how he can be so sure about its nature, and how it differs from modern formal logic, prior to any suitable formulation. Such surety in advance inevitably leads to blocking the road to inquiry, one of the worst of all methodological sins according to Peirce. Whatever "dialectical" logic is, there is no reason to suppose that it cannot be formulated, along with other metaphysical views, on the basis of formal logic in the modern extended sense. Harris, like Findlay, seems to conceive of formal logic in terms of its state of development prior to 1910 or thereabouts, and both seem to refuse to allow the subject to grow.9 If only they would take account of recent developments, they would see how inappropriate their strictures of it really are. Of course, formal logic must now be taken in the wide sense in which it has been taken here. That the techniques of modern logic are an inestimable help to metaphysicians is a

commonplace among those who use them. Indeed, so great is this help that they wonder how it was ever possible to do without them. Although the use of such techniques is becoming more and more widespread, there are many who resist them and, as already suggested, like Peter Damian see in logic the machinations of the devil himself. Much of this resistance, it seems, rests upon misunderstanding of one kind or another. It is safe to say that no one who takes the trouble to master the intricacies of modern logic continues his resistance for very long. But many things stand in the way of being motivated to attain this mastery. Let us reflect for a moment upon the most important of these, with the aim of removing some of the misunderstandings surrounding philosophic logic, its nature and scope, and the use of logical methods in metaphysics generally. Most of these points have been made elsewhere, but no harm will come from reminding ourselves of them here.10 In the first place, we should not think of logic in just the sense of Principia Mathematica, say, or of axiomatic set theory. Such "logics," if such they be, are in some respects too restricted, and in others too inclusive. They are too inclusive in embracing vast portions of mathematics in their scope, and too exclusive in not embracing logical semiotics (syntax, semantics, and pragmatics), as well as the calculus of individuals, a theory of intensionality, and an event logic. These latter are the very stuff of which metaphysics is made, the areas of theory most helpful to the philosopher, and curiously, the very ones to which least attention has been paid in recent years. Nor should we think of logic as being the exclusive possession of logical positivism, as is so often done even now, these many years after the virtual demise of that view. The subject-matter neutrality of logic has often been pointed out. It is true, of course, that the positivists were pioneers in using logic for philosophic purposes, and this perhaps is their most lasting contribution--the really positive part of positivism, as it were. But it is also widely recognized that other kinds of philosophers may reap its benefits also, as has been emphasized by thinkers so diverse as Gilbert Ryle, Heinrich Scholz, K. Go¦ del, Charles Hartshorne, and Frederic Fitch.11 Closely related with Ryle's point is one made by the English mathematician A.B. Kempe as long ago as 1886. Whatever may be the true nature of things and of the conceptions which we have of them in the operations of reasoning they are dealt with as a number of separate entities or units. These units come under consideration in a variety of garbs--as material objects, intervals or periods of time, processes of thought, points, lines, statements, relationships, arrangements, algebraical expressions, operators, operations, etc., etc. . . .12 In all discourse, philosophical or otherwise, the entities dealt with are thus to be handled as separate units. Some of them are given proper names, and usually they are taken as values for variables--or if not, they are handled as constructs in terms of entities that are. That this is the case seems to be a necessity of discourse if the "operations of reasoning" are to take place, and without such operations there can be no philosophy--in the Western sense--worthy of the name. Josiah Royce also made essentially the same point in 1914 when he noted that without objects conceived as unique individuals, we can have no Classes. Without Classes we can . . . define no Relations, without relations we can have no Order. But to be reasonable is to conceive of ordersystems, real or ideal. Therefore we have an absolute logical need to conceive of individual objects as the elements of our ideal order systems. This postulate is the condition of defining clearly any theoretical conception whatever . . . . To conceive of individual objects is a necessary presupposition of all orderly [thought and] activity.13 Again, some of these objects are given proper names, and some surely are taken as values for variables. These objects are variously grouped into classes; or, as we say equivalently, certain properties are ascribed to them, and certain relations hold between or among them, these classes and relations usually being regarded as designated by suitable predicates. It is often very difficult to be able to decide what predicates are to be taken as

primitives and which are to be defined via suitable nominal definitions. There is often considerable latitude here and to some extent the choice may be arbitrary. Every predicate occurring in the system must be either primitive or defined--there is no other possibility. Once the primitives are chosen, as a result usually of a good deal of trial and error, the remaining predicates are defined. Although defined predicates sensu stricto may always be eliminated, the definitions of them "are at once seen to be the most important part of the subject," as Whitehead noted in 1906. "The act [of giving a definition] . . . is in fact the act of choosing the various complex ideas which are to be the special object of study. The whole subject depends upon such a choice."14 Here again there are often alternatives, with difficulty in selecting the most suitable. Once primitives are decided upon, suitable axioms or meaning postulates are needed to characterize them. But before it is profitable to axiomatize, a great deal of analysis and experimentation must take place, presystematically as it were. It is often advisable to try to determine what principles or laws are to obtain, irrespective of which are ultimately suitable as axioms. The problem of axiomatization is often a merely technical or mechanical one once a suitable parade of principles is laid out. Thus we should not disparage what are often spoken of as partially formalized systems, systems in which the full primitive vocabulary is fixed, as well as the formulae and some at least of the crucial principles, but without specification of axioms. We can often make enormous headway with only partially formalized systems. In fact, it is likely that such systems are of greater interest for metaphysics than fully formalized ones. Metaphysics --in its preliminary stages anyhow--seems to have more to do with the basic vocabulary chosen, the kinds of terms and formulae admitted, and general principles characterizing that vocabulary, than with any specific choice of axioms.15 Even in partial formalizations a very considerable technicality usually results. Of course, in these days technicality is unavoidable, whether we use partial formalizations or not. Peirce noted years back that the philosophy of the future would have to employ a "fiercely technical vocabulary." Indeed, it is difficult to see how this can be avoided in an age of highly sophisticated methodologies such as our own. This is a circumstance we must accept and welcome, for fierce technicality is with us whether we like it or not. Gone is the day when philosophy can be done in just common-sense terms with horse-and-buggy procedures, as already suggested above. It is interesting to note that the latest word, even from Oxford, is to this effect. Those who insist upon keeping metaphysics close to ordinary language must now face the fact that the analysis of ordinary language itself is slowly giving way to the exact study of logical form. The problem of "representing" or mirroring ordinary sentences or texts in exact logical or semantical structures is one of the most important problems in contemporary structural and transformational linguistics. Although still in its infancy, the study of logical form promises to revamp to its very roots the metaphysical study of language. Enormous progress has been made in this kind of work in recent years, which cannot be overlooked by the metaphysician who wishes to keep abreast of contemporary developments. Sometimes it is contended that the use of logical methods in philosophy depends more heavily on language, and how we say it, than on what is said and on what is being talked about. Language takes over and true philosophy is given short shrift. This contention of course misses the point that semantics is now a part of logic, and that semantics is the study of how words relate to objects and how sentences relate to what is meant. Thus there need be no neglect of the objects talked about or of what is intended to be said about them. Sometimes it is contended that the use of logical methods in philosophy provides a kind of "straight-jacket" or rigid form which does violence to the subtlety of what is intended -- the fit is never quite right. Logic distorts, so we had better abandon it altogether. The answer to this kind of objection is a question tu quoque. Is the fit ever quite right if natural language is used? A similar point

used frequently to be made by Philip Frank about physics. No physical theory ever quite encompasses or explains all the phenomena we would like it to. There are always a few recalcitrant circumstances that refuse to fit. Clearly there should be here a two-way adjustment. We must seek ever-more comprehensive theories, which, however, are not to be abandoned, ceteris paribus, to fit a few recalcitrant circumstances. Physics is a vast, integrated edifice not easily to be upset. A similar point has been made by H.L.A. Hart (in conversation) about the use of logical systems in the law. If the system is too narrow, let us go on to make every effort to formulate more comprehensive and adequate ones for the purposes at hand. Another objection frequently brought against the use of logical methods in philosophy rests on the contention that such methods are appropriate only for the sciences and perhaps for the philosophy of science, but not for the more "humane" parts of philosophy such as aesthetics, ethics, theology, and metaphysics. Such a contention is to make a fundamental duality where there is none, as already noted. Of course there are important differences among these subjects, just as there are important differences among the sciences. Some methods are useful in some and others in others. But logic is common to all of these, being not only subjectmatter neutral but closely interwoven with the very texture of language. It is interesting to recall, looking almost two millenia back, the contention of Plotinus that dialectic is "the precious part of philosophy: in its study of the laws of the universe, philosophy draws on dialectic much as other studies and crafts use arithmetic, though, of course, [italics added] the alliance between philosophy and dialectic is closer" (Enneads, I.3.5-6). Now semiotics here is in essentials merely dialectic in modern garb. As a matter of fact, semiotics is of much greater interest for, and help to, philosophy than is mathematics. The alliance is closer. Mathematics and logic have always been strange bedfellows anyhow, and never stranger than in the recent proliferation of metamathematical and model-theoretic techniques for philosophical purposes. There is an increasing use of logical methods in analyzing and reconstructing the great historical metaphysical views. Sometimes this is holistic, sometimes piecemeal. Such work can be very illuminating in updating views or arguments that might otherwise languish as mere historical curiosities. The aim of such work is in part historical, to help see precisely what is being said. But it may also be reconstructive and may part in very substantial ways from the historical text. Again, such work may be useful in helping to preserve what is of permanent importance. Inevitably this kind of work will increase in the years to come. The great historical views die hard, and rather are semper reformanda in the light of new knowledge. Of course, logic-cum-semiotics is itself also under continual development. We must not suppose it fixed once and for all for a new dogmatic slumber. New methods and formulations should be welcomed in an open-armed, inquiring spirit. But at the same time, progress in logical matters is slow and difficult and not every nouveaute+ can pass the critical scrutiny demanded of it. As a matter of fact, there are fewer alternatives than is commonly supposed, once analyzed to their logical bedrock with maximum logical candor. There is also the "it can't be done" attitude. Logical methods may be suitable for some purposes but not for others. Sometimes the "it can't be done" is insisted upon dogmatically. The Dutch intuitionist Brouwer for years apparently insisted that his mathematical views could not be formalized. Over the years, however, the work of Heyting and others, with ever. improved formulations, convinced him that they could be. Of course nothing succeeds like success, and the best way to convince those who think that it can't be done is to go ahead and do it. Often of course a few easy phrases will not suffice for this, but only years of hard work. Progress in metaphysics is par excellence "progress in clarification." Progress in the sciences, or in society, is something else again, to say nothing of progress in the arts if there is any. In metaphysics, however, the great historical views

must be continually kept alive by viewing them in the light of what we now know. This is almost always a matter of more adequate formulation of precisely what the view is, of probing more deeply into its foundations, of showing it adequate in this or that respect in which it was previously thought wanting, in showing how it may be brought into accord with modern science, and so on. The conscious use of logic is almost a sine qua non for such progress. Some metaphysicians are impatient of logical methods, claiming that they accomplish too little for the effort required. This is rarely the case, however. The situation is rather the other way around, that is, new problems and difficulties emerge under closer logical inspection, problems that would not have been seen otherwise. In this way logic is often a means of genuine discovery. Nelson Goodman has pointed out that I cannot hold the logical philosopher up . . . as a man who has found a magic key to all the riddles of the universe; rather, he seems to have found a way to cause himself of good deal of trouble. It is true, as the unlogical philosopher and the unphilosophical logician often point out, that the way of the logical philosopher is much like that of any transgressor.16 He transgresses the bounds of conventional philosophy with deeper, more thorough, and more searching formulations, and he insists that "unphilosophic logic" itself be subject to the same philosophic scrutiny as are other systems, especially as regards ontic commitment and ontic involvement--this latter being the ontic commitment of the metalanguage.17 By "logic" throughout has been meant, of course, a semiotics based upon the standard first-order theory of quantification, as already remarked, without sets, classes, or relations as values for variables in any wise or form. Some logicians find this too severe a restriction, and wish to include also a higher-order logic, a set theory, and perhaps also a model theory, or semantics of "possible worlds" as well. There are many objections to including these, not least of which is the excessive ontic commitment and involvement. We do not wish "our logic . . . to be responsible for more of our ontology than is the extralogical part of our system," as Goodman has put it (ibid., p. 39). And some of us are not willing to countenance . . . abstract entities [such as classes, relations, and sets as values for variables] at all (if we can help it) either because we are nominalists or because, for the sake of economy, we want to commit ourselves to as little as possible. If either nominalism or plain parsimony leads us to insist upon a logic that is not committed to abstract entities, then we shall have to forego a large part of the usual modern logic--namely, most of the theory of classes and relations. This will make the going hard . . . . The difficulty of doing without a philosophically objectionable technique is not, however, any sufficient reason for retaining it. These admirable statements are beyond reproach and totally persuasive. Even so, we should go one step further: We do not wish our logic to be responsible for any ontology at all, irrespective of whether it be more or less than in the extralogical part of our system. Otherwise we should have to give up one facet of the requirement of subject matter neutrality. It is often complained that logical philosophy is excessively complicated, too many symbols are used, the formulae are too long, and so on. But of course, once the new problems are opened up, the unlogical philosopher must now do without symbols and formulae what the logical philosopher can do with them. The situation is thus just the other way around. The problems are there and can no longer be avoided, and nonsymbolic procedures are seen to be intolerably complex in handling them or perhaps not able to do so at all. And in any case, the problems are usually more difficult than the unlogical philosopher supposes, as Russell pointed out at the end of his "On Denoting." I will only beg the reader not to make up his mind against the view [put forward]--as he might be tempted to do on account of its apparently excessive complication--until he has tried to construct a theory of his own. . . . This attempt, I believe, will convince him that, whatever the true theory may be, it

cannot have such a simplicity as one might have expected beforehand.18 Finally, a word concerning "verification" and "validation." Both topics raise problems of enormous difficulty in the methodology of the sciences and hence a fortiori in that of metaphysics and theology. Only a few items need be mentioned here. No easy comments concerning these topics are forthcoming at the present stage of research--there is just too much that we are ignorant of in the methodology of the sciences. However, there is progress in the right direction, it is hoped, to which attention may be called. The analysis of both verification and validation must be given in terms of truth. To verify is to find that a given sentence is true, or at least to come to accept or take it as true. To validate is to verify a sentence of general form, whereas we verify only a singular sentence. Sophisticated methodology of the sciences makes use of the notion of degree of verification, the degree of the strength of one's acceptance of an hypothesis. As already suggested, there is every reason to think that such a notion will also prove useful in metaphysics and theology. Variant notions of probability loom large in contemporary methodology of science. For the most part, these are confined to contexts of a purely extensional kind. Methods are readily forthcoming, however, for handling probability statements in all manner of intensional contexts via the Fregean notion of the Art des Gegebenseins, the notion of an entity's being taken under a linguistic description.19 Thus, instead of speaking of the probability of a class, say, relative to a given reference class, we must speak instead of the probability of that class under a given Art des Gegebenseins relative to that reference class, likewise as taken under a suitable Art des Gegebenseins.20 The use of probability notions in intensional contexts can be accommodated in this way--subjective probability, confirmation or logical probability, as well as statistical probability. Finally, it would seem all but impossible to discuss verification and validation-and indeed justification also--very deeply without a theory of human acts or actions, which in turn would rest upon a prior theory of events. We need not take events as the only realities, as the process metaphysicians would have us do. But we must at least at some stage recognize events, actions, processes, and states happening or taking place or occurring. And we must recognize that the logical properties of such occurrences differ radically from those of non-eventival entities. In sum, then, there is no roya1 road to metaphysical knowledge. The problem of verification and validation in metaphysics presupposes that for the sciences, and if anything is more difficult. The domain of principles or axioms required is wider as well as the admitted types of verificatory experiences, as Bochenski has pointed out. Adequate discussion of these topics is thus very difficult and must await adequate solutions to the corresponding problems for the sciences. There is no special metaphysical insight here that enables us to skip over the formidable difficulties involved. The situation is rather the other way around. Metaphysical insight itself should help us to find adequate solutions to these problems as confined to just the sciences, which then can be used for the wider purposes at hand. These various comments are by no means intended to supply a thorough analysis of the role of logica1 methods in metaphysics and theology, but only as a few reminders of points that are often misunderstood or neglected. Readers familiar with those methods will have found them for the most part superfluous; those who are not are invited to join the sodality of those who are in order to get on with the metaphysical jobs ahead of us. Milton, Mass. NOTES 1. Huston Smith, Forgotten Truth, the Primordial Tradition (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), pp. 12-13. 2. Recall some of the material in the author's Semiotics and Linguistic Structure (Albany: The State University of New York Press, 1978).

3. See the author's "On God and Primordiality," The Review of Metaphysics, 29 (1976): 497-522 and "Some Thomistic Properties of Primordiality," The Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, 18 (1977): 567-582. 4. Cf. the author's Truth and Denotation (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1958). 5. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1951). 6. (New York: New York University Press, 1965). 7. George Schlesinger, Religion and Scientific Method (Philosophical Studies Series in Philosophy, Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Co., 1977). 8. Errol E. Harris, Atheism and Theism (Tulane Studies in Philosophy, Vol. XXVI: 1977). 9. Cf. John Findlay, "Ordinary, Revisionary, and Dialectical Strategies in Philosophy," Erkenntnis 11 (1977): 277-290. 10. Cf. Truth and Denotation, Chapter I, and the author's Logic, Language and Metaphysics (New York: New York University Press, 1971), Chapter I. 11. See especially Gilbert Ryle, Dilemmas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954), and Heinrich Scholz, Metaphysik als Strenge Wissenschaft (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, l965, but first published in l941). 12. A.B. Kempe, "A Memoir on the Theory of Mathematical Form," Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 177 (1886), 1-70. 13. See Royce's Logical Essays, ed. by D. Robinson (Dubuque, Iowa: Wm. C. Brown Co., 1951), p. 350. 14. A.N. Whitehead, The Axioms of Projective Geometry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1906), p. 2. 15. Cf. Truth and Denotation, pp. 17ff. 16. N. Goodman, Problems and Projects (Indianapolis and New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1972), p. 40. 17. See the author's Existence, Belief and Meaning (New York: New York University Press, 1969), Chapter lI. 18. Logic and Knowledge (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1956), p. 56. 19. See Translations from the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege, ed. by P. Geach and M. Black (Oxford: Blackwell's, 1952), pp. 11 and 57. 20. See the author's "On the Language of Causal Talk: Scriven and Suppes," Pragmatics, Truth, and Language (Dordrecht, Boston: Reiedl, 1979), pp. 192-205. CHAPTER IV SOME PRINCIPLES OF PROCEDURE IN METAPHYSICS CHARLES HARTSHORNE METAPHYSICS AS NONEMPIRICAL THEORY OF REALITY Popper's definition of `metaphysical' is the most useful one: statements are metaphysical or nonempirical if no conceivable observations would falsify them. Metaphysics is trying to clarify ideas so general that any experience must be compatible with them. This means, not that no experience is relevant to their truth but that any experience, actual or conceivable, is relevant. Hence empirical falsification--or, in the usual sense, verification--is ruled out. Objections to a metaphysical statement must be on conceptual rather than observational grounds. It is, however, a conceptual objection to argue that no experience illustrative of the meaning of the statement can be conceived. Without illustrations an idea cannot be clarified, and only experience, actual or conceivable, can provide the illustrations. The other basic objection is inconsistency. It is characteristic of metaphysicians, in their weaker moments, to try to escape charges of inconsistency by refusing or failing to provide unambiguous experiential meanings for their terms. Consider Spinoza comparing his "modes" in "Substance" to drops of water in an ocean, or to the three-sidedness of triangles. Neither example really does the job assigned to it. I am perfectly convinced. that Spinoza did not clearly know what he meant by "modifications" of Substance. It was a non-idea, not a false idea. The not unreasonable Aristotelian-Whiteheadian "ontological principle" that the

abstract is real only in the concrete implies that if we understand concreteness we also understand abstractness, and hence that a proper theory of concreteness will sum up metaphysical knowledge. So I define metaphysics as theory of concreteness. Also, since we can give meaning to `real' or `concrete' only by their illustrations in experience, and since an experience includes whatever is given in it so far as given, theory of concreteness coincides with theory of experience. This is what idealists of every type (but hardly materialists or dualists) have seen, however unclearly. The problem is to clarify the insight. The objection to metaphysics that there may be several metaphysical systems all equally clear and consistent in themselves but incompatible with one another (so that only empirical evidence could decide among them) rests on a myth. The sufficient reply is, Show us two such systems. Every metaphysics in history has had its aspects of unclarity or dubious consistency. Mutually incompatible but internally flawless systems are by that very feature shown to be unmetaphysical. They are not on the final level of generality, but in some fashion specializations. Take Leibniz's Principle of Sufficient Reason. Is it clear and selfconsistent? Either one simply assumes the full definiteness of the concrete and particular as there in the reason, so that the problem repeats itself, or one is claiming to get the more from the less, the logically stronger from the logically weaker, a plain fallacy. Either way sufficient reason for the particulars is lacking. It took Leibniz's genius to hide the absurdity with wondrous subtlety. Nonarbitrary contingency is noncontingent contingency. Similar remarks could be made about Spinoza's attempt to show the necessity of his "modes". Metaphysical failures are not factual mistakes, they are failures to make full sense. Every metaphysician sees this as true of his opponents. At the heart of Hegel's Logic there is a logical blunder, which is found centuries earlier in Chinese Buddhism. The blunder is in supposing that if A and B are similar, or different, then each requires the other to be itself. Of course A cannot resemble or differ from B without B. But it does not follow that A requires this relation to be itself. Eisenhower resembled and also differed from Washington, and this relation doubtless meant something to Eisenhower. But it meant nothing to Washington, and it is not evident that there was any such relation in Washington's world. If A exists but B does not, then A has and needs no relation to B, not even as a definite possibility. Hegel (and his Chinese predecessors) violated the logic of comparison relations. Russell, holding that no concrete entity requires any other, in an opposite way also violated that logic, as can be seen from the standpoint of another and greater logician, Charles Peirce. I refer to Peirce's concept of Secondness or dependence--which at least in some cases is nonmutual. The objection that metaphysics must be a priori yet synthetic involves ambiguity. Judgments are formally analytic or synthetic, but what is formally synthetic may become analytic when undefined meanings are reasonably defined. Metaphysical categories require each other: if there is necessity, there is contingency; if independence then also dependence. Universal symmetrical denials of dependence (Hume, Russell) or of independence (Spinoza, Blanshard) destroy their own meanings (Maxims 5b and 10 below). Metaphysical questions are conceptual, and conceptual analysis must answer them. Linguistic analysts are right in this. But they tend to be monolithic empiricists in the nonPopperian fashion; or to analyze chiefly trivial matters, or extreme cases of bad metaphysics (arrived at by violating one or more of the 14 maxims we are about to consider.) Also conceptual and linguistic are not in all respects synonyms. SOME MAXIMS OF METHOD I find the following maxims of metaphysical method useful. 1. Take human experiences as the initial samples of concrete reality or actuality, and try to explain the abstract or potential in terms of aspects of concrete experiences. 2. Look to practical life and its most general pre-suppositions for the

indispensable ideas and ideals that philosophy, including metaphysics, is to clarify and purify. 3. Trust terms in ordinary (or, in some science or nonphilosophical discipline, standard) language -- for their ordinary or standard purposes; trust terms standard for some school of philosophy only so far as they prove explicable by ordinary or truly standard terms, together with examples from direct experience or practical life. 4. Do not overestimate the ease with which the metaphysical import of experience and practice is to be discerned, considering a) that it is the unusual, not the universal or essential, aspects of experience which stand out; b) that there is no reason to think our human awareness can ever be without qualification "clear and distinct", like that which theologians attribute to deity; and c) that consciousness is selective; hence, without suitable guiding ideas as to what to look for in experience we are likely to miss much that is relevant to our quest. 5. For such guiding ideas look to mathematics or formal logic, as (however successfully or otherwise) Peirce did in his categories of First, Second, Third, and Aristotle did in his use of the distinction between substance and property as analogous to that between subject and predicate. Examples: a) Take relations of dependence to be of primary importance, since all inference turns on them; b) Interpret symmetrical relations as special cases, as equivalence (biconditioning) is a special case of the normally one-way or simple conditioning or dependence; c) Look for ontological correlates of the modal terms possible, necessary, contingent; d) Distinguish levels of abstractness or of logical strength, and avoid the fallacy of misplaced concreteness; e) Avoid fallacies of division (e.g., "tables do not feel, therefore the molecules in tables do not feel") and fallacies of composition (e.g., "stars and planets do not feel, therefore the cosmos as a whole is insentient"). 6. Seek formally exhaustive divisions of possible doctrines (employing less crude devices than mere dichotomies, rather at least trichotomies, thus all, some only, and none), and search for principles by which to eliminate all but one possible doctrine. 7. With contrary doctrinal extremes (e.g., all relations external, all internal) look for an intermediate position combining the advantages and avoiding the disadvantages of both extremes. 8. Use experiential falsifiability (Popper) not verifiability as primary criterion of "empirical", or non metaphysical. 9. Be cautious about asserting the zero case, as in "such and such is not experienced"; remembering that while observation of X as present may establish its presence, inability to detect a presence is not always equivalent to detecting the corresponding absence ("no elephants here" may be safe, but "no microbes here" risky). Not to know that we experience something is not the same as not to experience it. Negative introspection is even more fallible than positive introspection. 10. Honor the principle of contrast, avoid saying that absolutely "everything" is such and such--unless you want the such and such to be as devoid of distinctive character as the most general idea of entity, in contrast to bare nothing. 11. Since metaphysics is searching for the most general meaning of `concrete', try to find ideas applicable to every thing conceivable as concrete, (and singular, note maxim 5e above), though (maxim 10) not to absolutely everything, singular or collective, concrete or abstract. 12. Expect such ideas to be variables with uniquely great ranges of values, rather

than constants or definite values under a variable. (Example: causal determination of events by previous events, and creative transcendence of such determination, may be viewed as matters of degree, whereas classical determinism takes the determination to be absolute or infinite and the creativity to be zero. The absolute degree and the zero degree are, at best, infinitely special cases, not general principles. They are therefore suspect as metaphysical. (And it is a matter of logic that they could not be established empirically.) 13. Since universal ideas must be variables, not constants, and since deity is a universal idea (knowing all, influencing all, etc.), expect God to be a variable with infinite range of possible values, not a mere constant--in some sense the most flexible and alterable of all realities, in spite of being the most secure of identity and permanence. See this combination as the problem, not the mere absence of change or novelty. Learn from Carneades and Hume (also Barth, Berdyaev, and many other modern theists) to distrust the simplistic idea of God as wholly immutable cause of all change. 14. Keep the lines of communication open with various forms of philosophizing, and with various religious, scientific, aesthetic specializations: also, look for rational grounds for agreeing or disagreeing with other philosophers, living or dead, and for better causes of disagreements than the self-serving one that the others are stupid. THE APPEAL TO EXPERIENCE Maxim 1 is a revision of Descartes' cogito. The point is not that everything except one's self can be doubted. Doubting is not "as easy as lying." The point is rather that initially the natures of both the given "self" and the given "world" are problematic, by comparison with momentary experiences. We know what it is like to experience; for each moment we remember more or less vividly how we have just previously been feeling, thinking, perceiving and remembering. But the self as something always the same yet always different is initially a puzzle; also, though we cannot, except verbally (by the pragmatic test) doubt that a worldly Something includes us and much else; the character of this something is by no means initially clear. Were it clear, the two thousand, or three thousand, years of natural science would scarcely have been needed and would have yielded results less mysterious than the present ideas of electrons, etc. Through memory we know what experiences are like, but how much does mere perception tell us about the nature of physical stuff or process? Memory relates experience to experience; subject and object are here alike, and both are somewhat well known in their intimate qualities. Perception relates human experiences to the things least like them, "inanimate objects". Materialists talk as though perception were no problem, while memory, the experience of experience, is a problem. They are trying to explain the best known by the least known, the most alien to our self-knowledge and hence most difficult to understand. Subjective idealism is the opposite mistake. If memory is self-awareness, perception is the nonpersonal aspect of givenness, how the nonself is given. Those who hold that only one's own mental states are given are denying that perception occurs. This is one of the perennial sophistries, hoary with age. It can hardly survive the application of Maxim 2, and is open to other objections. It remains true that whereas (in spite of Husserlj) physical realities are as genuinely given as are our experiences, it is the experiences whose essential properties are initially better known. We can, apart from science, know how remembering differs from perceiving and both from anticipating the future, or how hope differs from fear, and so on and so on, much more definitely and surely than we can know what it is to be a rock, cloud, or tree. And even the physicists are deeply puzzled by the question, What is matter? set over and above the mathematics that enables us to deal successfully with it. Husserl could almost be said (in his Ideen) to have tried to derive all wisdom by the application of Maxim 1, with little attention to anything like the other Maxims. This has always, since I encountered Husserl in 1923-24, seemed to me a naive and unfruitful way to philosophize. What we need to know is indeed there in

experience, but a turtle or a baby has experience. To extract from experience its deepest message is not to be accomplished simply by gritting one's teeth and determining to give complete and exclusive attention to the given. That is not how the human mind is able to get knowledge. God may derive all wisdom from divinely intuited Evidenz, but we can derive very little by simply staring at the given while trying to forget the world given in experience, or (the Epoche) trying to persuade ourselves that while it seems to be given it may not exist at all. This begs the whole question of realism. The source of the error is not far to seek. It has two aspects. a) All human intuition is indistinct, as Democritus, Epicurus, and Leibniz sagaciously saw. We have no God-like "clear and distinct" intuitions, certainly not of the data of perception. b) The other aspect is a natural but unwarranted assumption about dreams, that they are "mere mental states" for which no real givens exist. Quite the contrary, in all dreams, as Bergson so well describes, actual bodily states are intuited. In my dreams I find all sorts of physical, bodily, conditions as directly intuited. It follows that the hypothesis, "suppose all experience were like dreams," does not yield the conclusion, "then there would be no physical world." Rather the argument must run, suppose all experience were as dreams and a certain theory of what dreams are were true, then there would be no physical world. This argument is worthless; for no one knows what dreams, so described, could possibly be. The notion of mere mental state, of experience without data, real givens, is no better than the notion of a proposition that affirms only itself. "Experience not of an existing world" is mere verbiage, for all anyone can show. So it does not matter what conclusions may seem to follow from the use of this verbiage. Heidegger, Ortega, and the French phenomenologists, also Wittgenstein and Ryle, agree at this point, and I see this as a fairly definitive judgment on one aspect of Husserl's enterprise. In the previous paragraph points (a) and (b) mutually support one another. It is the indistinctness with which the world is given that makes it so easy to misinterpret the evidences of experience and misdescribe dreaming experience. The apotheosis of this latter error is Malcolm's essay on dreaming. As he told me, Malcolm had not read the essay of Bergson, the best philosophical writing in all the centuries on what dreams are. Malcolm here badly violated Maxim 14 as well as Maxim 9. Indeed he violated Maxim 3, for, as he admits, in talking about dreams one has to use the language we employ about waking experiences, whereas Malcolm wants to deny that there is a significant analogy between waking and dreaming awareness. The literature of metaphysics is vast. But of this literature how much expresses thought that proceeds according to a defensible methodology? Attacks on metaphysics can stress real weaknesses, for there has been plenty of bad metaphysics. But nothing follows about the impossibility of at least relatively good metaphysics. That issue is still open. University of Texas Austin, Texas COMMENT On Charles Hartshorne, "Some Principles of Procedure in Metaphysics" JAMES W. FELT A few years ago a philosopher wrote: "The vague whole truth and the sharp halftruth about philosophic fundamentals--for these we scarcely need professional or full-time philosophers. It is the sharp vision of the whole truth we ask of the philosophic profession."1 The philosopher was Charles Hartshorne and in the present essay he has given us a persuasive bit of evidence (if we had none other) both that he practices what he preaches and that metaphysics is alive and well in America. The essay is remarkable first of all for its unity of viewpoint. It exemplifies Bergon's statement that "a philosopher worthy of the name has never said more than a single thing . . . ."2 It is also remarkable for its reflective balance, its

historical wisdom, and its tautness of expression. It is itself proof that metaphysics is possible and worth doing. It lays emphasis on concreteness as experiential, on memory as more importantly constitutive of experience than perception, and on the ineluctably objective character of experience. Yet there are positions taken in the essay with which I am distinctly uncomfortable, and for the sake of discussion I should like to single them out. Doubtless some of my difficulties stem from misunderstanding, but I suspect that in larger part they are symptomatic of a different view of how to go about doing philosophy. Perhaps it is a matter of emphasis, for in another place, though unfortunately not also here, Professor Hartshorne wrote: "Since technical logic alone cannot establish a metaphysics, intuitions being also needed, and since these, at least as put into words and conceptualized, are not infallible or invariable from person to person, how far philosophers can ever agree is deeply problematical" (CSPM, xviii). Not only may some such divergence of intuitional viewpoint obtain between us; in this paper he seems to write as if he had forgotten the importance which he earlier attributed to intuitional thinking. I therefore briefly mention, in order of their appearance, difficulties which I find with the essay. (1) By way of preliminary clarification, we must understand the first paragraph of the essay in the light of Hartshorne's Maxim 9 and his caution in another place against confusing "what is not observably present" with "what is observably absent" (CSPM, 79). The philosopher who does not observe in his experience value or aim or the feeling of causal derivation, would not necessarily have observed their absence. But why is Popper's definition so very "useful" for metaphysical procedure? Popper devised it not so much to do metaphysics as to discriminate it from empirical science. To say that experience, any experience, cannot fail to have the universal characteristics of all experience, hence cannot be observed to lack them, is indeed true, perhaps even tautological, but does little to get us started metaphysically. What interests us in metaphysics, I should think, is rather the "divination" (as Whitehead put it) of just what those characteristics are which all experience has. And I see no way of doing this apart from a kind of intuitive observation, even though it is not "observation" in the usual empirical sense of the word. (2) I therefore think it fallacious to say flatly, "Objections to a metaphysical statement must be on conceptual rather than observational grounds." I even wonder whether Hartshorne quite believes it himself, at least in practice. For he grants, as we have seen, the need for intuitions, and are not these more fundamentally observational than conceptual? In another place, for instance, in refuting the proposition: "There is a beauty of the world as a whole, but no one enjoys it," Hartshorne argues: "Even in thinking `the world as a whole', we enjoy a glimpse of its beauty, or we should not have this thought. There is no experience and no thought absolutely without aesthetic fulfillment" (CSPM, 289f.). Does Hartshorne's conviction rely on conceptual analysis or rather on direct intuition? (3) I do not think that Hartshorne's response to the objection he raises early in his essay is satisfactory. For the sake of clarity I expand this objection a little, as I understand it: "if metaphysics lives up to its Popperian definition, then there could arise equally clear, internally consistent but mutually inconsistent systems with no way of telling which is true and which false, since empirical observation is excluded. But this amounts to admitting that their truth or falsity has no sense, hence that they are equally nonsensical." To this objection, if I have it right, Hartshorne gives two distinct replies: (a) that there are not in fact two or more such "clear" systems; (b) if there were, they would by that very fact be unmetaphysical, merely specializations of some more ultimate (metaphysical) system. But a is true only if we insist on an unreasonably rigorous sense of clarity. I think that few would quarrel with Hartshorne's own observation (CSPM, 69) that he knows of no system, including his own, which is ideally and patently clear. But if we take "clear" more realistically, does not the objection still have weight? I am

sure I could find philosophers of several other viewpoints who are convinced that their own systems are just as clear and internally consistent as Hartshorne's; who find his conceptual argumentation unconvincing; and who might with some plausibility claim that their systems are more faithful to experience than his. Surely that is the sort of claim Whitehead made when he criticized Hume or mechanistic determinists. Like Wordsworth, his complaint was not primarily logical or conceptual but intuitional (I would even say observational): that something had been left out of their accounts which nevertheless constituted an important part of experience. Reply b, on the other hand, seems no more effective. Even if we grant that, in the nature of things, there is only one possible ultimate metaphysical system, the valid conclusion to be drawn is not that both systems referred to must be unmetaphysical, but rather that at most one of them can be metaphysical. The interesting question is which, if either, is faithful to reality. The practical concern lies in choosing between competing metaphysical systems, or bettering one we have, and for that I submit that appeal to experience plays just as fundamental a role as logical analysis. (4) "Metaphysical questions are conceptual," writes Hartshorne (p. 8, par. 3), "and conceptual analysis must answer them. Linguistic analysts are right in this." (See also CSPM 94). But is not this a heavy overstatement and even a violation of Maxim 10? To be sure, some metaphysical questions are conceptual. Also, in an earlier quotation Hartshorne acknowledged the distinction between intuitions and their embodiment in words or concepts. Nonetheless, I believe that Bergson was nearer to the truth when he asserted that the method of metaphysics is "mainly intuition" (CM, 42), however much he may have overstressed its function to the neglect of metaphysical conceptualization.3 Has not Hartshorne given away too much to the linguistic analysts? (5) Does not the second half of Maxim 3, amount to a kind of reductionism, even perhaps an instance of what Whitehead called the `Fallacy of the Perfect Dictionary'?4 Perhaps I have not understood how Hartshorne means the words "explicable" and "together with," but it sounds as if he means that the technical terms of a metaphysics cannot denote ideas which are not in common use. Yet he admits with Whitehead, that in many ways philosophy is akin to poetry. Is an ultimate metaphysical principle, such as Whitehead's `Creativity', really "explicable" by ordinary terms, any more than is Eliot's `stillpoint' in Four Quartets? (6) Maxim 5 identifies what Maxim 4 called the "guiding ideas as to what to look for in experience," and it tells us that we should "look from the outset to formal logic." I find this astonishing. Or does "from the outset" mean only "to start with, not necessarily to finish with"? Surely it is not in virtue of the principles of formal logic that we recognize, for instance, that all experience is fundamentally value experience, or that it has the character of ongoing synthetic process. And even though we grant that the principles of formal logic arise from the structure of experience, it does not follow that all that is important, or even that most that is important about the structure of that experience will be reflected in formal logic. Yet Hartshorne says that it is to formal logic that we should turn in order to know what to look for in experience. (7) I cannot agree (Maxim 13) that deity is a universal idea, and certainly not just on the grounds that `God' is defined as knowing all, influencing all, and so forth. But even if we can define `God' in purely universal terms, this is more a descriptive than an essential definition. That whatever exemplifies the definition is unique does not, it seems to me, make the notion `God' universal. And notice how the first sentence of Maxim 13 begins with "universal ideas" but ends with "the most flexible and alterable of all realities" (not "notions" or "`realities'"). Even if we grant that the idea of God is universal, we begin the sentence with an idea and end it, voila- , with God (not `God'), a reality (not a notion). It is not hard to sense here the affinity in Professor Hartshorne's thinking with the ontological argument, even if one did not know he had written

books about it. (8) In summary it seems to me that Hartshorne stresses too much the logical, and too little the phenomenological, aspect of metaphysical method. In doing so he gives the impression of a kind of apriorism that maps out the logical structure into which real experience must perforce fit. This is too Procrustean for my taste. In a well-known passage Whitehead wrote: "The true method of discovery [in metaphysics] is like the flight of an aeroplane. It starts from the ground of particular observations; it makes a flight in the thin air of imaginative generalization; and it again lands for renewed observation rendered acute by rational interpretation."5 It seems to me that by the use he has made of Popper's definition of metaphysics Hartshorne has prevented himself from landing again in experience, for, as he says, "objections to a metaphysical statement must be made on conceptual rather than observational grounds." Does he in fact disagree with Whitehead's notion of metaphysical method? If he does, it seems to me a retrogression rather than an advance. Yet I commend Hartshorne's conclusion, that many instances of bad metaphysics do not prove it is pointless to try doing good metaphysics. It recalls the parallel conclusion drawn by another philosopher of our century: "If metaphysical speculation is a shooting at the moon, philosophers have always begun by shooting at it; only after missing it have they said that there was no moon, and that it was a waste of time to shoot at it."6 Santa Clara University Santa Clara, California NOTES 1. Charles Hartshorne, Creative Synthesis and Philosophic Method London: SCM Press, 1970); hereafter `CSPM'), p. 93. 2. Henri Bergson, The Creative Mind (New York: Philosophical Library, 1946; hereafter `CM'), p. 132. 3. For an attempt at restoring the balance see my "Philosophic Understanding and the Continuity of Becoming," in the International Philosophical Quarterly (1978), 375-93. 4. Modes of Thought (New York: Capricorn Books, 1958), p. 235. 5. Process and Reality (New York: Macmillan, 1929), p. 7; my emphasis. 6. Etienne Gilson, The Unity of Philosophical Experience (New York: Scribner, 1937), p. 309. COMMENT On Richard L. Barber, "Metaphysical Knowledge as Hypothesis" ERROL E. HARRIS In order to grasp the significance of Professor Barber's thesis it is necessary to know what he understands by the hypothetical, and this he nowhere explicitly states. However, it would appear that by hypothetical he means what is not immediately and originally disclosed in experience. What is immediate and original, then, will be categorical. Assertoric propositions could, presumably, be formulated only about what is immediately presented. Again, the objection to his position that Professor Barber considers implies that the hypothetical excludes certainty and so is, presumably, the purely problematic, an implication which Professor Barber does not repudiate. The thesis we are to discuss then would seem to be that all metaphysical knowledge is problematic and is not itself immediately experienced. If I understand him aright, Professor Barber is maintaining that metaphysics is the inference to, or perhaps better, the hypothesizing of, the conditions on which our immediate experience, which is certain and indubitable, would be what it in fact is; and this must include the hypothesis of the conditions on which our hypothesizing would constitute an adequate explanation of what we immediately experience. Now I find this position somewhat puzzling. Why, on this thesis, should anybody ever philosophize at all? If immediate experience were certain and indubitable surely it would require no explanation. If Professor Barber, or anybody else, were

to object that one can be immediately certain of the presence of isolated particulars which are not self-explanatory and the occurrence of which in one's experience needs explanation, then I should demur. For to be certain of the immediate presence of a particular one must be able to identify it precisely, and that would involve relating it to a great number of other particulars, some present and others not. So the immediate certainty of the presence of any particular involves immediately certain knowledge of much else, which, if one has it, leaves no need or room for explanation. It is when and because such knowledge is lacking, when the elements of our so-called immediate experience conflict, or when there are gaps in its continuity, that we raise questions and seek explanations. And it is just for such reasons that Professor Barber finds explanation necessary. The totality of his experience, he says, is incomplete; its contents do not immediately include components or aspects which tell of their sources, and so forth. All of which is evidence of the uncertainty of immediate experience. And, if lack of certainty makes knowledge hypothetical, immediate experience will be as hypothetical as any other and our distinction between the hypothetical and the assertoric will collapse. We may question further what experience is immediate, whether indubitable or not. Few nowadays will countenance the old empiricist dogma that sense-data are the immediate simple elements of experience. There is today widespread agreement that sense-data, as special objects of consciousness, do not exist, or at any rate are not immediately given (and so not strictly data). The common sense notion that sensuous perception is immediately given has been discredited by psychological evidence, and a tolerable consensus of opinion among philosophers of science is that all observation is theory-laden and that there is no theoretically neutral observation language. The doctrine of immediate intellectual intuition--whether of the `simple natures' of Descartes, or of Aristotle--is equally dubious. The allegedly self-evident is always evident in the light of some background knowledge or with tacit reference to some systematic context. Even cogito ergo sum is itself a discursive nexus of thought and being, a connexion of concepts which holds by virtue of a sophisticated appreciation of meanings derived from a complex system of ideas. If the assertoric is confined to the immediate, and if no immediate knowledge can be identified, all knowledge once again becomes hypothetical; and this, or something like it, seems to be Professor Barber's own conclusion. Metaphysics he thinks is subject to high degree of uncertainty, but all other knowledge likewise, in inverse proportion to the limitation of its scope, is liable to some degree of uncertainty. Such a position, however, is clearly untenable, for the hypothetical must rest upon a categorical base, and every conditional nexus must have factual ground. If all knowledge were merely problematic it would dissolve away into total ignorance. The objection frequently raised against the coherence theory of truth, that no proposition could ever be established if every statement depended for its truth on other statements, is valid against the view that all knowledge is hypothetical, for we should always be referred to prior conditions as the grounds of any supposition. There must be some firm ground on which to rest even doubts, and some categorical affirmations from which questions can arise. If all knowledge were merely probable there would be no basis on which to assess the degree of probability of any. Those who abjure certainty forget that probability is a degree of truth and can be estimated only by reference (tacit or otherwise) to some standard of verity which must itself be unquestionable. To abandon certainty altogether, therefore, is to embrace scepticism--a position which, if radical and unqualified, refutes itself by its own assertoric claim. Accordingly, we must, and we invariably do, claim categorical truth for some knowledge, and our question is whether metaphysical knowledge is to be included in what we assertorically maintain. Clearly the categorical foundation of all our knowledge must be whatever ranks as the criterion of truth, and what that is only metaphysics can decide. It is true

that different philosophers advocate different theories of truth, not all of which can be accepted. There must then be some hypothetical elements in metaphysical knowledge. But what nobody can deny except inconsistently is that there is and must be some ultimate truth--some criterion of judgment. So there must also be at least some categorical element in metaphysics as well, and it may well be that the categorical and the hypothetical are inseparable. In fact, the very nature of thinking makes their inseparability unavoidable. Metaphysics, I have said, must necessarily assert the existence of an ultimate truth. This knowledge is not simply categorical but is apodictic. Now it is commonly held that necessary knowledge is so by virtue of necessitating conditions, so that all necessary propositions are really hypothetical. This is a doctrine put forward both by F.H. Bradley and by Bertrand Russell. It is maintained that the universal (which is likewise necessary) is always hypothetical: All S is P being equivalent to, If anything is S it is P. But the hypothetical asserts a nexus, and if the assertion is to be true the nexus must be grounded in fact. If what is S is also P it must be because of some factual character of both of the terms which connects them invariably. If whales are mammals it is because they suckle their young and breathe through lungs, etc. Consequently every hypothetical has a categorical aspect, and categorical, hypothetical and necessary are all inseparable. Metaphysical knowledge is thus certainly to some extent hypothetical, but it cannot be so exclusively, and for that very reason is also, and perhaps more essentially, both assertoric and apodictic. There is, moreover, another reason why metaphysics is always categorical. It is a philosophical science and so, unlike empirical or exact (i.e., mathematical) science, it is self-reflective. Whatever it asserts, therefore, must be true of itself and it must affirm the existence of its own subject matter. This is not true of other sciences. Geometrical propositions hold good whether or not there exist in actuality any perfect circles or dodecahedra. In fact, though the geometrician will usually tell us that such figures cannot be constructed with perfect exactitude, nevertheless everything that he demonstrates about them is necessary. But it is so only on the hypotheses that the geometer states: it is hypothetical knowledge. But philosophical sciences cannot be purely hypothetical, because whatever they affirm of their subject matter necessarily includes the thinker who affirms and who cannot, without self-stultification, call his own existence in question. Thus, when a metaphysician makes statements about reality in general, he necessarily includes himself in the subject of the statement. For he is part of reality and therefore whatever is true of reality in general must be true also of him. Of course, he may judge hypothetically of both, but then, as I have already said, the ground of his supposition must be what is actually true of the real. I cannot speak of a merely possible world of which I am a member because my own existence is for me an inescapable reality and cannot be a mere supposition. Hence the subject matter of metaphysics cannot be merely suppositious as the subject matter of geometry may be. And Professor Barber himself hints at this necessity when he gives as examples of metaphysical questions: `What is real?', `what is the nature of "reality"?', `What is it that is?', 'What is, or has, being?'. These questions, with one accord, make no question that there is some reality, that something has being, the nature of which is of primary significance and the ground of all else. Any attempt to deny this would be self-defeating, and its assertion is categorical. It is hardly debatable that it is also metaphysical and is therefore at least one exception to Professor Barber's thesis. Many years ago an acquaintance of mine was being interviewed for a philosophical appointment. `What is your attitude towards reality ?' he was asked. He replied with firm assurance and perspicacity: `I accept it.' Who, indeed, could do otherwise, and how could we do so merely hypothetically? CHAPTER VI INTRODUCTION TO THE PANEL:

METAPHYSICS AND SCIENCE ANDRE+ MERCIER Professor Agazzi, realizing the positivist and empiricist view of the proper task of reason, which is also held more or less by analytical philosophers, asserts that metaphysics has always been characterized by a "synthetic view" of reason. It is, he says, because of this kind of creative freedom that metaphysics has been mistrusted. But now it appears that science too needs a "synthetic use" of reason, for it is impossible to derive scientific theories from a mere analysis of experience. Moreover, metaphysics is, according to Agazzi, a field of experience like science. Descartes was wrong when he held reason to be that which warrants certainty against doubt, but conversely the empiricists are also wrong, when they maintain that experience is the sole source of understanding. Actually, says Agazzi, there is a methodological affinity between science and metaphysics, even though the standards of rigor are different in one or the other. Now, some philosophers allege certain negative features of metaphysics but not of science. They speak of a personal view of the world, a want of objectivity and the like--objectivity being understood as intersubjectivity. However, this is not quite so, even though metaphysics does not fulfill a criterium of intersubjectivity identical with that of science as is usually conceived. It is scientific discourse which is intersubjective: metaphysics, Agazzi says, is a discourse which claims the right not to take anything for granted, whereas science takes for granted a whole set of institutional criteria. Consequently, metaphysics must renounce the "comfortable" status of intersubjectivity of science, for it can promise nothing from the beginning of its enterprise. This is not arbitrariness or anything of the like. On the contrary, it is a feature of the extreme severity of metaphysical discourse proper inasmuch as it aims at being more than intersubjective. Hence if we interpret objectivity with intersubjectivity, metaphysics is not objective. At this point I should like to interrupt my summary of Agazzi's paper to contend that it is correct to identify objectivity with intersubjectivity. I have indeed attempted in many of my publications to show that objectivity, which is a fundamental--indeed, the fundamental--mode of science, does not follow from an assumed intersubjectivity of science, but that intersubjectivity itself follows from the fundamental objectivity of science. There is an authentic intersubjectivity too in other enterprises of the mind, in particular in art, where art corresponds however to a subjectivity as its authentic mode of knowledge just as objectivity is the mode of science. Hence I refuse to assume intersubjectivity as a criterium of "scienticity," and an argument that says that metaphysics is not a science because it lacks intersubjectivity, is to my mind wrong. The fact that some kind of formal objectivity can be derived formally from some kind of formally defined intersubjectivity is no proof whatever of the assertion that objectivity follows from intersubjectivity. Any discourse, even wrong, can be put into a formalism. Here, of course, the word wrong means not formally incorrect, but not in agreement with the real. Continuing with Agazzi's paper, he notes that metaphysical systems as world views are not arbitrary, because they must be in agreement with empirical evidence and it is a fact that all such systems as have been put forward have been suggested by "reality," either in order to reflect a special feature of reality or to avoid an aspect of reality as appears undesirable to logos. Metaphysics yields unitary pictures enabling an understanding of what has first been explained, and curiously enough, Agazzi says, one cannot explain that which has not been understood beforehand. Hence, there must be a kind of global appreciation, i.e., even scientific theories reveal an important hermeneutic moment. Is it true, Agazzi asks, that such hermeneutic efforts are in metaphysics bound to personal intuitions? No, he answers, or only partially. I should rather say that this is not--even though partially --a fact, as many anti-metaphysicians say, but a hypothesis which nobody can prove. Another

difficulty which I encounter in Agazzi's text understanding is his sudden reversal, when he first says that one needs to understand what has first been explained, and then asserts that in order to explain one has to understand. Agazzi's next point concerns the apparent difference between a cumulative progress of science and a frustrating destiny of metaphysics. Metaphysics, it is said, tackles "eternal problems," while science gives clear answers to questions clearly put. Actually, Agazzi says, this is an oversimplified and optimistic view of science which of late has been severely criticized especially by Kuhn and Feyerabend. Not only is the positivist view wrong--and here, wrong has the same meaning as a moment ago--it is not in agreement with the modern conception of verifiability versus falsifiability (cf. Popper). I should like to ask whether Kuhn and his school have really been the first to utter such a critique. While I recognize their merit, Kurt Huebner, has long taught similar things, not to insist upon authors who are long dead, going back to Duhem, or even those still active like Margenau and even myself. The problem "What is progress?" cannot in our days be handled as it was in the 19th Century, as Agazzi, of course, knows. He asks: can a progress be ascertained in metaphysical inquiry? His answer is: yes, for certain things can no longer be maintained in the field of metaphysics. This, however, is a negative statement, whereas supporters of the idea of scientific progress argue with positive statements. There is, Agazzi notes, besides a global evaluation, also a local evaluation of progress in relation with "normal science" as produced by routine work until "the vein offered by a certain paradigm is exhausted." I like this metaphor, which of course is very Kuhnian. Metaphysics, he adds, works similarly and goes through its own paradigms too. This is an important argument, and on many occasions I have noted the same about art, calling the attention of philosophers to the fact that what is called by Kuhn `paradigms' in science has its counterpart in `styles' in art. Styles become exhausted, each in its own time, and are replaced by radically "new" styles just as scientific paradigms do. It is therefore a feature, not of science alone, but of all human cognitive enterprises, including metaphysics. Therefore, science is not characterized by that particular feature. The next point made by Agazzi is very important: if metaphysics, he says, is an effort of "knowing inside a belief," science is so too, within certain restrictions which do not count for metaphysics. These restrictions, if I understand him well, make the difference between metaphysics and science. Both have an affinity, but the deep distinction resides in their different thematic interest: the point of view of the whole for metaphysics, several limited points of views for the various sciences. He concludes that metaphysics, though right in claiming its cognitive status, cannot be attributed the additional character of being a science. I do not quite see what this additional character is. If it is a question of addition, then a science is simply "metaphysics + this additional character." If metaphysics is ontology, I can agree that physics for instance is ontology too, but of what? To my mind, the additional character is not really additional but restrictive, viz., the explicit character of things considered by physics or science in general being finite, multiple and in interaction with one another, which is not the focus of the interest of metaphysics proper. If Agazzi is in agreement with me, then what is the difference--non finite, non multiple, non interactive--which calls the attention of the metaphysician? Professor Bunge's contribution is short and formal, and contains theses about (i) what he calls the "science of metaphysics," (ii) the "metaphysics of science" and (iii) what he calls "emergence." Metaphysics, he claims, can be turned into a rigorous science, and he gives formal arguments. This seems to contradict what Agazzi said, viz., that metaphysics is not a science. Secondly, Bunge asserts that science has metaphysical presuppositions, as of course has been said by others before him. But he is more precise: There are theoretical metaphysical presuppositions and heuristic metaphysical

presuppositions of science. If we accept this, I ask: how does Bunge conciliate the fact that he can make metaphysics into a rigorous science with a metaphysics of science? If this were so, then, the metaphysics of science would be a "rigorous science of science." But what is that? Finally, emergence is said by Bunge to be a metaphysical concept. I say concept and not notion as he does, for reasons of conformity to the vocabulary to which I am used. Bunge connects this concept of emergence with novelty. My question is whether there is a relationship between Bunge's emergence-novelty connection and Agazzi's analysis of the Kuhnian argument about paradigms? Bunge concludes with a pessimistic note: He doubts that a definitive science of metaphysics or a definitive metaphysics of science will ever be built. I, for my part, should rather be optimistic. For, if these final stages were at hand, the philosophers of science would have nothing to do. Professor Hu¦ bner's first questions are: What is a presupposition; what is metaphysical? His answer reads: metaphysical presuppositions in science are groups of premisses which contain only a priori and valid statements. His next question is: are there such presuppositions at all? He answers: There are such in science, viz., instrumental, functional, axiomatic, judicial and normative ones. Axioms, e.g., are neither empirically true nor false. So they can never be falsified; they have a meaning, though, viz., for, and not by experience. Such presuppositions resemble the rules of a game, namely, the "game of experience." I like this phrase, for already mathematics is a game, but not the game of experience: it is "pure-game" if you please. Mathematics is not a science but a power. Therefore, if the question of the relationship between science and metaphysics is posed, then the other question, namely, about the relationship between mathematics and metaphysics deserves similar treatment as well. Hu¦ bner should be able to answer, for, he goes on explaining that logic never teaches anything about reality, whereas metaphysics, or at least metaphysicians, claim to speak about reality. Perhaps what Russell calls the "really real," in contradistinction to the more minute reality tackled by the sciences, is the reality approached by metaphysics. A special dialectic follows, says Huebner, which is reflected by that reality but which could not compete with the necessity asserted in formal logic. Hu¦ bner too has an argument about the dependence of presuppositions upon the historical situation in which they are made. But he insists that this does not make them arbitrary and talks of "the logic of a situation." Hence, he says, let us give up the idea that there are necessarily true presuppositions in science. What there is, are metaphysical presuppositions, for we can never grasp reality as such. In my book Erkenntnis und Wirklichkeit I have explained the same idea by saying that we always try to rape nature or reality. This never succeeds, because all we are able to do is to make clothes which more or less suit reality and that all our theories are nothing but clothes. We know about the clothes, because we made them, but not about the real body they actually conceal from our view. What is the difference or likeness, between scientific, and metaphysical clothes? CHAPTER VII METAPHYSICS AND SCIENCE: AFFINITIES AND DISCREPANCIES EVANDRO AGAZZI SCIENCE AS THE MODEL OF KNOWLEDGE? An inquiry today concerned with the problem of characterizing metaphysical knowledge cannot bypass the fact that the broadly accepted paradigm of knowledge in our days, is represented by science. Evidence of this is easily found when one considers the simple fact that every inquiry that aims at being taken seriously or at qualifying itself as rigorous and objective research, immediately claims to be a (perhaps new) science. This does not imply at all that metaphysics, in order to be taken seriously today, must try to qualify as a science as well. But it surely implies that, if science has actually become the present model of knowledge, a

comparison with science is inevitable if metaphysics wants to be considered a kind of knowledge in some acceptable sense. This pure consideration of principle is furthermore strengthened by a consideration of fact, namely, that the model of science has been exploited for a long while in contemporary philosophy in order to discredit metaphysics or, at least, in order to remove it from the realm of knowledge proper. The history of positivism and neo-positivism, many positions within analytical philosophy, beside the generic atmosphere of the scientistic mentality, are too fresh as memories to be in need of any detailed exemplification. They all show how science has been taken as the most convincing argument for proving that metaphysics was not so much a false knowledge, as simply no knowledge at all. As a defense against this attack, two main positions can be adopted. The one maintains: there are several kinds of knowledge, scientific knowledge being only one among other possible and actual ways of acquiring knowing which exist beside science. This position is certainly reasonable and can be defended with some success, but it is rather weak from the viewpoint of our issue. For it would be too easy for the opponents of metaphysics to accept the above statement and then say that science does constitute the proper and fullest standard of knowledge-metaphysics, together with common sense, unsystematic thinking, unorganized experience, personal approaches to reality, sentimental or aesthetic worldviews, would be seen as vague, generic, unreliable and provisional kinds of knowledge. It is therefore much better to adopt a second position, which assumes that knowledge as such has some unique general features, but admits of some further specifications depending upon the particular subject matter toward which the effort of knowing is addressed in the different cases. By adopting this attitude, one would surely be able to recognize that the general and characteristic features of knowledge have been brought to a particularly clear and effective degree of maturation and consciousness in science (which deserves, therefore, its being promoted to the paradigm of knowledge). But this would not prevent one from inquiring whether these characters are correctly recognizable also within domains of inquiry other than science (e.g., in metaphysics), although in these domains they are not accompanied by other features that are peculiar to science alone. It is worth noting that this way of putting things is fair not only to metaphysics, but to science as well, for one surely obtains a quite impoverished picture of science by reducing all scientific problems to a purely epistemological status. In other words, when people say, as they often do, that philosophy of science is merely the modern way of doing theory of knowledge, they are actually oversimplifying the richness of the aspects involved in science, and neglecting a substantial part of it. And if it is true that some epistemological emphasis has dominated philosophy of science for a long while, it is not less true, on the other hand, that the more recent trends in this discipline have recalled attention to a whole series of problems of science which are not strictly epistemological. An attempt to develop the second line of thought mentioned above has been made by the author of the present paper on several previous occasions and it would not be reasonable to repeat it here.1 Still, the core of those reflections will be recalled briefly in order to give the general coordinates of the discourse. The main stress in this paper will be upon some further points, which in turn, have only been hinted at in the previous papers. To give an initial idea of the aim of this paper, we could note that the preceding inquiry aimed at showing that science and metaphysics share the foundational requirements of their cognitive status, while differing in their cognitive interest. This was tantamount to claiming that the positive qualities which are usually credited to science are to be credited to metaphysics as well, and that these also include some features which are often considered as typical of metaphysics and alien to science. The task of the present paper will be, anagolously, that of showing that some of the negative features that are often alleged to be typical of metaphysics, are equally well recognizable in the case of science. It will follow that, even from

the point of view of some concrete limitations, science and metaphysics are on the same footing. Of course, this will not automatically mean a full parallel between both disciplines, and we shall therefore devote some attention to the problem of an acceptable differentiation between them. SOME COMMON QUALITIES OF SCIENCE AND METAPHYSICS The Mediation of Experience. Let us now outline briefly some positive characteristics that science and metaphysics have in common. The positivist tradition has opposed science to metaphysics by claiming that metaphysics is based on the mediation of experience while science never oversteps experience. However, the result of the most mature reflections in the philosophy of science, both in the field of concept formation and of theory construction, has been that the theoretical components can never be dispensed with and that they are by no means reducible to empirical ones. This fact has clarified why it is not possible in science to remain with pure experience or, to put it differently, how science too resorts to the mediation of experience as long as the tools for acquiring knowledge in science clearly appear to be two, i.e., experience and logos (whereby with logos we mean the specific function of reason). This ineliminability of the theoretic (i.e., non-empirical) side is by no means in contrast with the fundamental methodological requirement of every empirical science, which imposes that even the most abstract theoretical statements be able to be tested empirically. For this ability to be tested means only that fully empirical statements must be deducible from the theoretical ones and that they must turn out to be true or false on the basis of the empirical evidence. But it is here that one can point out a difference with respect to metaphysics, as this requirement of empirical testability does not belong to its methodological imperatives. This is true, but a little reflection shows that it has to do not with the cognitive structure of science, but simply with the different domains of problematization (or field of interest) of the two kinds of inquiry. In the case of science, the domain of problematization is, if we take science in its broadest sense, "the whole of experience;" in the case of metaphysics this domain is simply "the whole" as such. To explain what this way of speaking means we could say that science circumscribes its objects by selecting, in each of its different disciplines, a set of predicates directly bound to empirical testing conditions and goes on attributing these predicates (or predicates that are logically definable on the basis of these) also to theoretical entities (i.e., to entities which are not directly observable, but are postulated in order to explain the empirical data). This can be expressed also by saying that theoretical entities are supposed to belong to "the same kind of reality" as do empirical things, even though they are empirically unaccessible; in this sense they are included in "the whole of experience." Metaphysical predicates, on the contrary, are not intended to be limited to an empirical reference and are proposed as apt for attribution to any kind of reality (empirical or not), for the "viewpoint of the whole" cannot admit, as such, of any predetermined limitation. As a matter of fact, metaphysical entities which are reached by means of the mediation of experience are usually conceived of as not belonging to the same "kind of reality" as empirical entities. It follows from all this that statements which are intended to express the viewpoint of the whole must surely be compatible with the empirical evidence and also be able to explain it (like the theoretical statements of every science), but they cannot be submitted to the additional condition of being also empirically testable, for this would reduce their intended scope. It is clear therefore how the requirement of empirical testability is one of those "peculiar" features of science which do not belong to it as a paradigm of knowledge, but as a particular kind of knowledge that is, as a knowledge limited to particular thematic horizons. Analytic and Synthetic use of Reason. Another way of expressing the substance of the above argument is to claim that both science and metaphysics cannot be carried on without something more than an

"analytic use" of reason, that is, reason that is not allowed to perform more than an "analysis" of what is done or given. In the case of the sciences, those which are classified as empirical should limit the use of reason to a careful analysis of experience, to a classification, decomposition or recomposition of its parts, without allowing reason to proceed to any addition or construction of its own. In the case of formal sciences, the analyticity should be manifested in the current standard deduction of logical consequences from the postulates or axioms given at the beginning. It is well known that this way of conceiving the proper task of reason in science has been typical of the positivist and empiricist tradition; it is not mere chance that "analytical philosophy" has been deeply inspired by these schools of thought. Metaphysics, on the contrary, has always been characterized by a "synthetic use" of reason, in which the constructive power of man's rationality was put to the most challenging test. It was invited, so to speak, to complete the picture of reality by an effort of rigorous and reliable creation that goes far beyond what is actually "given" in any empirical evidence. It is because of this kind of creative freedom that metaphysics has been mistrusted so often. But now it clearly appears that science too needs a "synthetic use" of reason by which it is allowed to build something on its own forces without being mistrusted as unable to cope with reality. The impossibility of deriving scientific hypotheses and theories from a pure analysis of experience and the shortcomings of every inductivist justification of this process has led to a recognition of this creative or inventive performance of reason in science and has helped to understand that such an invention or creativity is by no means synonymous with arbitrariness or craziness. As a consequence, one is entitled to say that, if this synthetic use of reason is legitimated as such, it cannot consistently be forbidden when it is extended or applied outside the "whole of experience" (i.e., outside the domain of interest of science). Indeed, metaphysics is the field in which, while experience is certainly taken into account, the synthetic use of reason finds its most significant application. The discourse about the synthetic use of reason and the differentiated roles of experience and logos finds its justification in an analytic distinction, which seems to have been rather neglected in modern philosophy of science: the distinction between ascertaining and giving reason. The difference between the two is prima facie readily admitted, for it is rather clear that the fact of having ascertained something does not provide us with a comprehension or understanding of it: for that, the category of explanation is called into play. However, it is by no means always clear whence these two requirements derive their foundation. As a matter of fact, the task of reason was illegitimately indicated by Descartes to be that of ensuring us certainty against doubt, with the additional claim that experience is not reliable in itself and cannot provide us with any certainty. In this way, the proper role of experience was totally swept away; it was misleadingly attributed to reason, while reason itself was deprived of its specific task. The symmetric mistake was made by the extreme empiricist philosophies when they pretended that experience is the only source of all understanding, thereby attributing to experience the typical role of reason. The actual situation is rather the following: experience is the proper basis of ascertaining knowledge and, as such, provides us with certainty; logos has as its proper task that of giving reasons or of explaining what is already certain in itself, but still lacks intellectual comprehension. This does not imply that reason cannot also be used to attain some certainties, but simply stresses that there is a part of our cognitive activity which would not be satisfied even if we had a sufficient supply of certainties. This part is constituted by the set of reasons we propose to account for those certainties. The proposal of hypotheses for explaining empirical facts is, therefore, witness to the indispensable role of this part of our cognitive activity within science; and it is here that the synthetic use of reason has its roots. However, the difference in the problematic horizon which we already mentioned, and

which is expressed in adopting the viewpoint of the "whole of experience" in the case of science and of "the whole" as such in the case of metaphysics, is sufficient to prevent pushing existing affinities to a point at which dangerous confusions might arise. In other words, it should be clear enough from the above that not every meta-empirical statement is, as such, a metaphysical one. An obvious, but perhaps not unnecessary, remark as a conclusion of the above discussion might be the following. Once this methodological affinity between science and metaphysics has been established, one is not automatically entitled to claim that metaphysical doctrines have always been constructed according to the same standards of rigor as exact science. The result of our inquiry has shown only the possibility of such a metaphysics or, rather, of parts of metaphysics constructed according to those standards. In concreto, the exigencies which lead to the construction of metaphysics are quite differentiated and they would not be satisfied by a discourse obeying only the cognitive standards just sketched. Still, hints for the construction of some basic parts of metaphysics according to these standards can be provided and some of them are outlined in the papers cited. SOME ALLEGED DEFICIENCIES OF METAPHYSICS After having recalled some positive characteristics of science which can be extended to metaphysics, and some typical characteristics of metaphysics which can be found in science--and thereby vindicating a proper cognitive status for metaphysics--let us proceed now to consider some alleged negative features of metaphysics, which are claimed not to affect science. The first of them might be outlined as follows: even if one may admit that a few very basic and extremely simple metaphysical statements can be established by means of the complementary efforts of experience and logos in a way which is not too different from the method of science, still it is undeniable that every full-fledged metaphysical theory contains a rich display of details which are the expression of a certain "interpretation" of general reality according to some personal worldview, rather than an objective description of it. This shows that metaphysics inevitably lacks the fundamental character of objectivity or intersubjectivity, which is typical of science. This would indicate that, despite every affinity, science and only science remains an "objective knowledge"; that in turn would mark a profound distinction between these two intellectual enterprises. Is this true? To some extent it is, but not in such a radical sense as is frequently understood. Let us first explain why metaphysics cannot enjoy in its fullest measure the requirement of intersubjectivity which is usual for science. The Requirement of Intersubjectivity. Every scientific discipline is characterized by its specific "domain of objects," to which all its statements are explicitly or tacitly referred or "relativized." In order to avoid some easy misunderstandings, which could arise from conceiving of these "objects" as "things" of everyday experience,2 it would be better (and sufficient for the purposes of this paper) to say that every science is characterized by its "domain of discourse." This means that only some technical terms are supposed to be specifically pertinent to this science, while other linguistic tools are used for the sake of communication only. On the other hand, the specificity of meaning of these technical terms is bound to the adoption of some standardized operations for putting to the test sentences containing them. The technical vocabulary of a science is increased by introducing by means of theoretical constructs further terms on the basis of those that are operationally defined. All this may be particularly clear in the case of exact empirical sciences, but it can be shown that this situation is quite common. The consequence of these general features of the scientific discourse is that it is intersubjective, because the appeal to standardized operations for fixing the meaning of the technical terms provides the basis for a universal understanding among people who are ready and able to perform those operations and, in such a way, to become specialists or professionals of that particular science. Of course, the prerequisite for entering the domain of discourse for a certain science is constituted not merely by the mastering of material operations. Special chapters

of mathematics, as well as other auxiliary tools may well be required and they all constitute the basis for the intersubjective understanding of that science. But why do they constitute such a basis? Simply because they are not put under discussion in that science, because they are taken for granted in it. Only if something is unquestioned and unquestionable among some persons it may be used as a means for getting further agreement among them. Still, it is clear that such unquestionability does not belong to the standardized operations or to the mathematical or theoretic presuppositions of a science as such, but simply for the sake of the discourse of that specific science. They can very well be problematized, strongly challenged and even openly mistrusted within other contexts, i.e., inside other disciplines. What makes these operations or theoretic tools unproblematic and gives them the strength of becoming the foundations of a certain discipline, is neither an intrinsic logical necessity, nor a pure and simply arbitrary convention; it is the complex result of an historical development. Hence, they are characterized by that special kind of "contingency" which we could more aptly indicate as an "historical determinateness." The moral of this story is that every science is intersubjective because its domain of discourse is historically determined and its institutional criteria are unproblematic and taken for granted in it. This, of course, is perfectly compatible with a discourse which is done "from a particular viewpoint" and simply aims at developing what can be said within that viewpoint, without problematizing it, without asking questions about its legitimacy, its relevance, etc. But this cannot on the contrary, be the intellectual attitude of a discourse which is intended to be "from the viewpoint of the whole" or, if we prefer, to reach a truth which is not the particular truth expressible under a certain particular viewpoint, but which aims at being a kind of "absolute truth," in the sense of being such, under no special preconditions. It follows that metaphysics, as a discourse which claims the right to treat everything as a problem without taking anything for granted, must renounce the useful and comfortable status of intersubjectivity. This does not condemn it to absolute subjectivity; it is only that intersubjective agreement cannot be taken for granted. It may develop as a result of a patient analysis and dialogue, but it is not something that can be promised right from the beginning of the enterprise. Once this is well understood, it is clear that this lack of warranted intersubjectivity has nothing to do with the arbitrary, the erratic, or the like. It is rather the consequence of the extreme severity that metaphysical discourse imposes upon itself. It is not intersubjective simply because it aims at being more than intersubjective. If we identify objectivity with intersubjectivity (this can be done, if one gives to these concepts a suitable interpretation), we can say that metaphysical discourse is not objective. However this should mean no cognitive diminution with respect to science, if not in a purely pragmatic sense. Metaphysics and Worldviews. Once this general framework of the problem of intersubjectivity is well understood, it is possible to go a step further and investigate the objection that metaphysics is doomed to subjectivity, not because it is so rigorous as not to take anything for granted, but rather because metaphysical constructions are nothing but uncontrolled general world-pictures, which express personal feelings or, at best, intellectual intuitions of the individual metaphysician. Again, there is a good deal of truth in this appreciation of metaphysics, but this still does not imply uncontrolled arbitrariness or complete freedom for fantastic invention; moreover, it does not imply that something of this kind does not occur in science as well. The reason why the general worldviews which are typical of most metaphysical systems do not manifest any arbitrariness is that they must, first of all, be in agreement with empirical evidence. Indeed, if one looks without prejudices at the history of metaphysics, one can easily see that the characteristic points of every significant metaphysical system have been either suggested by some features of

reality which particularly impressed the thinker, or by the intention of removing aspects of reality which appeared to the thinker to be especially undesirable. In both cases, metaphysical constructions appear to develop as ways of satisfying the exigencies of logos by explaining empirical evidence, not in some specific or partial fields, but "as a whole." As a matter of fact, both the justification of features of reality which are felt to be in agreement with logos and the elimination of apparent difficulties which seem to be in disagreement with it, belong to the same pattern of the explanation. Under this viewpoint, no substantial difference occurs between the general hypotheses by means of which one explains current facts in a particular scientific domain (or resolves its apparent puzzles or difficulties) and the general ideas which lie at the foundation of a metaphysical doctrine. THE ROLE OF INTERPRETATION But one might remark at this point that metaphysical systems contain much more than is strictly necessary for explaining experience; they have a "redundancy" which is not admitted in science and which opens the way to at least a certain looseness, if not actually arbitrariness, in the use of reason. This remark is correct, but it does not indicate anything negative. It simply points to the fact that pure and simple explanation is not the ultimate goal of intellectual understanding. What is needed in addition to logical explanation, is what we could call an interpretation of what is known and explained. As a matter of fact, the category of interpretation is still quite alien to the current philosophy of science, but it has moments when it appears to be tacitly understood. Take for instance the usual prescription not to admit ad hoc hypotheses in a scientific theory. This prescription is universally made, but no justification of it is properly proposed: it sounds more or less like a tacit moral imperative. This lack of logical justification is a good symptom that something is afoot. Indeed, an ad hoc hypothesis satisfies all the requirements that an explanation could impose; if we feel dissatisfied with it, this means that there are other requirements to be fulfilled beside explanation itself. These requirements are not difficult to identify. We want our hypotheses to fit in harmoniously with a kind of general perspective. They must keep acceptable and rational relationships, not only with empirical evidence, but also among themselves, and this harmony is not sufficiently provided by the pure fact of not being mutually contradictory. We want more, we want a comprehensive picture which might enable us to believe that we have got an acceptable "interpretation" of that side of reality we are investigating in our particular science. In other words, the unity of the explanation is something which we could call "interpretation" and which is aimed at in every science by introducing some additional requirements which are "redundant" with respect to what is strictly necessary for the explanation proper. Interpretation and Understanding. But there is still more to be said about this point. The above indicates that we need an interpretation as a kind of unitary picture that enables us to "understand" what we have been able to explain. In this sense the interpretation and the understanding appear as results, as the endpoint of the cognitive process. This is true, but there is nevertheless a sense according to which this understanding must occur somehow at the beginning of the cognitive process. In order to open the way to the appreciation of this fact, one could reflect on the obviousness of this statement: one cannot explain something which one has not understood. This statement clearly indicates that there must be a kind of global appreciation or comprehension of something as a precondition for any program of explaining its features or behavior. This fact has some definite and detailed reasons within psychology, which we do not want to discuss here. We simply want to stress that, on the basis of the preceding considerations, one must admit that interpretation has a quite significant role also in science: scientific theories all have a rather important hermeneutic component. Great scientific theories, such as Ptolemaic astronomy, the Copernican system, Newtonion mechanics, the theory of evolution and relativity theory all show this hermeneutic character with special

clarity. Let us come now to the consideration that such hermeneutic efforts are bound, in the case of metaphysics, to personal intuitions, to private appreciations of individual philosophers. This is true only partially, because there is an "historical determinateness" also for philosophical systems and metaphysical conceptions, although they need the intervention of an exceptional mind to be created at a certain moment and much freedom and ingenuity are involved in this creation. The same is true of science as well, both on the small and the large scale. On the small scale we must admit the hermeneutic nature of the act by which the individual scientist proposes or invents a conjecture (to use Popper's terms), even before formulating it clearly in the form of a full-fledged hypothesis to be put to the test. On the large scale, the hermeneutic nature of the activity that leads to conceiving some general theory or unifying schema which is able to unite a lot of scattered facts and formerly separate hypotheses or laws, is even clearer. From every angle we reach the same conclusion: hermeneutic has become highly esteemed in recent years within some philosophical trends and also within some "human sciences," like history, theology, linguistics, and even sociology. It deserves indeed to be given more serious consideration also in the domain of natural sciences. If one acknowledges this, one can no longer blame metaphysics for giving considerable space to an hermeneutic component or consider this to be evidence of its inferiority with respect to science. As before, the entire difference lies in the scope of the hermeneutic effort, which envisages the "whole" in the case of metaphysics and some particular domain of objects in the case of science. PROGRESS IN SCIENCE AND IN METAPHYSICS Another important feature, which is often mentioned as one of the most clear distinctive marks of science, and actually as the one that more than other expresses its superiority with respect to metaphysics, had already greatly impressed Kant. It is the irresistible and cumulative progress of scientific knowledge, compared with the frustrating destiny of metaphysics, which allegedly handles the very same problems all the time and starts again and again from the beginning with every new philosopher. It is not by chance that metaphysical questions are often called "eternal problems," while scientific problems are such as to receive a positive or negative solution after a reasonable time spent in investigating them. Particularly during the time of the early positivism this used to be the main argument against metaphysics, whose futility was claimed to be evident from its lack of "results," to use the way of speaking of scientists who wanted to indicate the positive character of their work. Although still widely accepted, the stereotyped image of science that lies behind this kind of evaluation has been shown to be too optimistic and oversimplified. In the last decades, severe criticism has been made against the idea that science develops by a linear accumulation of knowledge. Moreover, some authors have reversed this pattern of cumulative progress and speak of the discontinuous movement of science, in which the transition from one theory to another is the expression of "incommensurable" world outlooks. Recent Views about Progress in Science. It would be too lengthy to enter into here a detailed discussion of these positions. In particular, it is certainly possible to justify a reasonable and undeniable sense in which one must say that there is a certain accumulation of knowledge in science.3 Nonetheless, one cannot underestimate, on the other hand, the arguments and historical analyses by which scholars, like Kuhn and Feyerabend, have shown that much of the alleged continuity in science is simply the result of an ad hoc retrospective reconstruction, made from the viewpoint of the more recent stage reached by scientific research. If, on the contrary, one takes history in its actual development, one sees how sudden and very complicated scientific "revolutions" often are. The "results" of the preceding science are often forgotten and disregarded or, at best, are reinterpreted according to a conceptual frame of reference that is at variance with the one they were related to before,

and as a consequence actually receive quite a different meaning. According to these more recent views, not only is the old positivist but also the neopositivist idea wrong, according to which the transition from one theory to another was simply determined by the discovery of some unexpected fact that did not fit in with the old theory, and pushed scientists to find another theory which was able to explain all the old facts and the new ones. They also do not agree with the Popperian view, which attributes the responsibility of theory-change to the "falsification" of the old theory through a clash with some empirical evidence, thereby giving rise to a new theory, "incompatible" with the old one. Against these interpretations of theory change, which are both "logical" in their motivation, Kuhn and Feyerabend attribute theory change to a discontinuous and global variation of a "paradigm," which leads to discarding the entire conceptual world of the old theory and introducing a new one, even in the presence of many logical difficulties and/or empirical shortcomings. Without trying to discuss these views (which contain also some weak points), it is enough for the sake of our discourse to remark that this new way of conceiving the flux of science not only shows the character of abstract idealization which was inherent to the schema of cumulative progress, but interprets the dynamics of this flux in a way which has much in common with the way different metaphysical systems have actually superseded each other in the history of philosophy.4 But, it could be said, even if one admits that scientific development is not able to be correctly represented under the image of the linear cumulative progress that was held some time ago, it is nevertheless true that nobody can deny "some kind of authentic progress" in science, while nothing of this kind seems to be the case with metaphysics. This statement is far from being self-evident or well supported, if not because we do not dispose of exact criteria for recognizing (let alone evaluating or measuring) scientific progress or even for universally determining "what it is." Still, it can be said with confidence that present scientific knowledge is not only "larger," but also "better" than that of other ages, because we have been able to retain the successful guesses made in the past about several special fields of inquiry, and also to learn from their mistakes and shortcomings. In other words, there are contents of knowledge which we regard as definitely acquired (although their validity may yet be better understood or interpreted) and we know that some ways lead to certain pitfalls or that some negative results have been obtained about certain specific questions. Progress in Metaphysics. There is a kind of "global" perception of scientific progress, which is quite compatible with a non-linear and non-cumulative picture of it. But it can now be said that a quite analogous perception can be taken as the basis for claiming that the extreme variety of metaphysical doctrines is fully compatible with an ascertainable progress in the metaphysical inquiry. In other words, a professional philosopher cannot ignore that some specific problems have been investigated by Aristotle or Kant and that such and such are the objective "results" obtained in those inquiries. When facing one of the so-called "eternal problems," he actually should know where certain efforts of solution inevitably lead, which paths are closed, etc. It turns out, therefore, that also in philosophy, and particularly in metaphysics, one can say that certain things can no longer be maintained, e.g., after Kant or Wittgenstein. In this sense we know "more" in philosophy than other ages--approximately in the same sense in which this can be claimed in the case of science. We can also say that our philosophical knowledge is "better" than prior ones, in the sense, e.g., that our notion of "dialectics" is richer and deeper than that, let us say, of Plato, due to the contributions of Kant, Hegel and Marx. But even more convincing than this effort at a "global" evaluation of progress (which, at any rate, shows no less vagueness and questionability in science as in metaphysics) may be what we might call its "local" evaluation. One of the most fruitful ideas introduced by Kuhn is his distinction between "normal" and "extraordinary" science, the second being characterized by the adoption of that critical and destructive attitude which Popper had imagined to be the constant

habit of the scientist. During the periods of "normal" science, specialists work in a kind of routine job, trying to develop and to exploit all the intrinsic possibilities of a paradigm by solving more and more complicated puzzles which challenge their ingenuity. As a consequence, a real accumulation of "results" takes place, which constitutes an actual "progress" in the usual sense of this term, until the vein offered by a certain paradigm is exhausted and another comes and proposes its puzzles. This schema applies perfectly also to metaphysics: when a great system of metaphysics is proposed, it is like a fresh paradigm and many generations of philosophers may work in developing its possibilities by applying it in a variety of contexts, from ontology, to ethics, to philosophy of nature, etc. As this gives rise to a series of actual "results," we must say that we "know more," about the possibilities provided by that metaphysical framework at the end of a period of such a development than at the beginning of it. It may also happen that, after a certain time, the paradigm is exhausted--which usually happens when the fertility of the first application is followed by the routine repetition or commentaries of scholastic pedantism, as it happened to Aristotelianism in the Renaissance, to Hegelianism in the past century, and to Marxism in our century. At that moment, a new metaphysics may be expected to come and propose its challenges to the speculative intellects. Knowledge and Belief. There is a last point that one should mention in this comparison of science and metaphysics. This is related to the fact that metaphysics seems necessarily to be bound to some kind of "belief," as it usually implies some personal attitude towards the world and some personal involvement in one's style of life. The question is too complicated to be discussed here. We shall limit ourselves to the remark that, from a certain viewpoint, it may be said that metaphysics is an effort of knowing "inside a belief." Science too, however, has the same epistemic structure, only restricted to its own objects. It is the task of the logos to justify the transition from belief to knowledge; as we saw that logos is necessarily involved in science too, it follows that such a transition also concerns science, as long as it is a conjectural inquiry. I prefer not to insist on this point, about which a few more hints may be found in one of the above-mentioned papers.5 ELEMENTS OF DISTINCTION BETWEEN SCIENCE AND METAPHYSICS In conclusion, in spite of the affinities which have emerged, science and metaphysics may and have to be distinguished. The main element of distinction is represented by the different thematic interest of the two, which we had the opportunity of mentioning several times: the "point of view of the whole" for metaphysics, several limited points of view for the different sciences, and the point of view of "the whole of experience" for science as such. We have already indicated this difference as constituting the distinction of the respective "cognitive interests" of metaphysics and science, but this difference leads also to other peculiarities which separate more sharply the intellectual attitude of the two. As a consequence of assuming a particular viewpoint in its inquiry about reality, every science is led to assume the nature of an intrinsically "refutable" knowledge: it appears as tacitly understood that some neglected aspects of reality might turn out to be relevant enough to impose revisions of our established theories, even after they have been developed in a satisfactory and seemingly "complete" form. In contrast, this cannot be the intellectual attitude of an investigation which intends to put itself from the point of view of the whole: it follows that this must be inclined towards getting a structurally non-conjectural and non-refutable knowledge. This is why metaphysics, though being right in claiming its status of knowledge, cannot be attributed the additional character of being a science in the modern sense of this word. This dissimilarity of intellectual attitude, on the other hand, helps us recognize that the difference in the "cognitive interests" mentioned above is actually more

than that. Indeed it calls our attention to the different kinds of problems and questions which stimulate man and introduces a distinction among them based on the degree of certainty we would want to rely upon in the answers we get. Many of these questions are such as to be adequately answered when we reach a conjectural but still reasonably reliable solution: these are most of the "practical questions" of life. However, there are also other questions, concerning which we feel we could not be satisfied with less than an irrefutable answer: these are the questions on which man "engages his own life" or, if one prefers, the radical existential questions. Their nature is such that no scientific "conjectural" inquiry is structurally apt to handle them. An ultimate rational inquiry, such as that of metaphysics, appear to be the only proper tool for trying to treat them according to the exigencies of logos and not only of faith. It should be clear from the above that metaphysics presupposes an existential engagement not involved in science; this is a major distinction between them which cannot be overlooked. An implicit admission of this fact is to be found in the general reaction against "scientism" and in the polemics against the so-called "neutrality of science" that have become common during the last two decades. As a matter of fact, those polemics were right in stressing that "pure science" cannot satisfy the most radical human exigencies, that it can bring social and moral disengagement and "alienation," that doing scientific research cannot avoid being even unconsciously involved in choices and decisions which imply conflicts of values and of worldviews. But this was incorrectly interpreted as an obligation to modify the cognitive status of science, by injecting values, choices, and worldviews and by making it partisan and "non-neutral." That was a patently wrong solution to a correct problem: that solution consisted in again confusing science with metaphysics, ignoring that modern science had found its identity by ridding itself of the metaphysical mode of thinking within its domain of research. That proposed solution was therefore objectively "reactionary," even if it was proposed with the pretension of being "progressist." The truly correct solution consists rather in recognizing that an harmonious and un-mutilated or integral intellectual attitude needs both scientific and metaphysical outlooks, that both are equally legitimate but differently motivated, and that the one cannot substitute for what can be provided by the other. There are signs that our time has reached the maturity to recognize this kind of balanced synthesis after a long period of "dissociation" in western civilization, which had prevented it from really being a "scientific civilization." In order to achieve that status, science must find a way of coping with metaphysics, without either of the two losing its identity. University of Fribourg Fribourg, Switzerland NOTES 1. Among such papers see: "Scienza e metafisica oggi," in Studi di filosofia in onore di G. Bontadini (Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 1977), I, 3-22. "Science and Metaphysics Confronting Nature," Dialectics and Humanism, IV (1977), 127-136. "Metaphysics in Contemporary Philosophy," Ratio (1977), 162-169. "Considerazioni epistemologiche su scienza e metafisica," in C. Huber, ed., Teoria e metodo delle scienze (Roma: Universita Gregoriana, 1981), pp. 311-340. 2. About this distinction see especially the last chapter of the book by the present author, Temi e problemi di filosofia della fisica (Roma; Abete 1974), or, in English, "The Concept of Empirical Data," in M. Prezelecki, R. Wojcicli, C. Szaniawski, eds., Formal Methods in the Methodology of Empirical Science (Dordrecht-Boston: Reidel, 1976), pp. 143-157. 3. See e.g., by the present author, "Commensurability, Incommensurability, and Cumulativity in Scientific Knowledge," Erkenntnis, 22 (1985), 51-77. A brief discussion concerning this topic is presented in the paper "Considerazioni epistemologiche su scienza e metafisica," see note (1) above. 4. Beside Kuhn and Feyerabend, one could mention at least the book by J. Agassi, Science in Flux (Dordrecht-Boston: Reidel, 1975) and for a different historicistic

perspective, the book by K. Hu¦ bner, Critique of Scientific Reason (Chicago: 1985). CHAPTER VIII SOME TASKS FOR METAPHYSICIANS MARIO BUNGE The aim of this paper is to discuss the following: Thesis: metaphysicians should investigate problems in both the science of metaphysics and the metaphysics of science. Why? Because they are there at least in nuce. What for? Because metaphysical problems are all-important for the whole of culture, not just for philosophy, and thus deserve being investigated thoroughly, rigorously, and systematically. My thesis, though not new, is not popular.1 Indeed, most thinkers reject the claim that metaphysics can be turned into a rigorous science, and most scientists are unaware of the metaphysical concepts and hypotheses inherent in their research. Therefore we must take a look at both the science of metaphysics and the metaphysics of science. THE SCIENCE OF METAPHYSICS Philosophers as diverse as Kant, Bolzano, Peirce, Alexander, Scholz, Woodger, and Donald Williams have thought that a science of metaphysics is possible--though each for different reasons. While for some of them metaphysics could be rigorous because it must be a priori (like logic), for others metaphysics could be scientific by being thoroughly empirical, and therefore could be forced to be compatible with science. Unfortunately none of the philosophers mentioned above produced a system of scientific metaphysics. While some, like Peirce, were fragmentarians, others, like Alexander, were not acquainted with science. Hence, none of them was able to prove that a scientific metaphysics is possible in the only way such proof can be given, i.e., by producing a system of metaphysics congenial with science. What are the conditions for a scientific approach to metaphysical problems? I submit that they are the same as for the scientific approach to any other conceptual problems, namely, the ones summarized in the following: Criterion: A set of metaphysical problems is approached in a scientific manner iff: (i) the problems are relevant to contemporary scientific knowledge, either because they arise in the course of scientific or technological research, or because the latter has some bearing on them; (ii) the problems and the proposed solutions to them are well formed and well conceived--i.e., well formulated; (iii) the problems are investigated with the help of the most suitable formal (logical or mathematical) tools; (iv) the investigation is carried out with the help of the available scientific knowledge; (v) the solutions to the problems are presented in a systematic fashion--i.e., in the form of theories, preferably (though not necessarily) axiomatized theories; and (vi) the proposed theories are checked for consistency, both internal (logical) and external (with the bulk of contemporary knowledge). We defer to the third Section the consideration of an example of the scientific approach to an ontological problem. THE METAPHYSICS OF SCIENCE That science has metaphysical presuppositions is of course a thesis familiar to philosophers and one accepted by a handful of scientists. However, metaphysicians seem to have failed to establish their thesis for want of two things. One is a clear elucidation of the very notion of a metaphysical presupposition; the other is an extensive search for, and systematization of, the metaphysical presuppositions of science. Let me give a hint concerning each of these unfulfilled tasks.

In studying the question whether science has metaphysical presuppositions we should avail ourselves of Kant's distinction between constitutive and regulative principles. We can say that a metaphysical statement is constitutive of a body of knowledge if it is used in proving statements of some theory included in that body; on the other hand a metaphysical statement is regulative with respect to a body of knowledge if it guides the search for some constituents of that body. In other words, we propose the following: Definition1 Let m be a metaphysical statement (definition or assumption). Then (i) m is a theoretical metaphysical presupposition of science iff there is a scientific theory T such that m occurs in T or among the premises employed in deriving consequences of the postulates and definitions of T; (ii) m is a heuristic metaphysical presupposition of science iff m occurs in a scientific research process, either in the selection of problems for research, or in the building of hypotheses or theories, or in the latter's empirical tests. For example, it is a theoretical presupposition of every chemical theory that every chemical compound has some emergent properties, i.e., properties not possessed by its components. And the hypothesis that thinking has no direct effect on matter (i.e., that psychokinesis is nonexisting) is a heuristic presupposition of the design and interpretation of every scientific experiment. If we now examine contemporary science in the light of the above definition, we are likely to find hundreds of metaphysical hypotheses at work in either a constitutive or a regulative capacity. Let the following list suffice: "There is an external world," "The world is composed of things," "Every thing possesses properties (to be distinguished from the attributes by which we conceptualize the former)," "Things are grouped into systems," and "Every system save the universe interacts with other systems in certain respects and is isolated with yet other systems in other respects." To expand this list, and to transform it into a well organized system (i.e., a theory), is an open problem. I.e., the metaphysics of science is yet to be born. EXAMPLE: THE CONCEPT OF EMERGENCE The concept of emergence has been much maligned by positivist philosophers and looks suspicious to most contemporary scientists. This is probably due not only to the influence of a mechanistic ontology but also to the fact that most of the philosophers who harp on emergence fail to analyze the concept and moreover claim that emergence can be neither explained nor predicted. Be that as it may, the fact is that science does use the notion of emergence and that this notion is a typically metaphysical one. So it behooves the metaphysician of science to clarify this notion. One way of doing so is as follows. Assume ordinary predicate logic and elementary set theory, as well as my theories of things, properties, and time (Bunge, 1977). Call px(t) the set of all properties of thing x at time t (relative to a given reference frame). Then the following conventions can be introduced: Definition2 Call the totality of (concrete) things and T the time span relative to some reference frame. Further, call px(t) the set of properties possessed by thing x at time t T, and px(t') the set of properties of x at a later time t'>t. Then (i) the total qualitative novelty occurring in x during the time interval [t, t'] is the symmetric (or Boolean) difference nx(t,t')= px(t) px( ); t< ->t' (ii) the emergent properties acquired by x during the time interval [t, t'] are those in ex(t,t') = px( ) - px( ); t< ->t' (iii) the absolutely emergent properties (or "firsts") appearing in x during [t, t'] are those in eax(t,t') = ex(t,t') - py( ), with y x and -
(iv) the absolutely emergent properties acquired by the world during the lapse [t, t'] (relative to the given reference frame) are those in: ea(t,t') = eax(t,t'). x These concepts can be utilized to formulate a number of metaphysical statements concerning novelty and, in particular, emergence. Perhaps the most interesting of all such statements are those concerning the emergence and disappearance of properties in the course of assembly processes, i.e., of processes transforming aggregates of things into systems. In order to state a few metaphysical hypotheses of this type we must first clarify quickly the notions of system and of assembly. A concrete system may be characterized as a complex thing whose parts are held together by certain bonds. More precisely, a system is a thing with (a) composition equal to the set of its parts, (b) environment equal to the set of things that can act on the system's components or that can be acted on by the latter, and (c) structure equal to the set of relations among the system's components and between these and the system's environment, and such that it includes relations of the bonding (or linking or coupling) kind. The subset of the structure of a system consisting of the bonds among its parts can be called the bondage of the system. (For an exact elucidation of the above notions see Bunge, 1978). The definition we need is: Definition3. Let x be a concrete system composed initially of uncoupled parts. Then (i) x assembles into y at time t'>t iff y is a system with the same composition as x but a nonempty bondage; (ii) the assembly process is one of self-assembly iff the aggregate x turns by itself into the system y. We may assume that there is at least one self-assembly process going on in some complex thing in every time interval: Postulate 1 For every time interval [t, t'] T relative to any reference system, there is a self-assembly process occurring in some complex thing x within that interval. Our next assumption is that every assembly process is accompanied by the gain of some properties and the loss of others. That is, we propose: Postulate 2. Let the parts of a thing x self-assemble into a system during the time interval [t, t']. Then (i) the system lacks some of the properties of its components (or precursors), i.e., px(t) - px(t') 0; and (ii) the system possesses some properties that its components (or precursors) lack, i.e., px(t') - px(t) 0. Postulates 1 and 2 entail the following consequence: Theorem. During every time interval, relative to any reference system, there is at least one thing losing some properties and acquiring others. The above fragment of a theory of novelty is relevant to science, it is formulated with the help of formal tools, and it is hoped to be consistent with contemporary science. In short, presumably it satisfies our Criterion in the first Section for a metaphysical problem to be approached in a scientific manner. And, since many a scientific problem is motivated by the belief that certain processes result in the formation of things possessing emergent properties, our microtheory belongs also to the metaphysics of science. CONCLUDING REMARKS The metaphysical tradition should be enriched by vigorously pursuing two intertwining lines of study: the building of systems of scientific metaphysics, and the analysis and systematization of the metaphysical hypotheses inherent (either in a constitutive or in a regulative capacity) in science. Because neither science nor philosophy stand still, there is no reason to believe that a definitive science of metaphysics or a definitive metaphysics of science will ever be built. Both fields of metaphysics are likely to keep changing as long as there remain investigators interested in them.

University of Montreal Montreal, Quebec, Canada REFERENCES Mario Bunge, The Furniture of the World (Dordrecht and Boston: Reidel, 1977). Mario Bunge, A World of Systems (Dordrecht and Boston: Reidel, 1978). CHAPTER IX THE PROBLEM OF METAPHYSICAL PRESUPPOSITIONS IN AND OF SCIENCE KURT HU¦ BNER Let me begin with a short logical analysis of one of the basic theses in traditional philosophy, namely the thesis that there are metaphysical presuppositions in and of science. 1. What is meant by "presupposition" here and what is metaphysical? Obviously science essentially consists of hypotheses and theories and both consist of general statements. Take e. g., the gravitational theory, the theory of special and general relativity, of quantum mechanics, the hypothesis of the expanding universe, of the ether, of phlogiston, the theories of capitalism, of socialism, of the Rechtsstaat, of ancient Roman law, of the medieval feudal system, of classical or modern music, of different styles in literature, etc., etc. In all these cases hypotheses and theories describe general basic rules by a system of statements (axioms, theorems, lemma, etc.); these rules determine the objects of nature or the behavior of men. Indeed we speak sometimes of a theory or a hypothesis regarding an individual event like, e.g., the theory of the origin of the moon or the hypothesis of the rather mystical character of Jeanne d'Arc. But even in these cases we mean nothing else than the explanation of individual events with the help of general rules. In the first of the given examples we apply physical laws to a special case and in the second example we presumably will apply psychological laws or general dispositional predicates. Nowadays some attempt to represent theories as definitions of set predicates. But without mentioning that definitions of that kind are possible only in highly formalized cases I want to stress the fact that at least every theory can be formulated in statements too. Now, if metaphysicians speak of certain metaphysical presuppositions in science (I will discuss possible presuppositions of science later on) they obviously mean in particular that general statements there can be somehow logically derived from other statements they call metaphysical. And these metaphysical statements they think to be a priori which are necessarily valid and can never be falsified. 2. But how can scientific statements which we think to be empirical be derived from metaphysical statements which are understood as a priori? Let me give a simple example. Cosmologists today believe in the so called cosmological principle. According to this principles the universe is homogeneous and isotropic. Even if there is some empirical evidence in favor of this principle today we can easily imagine a philosopher who has some reasons to believe in it as a metaphysical, as e.g., Copernicus thought the universe has to be very simple because of the clearness and rationality of its creator. Now, from this principle we can first derive the Walker Robertson line element. Using the metric tensors of this allegedly aprioristic line element for the empirical field equations of the theory of general relativity we get an equation with different solutions each representing a special model of the universe. Consequently it is possible to regard this equation as the logical result of a priori and of a posteriori presuppositions. The same is true if we add to this equation some empirical knowledge regarding its variables like the space curvature and the cosmological constant. Then in applying the equation we can use special values for these variables and get a special model of the universe, expressed by a singular statement. Thus, not only general scientific statements as it seemed at first, but also singular scientific statements could be a logical result both of a priori and a posteriori statements.

To summarize: By metaphysical presuppositions in science metaphysicians evidently understand that part of a group of premises of a deduction of general or singular scientific statements which contains only a priori and necessarily valid statements. After this short analysis and definition it should be asked whether there are presuppositions of that kind. This question divides into two parts: First: Are there a priori presuppositions in science and secondly: Are some or all of them necessarily valid? 3. As to the first question the answer is undoubtedly: Yes. Mainly we can distinguish five types of a priori presuppositions in science: instrumental, functional, axiomatic, judicial and normative. Let me explain that briefly. If we want to test a theory we make measurements with instruments. This presupposes certain theories about the functioning of these instruments. Of course some of these instrumental theories can be tested too but for that we again need measurements with certain instruments and certain theoretical presuppositions, etc. To avoid a regression ad infinitum we have to stop somewhere and somehow to stipulate the validity of some of our presuppositions. These are the instrumental presuppositions a priori in the given context. Now, if with their help we have got some dispersed measurement results we unavoidably have to make some extrapolations and some interpolations to get a curve which we can describe by a mathematical function. Again the principles on which these extrapolations and interpolations rest cannot be tested, but have to be regarded as a priori. These are what I called the functional presuppositions. With the help of mathematical functions we can construct the axioms of a theory. How can we empirically test those axioms? Adding to them some initial conditions (e.g., by measurements) we can derive from them special basic statements and these basic statements can be compared with those basic statements which describe the outcome of measurements. If both harmonize we say the theory has been corroborated--at least for the present--and if they do not harmonize we say the theory has been falsified--at least for the present. But the corroboration never says that the theory is true because for logical reasons the truth of a conclusion--here the basic statements--does not imply the truth of the premises-here the axioms. On the other hand, the falsification does not say that the theory is false because this falsification depends on basic statements which themselves are dependent on theories and not all of these theories can--as already mentioned--be tested (some of them at least have to be stipulated a priori). Consequently the axioms of a theory are strictly speaking neither empirically true nor false but they are a priori stipulations (with more or less additional empirical evidence). If one does not like this conclusion he should remember that, even if there are some axioms in a given context which do find additional empirical support, there will always be some too which do not. The reason is that at least among the axioms of the instrumental theories used there will be some--as already shown--which have to be stipulated a priori to avoid a regressus ad infinitum. Consequently in any case there are axioms and axiomatic presuppositions a priori in science. Now, because no basic statement strictly verifies or falsifies a theory we always have to use some criteria and principles according to which we decide whether in a special case we have to accept or to reject a theory. All the different propositions of inductivists, falsificationists, etc., according to which we allegedly have to judge about a theory on the basis of a given empirical evidence are of that kind. But obviously they are propositions for experience not by experience, and consequently they too are a priori ones. For that reason I call them judicial principles a priori. Finally there will be some ideas among scientist as to how to distinguish a scientific from a non-scientific theory or hypothesis. In other words they will use some norms in doing so. Norms, however, as is clear by definition, are a priori because they do not say what is but what should be. Again let me summarize: On the one hand we cannot set up a theory--or a

hypothesis--without a priori norms and axioms; on the other hand we cannot test it without some a priori stipulations regarding the testing instruments or the constructing of functions and without some judicial rules. All this is the necessary framework in which scientific experience takes place, and all this is the necessary condition for doing any scientific work. These a priori presuppositions of science are like the rules of a game, the game of experience. Without them we cannot not play at all; with them we can play the game but it is only empirically that can we find its outcome. 4. Having shown that there are a priori presuppositions in science, are some or all of them necessarily valid? How could we be sure of this necessity? We know about strict necessity only in formal logic. Formal logic however, never teaches us about reality because its character is rather tautological. (Either it will rain tomorrow or it will not rain tomorrow is certainly logically and necessarily true, but it does not give us any information about what really will happen.) Nevertheless, metaphysicians believed in the necessary validity of certain a priori statements for different reasons. Some of them thought that there is something like an immediate rational insight into an absolute truth (Rationalism a- la Descartes); some of them thought that there are necessary conditions for the experience or the selfconsciousness of the ego (transcendentalism a- la Kant); some of them thought that reason produces a special dialectic and that reality is necessarily a mirror of that dialectic (dialectic a- la Hegel), etc. Of course, I can not name all these different ways of regarding statements as metaphysical (that is, as absolutely true) and even less can I try to discuss them here. But I can say this: Obviously none of them was convincing to such a degree that everybody necessarily accepted the alleged necessity maintained by metaphysicians. That means that, in any case, they could not compete with the strict necessity recognized in formal logic and that their conviction lacks exactly that intersubjectivity to which they seem to pretend. Consequently it is at least very doubtful if there are any statements which could be necessarily valid, and therefore metaphysical in the traditional sense. These doubts are strongly supported by the history of science. Almost all the statements which have been taken as necessarily valid have been given up sooner or later or at least one has found out that they present only one of several different possibilities. (I would like to remind the reader of the belief that the universe has necessarily an Euclidian structure, that physics has to be necessarily deterministic, that there has to be necessarily an ether, that there is necessarily an absolute difference between inertial and gravitational systems, etc. etc.) 5. Now, if on the one hand there are a priori presuppositions in science and if on the other hand they are not necessarily valid, another question arises: How can we avoid regarding these statements as purely arbitrary? How can we justify them? This is obviously the old Kantian quaestio juris in a new form which does more justice to the facts of the history of science. My answer to this question is: Such a justification is only possible regarding the special conditions of a historical situation. To justify statements a priori will always mean to deduce them from other statements of that kind. We can deduce more special statements from more general ones, we can transfer a group of statements from one special field to another simply by changing their content and keeping their structure, etc. If, for example, somebody believes in the cosmological principle mentioned before it could be that he justifies it in a Copernican way. He could say that this principle must be true because generally the principle of the uniformity and simplicity of the universe must be true and the last principle must be true because the divine creation can not be something obscure and confused but must be something clear and reasonable. We may or may not like such an argument, but it was very powerful in the history of science and, in any case, it shows clearly the logical structure of justifications of a priori presuppositions in science. We see also that the deduction in which those justifications consist stops somewhere in the historical background; in our special case this background

is a certain theological idea rooted in the 15th century. So, on the one hand, justifications of a priori statements depend on a special historical situation which originated in a special epoch and will perish with it again; but, on the other hand, these justifications are not purely arbitrary because they are a consequence of the situation scientists live in. Between necessity and arbitrariness there is a third element: The logic of a situation. More, I think, cannot be expected by mortal beings. Let me once more come back to metaphysics. Even if, according to my opinion, we have to give up the idea that there are presuppositions a priori in science which are necessarily true, I still think it reasonable to call some of them metaphysical. Take, for example, the already mentioned postulate of the simplicity and unity of the world. Isn't it rather an expression of a Weltanschauung? So far I have only spoken of a priori presuppositions in science. But how about a priori presuppositions of science? Let us look at the postulate that nature is a system of causal laws or let us look at the idea that laws have to be at least conceptually clearly distinguished, both from space and time and from the individual events which take place in space and time and are coordinated in them and into them with the help of laws. That this is not a self evident idea but one of the main presuppositions of science becomes very clear if we compare this scientific Weltbetrachtung with a mythical one in which the general and the individual, the law and the event, and again all this and space and time cannot be separated but are joined in special unities and concrete forms. It is not only the history of mankind which shows that the bases of the scientific Weltbetrachtung obviously are not necessarily imposed on the human mind; this is shown also by the analysis given here. Because this Weltbetrachtung is not the result of experience but a certain framework in which experience can take place. We never can grasp reality as such; we always have to start with special and even metaphysical presuppositions. Let me conclude in the following way. Unavoidably there are metaphysical statements in science and there are also metaphysical presuppositions of science like the one just mentioned of a very general and basic kind. Metaphysics, however, does not consist of groups or systems of statements which are strictly necessary; it is rather an expression of and an answer to a special given historical situation or context in which scientists live. But even if there is not such a thing as the philosophia perennis, even if the different kinds of metaphysics, the different metaphysical presuppositions in, and the different metaphysical presuppositions of, science change in history and are perishable we should not feel depressed by that fact. Let me give a simile: What we see with our eyes we reasonably call true even if it depends on the special construction and conditions of our eyes. Suppose we would know these conditions to have changed as the result of biological evolution in the past and also that they will change in the future. Should we then stop enjoying seeing the world and should we then stop being convinced that we see true things?1 der Universita¦ t Kiel Kiel, Germany NOTES 1. For further discussion of the problems discussed in this paper compare: K. Hu¦ bner, Citizens of Scientific Reason, Chicago: 1985 und "Die Wahrheit des Mythos," Mu¦ nchen: 1986. CHAPTER X COSMOLOGY AND THE PHILOSOPHER ERNAN McMULLIN A check through the standard bibliography of articles published in Western philosophy journals over the past three years shows that only about a dozen, perhaps, out of more than ten thousand entries qualify under the subject-heading, "cosmology." Cosmology is assumed nowadays to be part of science, just like paleontology or pathology. Is there any reason, then, to include a symposium on "The idea of the universe" at a Congress of Philosophy other than to let

philosophers know what others have made of their estates? There are several issues in contemporary cosmology which can properly be termed "philosophical". Two in particular have given rise to lively discussion. Neither is, in fact, new but both have taken on new and intriguing forms in recent cosmological debates. One is the problem of creation, the other concerns the "anthropic principle" favored by some cosmologists who seek to understand why the universe is the way it is. It may be worth outlining these debates in some detail in order to illustrate the sorts of question that cosmology continues to pose for the philosopher, and, conversely, to suggest what his contributions to cosmological discussion may be. THE CREATION DEBATE In the natural philosophies of Aristotle and of Newton, it seemed quite plain that time could have neither beginning nor end. The stretch of time past must be infinite. Yet for those who accepted the Biblical account of cosmic origins, it seemed as though the universe did, in fact, have a beginning. Newton had a relatively easy way to harmonize the two claims: the material universe was brought into being by God at a finite time in the past, but the space and time into which it came to be were alike infinite in extent. Medieval Aristotelians were less willing to separate matter and time; if matter began to be, then so did time.1 The classical Augustinian account of origins made creation a single timeless act on God's part, an act through which time itself as well as the changing things of which time is the measure come to be together.2 By a subtle analysis of the notions of time, cause, beginning, Aquinas endeavored to show, within a generally Aristotelian framework, that although natural reason could not of itself demonstrate that time had a beginning, there was in itself nothing incoherent about such a claim. Yet the tension between natural philosophy and the Christian world-view was not really dissipated by the efforts of either Aquinas or Newton, and there were many, like Bonaventure and Leibniz, who were emphatic in holding that an Aristotelian (or a Newtonian as the case might be) could not be sincere in his acceptance of the Genesis story. It is against this background that one must view the controversy with which the expanding-universe theories have been surrounded from the beginning. The current Big Bang model postulates a singularity somewhere between ten and twenty billion years ago, from which the expansion of the universe began. For the first time, natural philosophy was led to assert, on its own resources, something that sounds like a beginning of time. No wonder that scientists and non-scientists spoke of this horizon-event as "the Creation", and of the time since it occurred as "the age of the universe". But these identifications immediately give rise to two sorts of objection. How is one to know (a point made by Lemaitre in the earliest debates occasioned by his model) that the Big Bang was not preceded by a Big Squeeze? Why could there not have been an unending cyclical series, like Vico's Ricorso on a grander scale? Even though a Big Squeeze would destroy all traces of the history that preceded, some general features of the prior sequence (the period of the cycle, for example) might possibly be inferred.3 Though one might prefer to speak of the universe that preceded the Big Bang as a "different" universe, there could still be a perfectly legitimate sense in which, because it in some sense provided the "materials" for the next stage, it could be called the "same" universe as ours. Thus, the Big Bang cannot automatically be taken to be either the beginning of time or of the universe, nor can one take for granted that the lapse of time since it occurred is the "age" of the universe.4 Even if the progress of cosmology leads us to opt for the "open" rather than the "closed" expanding model,5 one which makes the universe expand indefinitely instead of endlessly "rebounding", this could hardly be said to rule out the possibility of a preceding stage of matter to which we simply have no access through the singularity. Thus, there is no cogent reason to take the Big Bang to mark the beginning of time. On the other hand, there is no compelling reason why it might not have constituted such a beginning. Mario Bunge asserts that science requires a "genetic

principle" which would exclude such "irrational and untestable notions" as that of an absolute beginning of the universe.6 His argument is that the "known laws of nature" require that explanation in terms of an antecedent be always available. E.H. Hutten makes a similar claim: the notion of a first event makes no sense (he says) because one can always ask: "what happened before?"7 The most determined opposition comes from Marxist-Leninist writers who claim that the notion of an absolute beginning has "idealist" implications, and that in any event it contravenes conservation laws and runs counter to the basic principles of dialectical materialism. The notion that absolute beginnings of any kind are excluded by the laws of physics recalls the Aristotelian arguments for a similar position which were so warmly debated by medieval critics. The real question is the applicability of these laws to the sort of singularity the model postulates. Hawking is insistent that the laws of "normal" physics ought not be expected to apply to a singularity, especially not a singularity which comprises the entire universe.8 A genetic principle which tells the scientist he ought always seek for an explanation of a particular state by looking to an earlier state, or a conservation principle which directs scientists to try every other alternative before admitting that conservation of a particular sort fails, are in the first instance methodological prescriptions of a highly successful kind. Scientists ought not assume that the Big Bang has no antecedent; they ought to do whatever they can to establish a lawlike succession. But this is not to say that there must be an antecedent, that the success of these principles demonstrates that an absolute beginning is impossible. A metaphysical claim of this sort would require more on its behalf than an inductive appeal to the success up to this point of the genetic and conservation principles. Our conclusion is that the success of the Big Bang model for the first time gives a way of construing in scientific terms what a "beginning" of the universe might look like from here. But now a second question arises. Suppose the singularity was, in fact, an absolute beginning: can it be called "the Creation"? Creation is the act of a creator. A spontaneous uncaused beginning would not be a "creation"; it would be an absolute coming-to-be, nothing more. The term `creation' is an explanatory, not merely a descriptive, one.9 To say of the horizon-event that it was the Creation is to explain it in terms of a cause, a cause which is outside the time-sequence since its action is what brings time itself to be. Clearly, such an explanation is not a scientific one; science of itself could not establish a sufficiently strong principle of causality. Can philosophy do this? Until Hume's time it was generally supposed that it could, but the critiques of Hume and even more of Kant have made philosophers wary of what has come to be called the "cosmological" argument. The matter is still a hotly-disputed one;10 on one point, however, there is general agreement and that is that the issue is a properly philosophic one. Does the Big Bang model have any relevance to the issue? If the universe did "begin" at a point of time, would this give stronger support to the claim that a Creator is needed than if the universe always existed? Intuitively, one would be inclined to answer "yes" to this. An eternally existing universe seems a more plausible candidate for self-sufficiency than one which begins to be. Yet there are enough difficulties about the notion of "beginning" to warn one to treat this inference with caution. What can be said is that if the universe began by an act of creation, as earlier Western thought always supposed, then from our vantagepoint it could look something like the Big Bang that cosmologists are now talking about. What cannot be said is that the Big Bang model somehow validates the "cosmological" argument for the existence of a Creator. The inference does not work in that direction. It is interesting to note the extent to which philosophic presuppositions have affected the recent development of cosmology. The "Copernican principle" of the non-privileged status of our solar system or of our galaxy quite evidently had the status of a philosophic claim rather than just a convenient working assumption.

Perhaps the most striking illustration of this is Fred Hoyle's rejection of the Big Bang model in the 1950's and early 1960's. He was (and still is) convinced that a theory which implies a past time-singularity beyond which the history of the universe cannot be traced, cannot be a good scientific theory.11 What bothered him most was the affinity between the Big Bang model and traditional Western religious thought. His reluctance to abandon the steady-state model in the early 1960's as evidence continued to mount against it was motivated at least as much by this "anti-theological" principle as it was by the predictive virtues of his own steady-state model. One recalls in this connection the theological principles which so influenced Newton in the construction of his system. That a cosmological theory should rest in part on philosophical or theological presuppositions is not necessarily to its discredit. What would be to its discredit would be to leave these presuppositions as simple expressions of belief and nothing more,12 or to keep relying on their guidance in science even when this guidance continued to prove unhelpfu1.13 THE ANTHROPIC PRINCIPLE14 One of the liveliest debates in fourteenth-century philosophy focussed on the question: are the principles of physics necessary (as the Aristotelians maintained) or are they contingent (as the nominalists insisted). Might the universe have been other than it is? The Aristotelian view was that physics is a demonstrative science based on intrinsically evident principles. Contingency requires further explanation; if at the cosmological level one finds something that might have been other than it is, then one has to explain why it has taken the form it did. In contrast, something that is necessary requires no further explanation, and can thus be properly regarded as a scientific principle. The nominalist-voluntarist objection to this was that it limited God's freedom of choice; if God is free, then the universe might not only not have been, but it might have been of a quite different kind, operating in a different manner. To the charge that this left unexplained contingency at the heart of physics, the nominalists' response was two-fold. First, they argued that a demonstrative science of nature is an illusory goal; some kind of likelihood is the best one can achieve. Second, the contingencies of the world can be explained, "explained" in a different sense admittedly than the Aristotelian would be willing to concede, in terms of God's will. The world is the way it is, not because it had to be so, but because God willed that it should be so. A strikingly similar debate goes on around recent cosmological results. In the Newtonian universe, contingency abounded. It was plausible to argue, as Kant did, that the basic laws of Newtonian physics could not be other than they are. But the infinite universe of stars going in all directions was full of "could have been otherwise." The unification brought about in recent cosmology has revived the older question again. In an evolutionary universe each stage is explained by an earlier one. But when one gets back to the Big Bang, what should one expect? A state that could not have been otherwise? An entirely structureless entity? To put it in older terms, how can the Many come from the One, unless there is some multiplicity latent already in the One? And if there is, how is it to be explained? Coming at it from another angle, how is one to decide whether a particular feature of the universe is necessary or contingent, since we have only one universe, and thus cannot fall back on the simplest way to test a claim to necessity, i.e. that it occur in all cases? The argument for necessity will have to be a theoretical one. But such arguments are difficult to construct and notoriously open to selfdeception, as we have already seen in Eddington's case. The scientist is caught at this point. The case for necessity makes him uneasy; yet settling for contingency leaves him dissatisfied. If so far as one can see, something could have been otherwise, it seems fair to expect an answer to the question: well, then, why is it this way? Is there a limit to structural explanation, a point at which any further question (like: why is the proton/electron mass-ratio what it is?) is illegitimate? And is there a similar point beyond which genetic explanation cannot

be carried, when we get back to a first state that just was that way? In 1973, Collins and Hawking constructed a particularly teasing variant of the old question.15 The universe is known now to have a very high degree of isotropy; this is no longer, as we have seen, merely a simplification assumed for the sake of a first calculation as it had been in the past. What initial conditions would have allowed such isotropy to develop? It turns out that hardly any of the (so far as is known) possible initial conditions would have done so. It appears to be extremely difficult to construct a plausible genesis for the observed isotropy. It is not only contingent; worse, it is extremely improbable--"improbable", that is, in the sense that isotropy is produced only by an extremely small fraction of all the permitted ways in which a universe obeying the equations of general relativity might develop.16 How, then, explain such an apparently improbable occurrence? Collins and Hawking argue that galaxies can form only in an isotropic universe, and then go on to note that only where there are galaxies (and hence stars and planets) can there be life, and a fortiori rational life. If the universe were not isotropic, we could not be here to observe it. Since we are here, the universe must be isotropic. This is what Carter has called the "anthropic principle".17 The `must' here is, however, a hypothetical one. If there are to be cosmologists, then if the argument is correct, the universe will have to be isotropic (and also very old, and thus very large).18 The necessity is the necessity of consequence. But why should there be cosmologists? So far as we can tell, there very well might not have been. Our presence does not, then, explain isotropy, though isotropy might help to explain our presence. The fact (if it is one) that a non-isotropic universe could not be observed, so that we could expect the universe to be isotropic if we did not already know it to be so, makes no difference. The presence of observers in a universe may allow one to predict isotropy. But when isotropy is said to be a very "improbable" state, and we seek an explanation for why it should be the case, we cannot invoke the presumably at least equally improbable presence of observers. Why should the joint state: observers plus isotropy have occurred in the first place? One may simply say: the explanation ends; this just is the way it is, and there is no more to be said. The anthropic principle might, however, be construed as an explanation if one or other of two further specifications were to be permitted. If the universe is the work of a Creator who wills that conscious life develop in it, if in other words, the traditional Judaeo-Christian view should be correct that the purpose of the universe is in part, at least, man, then the presence of man in the world would explain the isotropy, the size, the age, and all the rest. Note that this is a stronger form of explanation than the medieval one which would explain, say, the presence of elephants or snow in the world by simply invoking God's will. Reasons can be given in the traditional Judaeo-Christian perspective for why God would want man in the world. Thus, the explanation is not merely by the presumed fact of choice, but by some presumptive reasons for the choice. The anthropic principle, if fortified by the traditional doctrine of creation, does therefore give an explanation, though it is no longer, of course, a scientific explanation. The second way in which the anthropic principle might be strengthened is to suppose that all or most of the possible universes do, in fact, come to be either in entire isolation from one another or, for example, in a temporal sequence punctuated by successive expansions and contractions.19 One would no longer ask: but why this (improbable) universe rather than another with a more likely type of configuration? They are all "there"; that we should find ourselves in the galactic one (rather than in one of the others) can then readily be explained. If all cars bore the same inscription: `HUMAN-1', one would want to know why this significantsounding phrase had been chosen rather than others. But if all six-symbol combinations of letters and numbers are in fact realized on different cars, seeing `HUMAN-1' on one car will no longer seem so significant (though it will still draw our attention). The analogy is not exact but it may serve to suggest why if all

possibilities in some domain are realized, the realization of some particular one ceases to be a special issue. Of course, one would still ask how, in the cosmological case, one could know that all the possibilities are realized. And one might ask, further, why any of them should be realized. The anthropic principle derives, therefore, from the claim (1) that the most basic structures of the universe might have been different from what they are; and (2) that the presence of man depends on their being what they, in fact, are. The first premiss is clearly a vulnerable one. It is difficult to exclude the possibility that at some later time cosmologists may be able to show that the cosmical parameters governing the sort of universe in which we find ourselves could not be other than they are.20 That the efforts of Eddington, Dirac, and many others in this direction have failed does not mean that success is impossible, only perhaps that their efforts were premature. It must, however, be said that for the moment at least, contingency seems well entrenched. REGULATIVE PRINCIPLES FOR COSMOLOGY? Is this all there is to be said? Until recently, philosophers were wont to make a far more robust claim. It was widely agreed that the philosopher could formulate some general principles which are prior to science and regulative of it. This would attribute a far more dominant role to philosophy than the contemporary cosmologist would be likely to concede, as we have seen. How plausible does this claim now seem? Three broadly different types of warrant have in the past been advanced for it; they might be called Aristotelian, Cartesian and Kantian, as long as one keeps in mind that the historical figures from which these familiar labels are drawn were much too complex to be comprised under a single well-defined account.21 Can any one of these sorts of argument for a philosophical a priori carry weight in today's cosmology? The Aristotelian, or broadly empiricist, approach is to assume that the knower can formulate on the basis of his everyday experience some very general principles in regard to motion, cause, space and the like. Because the categories employed are understood in a non-problematic way and are validated by even the simplest experiences of the world, the principles take on the character of very general truths about the world. The Cartesian, or broadly rationalist, approach is to suppose that an attentive inspection of certain of our ideas will disclose necessary connections between them; the ideas themselves are assumed not to depend on the specificities of experience. The Kantian, or broadly idealist, strategy is to take the most general categories of the understanding and forms of the intuition to be prior to experience and yet constitutive (or regulative) of it. In this way, synthetic a priori principles of a necessary sort can be derived from the possibility of experience. In each of the three cases, cosmological principles would rest on a different basis: in the first, on the natures of physical things, assumed to be directly known; in the second, on the interconnections between clear and distinct ideas; in the third, on the uniform structures of the human understanding. Since science takes its origin in observation, its validity must depend on the integrity of that observation. Scientific theory cannot, therefore, call into question the general framework within which claims to "observe" the world are made, a reminder which Bohr felt called on to deliver to quantum theorists in the 1930's. But this of itself does not commit one to a philosophic a priori. How specific is the commitment to the epistemic structures implicit in everyday observation? Can these structures remain unaffected by changes in science? Just how prescriptive is the commitment to these structures in the scientist's regard? Those who defend a philosophically-elucidated a priori which is supposed to be normative for the cosmologist tend to be committed to a sort of linguistic foundationalism, an assumption that the concepts, categories, forms, in terms of which the general principles governing the physical world (or our conception of, or our experience of, the physical world) are to be formulated, are somehow themselves given to us.22 They are assumed to be unproblematic, fixed, not in need of validation. Though he tried to be very careful about what he could assume, Kant

never adequately clarified the manner in which the content of the terms through which his a priori principles are expressed (terms like `time', `matter', `cause') is itself to be determined prior to all experience. It was not as clear in his day as it is in ours that the content of such terms can be altered by the progress of science (as the content of the terms `force' had already been in Newton's time), and that this alteration is itself a complex affair, depending a posteriori upon the success of the explanatory theories in which these terms occur. In the more developed parts of science, the constructive power latent within the hypothetical procedure allows older concepts to be reshaped or new ones to be formulated. It is, therefore, difficult nowadays to defend a Kantian distinction between a "pure physics" enunciating principles of the understanding given a priori and an "empirical physics" based on induction and thus merely contingent. Science suggests something closer to a continuous spectrum. Philosophers can still propose principles (the determinism of natural process or the impossibility of timereversal, for example) from one or other of the classical viewpoints. But they have to be willing to allow a certain dialectic with science. The principle may have to be modified or weakened in the light of a challenge from long-term successful scientific theory. Though it is not impossible that the philosopher should validly derive regulative principles "from the essential nature of the thinking faculty itself",23 or from the epistemic situation of the observer, it becomes more and more difficult to maintain that a necessary claim of potential significance to the cosmologist could be arrived at in this way. The choice between making science entirely independent of philosophy, making philosophy prior to and absolutely normative of science, and making the two interactive with one another, is one that has bedevilled Soviet science from the beginning. Indeed, the struggle between protagonists of these three approaches was one of the central intellectual preoccupations in the Soviet Union in the 1920's, until it was pre-empted by Stalin's imposition of the "normative" position in 1931.24 Reverberations of the struggle can be found in Soviet cosmology. It is asserted over and over by Soviet scientists that fidelity to the principles of dialectical materialism accounts for the successful development of theoretical cosmology in the Soviet Union. The principles most often invoked are those of quantitative difference leading to qualitative leaps (so that, for example, the universe as a whole might be expected to have properties not predictable from those of its parts), and of struggle between opposites (suggesting, it is said, the importance of unstable stellar states and the fundamentally evolutionary character of stellar and galactic formation).25 Some Soviet writers have made cosmology entirely subordinate to philosophy on matters of general principle. Sviderskii, for example, argued that finite universe-models are incompatible with dialectical materialism; only an infinite universe is admissible. Others (e.g., G.L. Naan) asserted that philosophy is not prior to, but is in fact derived from science, so that although it is normative in regard to science, it derives its warrant from science itself. It is hard to decide just what influence dialectical materialism has had on science; for ideological reasons it has been important to stress its superiority as a philosophy of science. But either of the options leads to trouble. If it is attributed some sort of a priori status, the question insistently puts itself: how can pre-scientific experience warrant principles sufficiently general and sufficiently precise to serve as norms for a science of the universe? If it is made dependent on science, it can easily reduce to science itself, at its most general. More troubling still from the Marxist-Leninist viewpoint, this may make dialectical materialism vulnerable to challenge from science. The most renowned Soviet cosmologist, A. Ambartsumian, has always insisted on the directive force of dialectical materialism in cosmology. Consistently with this, he has argued that his own reliance on it in the formulation of successful theories, serves to confirm its value. But this is a dangerous move. One of these theories had to do with the evolution of stars, for example; Ambartsumian opposed

the view defended by Jeans and Eddington that stars are relatively unchanging even across vast intervals of time. But now suppose the latter had been right? Would this count against dialectical materialism? Should the widespread opposition to the Big Bang model among Soviet cosmologists count against the philosophy that inspired it? One need not be a Popperian to believe that an outcome cannot confirm, unless its opposite would count against. To say that Jeans and Eddington could not possibly have been right, or that the universe as a whole must have properties that differ from those discoverable in its parts, would imply that dialectical materialism includes a metaphysics whose warrant is prior to science and is not dependent upon it. Outside the Soviet Union, there are few today who would attribute to philosophy a directive role of this sort in regard to cosmology. Philosophers like Whitehead and Broad constructed powerful metaphysical systems of "mixed" warrant, that is, by relying on both epistemological and more specifically scientific grounds. The problem in the end is one of meta-philosophy, of deciding on the sort of warrant that is appropriate to philosophic and to scientific claims, seen not as two entirely distinct sorts of intellectual pursuit, but as a continuum. What has made the issue more intractable is the pace of development of theoretical cosmology, a pace too rapid of late to allow meta-philosophy the time it needs to take stock. University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, Indiana NOTES *An enlarged version of this paper, delivered at the World Congress in Dusseldorf in 1978, appeared under the title: "Is philosophy relevant to cosmology?" American Philosophical Quarterly, 18 (1981), 177-189. 1. It is ironic to find P.C.W. Davies (Space and Time in the Modern Universe [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1977]) claiming that the view of space and time as "concrete properties of the material world" is the product of modern science. The "biblical account of creation" (he asserts) assumed that God built "form into a pre-existing but uninteresting space and time," imagining God "reigning in an earlier phase of the cosmos and being motivated to cause the cosmos" (op. cit., pp. 216-217). But this is precisely the (Newtonian) view of creation that Augustine, the first Christian theorist of creation, and the legions of medieval philosophers who were influenced by him, were concerned to reject! 2. De Civitate Dei, Book XI, Chapter 6. 3. In her very useful review, "Cosmology: Man's place in the Universe" [American Scientist, 65 (1977), pp. 76-86], Virginia Trimble assumes that the successive cycles would each constitute a separate universe, and remarks that "the question: What happened before the Big Bang? belongs to the realm of pure speculation (philosophy?) rather than that of physics. It is rather like putting a car into a steel blast furnace and asking [of] the trickle of molten metal that comes out whether it was a Pinto or VW before" (p. 78). Of course, one could ask whether it was a Pinto or a Cadillac; a mass measurement might well suffice to answer this. Cosmologists who postulate a contraction preceding the Big Bang are not just indulging in "pure speculation," but are assuming that some parameters either remain invariant (total mass?) or are continuously traceable (radius?) throughout. Hawking has, however, raised some doubts whether even this sort of "information" could come through the singularity ("Breakdown of predictability in gravitational collapse," Physical Review D, 14 [1977], pp. 2460-2473). 4. One further complication about the notion of "age" in this context is (as Milne first pointed out in his Kinematic Relativity [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1947]) that it may come out either as finite or infinite, depending on the choice of physical process to serve as basis for the time scale. Thus, even if one takes the Big Bang to be the event from which the age of the universe is to be counted, that "age" could still come out as infinite. To decide, therefore, whether the Big-Bang universe should be said to have had a beginning requires further precisions about the notion of beginning and of time-measurement. See C. Misner, "Absolute zero of time," Physical Review, 186 (1969), pp. 1328-1333.

5. Gott et. al. argue in a recent paper that the evidence already favors the "open" model. See "Will the universe expand forever?", Scientific American, 234 (1976), pp. 62-79. 6. Causality (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1959), pp. 24, 240. 7. "Methodological remarks concerning cosmology", Monist, 47 (1962), pp. 104-115. 8. "Black holes and thermodynamics", Physical Review D, 13 (1976), pp. 191-197; "The quantum mechanics of black holes," Scientific American, 236 (1977), pp. 3440. 9. Bondi has argued that the steady-state model brought the "problem of creation" into "the scope of physical inquiry," by proposing a statistical law which the new appearances of matter in that model would follow (Cosmology, [Cambridge: University Press, 1960], p. 140). Whether such a law explains the events depends in part on what one thinks of the D-N model of explanation. But even if it does, it certainly does not entitle one to assume that the problem solved is "the problem of creation." 10. See, for example, W.L. Rowe, The Cosmological Argument (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1975); D. Burrill (ed.), Cosmological Arguments, (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor, 1967). 11. Astronomy and Cosmology (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1975), p. 684. Note that this goes much further than the rejection of absolute cosmic beginning; it would exclude a Big-Bang type of singularity even if it were not an absolute beginning. See also Chapter 1 of his Ten Faces of the Universe (San Francisco: W.H. Freeman, 1977), with its highly emotional attack on religion generally, and on belief in "beginnings" specifically. 12. In Ten Faces of the Universe, Hoyle continually uses such phrases as `I believe' or `I prefer'. There is, at the very least, something premature about Davies' assurance to his readers that the new cosmology (unlike older world-views) "does not deal in beliefs but in facts. A model of the universe does not require faith but a telescope", op. cit., p. 201. 13. Hoyle has recently proposed a new and ingenious model which explains galactic red-shifts by a steady increase in the masses of elementary particles over time, galactic distances remaining constant. The model does have a singularity in the past when all particle masses were zero. But Hoyle argues that one can plausibly postulate a prior cosmic state of negative masses, as well as a far larger universe, homogeneous over time on a scale much larger than even clusters of galaxies (thus escaping refutation from the growing evidence for local inhomogeneity over time). The theory is ad hoc to an altogether alarming extent -alarming, that is, to anyone who is not more alarmed by an absolute timebeginning. 14. I am indebted to my fellow-panelists at the Dusseldorf World Congress of Philosophy (1978), Professors V. Weidemann and R. Sexl, for their clear delineation of the problem treated in this section. 15. "Why is the universe isotropic?", Astrophysical Journal, 180 (1973), pp. 317334. For further references, see V. Weidemann, "Cosmology: science or speculation?" 16. It should be emphasized that this is not generally agreed. Trimble, though she agrees that the universe is a "delicately balanced" one in regard to the possibility of the development of life, supports the earlier view that galactic formation is an expected development: "The matter at this [early] stage was not perfectly smooth but was concentrated in lumps. . . . The cause of the clumps is not well understood, though they are not unexpected, since, when the universe was very young, there had not yet been time for interactions and smoothing to have occurred across large distances. But they must have been there, because we see galaxies and clusters now" (op. cit., p. 78). It is the explanatory force of this "must have been" that is at issue. 17. B. Carter, "Large number coincidences and the anthropic principle in cosmology", in Confrontation of Cosmological Theory with Astronomical Data, ed. M.S. Longair (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1974) pp. 291-298. Carter uses a similar argument

to "explain" why gravity is so weak, by noting that stable stars (and hence planetary life) could not develop were gravity to be a stronger force. 18. Davies, op. cit., Section 7.3. 19. Trimble speculates that they might be "imbedded in five (or higher) dimensional space, existing simultaneously, from the point of view of a five (or higher) dimensional observer" (op. cit., p. 85). 20. Trimble, op. cit., pp. 85-86. 21. For a more detailed account see E. McMullin, "Philosophies of nature," New Scholasticism, 43 (1969), pp. 29-74. 22. This "myth of the given" has been very much the center of critical discussion in recent philosophy of science. See, for example, W. Sellars, Science, Perception and Reality (New York: Humanities Press, 1963). 23. Kant, Preface to the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. It is in this work, perhaps, even more than in the Transcendental Analytic of the Critique that the difficulties of the Kantian "pure physics" become evident. 24. David Joravsky, Soviet Marxism and Natural Science (London, 1961), and review article, E. McMullin, Natural Law Forum, 8 (1963), pp. 149-159. 25. See L. Graham, Science and Philosophy in the Soviet Union (New York, 1972), pp. 156-188, for the material on which this and the following paragraph mainly depend. See also N. Lobkowicz, "Materialism and matter in Marxism-Leninism," The Concept of Matter in Modern Philosophy, E. McMullin, ed. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1978), pp. 154-188. CHAPTER XI METAPHYSICS AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF ETHICAL AND SOCIAL VALUES JOHANNES LOTZ The theme of this paper is that metaphysics can provide a foundation for ethical and social values (positive aspect) and that without metaphysics no justification can be given to these values (negative aspect). MAN AS PERSON To treat this theme it might be noted that the human being is the bearer of these values, and therefore, one should ask first: what is the relationship of the human being (Mensch) to metaphysics? It must be made clear that he is rooted in that which is investigated by metaphysics. Is he still the `animal metaphysicum', as in former times? To put the question more exactly we must look to that dimension of the human being which plays the deciding part in ethical-social life and which makes the human being a person. We have to discuss therefore whether and how the human being, specifically as person, is distinguished by his openness to metaphysics, and whether and how, according to this openness of the person, the human being has the necessary ethical and social values. We shall begin with men or women (Menschen) as persons with two commonly accepted characteristics. First the person is, as Kant puts it: an end in himself (Zweck an sich selbst). Therefore, it is against his or her being to be used as a mere means to an end; his independence (Eigensta¦ ndigkeit) is such that he exists never merely for someone else, but for himself. Secondly, the person is an individual, a single being; as such one stands out inasmuch as he exhibits a characteristic singularity. Accordingly, the person is not a homogeneous indifferent atom of man within the multitude or the mass, able arbitrarily to be replaced by some other atom. Rather the person appears as non-interchangeable and irreplaceable at any given time as this particular person; the person is always a singular that cannot be repeated. To the extent the person loses his singularity (Einmaligkeit) and with it his individuality, it is possible to take the person as a means for an end, and accordingly to use or consume a person. Of course, the person's singularity must not be overemphasized to the extent that the commonness of human nature (Menschennatur) disappears. Independence and singularity manifest the individual life of the person, which displays itself in two characteristic features which show more exactly what the person is. The first characteristic is the self-consciousness (Ich-Bewusstsein) of

the person. One does not lose himself in the other or others, nor does one have a diffused or fuzzy consciousness as does the ego-less animal; instead one lives in a clear consciousness of himself. He has always seized his own self and can therefore say to himself, "I." This agrees with the complete return upon oneself (reditio completa) which Thomas Aquinas assigns to the human being; he observes in the animal merely the beginning of a return to one's self (redire incipit). Accordingly, man comes to himself as a person, or is coming to himself, by himself. He is a person, insofar as he still becomes a person; and he becomes a person insofar as he already is a person. The second characteristic of the person is his freedom (freie Selbstverfu¦ gung) to dispose or apply himself. By this characteristic one is not irresistibly handed over to the forces which arise from one's own inner being, or those to one's surroundings. Rather, a person of himself stands back, as it were, from these powers so that he can respond with a yes or a no, can accept or discard. The person is not made to live by powers which overcome him, but lives on the basis of his own decision. In other words, he is not determined as a mere member of the whole of nature, but determines himself within the totality of nature; and on top of that, the person subjects this totality to his own determination in the creation of culture. A person's self-disposing capacity completes the selfconsciousness, inasmuch as it distinctly expresses his independence and also his singularity. The former is without doubt apparent, the latter can be inferred from the fact that freedom develops its own and new initiatives, and does not accept the same fixed pattern. PERSON AND METAPHYSICS Our description of a person leads us to the question of whether and how the person is rooted in the metaphysical. The answer can be found through the transcendental method by looking for the reason which makes possible the two characteristic features by which a person can be recognized. In the self-consciousness the person reaches himself and therefore what he truly is; whereas, as long as the person remains in the realm of what he appears to be, or in the mere appearance of himself, and does not reach what he is, he does not truly come to himself and is not with himself or in his self-consciousness. C.G. Jung, with this in mind, developed the difference between the persona or the role someone plays, and the person someone is. What a person really is, or what he himself seems to be, cannot be clear for the person while he remains locked in himself as this limited being. Every limited being discloses itself according to its own relative viewpoints. From this point everything shows itself according to the person's limited perspective, but not in the way it really is. This is the case with an animal which, therefore, can never reach itself or its own "I." Consequently, a person is capable of breaking through to his own being only when he steps beyond himself as this limited, confined being, and breaks through to the unlimited, unconfined Being-itself (Sein-selbst) which embraces and establishes all that is being and discloses the absolute viewpoint. Only from that viewpoint can a being show itself as it is in truth. Because the self-consciousness essentially includes a grasp of one's own being (das Ergreifen), it presupposes reaching out (den Aus-griff) to the all inclusive Being-itself and with it the foundation of the metaphysical. The same thing holds for the person's freedom to dispose of himself (freieu¦ Selbstverfu¦ gung). The person is subject to the ever-present limiting impulses from within and without. But these are not irresistible as long as the attractive goods are unable to satisfy one's striving, i.e., when such goods, as the material object, a personal striving whose formal object is transcendent. On principle (though not factually in every case) the person confronts all limited goods freely, for fore, the formal object, which constitutes his striving and willing is necessarily unlimited. On the other hand, while all being is limited, the willing (das Wollen) stretches out to the all-inclusive or unlimited Being-itself (Sein selbst) which here appears as the good, while in the case of the selfconsciousness it becomes effective as the true. Inasmuch as the person himself is

a limited being, not only can he freely exercise control over such impulses, but he can also control himself as he accepts and rejects himself, completes or destroys himself which again is possible only by looking to Being-itself. According to this, man's free self-disposition is similar to his selfconsciousness insofar as it presupposes reaching out to being-itself, by which the person, according to his two characteristic features or fundamental accomplishment (Grundvollzu¦ ge) is grounded metaphysically. Without this metaphysical grounding the person would dissolve. One who explicitly rejects the metaphysical dimension of the person is continuously implicitly refuted through the very accomplishment (Vollzug) of his personal life. METAPHYSICAL AND ETHICAL VALUE Now that we have shown the foundational metaphysical structure of the person, through its help we can develop the connection between metaphysics and ethical values. In the person, the order of morality is set off from the order of nature. In the sub-human order of nature (untermenschliche Naturordnung) all proceedings play themselves out according to the unavoidability of a "must" (Muss). This does not change because of the indetermined relationships in the microphysical realm (Heisenberg), whence comes even the least statistical necessity in the macrophysical realm. In contrast to that order the ethical order is distinguished by the "ought" (Soll) which contains and manifests freedom. Certainly, the "ought" has a certain binding force; this however does not exclude, but opens toward freedom because when a certain action is demanded one is capable of doing the opposite. The action does not happen by itself or with the necessity of nature, but only through freedom. Since only the person possesses freedom, the moral order has an essentially personal stamp, while the order of nature is one of the impersonal or of "things." On closer inspection, the natural and the ethical orders in man compenetrate: his personal life is imbedded in pre-personal happenings. In the child, the latter is first preponderant; while the former emerges from it gradually. In the mature man, at the high point of his life, the personal reaches its fullness. Not all human beings reach the same level of maturity, for freedom is the possibility of either taking freedom up to use and develop it, or withdrawing from it, not using it and so letting it spoil. With regard to the last alternative, however, and except for psychological disorders, no one can completely suffocate his freedom, although he can continue to let himself be driven by impersonal or unfree forces. In this regard, also, although ethical action is not so manifest, one who is ethically undeveloped falls behind the fullness of his humanness and becomes compulsive for lack self-identity and personal independence. For the person freedom is that capacity for self-determination which essentially imparts a certain directedness (Gerichtetheit) along with human obligation or "ought" (Soll). Against this, Sartre sees freedom as the complete absence of determinateness (Bestimmungslosigkeit) so that man has no preimpressed essence or pre-given value order. He is only what he makes himself to be through his freedom. As this would lead to chaotic arbitrariness Sartre adds that everyone has his own freedom to work out an agreement with the freedom of all others. This contradicts his initial statement on freedom as the absence of determinateness by introducing determinateness (Bestimmtheit) or directedness (Gerichtetheit) into human freedom. Indeed, a certain essence (Wesen) has been stamped into man by his freedom, which singles him out from all sub-human beings, namely, the quality of standing out from, or of standing in Being-itself. Heidegger points to this when he says: The essence of "being-there" (Da-sein) is "ex-istence" (Ek-sistenz). This essence does not destroy freedom, as Sartre thinks, but stands at its very root. From this same essence springs the directedness (Gerichtetheit) which is essentially interwoven with freedom, or the binding "ought" (Soll) which demands that freedom shape one's life inasmuch as the person's freedom is not forced to do this. The different aspects of this essence and work of life-formation have their manifold values which attract our freedom and which, in turn, freedom has to realize. Since the person as free is founded in the metaphysical and requires fixed ethical values,

these values also have their roots in the metaphysical, without which the ethical would not exist. MOTIVATION AND CONSCIENCE It should be noted that ethical action is related not to what is determined (Determination) but to motivation. While what is determined denotes an influence which excludes freedom, motivation weighs the reasons (Gru¦ nde) which speak for or a- gainst a certain action, and which go back to the values that always are considered. This weighing of reasons does not lessen freedom, but leads to its completion, because it does not replace one's decision, but prepares for it and makes a pertinent decision possible. Only from such weighing or pondering could there emerge a truly personal action which depicts the individuality of a free person, usually known as a human act (actus humanus). The unconsidered deed, however, which shoots forth without the participation of freedom, is similar to impersonal happenings and is called an act of man (actus hominis) because, though it comes from man, it does not do so in a way that is proper to man. The preceding paragraph shows clearly how motivation attaches itself to the directedness dwelling in freedom, and how it concretizes this directedness for the here and now. Accordingly, ethical action develops itself from motivation: through weighing reasons or values it becomes truly free or personal and enables the metaphysical dimensions of the person to pervade every day life. It is by conscience that we grasp the ought (Soll) dwelling within freedom and concretize it in individual behavior. It has its origin neither exclusively in the super-ego (¦(U¦ ber-Ich), nor in one's environment, as one often hears today. Its word (Spruch) comes from the depths of the person, where one becomes aware of what he is and what he, therefore, ought to be. In other words, in our conscience we meet our own being as our task or mission (Auftrag), both as it spans our whole lifetime and as it stamps us for the present hour. Because of this root, the conscience is imperturbable and capable of recalling itself to itself when it strays from its own track. In specific cases, the conscience can be immature or mature, and consequently hazy or clear, mal-formed or well-formed and therefore false or true. One lives without a conscience when one has silenced it or goes against its unmistakable warnings. One acts according to one's conscience to the degree one faithfully follows its lead and so reaches one's true goal or life-truth. In this he avoids and overcomes his life-lie, into which the conscience-less person throws himself. Both the person with and the person without a conscience remain in the ethical realm, for the person can never leave that. But only the one with a conscience realizes the ethical dimension according to his own proper character (Eigentlichkeit), while the one without a conscience cannot get out of his peculiar perversion. Inasmuch as conscience continuously accompanies the person and derives from the very depths of man, at its roots it reaches the metaphysical or has a deeply metaphysical imprint, without which it would evaporate. UNCONDITIONED OBLIGATION Let us examine more in detail that by which the ethical bond surpasses other bonds or the nature of the "ought" (Soll) which, through one's conscience, makes demands upon us. Briefly, this "ought" distinguishes itself through its unconditionality (Unbedingtheit). Only one conditional bond can be expressed in the entire length of the if-then statement: if you want to reach this goal, you will have to use the means necessary for it, just as the vocation of the physician requires a special education. In this and in similar cases, the bond is merely conditional, because one has to make use of the means only if one wishes to reach one's goal, and no other means will bring this about. In contrast, the ethical "ought" imposes upon man an unconditional bond independent of every other bond, that is, it has value under any condition and the bond cannot be lifted. This unconditionality shows itself in the case of one's faithfulness to conscience, in the case of one's respect for human dignity, and in the case of the objectionableness of slander or of the misuse of the person as a mere means to an end. The person who in such cases goes back to an if-then

connection, covers up all that is conditional or all the previously considered givens (Gegebenheiten). Certainly one could formulate the proposition that man must follow his "ought" only if he wishes to act ethically or to lead an unobjectionable life. However, that formulation differs essentially from the one mentioned above insofar as the ethically good action is precisely not left up to the discretion of man (as in the case of the physician's vocation). Rather, man is bound by the "ought" itself and is called unconditionally. In this lies the foundation of all other demands of the ethical order. Today, one often hears it objected against the unconditionality of the ethical ought that it contradicts the historicity (Geschichtlichkeit) of all human actions. According to this, all these regulative norms have only a timeconditioned and, therefore, a conditional value: unconditional norms valid for all times would be excluded. The same would be said about ethical values, since the norms formulate the binding force given with the values. This objection is overcome by the fact that historicity would abolish itself if everything were subjected to the comings and goings of things in time or if nothing endured through change. If there is to be historicity then the foundation which makes it possible must endure. This foundation corresponds to the human foundation or structure, as was developed above, but it cannot be proven here in detail. In the same foundation or structure is rooted both the unconditionality of the ethical ought and the ethical values themselves, as will be made clearer in the following paragraphs. The given, trans-temporal, unconditional kernel of the ethical appears to us solely, but also truly, in completely timed-conditioned realities. Therefore we can speak of the historical (geschichtlichen) unconditionality of the ethical in which neither of the two elements replaces or disappears into the other. The ground or basis of possibility (ermo¦ glichenden Grund) of the unconditioned in the ethical obviously cannot be found in the conditional, because the former essentially and incalculably supercedes the latter. Insofar that man is a being that is becoming (als Seiendes) one is only somewhat conditioned, insofar as Being (Sein) comes to him only with boundaries inasmuch as it is conditioned by one's essence. Whereas he is a relative being which is becoming (relativ seiend) or alone in a view peculiar to himself, the unconditioned is characteristic of the absolute standing free from any mere viewpoint. Thus man can be considered the bearer of unconditionality only if his imbeddedness (das Hineinragen) in the allencompassing Being-itself belongs to his constitution. This imbeddedness attests to the Being in every point of view or beyond all boundaries, and thus to the absolute. This openness (Offenbarkeit) of Being-itself is expressed in the essential character of man's particularity and actions, so that the latter (his essential character) would not be what it is without the former (the openness of Being-itself). Therefore, the unconditionality of the ethical leads to the same foundationstructure as that for man, which structure has shown itself to be the root of man's personal life. He is the being-which-becomes (das Seiende) constituted through the openness of Being, or he is the relative being which is constituted through the lighting up (Aufleuchten) of the Absolute. In other words, ethical values are grounded in man only insofar as, even in the physical order, he has already reached, and lived on the basis of, the metaphysical. COMPARISON TO OTHER VIEWS What has just been said can be made clearer through some comparisons. Because Heidegger stops at the respective and therefore relative participations of Being (Seins) and does not take into consideration the clarifications (Aufhellung) of the one Being-itself, he does not penetrate to the absolute and therefore finds no foundation for the unconditionality of the ethical. Because Scheler sees only the becoming or changing character of being (das Seiende) and remains in forgetfulness of Being, he can preserve the unconditionality of ethical values only by asserting that these latter are independent of changing beings (Seienden) and by raising these ethical values to his own peculiar region of an emotional a priori. This is not sufficient, although a particular explanation of why this is so cannot be gone

into here. With regard to Hegel, it is important to develop the difference that has already been shown, the one which Heidegger calls the ontological difference (ontologische Differenz). In man this distinction manifests itself insofar as he is a changing or relative being reaching out to Being or the Absolute. As a being which is in the process of becoming he participates in Being or the Absolute, but he is not, however, the Being-itself or the Absolute. Genuine participation in the Absolute provides the foundation of the unconditionality of the ethical in man. Mere participation (Teil-nehmen) in the Absolute brings with it the historically conditioned forms of the ethical which mark man in his finiteness. While bound to the becoming or relative being, Being or the Absolute is not entirely itself in man. Thus the Being or Absolute dwelling within (immanente) man points beyond itself and man to its own form, in which it is totally itself. Thomas calls this being beyond (transzendente) man, the subsisting (das subsistierende), standing in its own right as being itself, and Being itself. It is the absolute simply; separated from man and all becoming-beings, it is fully independent Being. It is, finally, the divine Being and the personal God, since the subsistence of Being is synonymous with complete openness, with selfconsciousness and with the quality of freely disposing of oneself. God is the unconditioned one, the highest completion and, therefore, beyond every conditionality. Thus, he shows himself to be the ultimate foundation for the unconditionality of the ethical ought or for ethical values, while man is merely, but also truly, the next foundation. Only insofar as man, by means of Being-itself, participates in the unconditionality of the divine Being or ultimate foundation can he, as the next foundation, bear the unconditionality of ethical values. He who denies such participation loses, with the ultimate foundation for the unconditionality of the ethical, the more immediate foundation, and consequently ethics itself. With the ascent to subsisting Being, we have reached the innermost kernel of the metaphysical, without which Being-itself, the unconditionality of ethical values, and even the person himself fall. For all of these, therefore, this foundation in the metaphysical is absolutely decisive and indispensable. In the light of these findings, we can examine Hegel for whom the ontological difference takes on a dialectical character. Man, as a relative and changing being, is a dialectical moment in the unfolding of absolute Being; consequently he is identical with this dialectic. The uniquely unconditioned unfolds itself in the course of the conditioned (Durchlaufen des Bedingten): without the conditioned the unconditioned is a falsehood or not itself. Only in the conditioned can it attain to its truth and be totally itself. Finally, the dialectic is characteristically an exchange, according to which not only does the conditioned reach its truth in the unconditioned, but also the unconditioned in the conditioned. As this whirlwind (Wirbel) does not permit a merely unconditioned, the unconditionality of ethical values is dissolved by this dialectic. For this reason, a dialectical metaphysics is not sufficient, although it surpasses the denial of any metaphysics. The metaphysical foundation developed for the ethical "ought" as well as for the separation of ethical values can be made clearer in relation to further ethical data and individual ethical values. With the "ought" comes first of all the bond of duty; it carries with it responsibility and it is cause for guilt. In all this there is an unconditionality at work, from which alone stem the unqualified ethical character of such experiences, and such unconditionality necessarily shows the presence of the metaphysical. THE BASIS OF SOCIAL VALUES Closely connected with the ethical values are the social ones. Because many ethical values touch upon the social area, and contrariwise, one's social life has many ethical aspects. The statement goes even deeper: ethical and social values grow from the same root. Aristotle had been clear that man is not a simple or isolated entity, but needs to live together (Zusammenleben) with his peers. Man

completes himself only in community and in his association with others, not in separation from them. In the animal kingdom we already find an anticipation of such living together, specifically in what one calls by analogy ant and bee colonies. The social life of man essentially exceeds such structures in openness and depth, as can be seen from what was said above about the person, for the person is grounded in the openness of Being-itself, which on account of its fullness embraces everything. This shows boundless openness to be the ultimate ground for all things, reaching a depth that cannot be equaled. In virtue of this same openness of Being the person is as much with himself as he is with others: both poles of this encounter come to the same depth as two communicating tubes. More precisely, the possibilities of communication exceed all boundaries in extent and depth, while from both points of view actually completed communication remains subject to boundaries. As this boundlessness originates because it concerns the openness of Being, so the boundaries arise because man, as a being who is becoming, only participates in this openness. In the communication established for social life both partners are humans and persons. In this process the openness of Being shows itself in both parties as they bring to each other openness which in extent and depth may transcend all boundaries. However, the possibilities thus given are never totally exhausted because both partners cannot exceed the boundaries which exist for all changing beings, even though the partners can push these boundaries further and further away. Their communication becomes progressively richer the more the openness of Being unfolds itself in them and rules their reciprocal exchanges. This points out two complimentary aspects. Each one goes to the other in such a way that he goes over to the other. There is no contradiction here; but for each of the two sides the other is fixed by Being-itself. This opens each partner to the other and at the same time strengthens him in himself so that he does not lose himself in the other. As the same Being both strengthens each of the partners in themselves and opens them to the other person they do not suffocate in their own narrowness. In the measure Being is dissolved, the two sides fail in their meeting with one another, or a contradiction forms between being secure in oneself and going over to the other. Without Being, one either goes to the other in such a way that he is not secure in himself and thus has to lose himself in the other, or he secures himself in such a way that he does not go over to the other and therefore becomes locked up in himself. Since Being-itself is precisely the root of all that is metaphysical, it alone makes possible this communication or meeting between men which is social life. SOCIAL LIFE The different ways in which human beings have contacts with each other can be explained through the openness of Being. One can meet the other as an it, as a he, or as a you. Someone treats another as an it, or a thing, and not as a person, when he takes him or her simply as a thing, and forgets the openness of Being which takes place in him; on this level the person is apt to be misused as a mere means to an end. Someone treats another as a he or she when one in fact respects the person in him and does not degrade him to a thing or to a mere means to an end. However, one may be interested only in the accomplishments of the other and not in the person himself; therefore this person can be replaced by another who can achieve the same thing. Here the openness of Being remains in the background and does not extend past the mainly material accomplishments to the one who realizes them. Someone treats the other as a you or thou, however, when the person himself, and not his accomplishments, is the focus of attention. This other cannot be replaced and is respected as a person in the fullest sense. Since the openness of Being belongs to the constitution of the person, it becomes the characteristic basis of the relationship, which is thus lifted to its proper I-Thou level. As our presentation shows, if the kind and depth of social relationships cut themselves off from the empowering force of Being and thereby from the metaphysical, then in

the measure that these relationships degenerate into the quantifiable the metaphysical dimension is lost. We can come to better understand the significance of this, if we consider certain value-systems which play a decisive role in I-Thou relationships. First we should consider love which unfolds itself in two ways: a self-referral (ich-bezogenen) and a self-freeing (ich-freien) love. With the former I meet the other for my sake; in the latter I love him or her their sake. Only through this latter love can I proceed to the partner-love relationship in which I go beyond my own horizon and enter that of the other or wish the other well. As Augustine has beautifully formulated it, I will that the other be (amo: volo, ut sis). I say yes to the being of the other and contribute to it, so that he or she becomes more and more the person he is and ought to be. According to our earlier discussion, this occurs only when I remain in the horizon of Being-itself, that is, the openness of Being; the metaphysical is the ground that makes true love possible. Accordingly, in the measure love turns itself into self-seeking or hate, the metaphysical is lost or Being is forgotten. Similar things can be said about the confidence which comes out of love. The more deeply human beings love each other, the more they place themselves and their affairs in the hands and heart of the other, confident that nothing will be misused. Herein lies trust in the partner, which presupposes his or her trustworthiness. This is possible only insofar as one is unshakable, but because of their limitations all beings are at all times subject to shock. Only Beingitself alone is unshakable, due to its unlimitedness. Therefore man is unshakable only to the degree he goes beyond himself as a changing being and makes himself one with Being-itself. Consequently, trustworthiness--and, with it confidence--are rooted in the metaphysical. It is similar with faithfulness, by which a person gives himself to another or is at his disposal. He will not leave him even in bad times, but is willing to bear difficulties with him. Often he will be faithful to the other for a whole lifetime, even if the other disappoints him. Again, as a limited being one is fickle and inconsistent, but can gain strength and constistency to the degree that one takes root in the unlimited being or is grounded in the metaphysical. COMMUNITY AND SOCIETY Let us turn now from "I-Thou" relationships to "We relationships" in which community and society realize themselves. For community we will use the example of a nation (Volk) and for society that of the state. In the state tensions exist between the single person and the all-encompassing totality. Extreme solutions submit one of these two poles totally to the other and result in either liberalism, on the one hand, or totalitarianism, on the other. These can be overcome through a middle way in which the person serves the whole and the whole serves the person. The person serves the whole in order that it be capable of giving to the person the prerequisites for the full-development of the person. Hence, the person is subordinated to the whole only conditionally. This is proven from the previously developed idea of the independence of the person, who as his own self can never be a mere means to an end. The priority of the person is clear here. This could not be said of the person as a limited and changing being, because in these terms the state would be the greater being surpassing the person. On this account, precedence must come to the state. Correspondingly, priority belongs essentially to the person from the fact that the person is rooted in Being and participates in its absoluteness. The person is thus subordinate to the state only insofar as it is a being which is becoming. It follows that the state can place obligations upon the person and as such be superior to the person only if the state is founded in or participates in the absoluteness of Being. Any absolute character on the part of the state is derived from that of the person, because the state is built on persons. Accordingly, the cooperation or the working together of persons and society is possible through the metaphysical; should this disappear everything would fall apart. Authority in the state has the obligation to direct individuals to the common

good, so that each one contributes his own share. This power of authority to bind persons together in duty is due to authority's participation in the absolutism of Being. Therefore, those who bear authority, whether in a monarchy, an aristocracy or a democracy, are capable of administering their office suitably only when they do not drown in power but bring themselves through to Being; this requires a penetrating purification of all who participate. In this administration, as Plato showed in his Republic, the most important thing is uncorrupted justice which distributes and assigns duties and rights according to objective data, without letting itself be confused through selfish interests. Only they can do such deeds who add to precise and expert knowledge a high degree of personal maturity. According to what has been said above, as this always and essentially depends upon being founded (Grunden) in the all-embracing Being, authority and justice also rise out of the metaphysical. Once again this proves to be the root of social values, just as above it was seen to be the foundation of ethical values and the source of personal life.1 Munich, W. Germany FOOTNOTE 1. See Johannes Lotz, Ich-Du-Wir: Fragen um den Menschen (Frankfurt, 1968); Die Drei-Einheit der Liebe: Eros, Philia, Agape (Frankfurt, 1979); Person und Freiheit: Eine philosophische Untersuchung mit theologischen Ausblichen (Freiburg, 1979). CHAPTER XII METAPHYSICS AND HISTORY T.A. ROBERTS The aim of this paper is to discuss some philosophical problems relating to history, both in the sense of what happened in the past and, more significantly, in the sense of producing an account of what happened in the past. Discussion of these selected problems will reflect trends in philosophical thinking over the past twenty years or so in the Anglo-Saxon speaking world. The main general trend which seems to be discernable is a shift away from a predominantly empiricist approach to the problem of historical knowledge which was prevalent in the immediate postwar period--an empiricist approach well reflected in Patrick Gardiner's The Nature of Historical Explanation (1952). As is well established, this empiricist approach was an off-shoot of certain aspects of linguistic philosophy, if not of logical positivism, which found classical expression in A.J. Ayer's Language, Truth and Logic (1936). In that book Ayer castigated all metaphysical propositions as pseudo-propositions and therefore meaningless. In recent years metaphysics has been rehabilitated, and contemporary discussions of problems in the philosophy of history clearly recognize that important philosophical arguments in this area involve crucial and unavoidable metaphysical issues. Nothing will be said in this paper about the details of historical methodology or historiography, that is to say, the methods or techniques used by historians in their task of reconstructing the past. Some philosophers believe that one of the tasks of the philosophy of history is to examine and analyze the presuppositions underlying historical methodology. This is, in my view, a mistaken approach. Historical methodology reflects the empirical practice of historians. Philosophers on the other hand discuss those peculiarly philosophical problems that arise, irrespective of the nature of historical methodology, when we reflect on the very possibility of being able to obtain knowledge of the past. Historical methodology assumes, unquestionably, that knowledge of the past is possible, and has always been possible. It seeks to analyze and systemize the methods used most effectively by historians to establish this knowledge of the past. But if philosophers examine the very possibility of knowing the past, this task is clearly logically prior to the task of formulating a historiography. It is therefore no part of the philosopher's task to worry about historical methodology: indeed the boot is on the other foot. It is for historians to pay heed to what the philosophers are about despite their scarcely disguised impatience with, if not downright contempt

for, philosophical speculation. As parts of this paper will, I hope, make clear, historical methodology sometimes reflects a confused apprehension of the way thing are, and this very often because the confusion stems from a failure to recognize metaphysical issues which must be resolved one way or another, if the kinks, so to speak, are to be straightened out in historical methodology. No account is taken here of philosophical problems about time, which, since history clearly involves the past, are obviously relevant to any comprehensive reflection about history. Is time linear, continuous, unending and without beginning? If so, we will tend to represent the structure of time by a horizontal straight line, the points of that line representing the moments of time. Any point on that line can be chosen to represent the present, so that all points to the left of it represent the past, and all to the right represent the future. Granted such a structure of time, it is tempting to think of the history as a movement or process in time, a movement of progress or decline. A rival theory of time claims that time is closed and its structure is best represented, not by a line, but by a circle. On this view, the historical process is neither one of progress nor of decline but one of returning again and again to a point through which it has already passed. Yet a third possibility, canvassed by McTaggart, is that time is unreal. How do we decide between these rival theories of time? I mention these possibilities in order to distinguish between philosophical problems about time and philosophical problems about history, which presupposes time. My concern in this paper is exclusively, if narrowly, with philosophical problems about history. What kind of philosophical problems about history does one have in mind. Consider the following propositions. 1.There are no `bare' historical facts. All historical facts are an inextricable blend of fact and interpretation. 2. All history is contemporary history. 3. The Christ-event (the death and resurrection of Jesus) is the meaning of all history. These three propositions share at least one feature in common. They are of a high order of generality. The first makes a claim about all the members of a sub-class of the class of facts i.e. about the class of historical facts. The second arises from a well known dictum of R. G. Collingwood, a distinguished historian who became an equally distinguished philosopher, about the nature of all historical methodology. And the third claims that one particular event is the key to the meaning, not of parts of history e.g. the history of western civilization, or types of history, e.g., religious history, but of all history. Another feature these three propositions share in common is the fact that acceptance or rejection of them is not to be decided by appeal to particular states of affairs in the world. If this is true then these propositions possess something of a metaphysical flavour. That is, if we accept them, we accept them not because they are in some straightforward sense true or false, but because they encapsulate (in very abbreviated form) some insight or emphasize some feature, considered important, of the way we think we must structure reality, in order to make it intelligible. FACTS AND INTERPRETATION Some historians who have recently discussed historiography have made great play of the claim that there are no bare historical facts, only facts plus interpretation. They have advanced this claim to counter views advanced by J. B. Bury in his inaugural address at Cambridge in 1903 that history is a science no more, no less, and that the task of the historian is to chronicle simply and impartiality what happened in the past to narrate the bare facts. Another Cambridge historian, Norman Sykes,1 writing in 1949, challenged and rejected Bury's thesis; a thesis which implied according to Sykes that the documents on which the historian worked were impartial, and the use made of them by the historian was impartial. According to Sykes, the theory that a historian can be impartial seems to us today manifest nonsense. Impartiality is impossible since the writer of the historical document

has selected what to relate about events and the historian's use of this document is based on selection and interpretation of the material and this selection presupposes a point of view. Hence neither the documents which survive from the past nor the use made of them by the contemporary historian can be impartial. Bury's ideal for the historian, presenting the facts as they happened, without the refactory element of interpretation, is impossible. This claim that all historical facts are interpreted facts is often held up as an unique feature of historical methodology. It is also used to defend as legitimate the historian who adopts an explicitly avowed ideological, political or religious standpoint in his historical writing be it Marxist, Protestant, or that of the Whig historian. Since all historical facts are interpreted facts it is impossible to eliminate the element of interpretation which is constitutive of historical fact: and if an interpretative element seems inescapable, one interpretation seems as valid as another. The appeal by historians discussing historical methodology to the claim that all historical facts are facts plus interpretation seems to me to be a clear example of how historians have seized upon a valid philosophical insight but without recognizing its metaphysical nature or import. Being unaware of its nature, they have distorted its importance for historical methodology in at least two ways: (a) by claiming this dictum represents something which is an unique feature of historical methodology, and (b) by using it to buttress a defence of what is in effect the adoption of a particular bias (ideological, religious or political) in historical interpretation. The valid philosophical proposition which lies hidden and unrecognized in the discussions of historical methodology to which I have alluded is the claim that all facts are interpreted facts. If this is valid, it applies to all facts, and not merely to historical facts. If it does apply to all facts, then it follows that it applies to historical facts. But if it is valid of historical facts in virtue of being valid of all facts, then it is illegitimate to use it to defend or buttress the Whig view of history or the Marxist view of history. The reason for that is very simple. When we say that all facts are interpreted facts, the sense of `interpretation' we have in mind is very different from the sense of `interpretation' which is used when historians debate the merits or otherwise of the Whig interpretation of history or the Marxist interpretation of history. What is it that someone may have in mind when he or she intends that all facts are interpreted facts and why are we inclined to categorize such a claim as a philosophical claim? It is justly a claim of extremely wide generality, whose truth does not rest on particular empirical facts about the world, on how the world is. The claim implies that however the world is, it will consist of facts which are all interpreted facts. The status of the proposition is what Kant would have termed synthetic a priori--it is universal yet applies to experience. To understand its import is in effect to reject a rival metaphysical claim. A rival claim, to take an example at the very opposite metaphysical pole, is the claim that all facts are reducible ultimately to simple facts, and simple facts are descriptions of pure simple acts of awareness by the intellect of simple sense experiences. All knowledge can in principle be reduced to the awareness by the mind of simple sense impressions--patches of color and bits of sound--to cite Russell's examples in his Logical Atomism. This kind of claim stems via Hume from Locke who regarded the mind as a blank and virgin piece of wax upon which objects in the world made impressions--the mind passively receiving them. Thereafter the mind might be active, creative and spontaneous in its manipulation of these impressions, but the very basis of all knowledge is the bedrock of the passive assimilation of pure sense experiences. In sharp contrast to this Russellian, Humean, and in part Lockean empiricist metaphysic, there is a Kantian view according to which even in the act of awareness of the most basic sense impression there is more than a passive assimilation of a sense datum. The mind is active in the assimilation, and in the transformation of what is assimilated into its own representation--something which

owes its origin to sense, but equally to mind. To rephrase this in more modern language, the Kantian claim is that the description of the most simple fact--e.g., there is a red patch on that wall--is not a mere description of a simple sense awareness. Any such description presupposes an already existing conceptual scheme. Such a scheme will contain empirical concepts e.g. `red', but it will also presuppose non-empirical concepts--what Kant termed categories--fundamental concepts, not derived or based on sense experience as empirical concepts, are yet essential if we are to be aware of any experience whatsoever. We have now placed the claim `all facts are interpreted facts' in a distinctly philosophical context, implying a Kantian type metaphysic in contrast to an extreme empiricist metaphysic which asserts the existence of simple facts as acts of simple assimilation of sense awareness. It is interesting to note in passing that the historian's use of the dictum "all historical facts are interpreted facts" arguably owes much to Collingwood, whose philosophical sympathies lie distinctly with the Kantian rather than with the empiricist metaphysic. The adoption of one metaphysic in preference to another carries with it its own implications, and this is no less true of the Kantian type metaphysic to which our historian methodologists are, probably unconsciously, committed. Considerations of space allow only a brief mention of two of these implications. If our representations of states of affairs--of facts--are an inevitable amalgam of elements of sense and of mind, then the resulting representation cannot be an exact mirror of the states of affairs which are non-mental in the sense that whatever their ontological status, they must be differentiated from mind. On a Kantian type metaphysic, we cannot have a simple realist view of the world: our representations do not represent directly how the world is. A representation of the past is then in some sense and to some degree a reconstruction which does not exactly correspond with what happened--if we mean by that past events as apprehended by a non-human intelligence. I do not know whether historians are aware of this implication, or whether they would be at all worried by it were they aware of it. The core of the Kantian "all facts are interpreted facts" type metaphysic is the claim that all awareness of experience--and historical experience is part of experience--presupposes a non-empirical categorial scheme by means of which we represent our experience. Now we may adopt the Kantian claim for the necessity of some categorial scheme without committing ourselves to accepting Kant's own analysis of the necessary categorial scheme. Once we adopt the Kantian--as contrasted to Kant's--position regarding the necessity of some categorial scheme, much fruitful philosophical discussion can be generated concerning the minimum content of such a categorial scheme. Clearly this is not the place to embark upon such a discussion but I wish to make one observation about this notion of the minimum requirements for a necessary conceptual scheme which is of relevance to historical enquiry. The observation is this. Whatever conception we finally entertain of the minimum categorial requirements, I think it is possible to state that such a minimum set of categorial conditions will rule out that it will be possible to give an intelligible account of being aware of an experience, description of which predicates opposite or contrary predicates of the same thing, e.g., it will rule out the notion that propositions of the form `p and ~ p' are true. Now some anthropologists have appealed to the notion of a pre-logical mind which some primitive peoples allegedly possess, and their conception of the prelogical mind implies the possibility of asserting contradictory propositions, in at least the sense of predicating contrary predicates of the same thing at the same time. Some historical theologians in interpreting what they consider the primitive stages of early Hebrew history have borrowed this notion of a prelogical mind as a valid explanatory tool. On the Kantian metaphysic, the notion of a pre-logical mind is incoherent. If it exists, we could not make sense of it: indeed we could not establish that it exists. This is a good example of how a sound knowledge of conceptual issues is essential to spot the kinks in historical methodology. The mistaken appeal to the notion of

a pre-logical mind as a valid explanatory concept in historical explanation is after all only of limited application in historical writing. I now turn to an area where awareness of conceptual puzzles will uncover deeper, more prevalent and therefore more difficult to eradicate, kinks in contemporary notions of historical methodology. In uncovering these kinks, I will be seriously questioning the theoretical possibility of historical knowledge. HISTORY AND CONTEMPORARY HISTORY As will be readily granted, the main concern of the historian is the reconstruction of past human actions. Now as R.G. Collingwood correctly observed in his Idea of History (1946), human actions possess a dual nature: they possess external and internal features. By external we mean the observable physical feature of the action--the movement of the arm. By internal we mean the beliefs, the desires, the intentions, and the motives which necessarily accompany an action, for without these mental features an action is not strictly speaking an action. An action is voluntary, or willed; and if willed, someone intends to achieve something by it, for which he may have his motives. To allow for intentions and motives, we must necessarily have reference to a person's beliefs and desires: otherwise a physical movement of the arm without intention is not an action. It is certainly an event, a change in the state of affairs in the world, but a random or chance happening in the world. To sum up, an action possesses a physical aspect and a thought aspect. And as Collingwood correctly implies, we do not correctly understand an action unless, in addition to achieving an awareness of the physical aspect, we also understand the thought aspect; and of these two, the latter is a more difficult achievement. So far as past human actions are concerned, the historian must re-think the thoughts of the agents who acted in the past. Since this rethinking occurs in the present, Collingwood summarized his metaphysical insight in the highly original dictum: all history is contemporary history. Original as his dictum undoubtedly is, Collingwood is not to be accepted uncritically. By confining the subject matter of history to the thoughts, beliefs, desires and decisions of agents in the past, Collingwood is being unduly restrictive, for the historian must take into account natural influences on a person's environment--economic, geographical and cultural factors. Nor, interpreted strictly, can Collingwood's dictum overcome the difficulty posed by the notion of identity--by what criteria do we know that our rethinking of past thoughts correspond exactly to those thoughts. Nevertheless, despite these and other objections, Collingwood places the emphasis where it should belong--namely that historians are primarily interested in past human actions, and the thought side of these actions is by far the most difficult to reconstruct as it is the most important. It is in connection with recovering and explaining the thought side of past human actions that the philosopher discerns theoretical problems of some considerable difficulty. I propose to review three of these briefly. Can the Motives of Past Actions be Established? The first problem raises the question what exactly is involved in interpreting past actions. Straightforwardly this involves deciding what was the meaning of the action, and what its explanation. Notice that in these problems I am concerned with the action of individuals. Group actions pose much the same problems, only more acutely. Working from texts or traces of the past, the historian must establish what the agent did. This is the overt act, the observable side of the action. He or she then must establish what the agent meant to do by this behavior--i.e., what was his or her intention. In explaining the action, the historian asks whether it was apt in the circumstances--in the historical context in which the agent found himself. Then we can ask what was the agent's motive in doing what he did. This is to offer an explanation of the action. The point I wish to emphasize here is that there is disagreement amongst philosophers as to whether historians should be or indeed can be concerned to

discover the motives for human actions. Some philosophers of history argue that discovering a man's intentions, and asking whether these intentions were appropriate in terms of the historical circumstances is as far as the historian can go. It is no part of the historian's task to tackle, still less to prejudge, the question of motive. When we have penetrated an agent's intention, we cannot and need not do more. Once we have discovered that an agent had sufficient reason to do what he or she did, we can penetrate no further. We have done enough. The major assumption underlying this view is that men act rationally. If men do not act rationally, there is no possibility of explaining their actions. A rational agent, in recognizing good reasons for acting, makes those reasons his or her own. The historian reconstructs his or her actions and discovers he or she had good reason for acting as he or she did. We need not be concerned with motives, for an agent may act from different motives, whereas an action is explained when we can cite sufficient reason to account for it. The opposite contention is to claim that citation of motive is important for a full explanation of an agent's action. Just because two possible motives could yield the same action in the context, it does not follow that explanation can proceed without deciding possible motives. To know why a man acted as he did involves knowing how he could have acted in other circumstances, in other conditions, for instance, those where the two motives would have moved him along different paths. This question as to whether historical explanation should take account of motives of human action is a fundamental theoretical issue, a philosophical issue involving our analysis of what constitutes a human action. Until this issue is resolved, the standard model of historical methodology used by historians--namely that they attempt to discover the meaning of actions and their motives--is out on a limb. If it is decided to include motives as part of any full or reasonably comprehensive explanation of human actions, it is important to recognize that deciding in any particular case what was the motive normally requires far more concrete information or evidence than the historian usually has at his disposal. This points to a fundamental weakness in historical methodology. To decide questions of motive, we need to investigate fully the agent's situation, his or her state of knowledge, the nature of the evidence available to him or her, the rules and conventions prevailing in his or her time with regard to social action, how he or she would have acted in quite different circumstances. Ascribing motives for an action involves knowing (or believing) that the agent knew (or believed) what the meaning of his or her action was, and the way in which he or she thought the reasons for his/her action justified his/her action. It is only necessary to set out these requirements for one to realize that, so far as most past human actions are concerned, the historian lacks the abundance of evidence which would enable him to give a reasonably certain and reasonably full answer to such questions. Historical Understanding I turn now to another philosophical problem posed by reflection on historical methodology. An agent does something--performs a piece of behavior--and in order to understand his action, which is essentially more than just the observable behavior, it is necessary to ask what did he mean by doing what he did. What was his intention? The point here is that what an agent intends by a piece of behavior is governed by rules or conventions in his or her society, or by the rules and conventions of a group or sect to which he or she belongs. Consider the following simple, biblical example: "And John baptized Jesus in the river Jordan." The actual piece of behavior performed by John is not stated. We infer that he dipped Jesus bodily into the waters of the river. We infer this from our knowledge of Jewish baptism, of Jewish practices of ritual washing. The writer in using the concept of baptism presupposes that we understand the meaning of what was done, the dipping in water for the washing away of sins. This is what is meant by saying that John, in doing what he did, obeyed the rules or conventions of

Jewish baptism, although in obeying them he also changed them slightly, for there is reason to believe that there was something distinctive about John's baptism. Had John merely dipped Jesus in the river, such behavior would not in itself count either as Jewish baptism or John's baptism. Had he dipped Jesus into the water accidentally or by chance, that would not count as baptism, any more than the sprinkling of water on an infant's head counts as Christian baptism. John's behavior takes its meaning from a certain context which gives the action--which includes the behavior (what was observable) but is more than the behavior--a specific religious meaning. Let us now ask the question--did John believe that the dipping in water literally washed away sins? If so, how do we conceive of it? Do we understand it in terms of causal efficacy? Or did John think of it as a symbolic washing away of sins? One thing is clear: until we answer this question, we do not fully understand how John's behavior was meant to have meaning. And can we ever fully understand John's action if we examine his behavior from the standpoint of a scientific culture which believes that dipping in water could, by itself, not wash away sins, and that to think so is to be governed by some magical thought form, which is unreal. Could a culture which rejects the notion of sin, or did not possess a notion of sin, ever understand the meaning of what John did? The problem posed here is the problem of understanding cross-culturally the rules and conventions which give meaning and point to men's actions. So far as I am aware the problem is first posed by F. H. Bradley in his Presuppositions of Critical History (1874). Bradley in that book is perplexed by the question, how can a 19th century citizen of western civilization understand a society such as that of lst century Palestine which apparently believed in the efficacy of devils and miracles. Interestingly enough Bradley was led to ponder this question by reflecting on a historical work on the early Christian community which had been published by a distinguished historical theologian, F.C. Bauer's Epochs of Church History. Bradley's concern has been revived in our own day, but from a Wittgensteinian standpoint, by Professor Peter Winch.2 There is an important difference between them. Whereas Bradley raises the specifically historical problem of understanding a past culture from the standpoint of another quite different culture, Winch raises the problem of understanding cross-culturally: how can the contemporary westerner enter into the thought world of primitive African tribes? Whereas Bradley addressed his discussion to historian, Winch addresses himself to anthropologists. Philosophically, the issue appears to be the same, in principle. I do not propose, nor does space allow, to follow the ramifications of the Winchian or Bradleian discussions. I wish only to draw attention to the following observation. The Winch discussion gives rise to a strong and a weak thesis. The strong thesis is that it is impossible for us to understand the meaning of men's actions cross-culturally, that is on the basis of anthropological evidence. It is impossible to get under the skin of a primitive society and understand the point or meaning of what the primitive man does. The weak thesis allows that this is possible though extremely difficult in practice. If we apply the strong thesis to history, it rules out the possibility of understanding across the centuries, just as much as it rules out understanding cross-culturally. The weak thesis, although it admits the viability of anthropological studies, is of little comfort to the historian. For whereas the weak thesis allows that an anthropologist can, by long sojourn in a primitive society and by constant questioning of his or her hosts, eventually get under the skin of that society, the historian is by comparison much less favorably placed. He or she lacks the wealth of vital information which the anthropologist can gain, and therefore the historian is not in practice in a position to be able to understand a past culture very different from his or her own. Before leaving the topic of the role of motives and intentions in understanding human actions, past or otherwise, it should be emphasized that we have taken no account of possible unconscious motives or intentions--motives and intentions in

so far as a man is aware, or thinks he is aware, of them have alone been taken into account. There exists the phenomena of unconscious motivation. For example a person is hypnotised and commanded under hypnotism to pass over the ace of spades as she goes through the pack of cards. She does as she was bidden. Although unaware that in so acting she obeyed the hypnotist's command she is nevertheless aware which card is the ace of spades, for she does pull it out of the pack. How are we to describe what goes on here in terms of motives and intentions? But there is an even more difficult problem. If individuals can manifestly act from unconscious motives, is it possible that groups or societies can be in the grip of unconscious forces? How would we recognize such unconscious forces, and behavior which is determined by them? Questions about possible unconscious motivation pose very difficult problems, but so far as one can make out, historians do not seem to give them much consideration when they construct their historical accounts of the past. Finally I wish to mention briefly one other philosophical problem which must be resolved before a satisfactory historiography can be developed. As we mentioned earlier, an agent's actions are explained by locating his or her actions in a context and showing how he or she had good reasons for acting as he or she did. His action was an appropriate--or one of several possible appropriate--response to a particular set of circumstances. The problem which arises here, which has been extensively discussed in recent philosophy is quite simply--can reasons for action be causes? Some prominent philosophers e.g., Melden, Hampshire, Kenny, Winch, Peters3 have argued that reasons cannot be causes. Allied to this question is the problem whether it is possible to formulate scientific type laws about human actions. Impressed by the success of the natural sciences, philosophers such as Comte (the father of sociology) believed it was possible in principle to fashion causal laws about human actions, and to base predictions about future human actions on these laws. This enterprise has hardly been very successful, and some philosophers argue that the attempt is impossible in principle. They concede that we can certainly appeal to known or possible scientific laws to explain behavior in the behavioral parts of actions. But they argue that the intentional component of actions cannot be the subject of law in the scientific sense, and therefore human actions will forever remain beyond the scope of the scientific type of law. Giving reasons for actions is explaining them and this is a form of causal explanation. Often the explanation is a singular causal statement but singular causal statements do not necessarily and always imply general causal laws. Here is an example of a radical theoretical disagreement amongst philosophers which ideally needs to be resolved before a satisfactory historical methodology can be constructed. The other philosophical problem is not unconnected with the alleged impossibility of subsuming intentions under scientific law. It arises from Quine's radical translation thesis.4 So far as I understand it, the application of Quine's thesis to the area under discussion is something like this. If we allow that what an action means to a man is what he intends by it, Quine contends that owing to certain logical difficulties connected with the notion of exact synonymity, we can never be certain that we understand what a man's intention is. Consider the example already cited: "And John baptized Jesus in the Jordan." The meaning of what John did is closely related to what he intended to do. And what he intended to do was closely governed by John's understanding of the concept of `baptism'. But since this concept is, in a sense, a theoretical concept one which does not possess an exact or precise extensional reference, then what John previously understood by `baptism' may be one of several possibilities. But we can never be sure we know which one of these John had in mind: indeed the meaning of baptism for him cannot be translated exactly in terms of my (i.e. the interpreter's) understanding of baptism. Clearly, to the extent that Quine's thesis is correct, to that extent it undermines at a stroke the theoretical possibility of recovering another's intention, and hence of recovering the

intentions of past actions. The Christ Event and the Meaning of All History This discussion would be incomplete if no reference was made to the third of the propositions instanced at the outset, namely: The Christ event is the meaning of all history. The first comment is to draw attention to the ambiguity of the expression, "the meaning of all history". This can refer to history in the sense of "all that happened," i.e., what is known by an omniscient being such as God. In that sense, the philosophical difficulties of constructing satisfactory historical accounts, to which most of this paper has been devoted, would be irrelevant to the validity of the claim that the Christ event is the meaning of all history. On the other hand, if the proposition refers to history as recorded or reconstructed by historians, i.e. to accounts of the past, then the philosophical problems to which attention has been drawn in this paper are indeed relevant. For if consideration of these philosophical problems serves to cast doubt about the very possibility of our being able to reconstruct the past on the basis of evidence or traces bequeathed by the past, then this is directly relevant to any claim that presupposes we can successfully know the past. That is the claim that X is the meaning of all recorded history logically presupposes that we can reconstruct recorded history before we can claim that X is its meaning. My second comment concerns the question of how one is to understand the expression "the Christ event is the meaning of. . . ." Now it seems that at least one theological interpretation of this expression which is advanced does invoke the concept of intention, and may therefore generate philosophical difficulties of the kind discussed in this paper. The theological interpretation one has in mind is Bultmann's.5 For him, correctly interpreting the Christ event is connected with true understanding of the notion of the self's authentic existence. A correct understanding of the authentic existence of the self is the meaning of all history. That is, we fail to understand history if we fail to understand what is the self's authentic existence. Bultmann connects the notion of authentic existence with Christ's death on the cross in this way. Christ accepted the humiliation of the Cross in perfect obedience to God. Authentic existence of the self can only be realised in perfect obedience to God. The supreme perfect example of this obedience--the death of Jesus on the cross--is the meaning of all history. Apart from any other problems generated by Bultmann's version, it does presuppose that qua historical event, as historical action, we can recover the intention of Jesus in accepting the death of the cross. It must at least be possible to establish that it was a historical fact that Jesus intended to be perfectly obedient to God. This discussion will I hope serve to register a word of caution. Apart from the practical difficulties arising from the nature of the surviving evidence, or lack of it, the problem of recovering Jesus' intention poses severe philosophical problems. University College of Wales Aberyswyth, Wales NOTES 1. Norman Sykes, "Some Recent Conceptions of Historography and Their Significance for Christian Apologetie." Journal of Theological Studies, Jan-Apr, 1949, fn. 2437. 2. Peter Winch, "Understanding a Primitive Society," American Philosophical Quarterly, I (1964); reprinted in D.Z. Phillips, ed., Religion and Understanding (Oxford: Blackwell, l967), pp. 9-42. 3. A.I. Melden, Free Action, London, 1961. Stuart Hampshire, Thought and Action, London, 1959. A. Kenny, Action, Emotion and Will, London, 1963. P. Winch, The Idea of a Social Science, London, 1958. R.S. Peters, The Concept of Motivation, London, 1958. Donald Davidson, "Actions, Reasons and Causes" reprinted in Davidson, Essays on Actions and Events, OUP, 1980. 4. W.V.O. Quine, "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" in From a Logical Point of View

(Cambridge, Mass., l953). 5. R. Bultmann, History and Eschatology, Edinburgh University Press, 1957. **** http://www.crvp.org/book/Series03/III-20/prologue.htm PROLOGUE THE SIGNIFICANCE OF RESEARCH IN EAST ASIAN CULTURE YU XINTIAN THE SOURCES OF HUMAN SPIRITUAL REJUVENATION In inspecting international issues, there are at least three layers of thinking: state, region and world. A region generally is referred to as a continuous area of the world having definable characteristics, but not always fixed boundaries like a state. A region often has a large enough space to become an important component of a continent. Moreover, a region is not only a simple matter of space, but also a culture with a psychological identity born in a complicated and interrelated historical process. East Asian culture is just such a region. The triumphal progress of modernization in East Asia (including Southeast Asia) is one of the most exciting phenomena following WWII. If Japan’s prosperity is a special case of development of non-Western countries and the relatively small scale of the achievements of Asian “four dragons” limits their universal significance, the tide of China, ASEAN and Indo-Chinese countries doing their utmost to catch up has compelled people to recognize afresh the East Asian miracle. The emergence of East Asia since 1990 has broadened people’s field of vision and provided a foundation for looking forward to the prospect of a newly industrialized East Asian economic-cultural circle. Traced to its source, there existed a broad Chinese civilized circle in history. One of its outstanding characteristics was the learning and identification of Chinese culture. The Chinese cultural circle covered China, Japan, Vietnam and Korea. Buddhism, remade with Chinese culture, spread to Japan, Korea, Vietnam and Southeast Asia. The painting, medicine, architecture, music and persons influenced by the religion bore the strong imprint of Chinese culture. Confucianism took root in the lifestyle, ethics and political system of Japan, Korea and Vietnam, which were very close to the core of China’s “cultural circle”. “The Silk Road in the Sea” from China to Southeast Asia took shape as early as the 4th and 5th centuries. During the Tang and Song dynasties, the ancestors of the Persians and Arabs also made use of these sea routs to go to Guangzhou Prefecture, Quanzhou and Hangzhou for missionary work and business. The first emperor of the Yuan Dynasty was regarded as the originator of China’s “marine policy”. Beyond two expeditions to Japan (in 1274 and 1281), he sent his “navy” on an punitive expedition to ancient Vietnam and sent 10,000 naval troops to Java (in 1292). However, as these wanton military ventures did not achieve far-reaching political, economic and cultural results, the first and third emperors of the Ming Dynasty drew the historical lessons and developed trade and friendly relations with Southeast Asia and the West on a large scale. The seeds of capitalism in China then grew sturdily. China’s foreign trade was booming on an unprecedented scale after Zheng who went to the West seven times. His tracks were left in the present Cambodia, Thailand, Sumatera, Brunei, Java, Malaya, Kalimantan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, India and the eastern seacoast of Africa. In the conditions of the times, contacts with Southeast Asia were very frequent, while those with remote countries were occasional. China set up trade strongholds and residential areas in Malaya, Indonesia and the Philippines. In fact, Zheng He’s records described the people of Chinese origin settling down in Southeast Asia as constituting the local high society because of their higher cultural level and good management. Though the Ming Dynasty failed to spread “the system of rule by ceremony and propriety” to Southeast Asia, where Indian and Arab cultures were always influential, long-term coexistence and exchanges promoted cultural fusion. Comparing typically Islamized Indonesian culture with Chinese culture, one finds many parallels. Indonesians believe that Allah created humankind through parents,

so to believe in Allah one must respect and love parents and esteem teachers: one must “have a respect as great as a mountain and have a mind as open as a valley” for elders and betters. The Indonesian parliament advocates adopting resolutions through consultation; finding common ground as stressed in political institutions in East Asia. Indonesia promotes three principles: first, we are masters of society; second, we are duty-bound to protect our homes and defend our country; and third, frequent introspection into one’s faults will lead to knowing one’s deficiencies. In Chinese culture these have different approaches, but equally satisfactory results: “every ordinary person has responsibility for the rise and fall of China,” and “I daily examine myself on three points.” The Indonesian Government stipulates that during the period of construction, people are allowed the freedom of responsible speech. Though people have different interests, everyone must bear responsibility for the extensive state and social interests, and cannot impose their personal will on others. In foreign relations, Indonesia advocates “winning without fighting and overcoming the hard with the soft.” This is in harmony with high Chinese strategy. Though Indonesia is an Islamic country, the principles it follows differ to a certain extent from those of the Arab countries in West Asia -- the core region of Islam -- but are similar to its neighboring Chinese cultural circle. Of course, not a few Southeast Asian nations devoutly believe in religion, while the religious element is relatively weak in Chinese culture; this is an obvious cultural difference. However, in Thailand where Buddhism occupies the leading position and in Malaysia and Indonesia dominated by Islam, the spiritual religious pursuit does not hinder people’s striving for improving the material conditions of this life. People cannot help calling to mind the Chinese cultural approach: “the planning lies with man, the outcome with heaven”. East Asian culture is a gem of human thinking. According to the German philosopher, Karl Jaspers, in the axial period, that is between 800 BC and about 200 AD, Egypt, the two river valleys of the Tygris and the Euphrates, the West (Greece and Roman), and India and China all made the first spiritual leap on their own. Our various philosophies have originated since from that brilliant era. This proves humankind’s common origin and identity, not in the sense of biology, but rather of spirituality. Western culture has made significant contributions to the world’s historical process, leading to drastic social changes with the scientific and technological revolution as the centerpiece. However, the technological era has caused difficult problems such as environmental pollution and cultural crisis, while bringing happiness to humankind. We must draw the tools for a response to new needs from our own ideological treasure house. Chinese and Indian cultures both will be beneficial in overcoming global threats. From a longer historical perspective humankind after all will transcend the “animal circles” of war and be creative in a peaceful and unified environment, thus taking a second spiritual leap. Arnold Toynbee, a master in research on historical cultures, pointed out that “peace and unification . . . must center on the main shaft of geography and culture, and be constantly crystallized. I have a premonition of this main shaft in East Asia rather than in the U.S., Europe and the Soviet Union”.1 East Asian culture with deep connotations and rich diversity is bound to play a catalytic role in reviving and renewing the spirit of humankind. THE DRIVING FORCE FOR SUCCESS IN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT Researchers all over the world have tried to find the clue to the sustained and rapid economic development of East Asian countries and regions. One of the important reasons is their culture which is a time-honored and continuing topic of debate. During the period when Japan devoted major efforts to pushing forward its industrialization an Australian expert was disappointed after his investigation in Japan. He said that the Japanese were content with things as they were, had no concept of time and found it difficult to grasp Western modern technology and management. Since then the facts have contradicted his predictions. In the 1960s,

most social scientists asserted that Confucianism was incompatible with modernization, so it was hard for East Asia to take off economically. Confucianism lays stress on harmony and coordination, thinks highly of the collective and stability, does not seek change, attaches importance to humanism rather than to science and technology, and thus cannot be counted on to guide modernization. But after the 1970s, important changes took place. The economic success of “Asian four dragons” was looked upon with increased respect. The Confucian values, which had been criticized in the past, were universally recognized as the inherent driving force for this new growth. Weber saw the spirit of Western capitalism embodied in individualism, market competition and laissez-faire policies, which helped to bring about the uniquely successful modernization in the human history. But the East Asian work ethic and enterprise spirit are quite different. Only in the network of interpersonal relations can individuals have their significance, so everyone must scrupulously abide by his/her duties and obligations in organizations and pay attention to mutual cooperation. East Asian cultural features can be analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively. American scholar Michael Bonfd investigated the values of people of Chinese origin in 22 Eastern and Western countries. He devised 40 basic value items and asked every interviewee to rank each item. The 40 items were grouped into four categories: “integration”, “Confucian motivation for work”, “kindheartedness” and “ethics and discipline”. With regard to the “Confucian motivation for work” (superior and inferior, thrift, willpower, sense of shame, mutual courtesy, steadiness, face and tradition) Bonfd noted that Japan and the “Asian four dragons” ranked ahead of the other countries. Yu Shaohua with Singaporean National University investigated values of middle-level managerial personnel in 51 medium-sized enterprises in Singapore and Malaysia. Though he questioned Bonfd’s four categories, generally speaking, he agreed with the relationship between cultural background and economic development. Confucianism has important influence on economic development, but this, of course, does not diminish the importance of a sound political system and economic structure. Chinese culture has existed for thousands of years while the East Asian takeoff is a matter of only recent decades. It should be noted that in the process of industrialization, East Asian countries have not consciously created a new ethics and spirit, but rather have learned from, imitated and introduced Western capitalist technology, management and systems. But just as colorless light is refracted into an entire spectrum through a prism, Western culture is bound to be filtered through Eastern culture, resulting in quite different styles and features. The converse may also be true, namely, that Eastern culture is transformed and renewed in conformity with the evolving situation, leading to new developments. In sum, Western cultural nativization and native cultural transformation are important experiences of East Asian economic and social development, and can be used as points of references for other developing countries. In most developing countries, there still exist the phenomenon of a dual economy, causing the phenomenon of a dual culture. In vast rural areas, native culture sticks to the tradition, while in a few cities it copies Western culture. Undoubtedly, this kind of conflict and split in economy and culture is absolutely harmful to mobilizing the whole people to realize modernization. East Asian countries have removed the basis of a dual culture by eliminating the dual economy; that has promoted economic growth while solving the problem of a dual culture. It proves that conflict between Eastern and Western cultures may be eliminated through the practice of self-determined choice by independent states. This is a breakthrough for modernization theory and the practice of developing countries. As for the debates over relations between culture and modernization, the views can be classified into two schools: “culture theory” and “system theory”. The “culture theory” holds that nations have different cultures and social systems which play a great and even decisive role in economic development. If so, it is very difficult to learn from and disseminate their experiences, since any nation obviously finds

it hard to transplant another nations’ culture. The “system theory” considers that the cultural role is very small and economic development depends on special economic policies and conditions. Proceeding from this view, the expansion of modernization is easier. The famous expert on modernization, Peter Berger, wavers between the two views, and holds that the correct answer seems somewhere between the two. In fact, it is very hard completely to separate them. Firstly, this is because the cultural factor cannot play a role on its own without the support of other political and economic conditions. For example, while all are located in East Asia, Cambodia, Myanmar and North Korea have not yet entered the road of rapid growth. So, in doing research on culture, we cannot seek the “causes” of economic development exclusively in culture, but must look for the “juncture” with economic development. That is to say, we must identify the cultural factors which can vitalize the economy, not the cultural feature by itself. Secondly, the role of culture is not illusory. Correct policy and rational system will, of course, encourage enterprises and the people who work for them; but how to work out correct policy and how to make entrepreneurs and people willing to follow the government’s strategy cannot avoid issues of the cultural background. The ratio of saving by East Asian people is high, while that of Americans is low. This cannot be attributed to the difference in the system or wages or bank policy. Thirdly, recognizing the impact of culture, in a broad field of vision, culture is one of the variables. Culture not only determines the scope of policy, but also is related to features of social outlook. As almost everything is filtered through culture, the same economic policies may produce different results in different countries. Lastly, the process of East Asian countries shows that in the initial stage of modernization more emphasis often is put on the introduction and building of systems and policy. With development, various nations may give more consideration to the realization of spiritual values on the basis of the fusion of Eastern and Western cultures so that the impact of the native culture on society may gradually be intensified. System and culture move forward in interaction and coordination. East Asian experiences not only inspire other developing countries, but also are of international significance in theory. For example, the range and intensity of government intervention in the economy in East Asian countries are more than in other regions of the world. However, their market mechanism is flexible and vigorous and is capable of responding to changes. In discussion with US development economist Bhagwati, he held that the mechanism is still a mystery and that after in-depth research the Western theory may be rewritten. Culture cannot be simply transplanted, but it can be studied. The ability of humankind to realize and control the surrounding environment cannot be completed by a single nation on its own. Much of the culture of every society comes from other societies. Tools, organization, belief, art and other cultural factors keep moving from one society to another. A culture which has accepted the incentive of new information may respond and gradually change. Therefore, East Asian culture has both its own particularity in history, but also potentiality for universalization. A MEANS FOR ENTERING THE WORLD POLITICAL ARENA In the early 21st century, East Asia may become one leg of the tripod, together with North America and Europe. Reality determines consciousness, which is manifested in action. Asians have realized their own strength and are proud of it. They want to voice their own views and seek their own development norms and paths. In the past centuries by means of arms Europe and the U.S. destroyed most of the original civilizations and cultures of the world with Christianity, law and trade, and they denied or changed local ethics standards. Westerners were over confident that European ethical standards were superior and could effectively set up new standards all over the world; they bragged that they are teachers of other national spirits and ethics. According to their own standards arbitrarily they decided other nations’ destiny on the premise of being beneficial to them. Power politics is swollen with cultural arrogance.

Economic vitality and interdependence have enhanced the self-confidence of developing countries. In the past they could only submit to insufferable Western arrogance, but now they define themselves and regain their justice and selfrespect. The West spares no efforts to preach democracy and human rights. Without mentioning the problems and malpractice in their implementation in the West, even if they were absolutely perfect could they be applied in the different situations of the countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America? The West once sharply criticized the “autocracy” and “centralization” of South Korea, Singapore and China’s Taiwan, but these countries and regions ensured economic prosperity and promoted market development. On the contrary, the economy of the Philippines whose political system was most similar to the U.S. long was stagnant. Asians began to make it clear that Western values do not conform to Asia. In December 1993, this author took part in the “Asian Economic Development and Political Democracy” International Symposium sponsored by The Asia Foundation. Experts and scholars of Asian countries and regions unanimously held that democracy itself is not bound to lead to economic development, but economic development will after all promote democracy. What is most important is to seek a balance between economic growth and political democracy and to build a form of democracy suitable to a particular economic phase. The tide of democratization in Japan, South Korea and China’s Taiwan has proven that only after the economy arises to a certain level can democracy achieve a higher stage. In the terms of the Governor of Bank of Korea: South Korean democracy is sure to be South Korean with both Eastern and Western strong points. Asians are undergoing psychological changes from “everything being the best in the West” to finding again the values of their cultural heritage and achieving a modernization unequal to Westernization. Anwar Ibrahim, Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister, recognized that Asia indeed has its deficiencies on the issue of human rights, but allowing others to lecture us and threaten us on issues of freedom and human rights is equal to accepting insult. In an article in the International Herald Tribune, a former Singaporean ambassador enumerated several policies effective in East Asia. They included social contracts between the state and the people, building a clean ethical environment and a free and responsible public opinion, and casting away Western extreme individualism. While Asians have learned from the West generation after generation and will continue to do so, he hoped that the West should also learn from the East willingly and gladly. It is now time. This change of attitude by Asians has shocked the West. The noted American political analyst, Samuel Huntington, wrote the article “The Clash of Civilizations” with specially keen insight when he held: that the dominant source of conflict will be cultural; that increasing interaction will intensify awareness of the differences between civilizations; that Western efforts to spread its values have aroused a confrontational response from other civilizations; that Confucianism and Islam are uniting to challenge the West; and that the next world war, if there is one, will be a war between civilizations. Huntington’s views are incorrect in theory. Differences in culture and religion may often be the fuse for conflict, but the scramble for interests in terms of territory, wealth, resources and power is the main reason. Furthermore, between different cultures there are not only conflict and confrontation, but also exchange and fusion. The Islamic culture he regards as a great scourge hung like a bright moon in the dark sky in the Middle Ages before the rising of the sun of the Renaissance. Chinese culture spread to the West and became the engine of the Enlightenment. Moreover, religions such as Christianity, Islam and Hinduism have similar views on humankind, the environment, the importance of society and family, the significance of spiritual guidance and the objectives of life. Cultures can share values and different cultures can temper intersecting interests and

aspirations. All this has disappeared in Huntington’s vision. If in theory his views are incomplete and incorrect, politically they are indeed sensitive and insightful. Western countries took the lead in soft power while dominating the world with hard power. The rise of East Asian countries made the West feel severely the challenge of different cultures for the first time. Western superiority in soft power is declining as East Asian ideologies, cultures, religious beliefs and value systems pour onto the international arena. They pay no attention to Western centralism, but rather affirm their own presence with a particular political culture. This is the real reason for Huntington’s heavyheartedness. The people in the original colonies and semi-colonies experienced painful cultural impact. Native cultures under strong attack by Western culture manifested features unsuitable to modern society. People could not but cut their braids and abandon tattoos, and were forced to learn foreign cultures. The compulsion resulted in two deviations: One was fiercely to boycott all Western culture while resisting the exploitation and oppression of colonialism and imperialism; the other was to feel keenly their own backwardness, worship the West, copy its indiscriminately, and dream of golden hair and blue eyeballs. Only after national independence could people eliminate the two deviations and learn to choose on their own and with balance. Western countries have not had such an experience, which is their good fortune. However, for this reason it is more difficult for them to understand the excellence and greatness of many cultures in the world. This is their future misfortune. Western centralism will be spurned in time and become the shackles of Western progress. Huntington represents exactly the habits of Western conservative forces. East Asian nations, while enhancing their strength, can demand their due in the international political arena. Culture is one of their weapons. As early as 1980, the famous British politician Roderick MacFarquhar noted that in the next century the challenge of the Russians will be military, and that of Middle East will be economic. Only East Asia will constitute an all-round challenge to the West from the style of economic development to basic values. However, East Asian nations will not conquer the West and dominate the world, since the times are completely changed. East Asian cultures are still opening the way for East Asian countries to obtain due rights. Reaching this objective, having undergone colonial oppression and enslavement, these countries will be absolutely unwilling to bully and humiliate others. East Asian cultures will embrace the quintessence of the various ideologies and cultures of humankind in terms of their culture of the golden mean and contribute their wisdom to creating a fairer political and economic order and a more brilliant world culture. NOTE 1. Prospects for the 21st Century---Dialogue between Toynbee and Ikeda Daisaku (International Cultural Publishing Company, 1993), p. 294. *** http://www.crvp.org/book/Series03/III-13/chapter_i.htm CHAPTER I TWO ASPECTS OF MODERNIZATION MO WEIMIN History concerns human civilization whose progress lies in the transformation of humankind from a slash-burn culture to the utilization of modern science and technology. Modernization is important in the this history for it indicates rapid progress in the ability to control nature and improve one’s material and spiritual conditions. It is a linear concept resulting from a harmonic relation-ship between subjective human activity and external nature. More importantly, it is also an open-ended concept for it requires every country not only to develop its traditional rational factors, but to tolerate and even adopt progressive foreign ideas. In a narrow sense, modernization refers to attaining "modern and advanced levels of science and technology" in, for example, agriculture, industry, national

defence, science and technology. But as a product of human progress it should include also moderni-zation of thoughts and ideas. These two aspects cannot be separated, let alone be arbitrarily isolated. How to grasp properly the relation between these two aspects and their respective degrees is the key to the realization of modernization. This chapter will con-sider this problem by combining a review of history with reflection upon the present situation. AN HISTORICAL REVIEW In ancient times, especially in the Song dynasty, China once had an outstanding history of leading the world in science and te-chnology typified by the "Four Inventions": printing, gun powder, paper-making and the compass. However, good times do not last long. At the end of the 18th century, the ruling class of the last feudal dynasty (Qing) in Chinese history, on the one hand, closed the country to international interchange, blindly opposed every-thing foreign, was arrogant in its parochialism and discriminated against any who held different views. On the other hand, it was on the decline and had serious social crises, of which the more obvious were: corruption and incompetence on the part of officialdom, decline in armaments, annexation of its territory, increasing finan-cial deficits, and a serious distance between the poor and the rich so that a large number of its working people lived in an abyss of misery. Moreover, a massive importation of foreign opium at the cost of great wealth not only poisoned the working people, but aggravated the Qing dynasty’s financial difficulties. At the same time, the Western great powers had long coveted this old and my-sterious territory. With difficulties both at home and abroad, a few landlords and intellectuals voiced dissatisfaction and even indignant resent-ment. Currents of social thoughts then underwent a radical change, and there emerged "Jing Shi Zhi Yong", whose main repre-sentatives were Gong Zizhen, Wei Yuan, Lin Zexu and Bao Shichen. Their thought included the following important points: (a) to reveal the dark and decayed phenomena in feudal society; (b) to criticize the Han learnings’ stress upon the past rather than the present and its attempt to escape rather than confront reality, as well as the hollow vagueness of Song learning; (c) to propose poli-tical and economic reform; (d) to advocate guarding against and resisting the economic and military invasion by Western great powers. When defeat in the Opium War shocked the Chinese in inte-llectuals, the clearest response was insistence upon studying the Western capitalist world. The first person to raise the question of how to study this was not Lin Zexu, but Wei Yuan who discovered that the reason the great Western powers won the Opium War was their possession of powerful armaments and advanced technology. Hence, he advocated learning from advanced foreign technology in order to resist or even control the West. This recognized the dis-parities between China and the West and that China’s progress in modernization must be through the study advanced Western science and technology. Moreover, after the second Opium War, Feng Guifen realized not only that Chinese technology was inferior to the West’s, but more importantly that China could not be compared to the West in the following things: the employment of human resources and terri-tory, the close relationship between the ruler and the people, and the correspondence between speech and reality. Feng Guifen advo-cated that Chinese modernization should retain the Chinese feudal ranking or seniority in human relationships as a matter of sub-stance, with the great Western powers’s methods of wealth and power playing a subsidiary or functional role. As the invasion by the Western powers intensified and people’s rebelliousness rose like a raging fire, the ruling class of the Qing Dynasty was greatly shocked and split internally into die-hards and a Westernization movement which introduced techni-ques of capitalist production initiated by such bureaucrats as Zeng Guofan, Li Hongzhang and Zhang Zhidong in the latter half of the 19th century. The diehards obstinately clung to the creed of "Tian (Heaven) does not change, nor does Tao" in order to preserve the feudal rule of the Qing government, while the Westernization Movement attempted to learn from Western technology and "Zhi Qi Zhi Qi" under the motto that "what changes is Qi, but not Tao." Thinking Chinese

cultural heritage and institutions to be vastly superior to the West, so that there was no need to resort to the West, they refused to accept Western democracy and civilization. The major guide of the Westernization movement was Feng Guifen’s emphasis upon modernization in science and technology, but not in thoughts and ideas. This was the first stage of China’s moderni-zation, insisting that "the Chinese factors remain fundamental, while Western factors play a subsidiary role." However, after the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, repre-sentatives of the Constitutional Reform and Modernization move-ment, such as Tan Sedong, Liang Qicao, and Kang Youwei repre-senting the interests of the liberal bourgeois and the enlightened landlords, sharply criticized the weakness due to the failure of the Westernization Movement. the Modernization’s Reform Movement of 1898 marked modern China’s second step toward moder-nization. This insisted that the West was fundamental or the matter of substance while China was subsidiary or functional. Because of lack of agreement on the part of the ruling class and obstruction by the diehards the Movement met with failure. However, the political reform decreed by the Qing government on January 9, 1901 reflected that some agreement had been reached among the ruling class. Although the reform repeated the old themes of the un-changeableness of "the three cardinal guides: ruler guides subjects, father guides son, and husband guides wife, and of the five constant virtues: benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom and fidelity," it also manifested a pressing historical sense of "over-hauling and consolidating government practice" and "moderation in wealth and power". The reform indicated that the only solution to the problem of destitution and weakness was to learn from the strong points of foreign countries in order to offset China’s weak-ness. What had been learned in the past of Western learning was merely superficial, not its essentials without which China could not become prosperous and strong. In fact, neither the idea that "China was the fundamental and the West subsidiary", nor the alternative that "the West was the fundamental and China subsidiary" were decisive because, as Yan Fu pointed out, "Chines Learning had its own fundamental and sub-sidiaries, as did Western Learning." In the Westernization Move-ment, Guo Songtao and Zheng Guanying began to revise the doc-trine that "China was the fundamental"; especially Zheng Guan-ying thought that the prosperity and strength of the West lay in its political and economic institutions, and advocated the establishment of a House of Representatives and an introduction of cons-titutionalism. In the course of learning from Western modernization, the Qing government gradually underwent a painful change from refusal to acceptance. The May 4th Movement of 1919 was an anti-imperialist, anti-feudal, political and cultural movement; it was influenced by the October Revolution and led by intellectuals having the rudiments of Communist ideology. From then till the foundation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, there were three views on the problems of modernization: (a) modern neo-Confucianism eva-luated Western civilization and preached Chinese traditional civili-zation; (b) some advocated an overall Westernization, of whom Chen Xujing and Hu Shi were representative; and (c) the Com-munist Party suggested making "the past serve the present and foreign things serve China." The third view would appear correct and logic suggests that Chinese modernization should have ad-vanced this way; however, the facts are quite the opposite. There are striking similarities in history and the thirty years after liberation. China followed the way of the Qing government in once again closing the country to international intercourse and an overall rejection of Western civilization. From the Anti-rightist Struggle (the counterattack in 1957 against the bourgeois rightists) and Anti-Rightist Trend at the Lu Shan meeting to the Communist Party’s Third Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee’s stress upon the absolutes of class struggle, all leftist thought led to such feudal survivals as absolutism and royalism in their modern forms. What had already been extinguished in the West began to spread in China and thoroughly engulfed the kindhearted, but in-sensitive and meek, working people. Especially, "the Cultural Revolution" so wantonly

trampled on Chinese democracy and legal institutions that the basic human rights of citizens could not be guaranteed. In order to preserve its own absolutism and obscu-rantism, modern absolutism could not tolerate the splendid Wes-tern civilization permeating China, which was old and obstinate. Things take an opposite direction when they become ex-treme. In 1978 the Communist Party’s Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee advocated and carried out a policy of reform and openness, signaling thereby that Chinese modernization had taken a turn for the better. Practice shows that the reform provided thriving vitality, for example, in importing advanced te-chnology and equipment, establishing special economic zones, im-porting foreign capital, and advocating in the countryside a con-tract system by which the family has access to its products. All these reforms led to rapid progress in the national economy and greatly raised people’s living standard. Although at the same time Western spiritual civilization was imported, modernization was confined mainly to the material field and concerned science and technology. Western thoughts and ideas were guarded against overcautiously and twice campaigns against bourgeois liberalization were initiated. This was no coincidence, but a positive re-flection of the long-accumulated conservative psychology of the whole Chinese ruling class. It came from the particular political role played by China on the international political scene. This con-tributed to the traditional and deep-rooted bad habits of being satisfied with destitution, being overcautious and meekly sub-mitting to the oppression and maltreatment of fellow countrymen. However, just as there is interaction between material and spiritual civilizations, there is interaction as well between Western moder-nization in science and technology and in thought and ideas. Mo-dernization of science and technology provided the material basis for modernization of thoughts and ideas, while the latter in turn prompted and guided the former. Hence, if there is emphasis merely on Western modernization of science and technology with-out at the same time emphasizing and adopting that of thoughts and ideas, then even if the economy advances and people’s living standard are raised, this will be temporary and limited, or may stop or even go backwards, because this kind of modernization of science and technology does not receive the help and support of thoughts and ideas. THE PRESENT SITUATION Although the Chinese government emphasizes importing Western science and technology and its approach to management, it does not at the same time import Western thoughts and ideas; this results in a separation of content from forms of modernization. Just as Westerners cannot import Chinese Confucianism to guide their modernized science and technology (the Asian "Four Small Dra-gons" originally were nurtured in the spirit of Confucianism), China cannot merely import Western science and technology in order to engage in modernization in a context in which Chinese tra-ditional culture is dominant. For example, almost every state enter-prise spends much foreign currency in importing advanced Western technology and equipment each year, but it does not import their mechanism of management or if it exists it is greatly limited. To say the least, the Western countries’ economic development is due mainly to their sound method of management and perfect system of legal institutions. Herbert Spencer applied Darwin’s doctrine of "struggle for existence" to human society and thought that, like the process of the evolution of living things, society evolved through a natural rule that "the superior exists, the inferior is eliminated" or survival of the fittest. Moveover, the competitive ability of enterprises is based on that of the individual. Only if the individual, who is a combination of intelligence, physical power and morality, brings his potential to full force can his enterprise win in competition with others. As Yan Fu pointed out, people’s moral intelligence and physical powers reach maturity in environments made up of the struggle for existence within liberal institutions and a free eco-nomic field. Meanwhile, all these liberated abilities are organized, combined and enable the state to prosper and be strong. In order not to harm others and to benefit oneself, there must be concepts and

institutions which guarantee putting the indivi-dual’s constructive abilities into operation. Thus all agreed that advanced weapons and technology and effective political-econo-mic institutions were the main cause of the prosperity of the great Western powers’ and their winning of the Opium War. Yet Yang Fu thought the reason lay rather in its different understanding and grasp of reality, that is, in its advanced thought and values, whereas the cause of China’s destitution and weakness lay in its lagging with regard to ideas and values. Over the years, China has advocated reform of the economic system in cities. Although this has had some success, if one con-siders Chinese enterprises carefully, one notes that they are not strictly like Western enterprises. This amounts to saying that the essential characters of the modern Western factory or enterprise are not the equipment employed, but the sites, the labor and the power resources. This means that production is completely independent and the economic accounting is very thorough. As this is lacking in the existing Chinese state enterprises, strange as it may sound, Western scholars think China in fact has no enterprise. Some researchers think that the use of the term "unit" is not only characteristic, but directly reveals the internal link between cultural traits of the enterprise and the national cultural environ-ment as a whole. Upon closer consideration one can find the fo-llowing points involved in this link: (a) if the realization of profits and the growth of capital is the aim of an enterprise, then the various behaviors and norms in and out of the process of production of Chinese state enterprises bear little relevance to attaining this aim. Indeed, quite a few forms of behavior directly disturb the realization of this aim. (b) A large number of the behaviors and activities of state enterprises, which take place outside the process of production, are very similar to those of non-enterprises, for example, office, school, hospital, the press and mass organization. (c) Even the organization, choice of aims, transmission of infor-mation, human relationships, criteria of value and therefore the environment as a whole of state enterprises have very few dis-tinctive features of an enterprise, but are similar to nonenterprises. Under these conditions, the people in state enterprises are endowed mainly not with an enterprising personality, but with a unit-personality. This has the following manifestations: (a) great attention is paid to the treatment of human relationships, (b) its set of values gives priority to politics; (c) there is little expression of independent thinking and action, but one relies on others; (d) there is sudden enthusiasm, but no constant sense of efficiency or selfconscious spirit of creativity; and (e) there is scrupulous adhesion to ethical principles in small closed circles where one is on intimate terms with the other persons, but no social morality. How can a sense of competition be generated and productive efficiency raised among "unit-individuals" working in this kind of "unit," which is not an enterprise, for who is the bearer of unit-personality? Another important characteristic of the Chinese reform is to develop a contract system of responsibility of the family for pro-ducts in countryside. Although this arouses a productive attitude among peasants, the inherent character of Chinese traditional agri-cultural society itself constitutes the deeper and wider cultural environments of the organizational system of the unit. First, due to the nonindependence of the individual person, it is only through the community that one can exist. Second, social functions are concentrated on a closed village, which was organized in terms of blood relationships, was self-sufficient and had no mutual inter-change. Even the present community and village is essentially of this nature, rather than the earlier "People’s Commune". Third, the natural village is strictly controlled by a highly-concentrated cen-tral political power to which it pays various tributes. Lastly, al-though distribution of farmland among families can make for in-tensive and meticulous farming and combine the peasants’s interests with their responsibilities, it seriously impedes the mechani-zation of agriculture, reduces labor efficiency and unnecessarily binds a large number of peasants to sparse and small farmland.

Economic reforms both in cities and in the countryside show that it is not sufficient merely to make use of advanced Western science and technology; there is need also to draw lessons from Western ideas and institutions. Modernization requires reform, but the problem is: reform to what degree and how to reform? It can be seen from the above analysis that in the course of construction of modernization during the past century China has not been able to escape the vicious circle of merely emphasizing Western science and technology, but not its thoughts and ideas. The reason lies in the Chinese traditional culture of absolutism and obscurantism leaving an accumulation of power in the ruling government and fellow countrymen. The only way to escape this circle is to establish a sound democracy and legal institutions for the construction of Chinese modernization. A consensus must be reached among the ruling class: whatever the Western things may be (whether science and technology or ideas and thoughts), provided that they are advantageous to the China’s realization of modernization, they should be fully employed strategic decisions regarding modernization must be based on this agreement. Other elements which need to be considered include the following. - First, there must be long-term planning. This means avoiding by all means the issuance of an order in the morning and rescinding it in the evening. It is no accident that at present some people think Chinese policy always will change in three to five years. But it also means that those who make strategic decisions cannot be eager for success and instant benefit and have a narrow vision. - Second, the reform must be proactive; several reforms in Chinese history were carried out under the circumstances of domestic trouble and foreign invasion, and therefore were largely passive. It is impossible for this kind of passive reform to remove or even touch the previously organized systems which hindered the development of productive forces or radically to reform old thoughts and ideas. However, if the ruling government can repair the house before it rains and put reform into force before expe-riencing difficulties, then surely the medicine can be suited to the illness, cure the sickness and save the patient. But the activities of reform must first be based on the modernization of thoughts and ideas. - Third, it must be feasible, that is, it is necessary to assess and weigh the advantages and disadvantages without taking any hasty action or making an administrative intervention before the strategic decisions are made. - Fourth, it must be pluralistic. Truth comes from the co-llision between several penetrating insights. Different thoughts and ideas can learn from each other’s strong points and offset their own weakness. If one thought is artificially given priority over others, then it will certainly hinder the quality of the overall thought and the renewal of internal thought mechanism. Likewise, in making strategic decisions, pluralistic thinking should be permitted and encouraged. The authorities might well establish two or more groups to study and analyze important problems relating to the na-tional economy and people’s livelihood and to design counter-measures. Their decisions would be handed over to the National People’s Congress, and finally put into force as scientific policy and law. However, at the present time, the representatives of the National People’s Congress consider only one draft resolution, without an alternative with which to compared it. So the Con-gress’s name does not fit its own reality, for there is no draft resolution which is not voted through by the Congress. A depen-dant and meek psychology exists not only in ordinary people, but also in the representatives and leaders at all levels. This is de-monstrated by the historical fact of the initiation of the disastrous "Cultural Revolution". From the state enterprises’ nature as a "unit", to the agri-cultural economy’s mode of production, to the one-dimensional mode of making strategic decisions regarding modernization, all these show how lagging thoughts and ideas seriously fetter the country’s productive forces and the realization of modernization. The slogan that "science and technology are the first productive forces" should be revised and its ambiguous influence removed. In fact, science and technology do

not play the same role under different circumstances. Research and the application of science and technology are restrained not only by economic conditions and the conditions of science and technology, but more by policy and law, thoughts and ideas and the researchers’ abilities and quali-fications. In the past years, the development of China’s basic theoretical research has not been slower than the West, nor have their achievements been, but the application of their achievements, that is, their transformation into productive forces falls far behind the West. If modernization cannot be improved and realized, and people’s living standard cannot be raised, then the ruling party is not qualified. All depends on it having or not having the ability to deal with the relationship between he two aspects of moderni-zation. In sum, from historical retrospection and reflection on rea-lity, it appears that the realization of modernization in China, both in the past and at present, is confined mainly to the material field and neglects the side of though and ideas; for this reason it has been onesided. *** http://www.crvp.org/book/Series03/III-2/chapter_ii_human_nature_and_huma.htm CHAPTER II HUMAN NATURE AND HUMAN EDUCATION ON HUMAN NATURE AS TENDING TOWARD GOODNESS IN CLASSICAL CONFUCIANISM PEI-JUNG FU By "Classical Confucianism" I mean a trend of thought initiated by Confucius (551479 B.C.), developed by Mencius (c. 371-289 B.C.) and Hsün-tzu (c. 313-238 B.C.), and finally culminating in the I-chuan and the Chung-yung. To appreciate the world-view, moral ideals, and religious beliefs of the Chinese people, Classical Confucianism is the first school to be understood. In the hope of advancing this understanding, the present chapter will focus on the theory of human nature as expounded by this school. It will argue that early Confucians maintained a theory of "human nature as tending toward goodness." The discussion will contain three parts: (1) the presentation of this theory by Confucius, (2) the demonstration of this theory by Mencius and the Chung-yung in a direct and explicit way, and by Hsün-tzu and the I-chuan in an indirect and implicit way, and (3) the consequence of this theory, that is, the fact that the above Confucians all emphasized the obligation to perfect oneself and to bring others to attain their perfect state. THE THEORY OF CONFUCIUS ON HUMAN NATURE Confucius' view on human nature was not clearly and distinctly supplied in the Analects. It is no surprise that one of his disciples complained that "one cannot get to hear his view on human nature" (A, 5:13).1 In two passages of the Analects, Confucius classified men as belonging to three groups: "upper, middle and lower," but as this classification was made according to man's "learning ability" it had nothing to do with the common nature of man.2 Another two passages expressed more directly Confucius' opinion in this respect. (a) The Master said, `That a man lives is because he is straight. That a man who dupes others survives is because he has been fortunate enough to be spared' (A, 6:19). (b) The Master said, `Men are close to one another by nature. They diverge as a result of repeated practice' (A, 17:2). In passage (a), the meaning of "straight" (chih) is uncertain. Granted that it has moral implications, it shows only that one should follow the right way, but does not reveal what human nature is. Passage (b) informs us only that Confucius recognized that there exists a common human nature. Whereas many scholars readily connect it with goodness,3 the present essay will establish that Confucius had in mind human nature as tending toward goodness. It will argue that otherwise some key passages of the Analects concerning politics and morality become incomprehensible. First, Confucius described the marvelous effect of the virtuous man in the field of politics as follows:

(a) The rule of virtue can be compared to the Pole Star which commands the homage of the multitude of stars without leaving its place (A, 2:1). (b) If there was a ruler who achieved order without taking any action, it was, perhaps, Shun. There was nothing for him to do but to hold himself in a respectful posture and to face the south (15:5). (c) Just desire the good yourself and the common people will be good. The virtue of the gentleman is like wind; the virtue of the small man is like grass. Let the wind blow over the grass and it is sure to bend (12:19). The above three passages would be pointless and meaningless if there were no common human nature and if this were not tending toward goodness. In other words, for Confucius the highest political ideal was the traditional ethiocracy which required that the most virtuous be the ruler because virtue was believed to be in line with human nature.4 On the other hand, Confucius narrowed down the issue by emphasizing the inner relation of man's self with virtue. He said, (a) Is jen really far away? No sooner do I desire it than it is here (A, 7:30). (b) The practice of jen depends on oneself alone, and not on others (12:1). (c) Is there anyone who has tried to practice jen for a single day? I have not come across such a man whose strength proves insufficient for the task (4:6). A discussion of Confucius' concept of jen would require a more extended treatment than is possible here, but for present purposes it suffices to say that jen means both "the way of man" and "goodness." The above passages state that jen is man's inner tendency and that it is within man's ability to practice jen. Thus, there is solid foundation for claiming that Confucius regarded human nature as tending toward goodness. DEMONSTRATION OF THE THEORY On the basis of Confucius' teachings, Mencius and Hsün-tzu developed philosophies which sometimes were considered mutually complementary. As regards the theory of human nature, however, Mencius and Hsün-tzu obviously held incompatible views. The following discussion will try to show that Mencius' theory of "human nature as good" is in fact a theory of "human heart as good," and Hsün-tzu's theory of "human nature as evil" is actually a theory of "human desire as evil." These two theories are not necessarily contradictory, since they share the same underlying idea that human nature tends toward goodness. To clarify this point, we will lay more stress on the works of Mencius and the Chung-yung which directly elaborated on this idea than on those of Hsün-tzu and the I-chuan which accepted this idea in an implicit way. Mencius Etymologically, human "nature" (hsing) comes from "birth" or "to be born with" (sheng). The common understanding of this word in ancient China can be formulated as follows: "The inborn is what is meant by nature" (M, VI, A, 3).5 However, this consideration of the origin of nature exhibits only what a thing has rather than what a thing is: it expresses at most the sameness rather than the difference of all things. In order to determine what a thing is, it is necessary to know its essence: the genus plus the difference of species. This rule, made familiar by Aristotle, was true also for Mencius. First, Mencius was quite aware that in dealing with anything of the same kind, we must determine what this "same kind" means, and this is even more true when applied to man. Mencius said, "Now, things of the same kind are all alike. Why should we have doubts when it comes to man? The sage and I are of the same kind" (M, VI, A, 7). The wicked, however, also belong to the same kind. Thus, in determining the essence of human beings, we should find the difference of species. Mencius said, Slight is the difference between man and the brutes. The common man loses this distinguishing feature, while the gentleman retains it. Shun understood the way of things and had a keen insight into human relations. He followed the path of benevolence and righteousness. He did not need to pursue benevolence and righteousness (M, IV, B,19).

Clearly, the essence or the distinguishing feature of man must be understood through the "slight difference" between man and the brutes. The statement about Shun is an example that benevolence and righteousness are the interior path of man, following which will have a great effect. The implication of this whole sentence is probably that benevolence and righteousness belong to the "slight difference."6 Another paragraph will also help clarify the distinguishing feature of man. "A gentleman differs from other men in what he retains in his heart-namely, benevolence and propriety" (M, IV, B, 28). Granted that the human essence of man can be described as benevolence, righteousness, propriety, etc., how can common people lose it? Can something be defined by a feature which can be lost? The key to the answer lies in the idea of "heart," which is to be understood here as neither bodily heart, nor soul, but mind with sensitivity. Concerning human nature, Mencius presents his famous theory of "the four germs of the heart," concluding as follows: From this it can be seen that whoever is devoid of the heart of compassion is not human, whoever is devoid of the heart of shame is not human, whoever is devoid of the heart of courtesy and modesty is not human, and whoever is devoid of the heart of right and wrong is not human (M, II, A, 6). These four states of heart are named, in turn, the germs of "benevolence, righteousness, propriety, and wisdom" (M, II, A, 6) within man's heart, which forms the difference of human beings. Human nature must be defined through this heart: Mencius said, "That which a gentleman follows as his nature, that is to say, benevolence, righteousness, propriety, and wisdom, is rooted in his heart" (M, VII, A, 21). Therefore the goodness of human nature resides in the goodness of the heart. A reservation, however, must be added, namely, that goodness exists only in the state of germ and needs to be retained, nourished, and developed. In this way Mencius demonstrated that human nature is tending toward goodness. He did not stop at this point, but continued to examine the nature and origin of the heart. Mencius affirmed that there is a propensity for development within the heart which makes it an "evaluating heart." If this means an ability to be moral and human beings are moral agents,8 does not its propensity for development imply in some sense a "commanding heart"?9 It must be the case, then, that the evaluating heart is at the same time the commanding heart, for otherwise how could Mencius honor as gentleman those who "retain" it? Only with this understanding does it become meaningful to say that "there is nothing better for the nurturing of the heart than to reduce the number of one's desires" (M, VII, B, 35). Only if the heart does more than evaluate can Mencius say, "The sole concern of learning is to go after this strayed heart. That is all" (M, VI, A, 11). On the basis of this double character of the heart, we can look further at the heart in itself. Mencius used one word "thinking" to sum up the function of the heart. He said, "The organ of the heart can think. But it will find the answer only if it does think: otherwise, it will not find the answer. This is what Heaven has given me" (M, VI, A, 15). By thus explaining the source of the heart, especially its function of commanding, he bridges the gap between Heaven and man. Therefore, instead of stating that Mencius substitutes "self-legislation" for "external divine command," we prefer to say that man's self-legislation is bestowed on him by Heaven.10 The relation between Heaven and man is another interesting topic in Mencius' thought, but is beyond the scope of the present essay. What we have established thus far is that the reason why human nature tends toward goodness consists in its relation with Heaven. Hsün-tzu Hsün-tzu regarded human nature as that with which man is born (H, 4:39; 16:274).11 He further claimed that "the nature is that which is given by Heaven; you cannot learn it, you cannot acquire it by effort" (23:290). This concept of human nature, based upon empirical observations, is of three kinds: the desire of sense organs, the ability of sense organs, and the plasticity of man's character.12 Hsün-tzu seems to take man's instinct as his nature and that this in itself is neutral. How

then could Hsün-tzu also affirm definitely that "man's nature is evil" (H, 23:289)? The reason is that if everyone follows his instinctive tendency without restriction, the result inevitably will be "strife and rapacity, combined with rebellion and disorder, ending in violence" (H, 23:289). Undoubtedly this result can be defined as evil if compared with an harmonious society. Though Hsün-tzu's theory of human nature as evil cannot be understood without its background of moral and cultural idealism,13 nonetheless, to define human nature through that which follows as a result is not the way it is usually defined or understood. Did not Hsün-tzu find a difference between man and the brutes, and if so why did he not use it to define the human essence? According to Hsün-tzu, what makes the person truly human is the ability to make distinctions (H, 5:50), what makes the human person the highest being on earth is the sense of righteousness (H, 9:104). Thus, the ability to make distinctions and a sense of righteousness must belong to human nature. If well developed, there will result propriety (li) and righteousness (i), which are regarded as good. Had Hsün-tzu defined human nature through this approach, he would not have found any argument with Mencius.14 Far from doing this, however, Hsün-tzu considered propriety and righteousness to be the result of artificial activity, a virtue acquired by human effort. The question then becomes: How did Hsün-tzu bridge man's evil nature and his artificial activities? To answer this question, we must take account of Hsün-tzu's concept of "heart." Hsün-tzu's use of the concept of "heart" is not always consistent. First, the heart constitutes one element of man's emotional nature. In this sense, the heart always tends toward profit, just as ears to sound and eyes to color (H, 11:137, 141; 23:291): "If a man has no teacher or law, his heart is just like his mouth or belly" (H, 4:40). Second, the heart is higher than other senses: "The heart occupies the cavity in the center to control the five organs. This is called the natural ruler" (H, 17:206). This sense of heart is quite similar to that of Mencius. "The heart is the ruler of the body and the master of its god-like intelligence. It gives commands, but it is not subject to them" (H, 21: 265). Thus, the heart appears to have the function of distinguishing and commanding. Since the heart also belongs to human nature, why did Hsün-tzu still insist on the evil of human nature? Further examination will show that Hsün-tzu did not consider the heart itself to be the independent criterion of all things. He argued that in order to function, the heart must keep itself in a state of "emptiness, unity, and quiescence"; and that the condition for this is that the heart perceive the Way (tao) (H, 21:264). This third sense of the heart is central to Hsün-tzu's theory, whose key idea is that "the heart is the craftsman of the Way, and the Way is the foundation of good government" (H, 22:281).15 Thus, there must be a close relation between the heart, representing human nature, and the Way, representing goodness. It is not inconceivable to say that Hsün-tzu also had in mind a view of human nature as tending toward goodness. The I-chuan The I-chuan was designed to manifest how the sages exhibited the way of man by meditating on the way of Heaven. It focused upon clarifying the relation between Heaven and man and did not articulate any clear theory of human nature. What we may figure out in this regard is very limited. Under the 24th hexagram we read, "Do we not see in fu the mind of Heaven and Earth"? (T'uan, Fu, p. 233).16 To clarify this hexagram, the Master (who in this context must be Confucius) said of his favorite disciple Yen Hui that "If anything he did was not good, he was sure to become conscious of that; when he knew it, he did not do the thing again" (Hsitz'u, II, p. 393). Thus, the mind (or better, the will) of Heaven and Earth is manifested in one's returning (fu) to one's original state, by which one discovers what one should and should not do. Consequently, the I-chuan affirms that "returning" presents "the root of virtue" (Hsi-tz'u, II, 397) and we may easily perceive that human nature is in line with goodness. What is called the way operates incessantly with the rhythmic modulation of

dynamic change and the static repose, thus continuing the creative process for the attainment of the Good and completing the creative process for the fulfillment of Nature which is Life (Hsi-tz'u, I, p. 355).17 This statement is especially meaningful for human beings. Again the I-chuan emphasized, "The perpetual continuance of fulfilled nature in life is the gate of the Way and Righteousness."18 Therefore, it is understandable that the sages "exhibited the way of man under the names of benevolence and righteousness" (Shuokua, p. 423). The Chung-yung The Chung-yung dealt incisively with the nature of man. First, it did not regard human nature as good in itself. "Hui made choice of the Mean, and whenever he got hold of what was good, he clasped it firmly, as if wearing it on his breast, and did not lose it" (C, 8:1).19 If what is good can be held and lost, then it does not pertain to the nature of man. Instead, human nature as seen by Chung-yung is always "tending toward" what is good, as is manifested in "knowing and practicing" the good. This includes the five duties and three virtues. The Chung-yung takes them as universal objectives of knowledge and action and relates them to the universal obligation of man: Some (people) are born with the knowledge (of those duties); some know them by study; and some acquire the knowledge after a painful feeling of their ignorance. But the knowledge being possessed, it comes to the same thing. Some practice them with a natural ease; some from a desire for their advantages; and some by strenuous effort. But the achievement being, it comes to the same thing (C, 20:9). This "same thing" at which human knowledge and action are aimed is goodness, which the sage "hits without an effort and apprehends without the exercise of thought" (C, 20:28). Thus, we may conclude that human nature is tending toward goodness. The next question, whence does this kind of human nature come? The Chung-yung believes that human nature is conferred by Heaven (C, 1:1). The point of contact between human nature and Heaven is "sincerity" (C, 20:18): being sincere is the way of Heaven; becoming sincere is the way of man. To understand the implication of "becoming sincere," we need to ascertain what the Chung-yung thinks about the ordinary people. In dealing with the way of the gentleman, the Chung-yung notes that Common men and women, however ignorant, may intermeddle with the knowledge of it (the way of the gentleman); . . . common men and women, however worthless, may carry it into practice. (C, 12:2) In this passage two things are worth noting. First, to describe ordinary people as "ignorant" and "worthless" shows indirectly the dissatisfaction of the Chung-yung regarding the natural state of man. To be human, it is not sufficient simply to maintain one's natural life; one must follow the way of the gentleman by cultivating virtue (C, 13, 14, 15). Second, the undoubted capacity of ordinary people to know and practice the right way has something to do with our previous statement that human nature tends toward goodness. Furthermore, if by "sincerity" is meant to be true to oneself, then the Chung-yung holds that when one is true to oneself one will find in one's nature "the tendency toward goodness." Instead of supplying any logical argument, the Chung-yung invites one to reflect upon oneself. Two passages are significant: (a) There is nothing more visible than what is secret, and nothing more manifest than what is minute. Therefore the gentleman is watchful over himself, when he is alone (C, 1:3). (b) He cultivates to the utmost the shoots (of goodness) in him. From those he can attain to the possession of sincerity (C, 23:1). An inkling of mysticism can be perceived here. It seems that one is endowed with a "spark of light" in one's nature. Being true to oneself, one will naturally magnify this spark of light; thus, one carries out moral cultivation in order to be truly human. Finally, it is impossible to repress "the expressions of sincerity" (C, 16:15). One is born with moral discrimination which distinguishes what is good from what

is evil. This entails responsibility for ceaselessly "choosing what is good and firmly holding it fast." (C, 20:28) Once one possesses sincerity, one will not merely strive to complete oneself, but will extend this to other men and things (C, 25:3). This is the reason why the Chung-yung claims that when one attains the state of equilibrium and harmony, "a happy order will prevail throughout Heaven and Earth, and all things will be nourished and flourish" (C, 1:5). CONSEQUENCE OF THE THEORY Three consequences of this theory were acceptable to all early Confucians: 1. All are capable of becoming gentlemen (chün-tzu, the ideal personality set by Confucius). Confucius said that he never came across anyone whose strength was insufficient for practicing jen. Mencius expressly insisted that all can become a Yao or a Shun. Even Hsün-tzu, though without giving a satisfactory explanation, maintained that the person on the street can become a Yü. The I-chuan emphasized gradual cultivation which presupposes the possibility of perfecting oneself. The Chung-yung believed that if one chooses what is good and holds it fast, then "though dull, he will surely become intelligent; though weak, he will surely become strong" (C, 20:21). 2. All are obliged to become a gentleman. We perceive in Classical Confucianism an obligation which can be understood in terms of a "categorial imperative." To be human is to become virtuous; there is no other choice. The purpose of one's natural life is to realize one's moral ideal. Early Confucians all emphasized this categorical imperative. Both Confucius and Mencius held that man should sacrifice his life for the sake of jen or i (roughly, benevolence or righteousness). To our surprise, Hsün-tzu also declared, "A gentleman, though worrying about danger and misery, will face death for the sake of i" (H, 3:24). The I-chuan stated that a gentleman "will sacrifice his life in order to carry out his purpose (i.e., to follow the way of the sage)" (Hsiang, K'un, p. 325). The Chung-yung also claimed, "When bad principles prevail in the country, he (the gentleman) maintains his course to death without changing" (C, 10:5). 3. While becoming a gentleman, all are responsible for aiding others to attain their perfect state. A famous saying of Confucius reads, "A benevolent man helps others to take their stand insofar as he himself wishes to take his stand, and gets others there insofar as he himself wishes to get there" (A, 6:30). Mencius traced this responsibility back to Heaven, and announced, Heaven, in producing the people, has given to those who first attain understanding the duty of awakening those who are slow to understand; and to those who are the first to awaken the duty of awakening those who are slow to awaken (MR, V, A, 7; V, B, 1). Leaving the concept of Heaven aside, Hsün-tzu found no disagreement with Mencius's position that, "All creatures of the universe, all who belong to the species of man, must await the sage before they can attain their proper places" (H, 19:243). The I-chuan emphasized the status of the sages who "would give their proper course to the aims of all under the sky, would give stability to their undertakings, and determine their doubts" (Hsi-tz'u, I, p. 371). Finally, Chung-yung best expressed the highest ideal set for man by Classical Confucianism: It is only he, being most truthful and sincere in all the world, who can completely fulfill his nature in the course of life. Being able to completely fulfill his own nature in the perfect way, he can, also, completely fulfill the nature of other men. Being able to completely fulfill the nature of other men, he can, furthermore, completely fulfill the nature of all creatures and things. Being able to completely fulfill the nature of all creatures and things, he can participate in the cosmic creation and procreation in the process of temporal transformation. Being able to participate in the transformation process of cosmic creation and procreation, he is a co-creator with Heaven and Earth (C, 22:1).20 National University Taipei, Taiwan, ROC NOTES 1. For English translations, I will follow D.C. Lau, Confucius, The Analects

(London: Penguin Classics, 1979). 2. These two passages are: (a) The Master said, "It is only the most intelligent and the most stupid who are not susceptible to change" (A, 7:3). (b) The Master said, "You can tell those who are above average about the best, but not those who are below average" (A, 6:21). 3. For example, see Takada Shinji, Shina shiso no kenkyu (Tokyo: Shunjyusha, 1942), p. 104; Hsü Fu-kuan, Chung-kuo jen-hsing-lun shih (Taipei: Commercial, 1977), p. 89. 4. Cf. Fu Pei-jung, "Shih-ching shu-ching chung ti t'ien-ti-kuan yen-chiu," Chehsüeh yu wen-hua, Vol. 11, No. 7 (July, 1984), pp. 36-37. 5. For English translation, I will follow D.C. Lau, Mencius (London: Penguin Classics, 1970). 6. See Hsü Fu-kuan, p. 165. 7. Cf. Donald Munro, The Concept of Man in Early China (Stanford: Stanford Univ., 1969), p. 48. 8. Cf. D.C. Lau, "Theories of Human Nature in Mencius and Shyuntzyy," Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Vol. 15, Pt. 3 (1953), p. 550. 9. I.A. Richards indicates that "the mind, for Mencius, is its own law-giver." See Richards, Mencius on the Mind (London: Kegan Paul, 1932), p. 79. This point is fully elaborated in Munro, p. 58f. 10. Lau, "Theories of Human Nature," p. 551. Furthermore, Julia Ching maintains that the heart represents both the symbol and reality of man's oneness with Heaven. See Ching, Confuciansim and Christianity (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1977), p. 91. 11. Here (4:39), the first number means the 4th chapter of the Works of Hsün-tzu, and the number of the page (39) is according to the edition of Wang Hsien-ch'ien's Hsün-tzu chi-chieh (Taipei: Shih-chieh, 1967). The English translation follows roughly Holmer Dubs, The Works of Hsuntze (London: Arthur Probsthain, 1928) and Burton Matson, Hsün-tzi, Basic Writings (New York: Columbia Univ., 1963). 12. Hsü Fu-kuan, pp. 230-32. 13. T'ang Chün-i, Chung-kuo che-hsüeh yüan-lun: yüan hsing pien (Hong Kong: Jensheng, 1966), p. 49. However, Ch'ien Mu suggests that Hsün-tzu's theory remains on a utilitarian level. See Ch'ien, Chuang-lao t'ung pien (Hong Kong: Hsin-ya yenchiu-so, 1957), p. 263. 14. Munro, p. 81, analyzes Hsün-tzu's concept of mind from several points of view and concludes that "none of these points conflicts basically with the view of hsing in the Mencius." 15. I translate the term "kung-tsai" as "craftsman" according to its context; Dubs's "master-workman" is also acceptable, but Watson's "supervisor" goes too far. 16. For English translation, I will follow James Legge, The I Ching (New York: Dover, 1963). 17. This is Thomé Fang's translation. See Fang, Chinese Philosophy: Its Spirit and Its Development (Taipei: Linking, 1981), p. 110. 18. Cf. Fang, p. 111. 19. For the English translation, see James Legge, The Doctrine of the Mean, in The Chinese Classics, Vol. I (Hong Kong: Hongkong Univ., 1960). 20. This is Fang's translation, p. 113. **** http://www.crvp.org/book/Series03/III-20/chapter_iii.htm CHAPTER III CULTURAL POWER AND CULTURAL CONFLICT GUO JIEMIN Cultural power, also called cultural hegemony, cultural imperialism and cultural colonialism, is generally referred to as imposed cultural values between states and between ethnic groups. This concept first put forward by Gramsci in the 1930s revealed the “super-political veil” of the traditional concept of culture. He held that cultural hegemony was an indispensable ruling form. To rule civil society,

the ruling class must draw support from intellectuals and cultural institutions to make its ethics, politics and cultural values a universally accepted code of conduct and make the broad masses of the people freely agree with the social lifestyle of the basic ruling group.1 In fact, before that, Western colonialists used cultural power as their powerful weapon in the international arena. Wherever they went, they recklessly destroyed local civilizations, denied or changed local moral norms and forcibly judged the destiny of other countries and ethnic groups by their own cultural values. History is developing, the times are forging ahead and peace and development have become the themes of the current age. But cultural power as a phenomenon contrary to the times has not yet disappeared from the scene. Though it has come by the barbarous and bloody means the colonialists had adopted, its essence remains as before. THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF CULTURAL POWER Cultural power has not emerged and developed accidentally, but has a certain background in the times. An Age of the Emergence of Culture The end of the Cold War has entailed a softening of fierce military threats in international relations and a relaxation of ideological confrontation between blocs. Many countries have begun economic reforms and contacts between countries and between ethnic groups have increasingly been strengthened, thus enhancing awareness of civilization. Whether a country is strong or weak is measured no longer only from the political and military perspective, but in terms of its comprehensive national strength. This includes not only such factors as economy and military affairs, science and technology, and natural resources, but also the essential spiritual factors of national culture, will, character and spirit. It includes also the integration and balance of those essential factors. This clearly enhances the importance of culture, which now becomes one of the main factors determining a country’s strength, along with politics, economy, military affairs, science and technology. Because of changes in world political and military situations, countries with a strong “hegemonic awareness” have turned their attention to the cultural field and attempted to unify the world with their cultural values in order to achieve results they cannot reach through political struggles and military force. The modernized media have facilitated this enabling cultural power to emerge at this historical moment and become a very prominent post-Cold War cultural phenomenon between countries and ethnic groups. The New World Pattern Demands New Cultural Values At present, the world pattern is moving towards multi-polarization. First, the position of the U.S. as the sole superpower is declining. Although it has tried to move from leadership of the West to that of the world, its internal and external contradictions are numerous and its abilities fall short of its wishes. Second, Western Europe has formed a community to save the central position of the West; it has moved from being a follower to being a competitor of the U.S. Third, Japan has continued to say “no” to the U.S.; it has competed fiercely with the U.S. economically and displayed remarkable politically ability. Fourth, Russia has inherited most of the assets of the former Soviet Union, especially its military force; it remains strong, though its vitality has been sapped due to the disintegration of the former Soviet Union. Fifth, China has developed rapidly since the beginning of its reform and opening and is gradually manifesting its strength. In the world, from the perspective of comprehensive national strength, the U.S. ranks first; militarily, the U.S. and Russia predominate; in economy, the U.S., Japan and Europe form a tripod; politically, there are five power centers, the U.S., Russia, Europe, Japan and China. The above pattern has appeared in embryonic form; it is difficult to determine how many poles the world will be divided into in the future. Under the situation of a multi-polar world pattern, mutual respect and tolerance between countries appear especially important. As early as 1988, when meeting Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, Deng Xiaoping pointed out, “Two things have to be done at the same time. One is to establish a new international political order;

the other is to establish a new international economic order.” As for establishing a new international order, we should take the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence as norms for international relations.2 However, the U.S. has not abandoned the effort to establish a “uni-polar” world dominated by itself. It assumes the responsibility of leading the world, promoting U.S. values and safeguarding U.S. interests all over the world. The essence of the so-called U.S. responsibility for leadership3is to continue to establish U.S. hegemonic position in the world. Maintaining this position and advancing U.S. values, including cultural values, are twin aims. Maintaining the former is beneficial to promoting the latter, while promoting the latter maintains the former. At the moment when a new world pattern is in the shaping, the U.S. is stepping up pursuit of cultural power as part of its plan for acting as a “world leader”. HISTORICAL SOURCE OF CULTURAL POWER Deep-rooted Western Centralism In research on world civilizations, many Western philosophers and historians have elaborated the following view: In the world, there is only one real civilization, that is, Western civilization. Other civilizations either lack vitality or have converged into Western civilization, which is a “universal civilization suiting everyone” just as Western values are global values. For instance, the great philosopher, Hegel once stood on the “holy” world philosophic rostrum in Europe and solemnly foretold with European pride that the development of the heart of the history of humankind like the route of the sun, rises in the East and falls in the West. But after falling in the West, it will no longer rise in the East, for the West occupies the center of the world.4 British writer Rudyard Kipling nakedly declared that the burden of the whites lies in subjecting the East to the high British civilization either by belief or by violence.5 The dissemination of modern Western civilization accompanied the imperialist aggression and expansion. Western centralists deny that the development of any cultural type is the result of choice according to its own distinct cultural background, conditions and needs. They hold stubbornly that only their approach to the world, value standard and pattern of behavior is correct and civil. They have never seriously listened to the voice from the East and have always sized up the East at a distance and from a height. Even in the face of the fact that in recent years East Asian countries have risen one after another and accomplished economic miracles, some Western thinkers still hold a suspicious and negative attitude to East Asia’s important role on the world. They even think that this is the result of importing Western culture. The formation of Western centralism is based first on the sense of superiority resulting from the development of Western industrial revolution. Then it reflects the fact that Western Christians consider themselves to be the chosen of God who must shoulder the mission of disseminating civilization to the whole world. Hence, they are always overweening, like to play the role of “Savior,” and cannot tolerate any phenomenon contrary to Western cultural values. As early as 90 years ago, Sun Yat-sen acutely pointed out that Europeans regarded themselves as disseminators of orthodox cultures and posed as cultural masters. Any cultural development or independent thinking outside the European was regarded as a revolt. This was an “overbearing culture”. Lingering Cold War “Customs” In the Cold War period hegemonic countries confronted each other as enemies. Since then geopolitical enemies no longer existed, but by habit and out of their political and economic needs, countries accustomed to the Cold War shifted their struggles to the more extensive field of civilization and culture, and extended their target to the whole Third World. They vowed to conduct “a war without gun smoke” with all non-Western civilizations and attempted to use their value standards to unify the world; they have raised civilizational and cultural issues as a new excuse for interfering in other countries’ internal affairs. The U.S. regards the drastic changes in East Europe and the disintegration of the former Soviet Union as a victory of the tactics of peaceful evolution or of U.S.

cultural values. In his agenda, Bush wrote that political and economic ties have been favored by the attraction of U.S. culture for the whole world; this is a new “soft power”. Some important U.S. Government officials have also put forward in their speeches about foreign policy an “expansion strategy” of spreading the market-oriented family of democratic countries to the rest of the world. Under this thinking, the U.S. has actively intervened into Latin America to build a socalled “democratized hemisphere”; it has also set up “Radio Free Asia” based on the earlier “Radio Free Europe” with ulterior motives. The U.S. has made it clear that Radio Free Asia will also play a proper role in the ideological field.6 Its motive in pushing cultural power and making Cold War noises is all too clear: the Cold War has passed away as an era, but its habits remain. CULTURAL POWER CONTRARY TO THE TREND OF WORLD CULTURAL DEVELOPMENT World Cultural Pluralism Cultural connotations are very rich. Its central content is a deep value system, a characteristic national psychology evolved over a long history, and a kind of lifestyle. Different economic, political, historical and geographic environments, climate conditions and “genetic codes” have caused many differences between various ethnic groups in custom, habit, ideology and concept. In this view a cultural historical typology takes the expression of the diversity of the human lifestyles as its mission and holds that culture is plural. Development of any cultural type is the result of choice and is created according to its own cultural law, cultural background, historical conditions and realistic needs; this develops various cultural modes in reality. However, some Western centralist scholars often mechanically look on and analyze the complicated reality of other cultural types according to the Western model of cultural development, and deny the diversity of various cultures and their ability to choose their own development road. This is quite absurd and not in conformity with objective facts. As all know, four countries with ancient civilizations of different cultural types have made great contributions to world culture. Other countries’ national cultures have also more or less enriched the cultural treasure house. Since modern times, because of the industrial revolution in the West, “Western centered theory” and “Western cultural superiority theory” have prevailed for a time. Western cultural values long occupied a dominant position in the world. Modernization became almost a synonym for Westernization. Western culture naturally has its own strong points, but is not universally applicable and cannot be imposed on countries and peoples with different national conditions. “East Asian economic miracles” have presented a development road different from the West. Though much influenced by Western culture, some countries are quite different on a series of issues such as ideology, concept and interrelations between individuals, family, the collective and the state. Even Japan actively absorbing Western culture has always combined the Japanese spirit with Western learning and tenaciously defended its national spirit.7 Under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, guided by Marxism, China has had as its objective the realization of socialism with Chinese characteristics. Especially since the beginning of its reform and opening China has insisted on the road of building socialism with Chinese characteristics. It has made giant strides in socialist modernization and formulated socialist culture and values with Chinese characteristics, attracting world attention. These facts strongly prove that in contrast to the opinion of Western scholars, it is not only Western culture that can help bring about a sole successful mode of modernization in the history of humankind. Economic success has strengthened the cultural self-confidence of East Asian and Southeast Asian countries, which no longer consider that the “Western moon seems more full” and have clearly recognized that Western values are not adapted to Asia. But they do not rule out an absorption of the strong points of Western cultures. Some insightful Western personages have begun to realize the limitations and drawbacks of Western culture. Some have pointed out that the problem of Western culture is that it can successfully reduce mortality from diseases, but it

can not reduce the suicide rate from the collapse of values. They advocate learning from ancient Oriental culture, resulting in an “Oriental fad” in some regions. Each culture has its inherent value. There is only difference between cultures, but no distinction between the good and the bad. Taking Western cultural values as the sole choice of the whole of humankind is unrealistic, unscientific and unreasonable. The world is developing towards a multi-polarization that promotes cultural pluralism. With the world economic center moving eastward, it is fully possible for East Asia to become the third largest cultural center in the world, following North America and West Europe. Cultural Blend And Conflict Each culture has its own national characteristics. With the construction and hookup of information superhighways and the close interrelation between the economies of the world, different countries and ethnic groups have forged unprecedented interrelations. This greatly increases the chance of exchange and collision between different countries. Generally speaking, in contacts with different cultures, one ethnic group always measures the others by its own value standards, either deepening understanding and blending or broadening the divergence and causing friction and conflict. Neither blend nor conflict is absolute; there is conflict in the process of blending, while there is slow mutual infiltration tending towards blending even in the process of conflict. This is an unavoidable phenomenon in contacts between different cultures. One major advance in the modern cultural theory is that people universally realize that cultures are mixed, different, interrelated and interdependent. Edward Said held that the development and maintenance of each culture needs another different and competitive culture, that is, the existence of an alter ego.8 Undifferentiated culture is unrealistic and can be said to be lopsided. Divergence does not mean conflict, while blend does not mean the elimination of national individuality. Correct realization of blend and conflict in cultural development lies in exploring how to make different cultures blend and avoid conflict; this is the requirement of peaceful development in human society. Historically, there have existed many civilizations such as Islam, Confucianism and Buddhism on the Asian continent. Over thousands of years they have been marked by exchange and coexistence. Only after meeting with Western civilization, have relations between rule and subjection appeared. Since the beginning of its reform and opening, China has felt that it can absorb advanced technology and managerial experience favorable to its modernization drive in contact with other (including Western) civilizations. Facts have proved the coexistence of different civilizations to be possible. Here the key lies in the attitude of mutual respect, the position of equality, and in the full realization that this is a two-way choice. Marx showed how history transfers into world history by bringing to light from the angle of productive forces the importance of the extension of universal human contacts to cultural accumulation and evolution. We must realize that the interaction between Eastern and Western civilizations is the fundamental condition for the progress of humankind. The 21st century is an era pf the globalization of the coexistence of plural cultures and requires a corresponding “global awareness”. The whole world cannot have but one kind of cultural values and one voice. Exchanges, learning from each other’s strong points and blending between different cultures will promote friendship between peoples of various countries and ethnic groups. But taking an overweening attitude to push cultural power goes against the trend of the times; it is bound to trigger or intensify contradictions and conflicts between different cultures and to create a tense international situation. THE “CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS” THEORY IS A CULTURAL POWER THEORY After the Cold War, some Western scholars have actively cooperated with U.S.-led Western countries in pushing cultural power on developing countries and put forward in succession such theories as “the end of history”, “the clash of

civilizations” and “post-colonialism”. They have attempted to create theoretical foundations for their cultural infiltration and expansion under the cloak of rationality and legality. Among these views, the “clash of civilizations” theory has had the most extensive influence. It holds that in the next century, conflict between civilizations will supplant ideological and other forms of conflict as the dominant form of global conflict. We must analyze this theory in order to detect its crux. Behind Heavyheartedness First of all, it must be noted that here the concept of civilization is basically equal to the concept of culture. The two can be interchanged. For example, “Confucian civilization” can also be called “Confucian culture”. Civilization is an existential form of culture. Then to what does the “clash of civilizations” theory specifically refer? Professor Samuel Huntington of Harvard University wrote in the article “The Clash of Civilizations?” that non-Western civilizations no longer remain objects, but have become actors. The centerpiece of international politics will become the interaction between the West and non-Western civilizations. In the near future, the focus of conflict will concentrate on relations between the West and some Islamic-Confucian countries. He means that non-Western civilizations have gone up on the international stage and stood up to the West as equals, leading to cultural conflict. In essence, this is entirely a cultural power theory that regards Western civilization as the orthodox one which embodies the “absolute spirit”, to which other civilizations should be subjected. Once non-Western civilizations have an independent spirit and move from being “objects” to “actors”, there will be a deluge of rebellion which should be “contained” and struck down. This thinking represents the aspirations of some Western centralists. For instance, an article in the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung said that the clash of civilizations between Islam and the West is obvious and that political Islam seeks to replace Western civilization so that Islamic civilization occupies the world’s leading position.9 An article in German Die Welt also held that Oriental culture is weakening the infiltration of Western ideology. It pointed out that with the end of the Cold War various civilized societies outside the West seem to emit a new radiant force, which is crippling the imported principles of Western life and strengthening local cultural awareness. As described above, world culture is moving towards diversification. There is not only conflict, but also a blending of different cultures in their exchanges and interchanges. The key lies in mutual respect and inclusiveness, which is beneficial to cultural blending and coexistence. The “clash of civilizations” theory has absolutized local ethnic and religious cultural conflicts in history and reality. It has turned a blind eye to the megatrend of peaceful coexistence, exchange and development between ethnic groups and cultures. In cultural development history, while Western culture has made great contributions to human civilization, Oriental culture is also a gem of human ideology. They should exchange with each other and learn from each other’s strong points in order to benefit humankind, rather than be used to repel each other and contend for hegemony. If Not Power, What? The “clash of civilizations” theory has naturally been criticized in many quarters. For this reason, S. Huntington wrote another article entitled “If Not Civilization, What?: Paradigms of the Post-Cold War World”, reiterating that civilization is the source of post-Cold War conflicts. Cultural power is bound to accompany political power. For example, U.S. foreign policy has always included a plan of disseminating U.S. cultural values to the rest of the world, of which exporting the mode of U.S. political development is one of the major elements. In the international political arena, the U.S. has always brandished a menacing club, now sanctioning this country, now punishing that country. The world has on occasion been divided into four types of countries -- “law-abiding,” “newly-emerging,” “barbarous” and “gloomy”. To guarantee U.S.

interests, it has been considered imperative to have an operable international system in conformity with U.S. standards. The U.S. has been regarding China as its potential rival and after the “clash of civilizations” theory very many pages about the so-called “China threat” theory have appeared in some overseas newspapers and periodicals. China has always adhered to the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence and advocated settling international disputes through peaceful means. In its modern process of seeking national and ethnic interests, it has never expanded to other regions and fields outside its homeland. Where did the “China threat” come from? The so-called human rights issue is a political slogan of which the U.S. is most fond and a main means by which the U.S. pursues its cultural power. It accuses Singapore of being an Oriental authoritarian state on the grounds of infringing on human rights. For this reason, Lee Kuan Yew has made a series of statements. On the one hand, he expounds the divergence between concepts of family, society and state in Oriental civilization and those in Western civilization. On the other hand, he criticizes Western values based upon individualism and various problems occurring in U.S. society. However, the U.S. has managed with difficulty to subject other countries to its cultural values. Time and again it has issued human rights reports with vicious slanders and charges against human rights situations in Eastern countries, especially China, interfering in other countries’ internal affairs. This has aroused dissatisfaction and resistance from many countries. In reply to the question: “if not civilization, what?” aimed at establishing the dominant position of Western civilization, we would counter with a question “if not power, what?”. Marxist cultural theory, based on the fundamentals of historical materialism, fully affirms the diversity of various ethnic and social cultures and firmly opposes an absolutization of any culture. It opposes cultural expansionism and rejects cultural relativism. As early as the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels predicted the trend of world integration: In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal interdependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrowmindedness become more and more impossible and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature. Today, when the world has become a “global village”, all ethnic cultures should join hands in creating a more rational and healthy world culture based on maintaining and developing individuality. Deng Xiaoping’s theory of building socialist culture with Chinese characteristics is the result of combining the universal truth of Marxism with concrete Chinese cultural practice. Under the guidance of this thinking, the CCCPC “Resolution on Several Important Issues in Strengthening Socialist Spiritual Civilization” put forward the concrete objectives of the struggle to build a socialist spiritual civilization. We will not only actively absorb excellent foreign civilizational achievements and carry forward our country’s traditional culture, but also prevent cultural refuse from dissemination, clear it away, and withstand the attempts of hostile forces to “Westernize” and “split” China. In international cultural exchanges, we will insist on the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence and in order to contribute to the progress of human civilization oppose any exercise of cultural power. NOTES 1. Quoted from Dai Wenrong, “From ‘Orientalism’ to ‘Cultural Imperialism’”, Foreign Social Sciences, No. 6, 1996. 2. Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping, Vol. 3, p. 275. 3. Washington Post, October 7, 1995. 4. See Jiang Danlin, Eastern Path of Rejuvenation (Guangdong Education Publishing House, 1996), p. 2. 5. Quoted from Abstract of Foreign Modern Philosophy and Social Sciences, No. 12,

1991. 6. Gu Ping, “Asia Is Disgusted with Cold War Noise”, October 11, 1996. 7. Quoted from Fang Li, “Post-Cold War Cultural ‘Invasion’ and ‘Anti-invasion’ in International Relations”, Strategy and Management, March 1, 1996. 8. Edward Said, “Orient Is Not Orient---Orientalist Era on the Verge of Dying Out”, Foreign Social Sciences, No. 6, 1996. 9. Quoted from Fang Li, “Post-Cold War Cultural ‘Invasion’ and ‘Anti-invasion’ in International Relations”, Strategy and Management, March 1, 1996. **** CHAPTER IV AESTHETIC CULTURE: FROM TRADITION TO MODERNITY CHEN CHAONAN AESTHETIC CULTURE DOES NOT BEGIN IN MODERN TIMES In contemporary China aesthetic culture has already become a hot topic in academia, business, and mass media. Studies and theses concerning aesthetic culture appear frequently; in business transactions the words "aesthetic culture" often are used as a sort of decoration. It has become widely known through the channels of the mass media: newspapers and magazines, TV and radio. Therefore it has been stated that "aesthetic culture is a new phenomenon cropping up in the course of the development of modern aesthetics and arts."1 But as a matter of fact, aesthetic culture is really not newborn in contemporary society, nor is it a special feature of the market economy. The attitudes people take towards the world can be classified generally into three types: knowledge, utility and aesthetics, which correspond to truth, good and beauty. Sometimes these three attitudes cannot be separated clearly in real life. Ernst Cassirer noted: "It is man’s special characteristic that he is not limited to take one sole specific attitude towards reality, but can think in terms of images, apart from concepts and utility."2 The attempt to put human activity into images can be seen clearly in "Li" (ritual) and "Yue" (music) in ancient China. The basic significance of "Li" in primitive society is to worship god. But in the process of changing into a slave society the basic meaning of "Li" was turned into recording merit, governing state and holding ritual. In its primitive sense "Yue" does not indicate music but various kinds of artistic activities including music. If used in a broad sense this implies any activity that makes people feel happy. So "Yue" assumes the meaning of happiness. In such events as worshipping god, recording merits and governing the state, in order to cover the apparent religious, utilitarian and political purposes, some proper mode of expression must be found. This can be by turning to images, as this not only makes it easy to accept ideas in a visual manner and to put them into concrete performance, but also is able to inspire one’s passion and produce a kind of resonance so as to achieve an edifying effect. For instance, China is well know for its bronze ware, and the "Ding" (an ancient cooking vessel with two loophandles and three legs) can be regarded as its special representative. The following passage is found in the Chinese ancient literature "The king sent someone to bring gifts to a chancellor in recognition of his service. Seeing the large `Ding’ given him as a gift, the chancellor asked about its size and weight. The envoy replied: the significance of `Ding’ does not lie in its size and weight, but in its symbolizing things that make ordinary people tell good from evil and loyalty from betrayal." So "Ding"’s function is to display morality and nothing else of importance is attached. Morality is both the spiritual principle and behavioral norm. If one would like to translate this into an image, building a "Ding" is one of the proper methods. The aesthetic characteristics of such images come from their shape and decoration which still are admired by day people. For E. Cassirer, "Art can be regarded as a painting that implies the meaning of moral truth. It is looked upon as the expression of a sort of metaphor that covers some ethical significance."3 We can see from the "Ding"’s shape, decoration and forging process the moral spirit that is displayed through its image in the form of artistic exaggeration. As this endeavor to bring the features of aesthetic

imagery to human activities occurred at the beginning of cultural development, we cannot say that such practice has nothing to do with an aesthetic culture or that it is a product exclusive to modern society. The Chinese definition of aesthetic character can be found in Modern Aesthetic Systems, a textbook on aesthetics used widely in colleges and universities. Owing to its wide use, its definition is to some extent accepted by most people: "Aesthetic culture is the combination of materialized product, ideological system and behavioral pattern; it is an important focus for the research of aesthetic sociology."4 This definition covers three aspects: 1. artificial products with aesthetic features, including various kinds of artistic works; 2. the ideological system concerning taste, ideas and evaluative standards of aesthetic activity; and 3. the aesthetic activities carried out by man, such as creation, appreciation and so on. According to this definition, no clear line can be drawn between history and the modern age, between East and West. Aesthetic culture appears when a nationality or a country begins to acquire culture; it exists permanently in the course of the historical development of a nationality or country. The contents listed in the definition focusing on artistic works, aesthetic ideology and aesthetic activity involve the problem of the relation between aesthetic culture and the arts. Undoubtedly, the creation, evaluation and appreciation of materialized products in artistic activity manifest the aesthetic relationship between man and the world. The arts are an important aspect in aesthetic culture, but people have aesthetic needs and make efforts in other kinds of cultural activities which have aesthetic characteristics. Thus, they too are able to establish some kind of relationship with man. It seems inappropriate to restrict ourselves to artistic activity when researching aesthetic culture. These aesthetic cultural activities constitute another important content of aesthetic culture, which therefore is constituted of two basic components: 1. the arts, and 2. other aesthetic cultural elements. AESTHETIC CULTURE IN WORSHIPPING GOD, RECORDING MERIT AND SETTING RITUALS In primitive cultures, which had no classifications, music, dance, religion and sorcery were mixed together. In religious devotions sacrifice, worship, fortune telling and sorcery were all accompanied with song, dance and music of primitive artistic form. It is recounted from ancient times that Sheng ordered musicians to welcome with music their ancestor who was a half-man, half-god idol. In this way, worship of ancestors was given sensible form in the rhythm and tune of the music, and thereby attained to social value. Another ancient Chinese book recounts the story about worshipping heaven. Social leaders should take the lead in paying homage to heaven with song and dance in order to show that their leading position was endowed by heaven. In this turning to singing and dancing the implications of the worship heaven were given artistic expression. In the transition to a slave society recording merits, governing the state and setting rituals became the primary meaning of "Li". Ling Wu of Zhou dynasty died shortly after he conquered King Chou of the Yin dynasty; King Cheng succeeded the monarch and appointed Duke Shoo to assist in official affairs. Six years later the country was peaceful and thriving, so Duke Shoo began to set rituals and compose music to replace military power with civil administration for the governance of the state. It is said that national accomplishments and social security could not be fulfilled without the composition of music and the establishment of ritual. In ancient times, ritual and music usually were mentioned together, but this does not mean that "Yue" had as high a position as "Li". "Li" was in the dominant position to which "Yue" was subordinate; "Li" was the goal, "Yue" the means. "Yue" must be in the course of "Li" and serve its purpose. Nevertheless, "Yue" is not passive or negative. It brings emotional coloring to "Li" and can display figuratively the necessity and importance of "Li" to society. In one story "Li" and "Yue" are used as the same thing. A chancellor of the State of Lu paid an official visit to the State of Jin. The king of Jin arranged to welcome him with music. First, when three tunes of music in (...........) were played, the envoy

from Lu did not come forward to meet the king. Then the king ordered the musician to sing three songs in (.........), the envoy still did not advance. At last, when the musician sang three songs in (.........), the envoy came forward to show his respect to the king. The reason for the envoy’s action is that the music in (...........) was used for the king to feast dukes or princes, and songs in (...........) were sung when dukes or princes met each other. Only songs in (...........) was music for the king to receive state officials. The envoy knew the rituals and regulation implied in the music very well, and would not violate the regulation to enjoy too high a reception. AESTHETIC CULTURE IN RELATION TO VIRTUE, AMBITION AND SENTIMENT The merging of "Li" and "Yue" in the early period of slave society later turned into a long tradition of Chinese culture. Apart from its meaning as worshipping heaven, recording merits and setting rituals, "Li" was used in a broad sense to indicate the moral norms of feudal society. Artistic activity like music played the role of moral edification. It is pointed out in an ancient book that the purpose of setting rituals is to bring various kinds of social behavior under control and keep society from deviating from the norms. Poems were written in order to express the contents of rituals. This is the origin of the view that music was created for expressing virtues. Such artistic forms as music and poetry should be used to display noble virtues and should become a figurative approach to spread noble virtues everywhere. "Virtue" is the aim of "music" and "music" is the expression of "virtue". Virtue acquires form and feeling through "music", and thereby aesthetic features. In ancient China, some famous tunes have clear moral implications. The work of Qu Yuan Ode to the Orange, "despite its description of the beauty of an orange and the shape and color of the tree, is intended to symbolize such human virtues as selflessly clinging to virtues and independence without following outof-date models. His works conform to the direction that "music was aimed to display virtues." An expression similar to "music is aimed to manifest virtues" is "music is used to keep virtues." That is to say, if a king wanted to keep his state in permanent order and long peace, he should be content with moral norms, follow the rituals and practice justice. This relates artistic activity and national politics. Confucius said that if "Li" and "Yue" were not considerably developed in a state, criminal law and the regulation of reward and punishment would not be proper. This is a political function of the arts. (..........) is the earliest work in our country about musical theory. It points out that ritual, music, criminal law and politics, though different, must be unified for the common goal, namely, to enable the people to share a similar aspiration and to direct state administration along a regular track. In rituals, criminal punishment and politics, the arts should not only serve the common purpose, but also endow these events with a concrete visible image. In ancient China, with the view that music was to display virtue, it was suggested also that poetry be used to express aspiration (..........). In ancient language " " (poem) is equal to " " (aspiration), the two characters expressing the same meaning. The early poems were used to express the intention of gods and ancestors in the events of politics, religion and hunting. Later poetry changed so as to express the author’s thoughts and motivation, ambition and aspiration, life experience and internal feelings. In the Han dynasty " ", an important paper discussed poetry, "..........", affirming its connection with ambition, and at the same time recognizing it as the external linguistic expression of the mind’s activity. This enriched the cultural connotation of "............" and thus established the position of " ....." (sentiment or feeling). Since that time, poetry as an aesthetic form expressing feeling has attracted the attention of ever more scholars and artists. In the Wei and Jin periods (3rd century A.D.), the scholar Lu Ji proposed that the beauty of poetry came from the rich feeling contained therein. This can be understood to mean that the beauty of poetry was produced by its rhythm, image and

metaphor. At that time some artists paid great attention to the expression of sentiment in poetry, painting and music, and also strove for the creation of new artistic forms. In this way, art itself was greatly developed. Lu Xun said: "The age of Chao Pei can be said to be a conscious age of literature or an age of arts, for art as indicated in modern times."5 This is of special significance in Chinese cultural history. After the Wei and Jin periods, not only did a conscious sense of art appear, but aesthetic features were attached to a person’s talents, appearances and speech, which formed the fashion of the times. The speech and behavior of the officials of that time involved one’s demeanor and temperament. To find beauty in a person’s behavior and manner is to be conscious of one’s own beauty. AESTHETIC CULTURE IN ENTERTAINMENT, EXPRESSION OF FEELING AND MARKETING The long duration of Chinese feudal society enabled Confucian ideology to dominate for a very extended period. It put much emphasis on the edifying function of art and the ethical purpose of culture. In such a context art and other sorts aesthetic culture had very advanced social functions in the service of politics, morality and religion. In the relationship of arts to feeling, taste and leisure, though the Confucian ideology exerted a confining influence, some development took place during that period. For instance, poetry in the Tang dynasty paid great attention to feelings, and some Tang poems are rich in feeling or sentiment and taste. The great poet of the Tang dynasty, Bai Juyi, said: "In what affects people, feeling can be counted as the first." The emphasis on sentiment is very clear here. The man of letters Wang Ruoxu in the late Song dynasty said: the sentiment implied in poetry is quite different from ordinary feelings. It is a "charm and delicate taste", i.e., a kind of aesthetic sentiment. This kind of understanding is very close to the distinction made by modern aestheticians between feeling in daily life and that expressed in artistic works. In the period of the Ming and Qing dynasty, the Chinese feudal culture reached its mature and final stage. The Confucian influence was marked by "music aimed at displaying virtue, poetry for ambition, and reason applied in poetry." Though this remained very strong, social developments created many conditions for aesthetic culture. Many excellent novels, dramas, paintings, calligraphy, horticulture, and works of music appeared at that time. The standard of literary and artistic creation and criticism were varied as well. Writer Zhu Yunming said: "The situation derives from the contact between the person and the object, while sentiment comes from the contact between the person and situation." The dramatist, Tang Xianzu, said: "Feelings or sentiments and dreams lead to the creation of drama." Writer Yan Zhongdao said: "Poetry is mainly intended for airing one’s inborn nature and inspiration." The musician Zhu Zaiyu said: "Elegance is the highest beauty." Thus, sentiment, taste, nature and inspiration, beauty, etc., all took shape and became the criteria for evaluating the arts and aesthetic culture. What most attracted people’s attention was the rise of popular novels and folk art. The popularity of such sentimental and chivalrous novels as Dream in Red Chamber sufficiently demonstrated the improvement of artistic reality and entertainment. The folk printing of large numbers of New Year’s paintings fulfilled the demand of farmers for the celebration of the New Year’s Festival, family culture and entertainment. The subject matter of New Year’s paintings in the Ming and Qing dynasties varied widely from myth, legend, and dramatic story to men farming and women weaving, celebrations and congratulations. They became almost an art gallery reflecting rural life. Behind the popular literature, drama and arts stood the Chinese people who at the turn of the century showed increased demand for aesthetic culture. In the 20th century Chinese society has undergone radical changes during which the social functions of various kinds of arts has been fully displayed. Worshipping god, recording merit, ritual settings, displaying virtues, expressing aspirations and sentiments still were closely related to the arts. Their social functions drew support through representation in images; they were carried forward by their aesthetic features. Moreover, such functions as entertain-ment, sentimental

expression and marketing which originally were implied in aesthetic culture were developed and resulted in many characteristics of modern aesthetic culture. Entertainment and the expression of feelings as the original functions of the arts never received as much attention as they have in the 20th century. While the modern industry creates plentiful material wealth, at the same time it imposes the patterns of industrial production upon social life, such as a quick pace, a rigid social order and a noisy urban environment, thereby pushing people into a strange, gigantic social machine. While obtaining material living conditions far better than before, people also have lost many things they once possessed, such as a warm and peaceful environment for the family and close relations with friends and relatives. Now the family has become a market for making money; furniture, electrical appliances, foods and medicine all pour into the family. More unfortunate is the rise in the proportion of families with but a single parent. Material wealth cannot make up for the spiritual loss and suffering. Modern people need entertainment and leisure to ease the tension of work and to ease their rigid schedules. They need also to break through spiritual repression in order to recover a balance of body and mind. They need not only those arts which create the peaceful and harmonious mood which Henri Matisse compared to a restful armchair, but also the expression of feelings to pacify distorted mental states as, for example, the loud cry as described in Shout, the well-known painting of Edward Munch. Since people need entertainment and leisure, the entertainment and leisure industry develops through artistic forms which inspire the sense of beauty. For instance, on TV, programs which integrate games, entertainment and artistic form have a high level of viewers. Such programs would be unimaginable in the 70s. People today need to express their feelings, and cultural and artistic activities are a natural means for this. Shouts in popular songs, though lacking a sense of beauty, vent deeply buried feelings. Though the improvised movements of the disco do not require the basic training needed in artistic dance, still it can display the individual’s personality and produce the joy of a balanced body and mind. The new cultural needs of modern society are utilized by commerce to develop a commercial culture never before known. Industrial and agricultural products are turned into consumer goods through commercial channels. Marketing gives rise to commercial advertisement which under the stimulation of large profits brings various artistic methods into play. Painting, music, movies, sculpture all feed the image approach to marketing. In the commercial streets of Shanghai one can see as advertising not only paintings of all forms, but imitations of Michelangelo’s sculptures in front of shops. Female film stars with world reputations can be seen in TV commercial ads. Such marketing requires an aesthetic culture. John Dewey said: "There is a sort of art which is multiplying fastest which includes structures built in the name of architecture, paintings under the cover of art, novels and drama under the sign of literature and so on. In reality, these works are, to a large extent, the concrete expression of commercialization in production. . . . Their owners’ qualification for catering to elegance is only their economic status."6 This suggests the huge power of commerce in modern aesthetic culture, both positive and negative. It is possible, however, that cultural aesthetics has a deeper significance. It already has been suggested that aesthetic culture should be the basic component of the general culture and include its ways of thinking, living and education.7 This would form a new project for research in aesthetic culture. NOTES 1. Li Xijian, "The Structural System of Aesthetic Culture", Learning and Probing, no. 6, 1992. 2. E. Cassirer, An Essay on Man (New York, 1994), ch. 9. 3. Ibid. 4. Ye Lang, ed., Modern Aesthetic Systems (Beijing: Beijing University Press), p. 259. 5. Lu Xun, The Complete Works of Lu Xun, vol. 3.

6. John Dewey, Experience and Nature (1925), p. 296. 7. News Letter of China (Aesthetic Society, 1996), no. 1. **** http://www.crvp.org/book/Series03/III-16/chapter_v.htm CHAPTER V THE LOSS OF THE SUBJECT AND THE DISORDER OF VALUES: Critical Reflections on Present Cultural Research YU WUJIN In the present circumstances in which everyone is talking about culture and a jumble of all kinds of viewpoints are on display, what is the historic mission of philosophy, now and for a long time to come? It is important that philosophy not follow the fashion and simply drift with the tide, for example, building a new system of cultural philosophy, or translating all sorts of new trends into cultural thought, etc. Rather it must aim at critical reflection to clarify the essential viewpoints which exist generally in present cultural research. Otherwise, the more we talk about cultural research, the further we are likely to wander from the truth. In present cultural research, the coexistence and conflict of many different viewpoints is obvious. Some call this a "multi-cultural state", which, of course, is beyond reproach. Moving from the past "unitary cultural state" to the present "multi-cultural state" is a type of historical progress, but it is not sufficient simply to stop on this point. To admit a "multi-cultural state" and to treat different ideas on culture with lenience and openness, though necessary, does not mean that the existence of each viewpoint on culture is reasonable, or that one viewpoint on culture has no right to think critically about other viewpoints. In fact, without critical thinking, not only will the "multi-cultural state" degenerate into a simple juxtaposition of viewpoints, but all cultural research also will lose its vitality. THE LOSS OF THE SUBJECT If one looks closely at the very different viewpoints on culture, one finds a general and significant phenomenon, namely the loss of the subject and a disorder of values. Here "subject" refers to the Chinese people in the 1990s; the so-called "loss of subject" refers to the subject’s loss of any objective position upon which to stand. This kind of loss of subject or of identity necessarily causes a disorder, and even a reversal of the appreciation of the value of the subject, thus leaving it to float like duckweed on all kinds of different ideas. This loss of subject appears in the following circumstances. The first is the misplacement of the subject, namely, the subject does not regard itself as Chinese in the 1990s, but replaces its own position by that of other people when researching all sorts of cultural phenomena and problems. Of course, "the people" referred to here are varied, but the most typical or common are the following two kinds: one is the ancients, especially Confucianism as represented by Confucius himself. Although such a research position as "approve the past, not the present", "stress the past, not the present" is not so flagrantly manifest as the school of the quintessence of Chinese culture bitterly attacked by Lu Xun, but its latent appearance in the present cultural research can be found everywhere. One example is critically to praise the Chinese cultural tradition, unconditionally worshipping such ancient texts as The Confucian Analects, The Works of Mencius, The Book of Chang, etc., while avoiding or concealing the historical limitations of Confu-cianism, etc. These are instances of the subject misplacing his or her position onto the ancients. Another example is the attitude toward contemporary representatives of Western modernism and postmodern cultural thoughts. In recent years, Chinese scholars have scrambled for such new thoughts coming from the West as anti-rationalism, existentialism, the philosophy of the absurd, deconstructionism, post-colonialism, etc. They have employed the position, attitude and methods of these new thoughts uncritically to describe and even to comment on Chinese modernization and social and cultural problems, while neglecting to a great extent their identity. In pursuing moder-nization contemporary Chinese society has a completely different

life interest and value-orientation than contemporary Western society. Therefore, when the subject uncritically replaces his or her own position with that of such representatives of the Western modernist or post-modernism schools on culture as Camus, Lyotard, Derrida, etc., they not only cannot correctly solve the types of problems which contemporary Chinese society is facing, but misdirect the discussion. A second mode of loss of the subject is prejudice, that is, the subject being unable to master the objective value-orientation needed by the Chinese in the 1990s, replaces this with one that is purely subjective. The subject’s prejudice appears mainly in two inclina-tions: one is that the subject evaluates all sorts of cultural problems and phenomena completely according to one’s own liking, for example, the one who worships Lao Zi praises him up to the heavens or those who worship Confucius and Mencius praise them as perfect sages, forgetting that Confucius himself has even said: "I am fortunate that if I have any errors, people are sure to know them" (The Confucian Analects). In contrast, people who dislike Confucius denigrate his thought as devoid of any merit. Another example is how often in investigating cultural and social problems people miss the essence of these problems, and grasp only some partial, accidental, temporary or detailed elements. This echoes the common expression that prejudice is further from the truth than innocence. In a word, setting out from a purely subjective valueorientation and writing articles interpreting the six scriptures seems to be a high activity of the subject, but in fact it is a new form of the subject’s ignorant, homeless and embarrassed state. The third is lack of awareness of the subject, namely, when research on the subject’s identity and on such cultural phenomena as cultural character, cultural events, texts, etc., attempts to clear up any elements and feelings through socalled purely objectively investigation of all objects in order to make not value judgements, but factual judgements. This research attitude seems extremely fair, and even can be honored by such high sounding terms as scientific research. In fact, it is a timid approach through which the subject avoids the difficultly of researching the life world in which he or she lives and avoids ascertaining the value-orientation he should possess. Actually, factual judgments completely devoid of value dimensions never exist. Even in research on the natural sciences, our choice of research theme and our interpretation of its meaning indicate our values. From the above analysis it becomes manifest that loss of the subject is a key problem in cultural research. If we leave aside the subject’s identity to expand blindly the range of cultural research, for instance, to prostitution, tea, dietary cultures, etc., or argue endlessly on some side issues, we cannot lead general cultural research along a healthy trajectory. Nor can the loss of subject be avoided only by continually using such expressions as "I think" or "I find" or "I believe". On the contrary, the more these sentences are used, the more the rootless, homeless and embarrassed state of the subject is revealed. Besides, as also can be made out from the above analysis, the loss of subject necessarily causes confusion, even disorder in one’s value views, as well as errors in one’s cultural critique. This deforms "plural cultural states" into purely exterior and pseudo-morphologies. THE LOSS OF HISTORICITY AS THE CAUSE OF THE LOSS OF SUBJECT OR OF IDENTITY Let us look further into what actually causes the universal phenomena of loss of subject and disorder in values. There are two primary reasons. Objective Reasons One reason is objective. With the development of the market economy and the acceleration of social transition all sorts of problems have sprung up. To solve these people resort to various ideas and cultural viewpoints. When all forms of cultural views are chaotically on display, however, contemporary Chinese scholars, who have just freed themselves from the pure ideological cultivation of the style of the "Great Cultural Revolution," are at a loss as to what to do. It is like Grandma Liu visiting a great theme park. Under the clash of the cultures pouring

in, the standpoint as well as the monistic axiological perspective begins to oscillate. By continually translating and introducing new thoughts and using them in a semiskilled manner some try to indicate that they are continually thinking and in earnest. This unceasing pursuit of new ideas and terms and continued change of one’s position seems to some people to be thinking in earnest, but it may be only loss of the subject’s identity. Of course, in all fairness, whenever a society is in a period of great transition, the above phenomena are almost inevitable. But this should not continue for long, for drifting with the tide without thinking and criticizing is contrary to the contemporary scholar’s mission. Subjective Reasons The other reason for the loss of the subject and a disorder of values is subjective, namely, the peeling off of historicity. This appears in two respects. The first is the peeling off of subjective historicity. As mentioned above, "subject" in this article refers to the Chinese person living at the turn of the millennia, or the contemporary Chinese to use an imprecise concept. What is the historicity of the contemporary Chinese, and how can it be peeled off? Generally speaking, this means the historical circumstances in which they have placed themselves. These are complicated, but here we refer not to the whole scope and detail of these historical circumstances, but to the essentials which are its developing trends. To contemporary Chinese, these historical circumstances appear to constitute an extremely rich and concrete life-world. At the heart of this world and promoting its forward development is the emergence of a Chinese style market economy. This is where the historicity of the contemporary Chinese lies. The Chinese market economy possesses both the general characteristics of a common market economy and the particularity formed in the Chinese cultural context. With regard to its general character, the rise and develop-ment of a market economy is bound to lead to the disintegration of the primitive ethical spirit based on natural blood relationships and local connections, and to the rise of new outlooks based on independent personality and centrally characterized by the spirit of democracy, freedom, equality and science. With regard to its particularity, the Chinese market economy emerged and developed under the conditions of a planned economy radically characterized by administrative decree. Therefore the existence of such phenomena as administrative power interfering unreasonably, and even illegally with economic life, and the use of one’s political power for one’s own profit, corruption, etc., are facts without question. Under the circumstances, it is especially important to advocate equal opportunity and social fairness and to set up and perfect various laws and regulations. In a word, the inescapable historicity of contemporary Chinese, especially those living in the 1900s, is embodied in the Chinese style market economy. To develop the market economy in a healthy manner, namely, to move it forward in a more perfect and reasonable manner, it is necessary to develop a new value system which cooperates with this style. Its core idea is precisely the spirit of freedom, equality, democracy, science and social fairness which presuppose the establishment of an independent personality as mentioned above. This is the objective value orientation that contem-porary Chinese, especially those living in the 1900s, should possess. Those who consciously can apply this value orientation in the analysis and research regarding different cultural phenomena are those who really understand their own historicity. Otherwise, the subject’s historicity is in the state of being peeled off, not to say that this state naturally leads to loss of the subject’s identity and to disorder in values. For example, the basic theme of Western modernism and postmodernism is to reflect the social problems caused by a highly developed science and tech-nology. Obviously, this kind of reflection is a profound contemporary Western apprehension of its own historicity. But, these contemporary Western themes cannot simply be moved into contemporary Chinese subject. In contrast to the contemporary West, the Chinese are moving into modernization, that is to say, in contemporary Chinese society it still is very important to devote

effort to developing science and technology and to expanding the scientific spirit. Consider how the chaotic state of administration leads to endless bureaucratic delays in the construction of roads and houses, or the superstitions which pervade popular, especially rural, culture. There is reason to repeat Hu Shi’s discourse of seventy years ago in the well-known "debate between science and metaphysics". If we look about everywhere there are altars for divine sages and Taoist and Buddhist shrines everywhere with divine prescriptions and ghost photos. With such underdeveloped traffic and industry where do we get the right to exclude science. Certainly, compared with the time of Hu Shi, contemporary Chinese science and technology has already developed to some de-gree, but, who will doubt that China still needs to develop a scientific technology and spirit for realizing modernization? In recent years, some mainland scholars have advocated objecting to scientism and expanding the spirit of humanism. Outwardly, they seems to try to let contemporary Chinese society absorb in advance the experience and lessons which Western society have undergone in the process of modernization. However, this is actually the complicated response of a conservative psyche contending with the historical process of Chinese modernization. Indeed, to oversee and contain the extension of scientism in some degree is significant. We should realize also, however, that in contemporary Chinese society the urgent matter is not to prevent the popularization and development of science and technology under the excuse of anti-scientism, but to develop scientific technology and to cultivate the scientific spirit. This goes beyond simple utility and bravely devotes one to truth (such as Coper-nicus, Galileo, Bruno, Darwin, Huxley, etc., in Western history). To advocate an ill-timed and excessive containment of scientism, to disregard the scientific spirit and expand lopsidedly the spirit of humanism is a typical mode of peeling off the historicity of subject. Inevitably this would lead to a loss of the subject and a disorder of values. Perhaps this state can be called conflict between the life situation of preindustrial society and the cultural state of mind of post-industrial society. The second peeling off of objective historicity is found when the subject researches such cultural issues as the cultural character, ideas and affairs, etc., but does not organically associate the theoretical side of the object with its social and historical side, thus peeling off the historicity of the object. For example, when some scholars conceal the great difference between ancient Chinese society and contemporary society in its present historical circum-stances, and discuss abstractly the relation in theory, the historicity of the object of which they talk is peeled off. Equally, when scholars conceal the historicity of Chinese and Western society, abstractly comparing similarities and differences of the two cultures, they make the same mistake. For instance, some contemporary Chinese scholars propose expending the humanistic spirit of the Confucian school, in terms of abstract theory. This is beyond reproach. How can one gain say or contradict such humanistic ideas as "let the father be kind, and son filial" advocated in Confucianism? However, the problem is that we cannot remain on the side of abstract theory, but must present the concrete, social and historical connotation which the Confucian humanistic spirit possessed in the historical circumstances at this time, namely, historicity. Only thus can we bring to light the correct attitude for treating the spirit. The Confucian Analects: Xue Er have the maxim that the superior man bends his attention to what is radical. That established, the practical applications follow naturally. Filial piety and fraternal submission are the root of all benevolent actions. That is, in his time he hoped to found a humanistic spirit based upon "filial piety and fraternal submission". In this spirit a man was taken first for son and brother, in other words, he was regarded as an element of the patriarchal clan system which turned to natural blood relationships for its ties and regarded patriarchy as its center. In the opinion of Confucius, not only were man and woman not equal, but neither were father and son; thus there is the direction that the

son conceal something for his father in the Confucian Analects. It is well-known that the humanistic spirit in modern civilized society is based on the independent personality, that is to say, man is not first regarded as son and brother, but as an independent personality. In family life, modern people still advocate "let the father be kind, and the son filial", but this cultural idea has been given a new social and historical connotation, i.e., "kind" and "filial" are discussed on the basis of independent personalities and equal relations between people. To disregard this concrete character of society and history, and to discuss abstractly the humanistic spirit of the Confucian school necessarily obliterates the essential difference between the modern and ancient humanistic spirit, thereby leading to confusion and even a crisis of cultural construction. For an example in Western culture one might ask why philoso-phical circles in our country inquire into the identity philosophy represented by Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. Often they analyze this in its purely theoretical aspect, namely, as maintaining that thinking and being are identical, thereby denying agnosticism in epistemology , etc. They completely neglect its social and historical characteristics. In fact, identity philosophy was put forward under the influence of the French Enlightenment and the French Revolution. Its social and historical connotation, in accord with Hegel’s view, is to "construct reality according to thought". In other words, it means using the general principles of Enlightenment thought to remodel German social reality. Thus, "identity philosophy" is not an abstract and tasteless philosophical doctrine, but a kind of revolutionary theory expressed by German philosophers in obscure language. In studying "identity philosophy", to disregard this concrete historical intentionality is to peel off the historicity of this research object, leading to a loss of the subject and to disorder in values. By way of summary, it is not difficult to see that the subjective reason for the phenomena of loss of the subject and the disorder of values is caused mainly by peeling off historicity. This tells us that in any cultural research, it is decisive that the subject clarify in advance its historicity so as to identify consciously the objective value-orientation which the subject should establish. TWO MEANINGS OF TIME AND THE NEED FOR AN EXISTENTIAL ONTOLOGICAL HERMENEUTICS The main point in all this thusfar has remained in the shadows of negation and critique. Now , we must answer such questions from the positive side, namely, how to avoid loss of the subject and disorder in values in cultural research, in other words, how to clarify historicity in cultural research, and thereby to establish the objective value coordinate of the subject. Before solving these problems, we need to clarify in advance the preconceived ideas that most easily lead the subject along the wrong path. The "central axis era" theory put forward by German philosopher, Jaspers, is just such a preconceived idea. It seemed to him that from the eight to the second century B.C. was the period in which Confucius, Sakyamuni, Socrates, etc. founded respectively the different normative cultural forms. This age is called the central axis era because the subsequent development of cultures is under the control of the normative cultural forms of this era. If one understands Jaspers only according to the transference and development of normative cultural forms, one cannot say he is wrong. But his error lies in regarding that era as the central axis, which implies that later developments of culture revolve around this "central axis era". This theory is focused on the phenomenon of the misplaced subject. In fact, the "central axis era" lies never in the past, but in the present. The present, of course, is a relative concept; it is what the history human beings attains. Contemporaries are those living at that time: their life interest is the genuine central axis, starting from which one interprets ancient cultures and their character. The Romans and Greeks lay in tombs; their culture was not aroused until the Renaissance European spirit acquired maturity. Similarly, the sense of long periods of history which we now regard as annals and many documents which are

still silent will be made manifest in the light of new life, and will speak once again. In view of this, Croce put forward the well-known proposition that "all genuine history is contemporary history," affirming the central function of contemporaries and of contemporary culture. In fact, according to Croce’s logic, even such a word as "the Renaissance" is not exact, because it easily can cause the misunderstanding that modern Europe is the sudden return of ancient civilization. The real circumstance, however, is just the contrary; modern Europeans employ the slogans and costumes of ancient characters only to play the program of a new life. Here, Croce actually put forward a kind of "new-central-axis-era" theory radically opposed to Jaspers. It proposes that to avoid the mis-placement of the subject’s position on the ancient position, namely, the replacement of the contemporaries’ position by that of the ancients’, what is most important is to realize that the central axis lies in the contemporary from beginning to end. Henceforth, to apprehend the essential significance of the contemporary life-world where the subject lives is the prerequisite for keeping the subject independent and free. We should not retain the shallow common sense that "not to understand the past is not to understand the present," but should apprehend the much more profound truth that "not to understand the present is not to interpret the past." Another preconceived idea which greatly effects us, even in our unconscious psyche, is "to worship chronicle time," namely the internationally current concept of time as the present. The 1990s, as we mentioned above, belongs to chronicle time, which in any case is inevitable for contemporary life. People unthinkingly take this idea of time into cultural research, especially comparative cultural research, thereby extending the faults of isochronalism. This is just one of the profound reasons that cause the peeling off of the subject’s historicity and the loss of the subject. For example, the Chinese in the 1990s usually think that they are in the same time as the Westerners. In fact, the concept of isochronalism here has formal meaning only for chronicle time. To extend this to mean that they are isochronal in their cultural state of mind is an especially great mistake. In fact, contemporary Chinese live in two different kinds of time, one is the chronicle time mentioned above, according to which people arrange their lives and contacts, especially international contacts. Another I would call the time of the form of society, which is decided by the economic relations that hold the dominant status in social life and restrict the cultural state of people’s mind. For cultural research, especially comparative cultural research, only this time of the form of society is the radical premise. In accord with such an idea of time we can say that the Chinese in the 1990s are not at the same time as regards the cultural state of mind as are the Westerners in the 1990s; in other words, Western culture in the 1990s and Chinese culture in the 1990s are not isochronical. In this respect, we must not be misled by such exteriors as that there are color TVs, compact discs, thunderbolt-dancing and rock in China in the 1990s as in the 1990s West. Chronicle time may also intrude into the cultural state of mind to a certain extent in a stage of development of a society, but the impact produced by it is next to nothing in comparison with the time of the form of society decided by economic relations. That is to say, the grounds on which to determine whether two kinds of culture are isochronical is fundamentally determined by the time of the form of society. Up to now, what people have and are undergoing is a pre-commodity economy and social form. Contemporary China is just entering upon the primary stage of commodity economy. Even if reluctantly it is put into the commodity economy or social form, still it lies in a different stage of development from contemporary Western society whose commodity economy has been highly developed. Thus, their cultural state of mind is not isochronal. The cultural state of mind of contemporary Chinese society still remains very deeply a brand of natural economy and planned economy. People often say that the Chinese walking and doing is either sluggish or unpunctual, whereas the Western is swift and punctual. This is just because

contemporary Chinese society lies in a different state of time from contemporary Western society. Therefore, investigated from the point of view of the time of the form of society, the cultural state of mind of contemporary Chinese society rather more resembles, or to be more exact, is at the same time as the cultural state of mind of Western society in the 16th to 18th century. Contemporary Chinese society’s stress upon the use of transport and technology, it’s call for the consciousness of morality and right, it’s attention to civil society and social fairness, etc., are the past events which Western society has undergone in the 16th to 18th century. Cultural research, especially comparative cultural research that remains in chronicle time, necessarily leads to loss of the subject. As mentioned above, the subject’s misplacing his or her standpoint upon that of the Western modernist or post-modernist school, abstracts from their respective historical background and renders impossible any general comparison of the Chinese and Western states of mind. This research of similarities and differences of thoughts of such Eastern and Western cultural characters as Lao Zi and Heidegger, Zhung Zi and Derrida, Zhu Xi and Hegel proceeds by shallow insight in pursuit of superficial resemblances. All these are closely related to errors in time theory. In fact, comparative cultural research should be based on the foundation of the time of the form of society. If people are blinded to this foundation their research will have no scientific value. After this de-covering or uncovering, we need directly to probe into the philosophical premises of cultural research. Such premises are ontologic hermeneutics — ontology in the existential sense. This kind of hermeneutics asks the cultural researchers to apprehend in advance their historicity, and grasp the essence of the life-world where they are situated, thereby setting a kind of objective value coordinate. When they do so, before beginning their research, researchers should have the courage to clear up their own subjective value orientation and avoid any misplacement or loss of the subject and disorder of values. **** CHAPTER VI AN OUTLINE OF INTERNATIONAL CULTURE YU XINTIAN THE SIGNIFICANCE OF RESEARCH ON INTERNATIONAL CULTURE The history of cultural research can be traced far back. However, in the past the cultural research in international relations, even if involved, is only scattered through international political and economic treatises. This kind of research seems to have prospered only since the 1990s. Researchers engaged in research in this field use the concepts of “civilization” or “culture”. The original meaning of “culture” in the Latin language was cultivation or manipulation as applied to human activities. The original meaning of “civilization” was civil and organized, referring to norms, standards or ethics in social life. Classical German philosophers differentiated culture from civilization as follows: the former concerns religion, philosophy and the arts in the deeper ideal state and spiritual life, while the latter belongs to the results of surface technology and materials. Engels held that the intention of writing and the use of ironware marked the beginning of civilization, but humankind had culture for hundreds of thousands of years before. This shows that the scope of culture is wider than civilization. In modern times, culture and civilization often are used as synonyms. For example, Edward Burnett Tylor in Britain regarded them as synonyms in his Primitive Culture. Besides, civilization is often referred to as civilized society, that is, people with reasonable behavior in their material and spiritual lifestyle constitute an interrelated whole. In this sense, it may become the basis of some particular nation-state or states. Because the concepts of civilization and culture have something in common and differ in the special emphases of their meaning, the term “international culture” seems more appropriate. Research on international relations generally has two subdivisions: one is world politics and the other is world economy. Neither can

escape its extensive cultural background, which was only indistinct in the past but now becomes distinctly prominent. Thus a third subdivision should be made: world culture. But, the term of “world culture” is liable to cause misunderstanding by suggesting erroneously that a unified world culture exists. For this reason, the term “international culture” is more accurate as an abbreviation for cultural research in international relations. The difference in definition reflects a difference in real life. International politics has not yet been fully integrated into “world” politics, and all countries have not been under the unified leadership of a “world government” or “world federation”. The international economy has not yet been completely “globalized” and contradictions and conflicts in economic interests often occur between various countries. The UN is the landmark organization of world politics, and economic interests have greatly strengthened the interdependence between countries through the development of finance and information. People have accepted the concepts of “world politics” and “world economy” as common practice. However, in the cultural field, a “world culture” has not yet appeared and probably will not take shape in the foreseeable future. In the past hundreds of years with Western colonial powers taking the lead modernization has moved across the rest of the world with the force of a thunderbolt, throwing open the doors of backward countries with gunboats, goods and missionaries, and spreading Western culture upon gaining political independence. In order to realize modernization developing countries have consciously learned from Western countries their thinking, concepts and culture. However, developing countries do not agree that “modernization means Westernization”; they pay increasing attention to their unique ways of combining traditional culture with modernity. They also stand against Western countries judging everything with Western value standards. So, “world culture” probably will not be created in-depth, though a kind of worldwide industrial culture and popular culture begins to emerge as modernization makes progress in every country. The concept of “international culture” reflects the interaction between the different cultures ranging from learning, absorption and integration to isolation, struggle and conflict. There are a number or reasons why research in international culture has been growing since the 1990s. Firstly, after the Cold War, severe ideological struggles between the two camps came to an end and many originally covered or constrained contradictions have broken out of a “Pandora’s box”. Most of the conflicts in the world since the 1990s have involved ethnic conflicts, national divisions and religious wars. To understand religious, national and ethnic contradictions and conflicts we must give greater attention to the identity, thinking, feeling and cultural psychology of peoples. Existing geopolitical and geo-economic explanations are far from sufficient to deal with the new issues emerging in an endless sequence. Secondly, the development of economic globalization at an unprecedented speed, the scale of the worldwide flow of materials, funds and personnel, and the rapidly deepening economic interdependence between countries have made possible an intensification of mutual antagonisms between various cultures in all countries. In recent years, the eruption of a new technological revolution, especially in information, has rapidly reduced distances over the world both in time and in space. Developed transportation has enabled people to leave in the morning and reach any place in the world by evening. The improvement of telecommunications and of coverage by broadcasting and TV networks have made any event at any place the focus of concerns all over the world. If in recent centuries it was Westerners who conquered the world or migrated to other regions, now a tide of migrants from developing countries pours into Western countries. If in the past there was a oneway exportation of Western thinking, it now has turned to a two-way interchange of thinking between East and West, as well as between the South and the North. European scholars note the new trend as the “Europeanization of the world” changes into the “globalization of Europe”. This cultural interaction has produced results

in international relations. For instance, on the controversial issue of human rights, not a few developing countries have begun to pay attention to their importance, while some insightful people in developed countries have begun to integrate rights to subsistence and development in the scope of human rights. This requires further research in international culture. Lastly, at the turn of the century, humankind is faced with many common problems whose resolution must be coordinated through new international relations. This requires changes in the accustomed thinking, principles and norms in order to reach new consensus. This calls for research in international culture. Drugs, AIDs, environmental pollution, ecological destruction and terrorism cannot be resolved on the basis of the national strength of a single country. If the simplest term is to be used to summarize modern humankind’s achievements, it is probably scientific and technological progress which originates from Western scientific and rational thinking and its concept of conquering nature. However, worship of science and technology may be blind, hampering the development of humankind. A variety of absurd theories challenge humankind, to which there can be no response while one sticks to traditional concepts. This requires research in international culture in order to absorb the quintessence of pluralism so as to shape the new thinking and values guiding humankind. The development of research in international culture has significance that cannot be reduced to past theoretical structures for understanding or conducting international relations. The formation of international relations in a modern sense was occasioned by the expanding colonialism of Western powers throughout the world. War, conquest, manoeuvre among the great powers, the outbreak of two world wars, and the birth of nuclear weapon all appeared in this period. The Cold War occupied people’s vision and geopolitical theory unified and almost became the synonym for international relations. In fact, it reflected only the political dimension of the theory of international relations. After WWII, especially since the 1970s and 1980s, the song of peace and development has gradually increased in volume and economic regionalization and integration has made rapid progress. Not only do developing countries increasingly depend on developed ones, but the flourishing of the latter cannot be separated absolutely from the prosperity of the former, spurring the constant innovation of world economic theories. The political Economy of International Relations, International Trade Relations, Development Economics and Geo-economics have emerged as the times demand, adding an economic dimension to the theory of international relations. In spite of this, the theory of international relations has considerable flaws and cannot explain many international phenomena. For example, the international community defines nuclear and chemical weapons as “weapons of mass destruction” and bans their use which will be morally condemned. But there are reasons to ask: Cannot conventional weapons “cause mass destruction”? It is hard to say that the ban of one kind of weapon will be more important than the ban of another. That definition to a considerable extent depends on people’s concept of humanity and morality. Also according to geopolitical theory, one country’s military interference in other countries always results from a rational calculation of egoism. However, in recent years, multilateral interjection has become the main form of international involvement. Many countries participating in interference have no direct or indirect relations of interests, which emerge from a collective understanding of some kind of morality. The emergence of research in international culture, as the third dimension of the theory of international relations, is of necessity aimed at remedying the defects of research in international relations. This will make the theory of international relations more multidimensional, richer and deeper. Though Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations has greatly promoted people’s concerns with this issue, research in international culture did not start from him and has not been a simple response to his argument. In reality, since the 1980s, many researchers began such exploration and a considerable number of works have paved the way.1 Furthermore, the rise of world economic theories cannot replace world political

theories, while research in international culture, cannot, of course, substitute for research in world politics and world economy. Each has its own theoretic emphasis to help people observe international phenomena from different angles. However, these three dimensions are not isolated; they are different aspects of the overall historical process of international affairs. Only by conducting cultural research can the process be grasped overall. Strictly speaking, humankind can learn only from its own history. As views on the past exert influence on the development of humankind’s collective awareness generation after generation, there is need for a clear explanation of history (including that of international relations), for this has much to do with the future destiny of humankind. Till now most explanations have focused on the parts of the whole, such as economy, politics, technology and warfare, rather than on the whole itself. This can result in one-sided and even distorted understanding. The explanation of history from the perspective of culture is conducive to overcoming these drawbacks. Culture has a bearing on all the activities of humankind -- artistic, social, political, educational, religious, spiritual, economic and technical. People throughout the world try every means to explain the world, organize themselves, handle various kinds of affairs, improve and beautify their life and fix their own position in the world. In this, culture is particularly inclusive and integrative. If research in international relations transcends the level of event description and explanation, through cultural research it can be upgraded to the theoretic deliberation of historical philosophy. On the other hand, only by breaking through the national boundaries and answering all questions raised by the integrated world, can cultural research enter a new realm. STRAIGHTENING OUT VALUE ORIENTATIONS Values provide the sole basis for fully understanding culture, because the core of all cultures is values. In international culture, different values have an objective reality. With the cultural issue increasingly prominent, controversies over different values are becoming rather fierce. Approaches to Western values, East Asian values, global values and future values in recent years reflect concerns over the core of research in international culture. Before conducting research in values, we should first of all straighten out our value orientation. In general the following main value orientations are found in China and the world at large. Ethnic Cultural Centralism Ethnic cultural centralism firmly believes in the superiority of the native ethnic culture and holds that it is not only of utmost value to the native ethnic group, but has universality and should be spread to other ethnic groups. As cultures of various ethnic groups in the world have arisen under separate historical conditions, almost all ethnic groups once had similar views. This is understandable in the environment of the times. This view contains positive and negative aspects. Positively either at the level of group, society, region and country or at the international layer, all cultures have made important contributions to international development and to the cultural heritage of humankind. Their spread reflects initiative in retaining and developing native ethnic cultures. Negatively, all cultures have their drawbacks. Unbelievably savage and brutal acts, war, violence, oppression, exploitation, infringement on human rights, racial purges and terrorism, are all more or less manifest in various cultures. Ethnic cultural centralism turns a blind eye to this, and even tries by every means to defend it, leading to a blind sense of national superiority. With the isolation of various countries having been broken so that people can witness the reality of multicultural coexistence in the world. Now they can correctly evaluate the strong and weak points of their native ethnic cultures with reference of other cultures. Remaining with ethnic cultural centralism at this moment is regarded as narrow, one-sided and stubbornly biased -- or worse, preaching a national chauvinism and playing down other ethnic groups for some

purpose. This will not only harm other ethnic groups but also bring great suffering to native ethnic groups. History has repeatedly proved this truth, which deserves close attention. “Western centralism” is the most conspicuous manifestation in the world of ethnic cultural centralism. Though the view that Western culture is universal has been criticized, its force is still very strong. For instance, Forer wrote that the quintessence of Western political values is universal and unavoidably will spread extensively. This cannot be denied,2 and numerous such expositions are available. On the other hand, we cannot but recognize that in developing countries, including China, many people hold an ethnic cultural centralism. Western cultural centralism has a “controlling nature”, while in developing countries it takes the form of “resistance”. The two are different, but cultural centralism is still incorrect and must be studied. Cross-cultural Relativism Cross-cultural relativism holds that there is no morale or truth which can become central for the world, and that all cultures are relative and coexist. Though various cultures differ and are subject to time and place, they are equal. Culture is the result of ethnic historical life. In the 20th century, very extensive investigation and research by cultural anthropologists has promoted this view. Relative to Western centralism and cultural superiority theory, this represents great progress. At least theoretically, it recognizes and looks squarely at world cultural pluralism. Not a few insightful Westerners hold this view with sincerity. But it cannot fundamentally eliminate the influence of Western centralism. On the contrary, it may enable Western centralism to take on a more moderate and covert appearance. The positivist research of cultural anthropology has only provided arguments which to some prove Western culture to be advanced while others are uncivilized and primitive. While bare faced ethnic cultural centralism is notorious, some regard their own values as advanced while playing down other ethnic cultures under the cover of cross-cultural relativism. For instance, criticizing Huntington for holding the view of Western centralism did not strike home, because Huntington said Western culture was unique rather than universal and cannot be imposed on others. But this does not stop him from insisting on Western cultural superiority at heart, and expressing his worries about the “only valuable” Western culture suffering challenges from different cultures. His attitude is somewhat representative. It is interesting that many Asian, African and Latin American countries also favor cross-cultural relativism, but at the other pole. Constrained by Western centralism for hundreds of years, they need to prove themselves through ethnic cultural rejuvenation in order to enhance the people’s confidence, beyond political independence and economic development. Faced with the assaults of strong Western cultures, they are unable to upgrade their own to universal cultures. They must hold the bottom-line of cultural relativism in order to gain equality with Western culture. Cross-cultural relativism is also highly influential in Chinese academia. Many people, including this author, have written articles stressing that all cultures are equal. However, conceptual introspection reveals cross-cultural relativism to be not unassailable. Stating cultural specificity and its local significance is, to a considerable extent, a description of the objective situation, rather than a judgment of values. We cannot withhold comment on the drawbacks of various cultures or even speak highly of them on the basis of recognizing cultural equality. Acts of killing babies, murdering elderly people, oppressing women or mutual slaughter in cultures should not be accepted, but must be criticized. Value judgments either within or between cultures must have an acceptable standard. Empirical Global Minimum Morale This view holds that not only are the values within a particular culture precious, but experience has proven that there exist global minimum common values. Not a few cultural anthropologists have observed that the majority of cultures have rejected deception, stealing, violence or incest; no culture takes pain as a value, has no

respect for life or fails to memorialize death. Even areas where revenge is considered legal strictly limit the number of deaths. To substantiate this theory, some have put forward arguments in biology, namely, that morals originate from a moral gene. If the genes are identical, there is no relativism; if genes are different, culture is also different. Others have advanced arguments in sociology, that is, the universal process of socialization has led to a universality of moral awareness. For example, all babies require attention by others. In this process, humankind has attained some common characteristics. However, these arguments are inadequate. We are in no position to explain whether the biological and sociological arguments have nurtured egoism or altruism. Proceeding only from experiences to prove the existence of the minimum values is also questionable. For instance, preservation of life is the most universal and fundamental value in the world, but often it is related to betrayal of belief, violating the law and sheltering family or tribal members. Furthermore, this argument is premised on global acceptance. The morale supported by the majority seems stronger than that supported by the minority or minor cultures. But there are reasons to ask: if all societies discriminate against women (or migrants, the disabled or some the group), can this prejudice be proved reasonable? This view is rare in Chinese scholars, but with the extension of cultural exchanges between countries it has gradually influenced the Chinese academia, especially young researchers. Universal Value Theory The universal value theory was first put forward by Western scholars. Its core is the recognition that everyone has the right to existence or human rights. Its original contents were limited to the rights of citizens and political freedom, but in recent years, due to the response of developing countries, some scholars have added basic economic and other rights. Amitai Etzioni holds that human rights is a demand upon all countries and societies, rather than being directed against some only. Though the concept of human rights historically was created in the West, it does not reflect only Western values, but rather is a demand on everyone. He has also observed that in recent years Asian countries have begun to pay attention to improving human rights and have no longer regarded human rights as an instrument of foreign oppression, but as a means of enhancing Asian specialization. He has quoted Bilahari Kausikan, a Singaporean diplomat, as saying “Human rights have become a legitimate issue in interstate relations. How a country treats its citizens is no longer a matter for its own exclusive determination”. This has been creating a global culture about human rights. Amitai Etzioni’s criticism of the theory of Western universal values is also thought-provoking. First, people always quote the U.N. Charter, international law, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and various resolutions and international conferences to prove the rationality of human rights. However, these have not been extensively recognized; for lack of participation by representatives of all the countries in the world they lack the foundation of a global moral dialogue. Second, it should be admitted that Western developed countries can afford political freedom, while developing countries can achieve political development only after economic development by leaps and bounds. Under conditions of extreme poverty, subsistence is humankind’s primary choice; other things are secondary. To those countries knowing nothing about peace, stability and progress, it is nonsense to talk about rights of citizens and political rights. Nevertheless, he still demands moral voices and global dialogue, and opposes imposed dialogues or rebukes at the slightest provocation.3 This view reflects a revised theory of universal Western values. In the Chinese academia, wide differences exist on the theory of universal Western values. Some hold that now that modernization is the goal being sought and that Western society has taken the lead in carrying forward modernization, our cultural orientation naturally should draw closer to that of developed societies. Some consider that the West has made use of its powerful cultural force to pursue colonialism and hegemony, so Chinese people should increase their own cultural

cohesion to deal with “a clash of civilizations”. This author opposes simple approval or simple opposition. It should be recognized that Western culture does provide some values of universal significance. Though taking the human as the foundation and respecting human existence is manifested in various cultures, enhancing it to the level of human rights in a modern sense is indeed the result of processes of extraction and distillation in Western civilization. It is because of their universality, that they have been increasingly accepted by developing countries including China. Except for the drawbacks Etzioni has criticized, this author wants to supplement what is perhaps a more important drawback, namely, that universal values are not limited to the human rights provided by the West; all cultures have the possibility of providing universal values. If human rights values did not absorb such basic rights as that to subsistence and economic rights raised by developing countries, they might not be so complete, and in that sense universal. So, universal values are not those which only the West can provide, but should integrate various kinds of excellent values found in the world; they are not a finished and established moral system, but are still in the process of formation. Cultural Internationalism This orientation is based on the theory of universal values. Furthermore, it holds that only by cultural interaction across national boundaries can we redefine the world order and determine the future face of the world. Akira Iriye pointed out that a sharp increase of transnational trade and the recognition of international law by all the countries have laid the initial foundation for forming theoretically a common international system. In the 20th century, cultural internationalism made rapid progress, such as exchange of information, coordination of weights and measures; cooperation across national boundaries of scientists, artists, educators and many others to promote mutual cross-cultural understanding; and various international organizations which form a network covering the whole world. The telephone, radio, cinema, TV and Internet have provided brand-new technology and means for cross-cultural communication. Even after suffering the destruction of two world wars and the Cold War, cultural internationalism has still kept its flames alive. Since the independence of developing countries cultural internationalism has become more comprehensive: nonEuropean countries have been increasingly active, more common issues facing mankind such as environmental protection and human rights have been put on the agenda, and there has been an unprecedented enhancement in the self-awareness of world diversity. If this kind of position can be agreed to by more countries, there may eventually emerge a new international order in which culture will be returned to its central place.4 Chinese scholars have also expressed similar views. For instance, Chen Lemin wrote that, from the perspective of a general world history which stresses political struggles, conflicts are everywhere in the human society. However, from the angle of the history of human civilizations, the general trend is toward integration, even in the midst of fierce conflicts.5 But no one has clearly put forward the concept of “cultural internationalism,” perhaps, on the one hand, because of the difficulty of differentiating cultural conflict from cultural integration, and, on the other hand, because of a certain taboo on “internationalism”. If a breakthrough can be made on the basic issues of universal values, the turn toward cultural internationalism may be confirmed. In short, the value orientation of Chinese scholars is bound to be varied and difficult to unify. However, no matter what attitude is taken, we should first make clear the starting point, the strong and weak points of this position in fulfilling the objectives, and how to remedy the defects so as to achieve a more rational explanation. Otherwise one can easily fall into the trap of blindness. Research in international culture based on objective scientific theories is beneficial in bringing about a new value orientation. This process must transform beneficial values, Eastern or Western, from the many cultures in the world, extract and distill excellent values from the native ethnic cultures, and integrate them into new values capable of guiding humankind in its way forward. As

Cheng Zhongying discussed, the universality of ideologies and concepts is related to the depth of their taking root in subjectivity and is closely connected with the horizontal network of meaning.6 Chinese culture goes back to ancient times, has extensive and profound knowledge and can provide rich cultural factors. The challenge is to modernize and upgrade these ideological factors and then transmit them to the rest of the world. This requires arduous efforts at cultural building, rather than a simple overall presentation, for otherwise they cannot be accepted and integrated. In the practical situation, the facts that Western countries possess strong technical means and that they began earlier the process of value modernization and globalization are very favorable to their dissemination of values. Relatively speaking, developing countries have just begun. But we cannot wait to see and bungle the chance. If we cannot attend to our research in earnest, we will lose the right to speak in the cultural upsurge of the new century. A FRAMEWORK FOR RESEARCH IN INTERNATIONAL CULTURE The aim of research in international culture is to recognize and understand more deeply contemporary international relations, and to explain how cultural factors play a role in the formation of international relations and how cultural research can enlighten international relations. Cultural research must involve the fields of ideology, concept and consciousness in order to be sure to reflect the realistic base of international relations. Denial of this point will lead to a break with historical materialism. However, ideology, concept and consciousness are not entirely passive reflections of objective reality, but at the same time play a counteractive role in the real situation of international relations. Not to see this point will lead to being entrapped in a mechanical materialism. In this sense we can say that changes in concepts cause changes in the world. Now when people see the world, what often appears in their minds are geopolitical concepts such as military power, security strategy and balanced diplomacy. Using these concepts to understand phenomena and explain results in turn strengthens geopolitical relations. For example, dealing with potential enemies by means of war or alliance often makes them real enemies. This is called “Cold War thinking”. Any phenomena which are hard to explain by geopolitics often are regarded as “confusions”. In fact, cultural forces have existed and been developing, and have constituted the contemporary world. Only because geopolitical theory has occupied the central position in international relations, has people’s sight been obstructed. The development of transnational cultural forces linking different countries, societies and peoples cannot be fully understood within the geopolitical and geoeconomic framework. Only by making use of the concepts and methods of cultural research can the interrelations between various domestic and international forces and the cultural interaction between individuals and groups transcending national boundaries be explained. Besides, some “confusions” are not real confusions; if cultural views are accepted then a clear explanation can be achieved. Therefore, we must build a framework for research in international culture. The first layer of research in international culture looks into the conditions of time and place in which new concepts, ideas and principles are put forward, and how they change people’s recognition and understanding of international relations. China’s definition of the current era has changed from “war and revolution” to “ peace and development”; this is a great transformation. To a considerable extent, “war and revolution” did reflect the world political situation in the greater part of the 20th century. There were two World Wars, the Cold War and a series of conventional wars; developing countries, except in Latin America, gained independence; most adopted the means of revolutionary wars, others went through peaceful transitions. However, this definition ignored the adjustment of modern capitalism on the basis of the new technological revolution and the change in the tasks of newly emerging countries after independence. In the late 1970s and the early 1980s, when foreign scholars first advanced a new definition of “peace and development”, China regarded it as the main melody of the

current era and proposed it. Deng Xiaoping noted that “peace and development” do not refer to two fulfilled tasks, but rather to the orientation of our efforts. On the basis of this view, the differences between social systems will no longer become an obstruction to exchange between countries. To fulfill the task of development, we should fall in line with the world economy, properly deal with contradictions with other countries, and strive for a peaceful and safe environment. In the same era, the U.S. definition diverged widely from China’s. It stressed “market and democracy” and “security and order”. The aim of the U.S. definition is to maintain the current order, prevent any country from threatening its status, and strongly promote U.S.-style marketization and democratization. The difference between China and the U.S. in the definition of the current era endowed their foreign policies with both cohesive and conflicting contents. Definition and concept are the overall reflection of the realistic situation, and the guideline for behavior that changes the status quo. The second layer of research in international culture is the analysis of the collective recognition of various concepts and ideas. The higher the degree of collective recognition, the greater the influence on international relations. Definition, concept, idea and principle not only guide the behavior of various actors in the world, but also impact common behaviors by collective recognition if the actors generally accept some idea and principle. Recently, Tanaka Akihiko, professor of Tokyo University in Japan, advanced the idea of “word politics”, that is, that the main point of current politics lies in “stating one’s views”, “daring to create marvelous words,” the “force of speech”.7 Why does speech have such force? This is because it must achieve recognition by other countries. Otherwise, it is only soliloquy and can only guide a country’s foreign policy with limited force. The 1998 Strategic Review by the U.S. Department of Defense pointed out that in analyzing the Asia-Pacific situation almost all the countries in the region had accepted the economic values of such core countries as the U.S., which were conducive to promoting economic relations between the core countries and this region. However, some countries continued to resist and reject the values of democratic politics, thereby generating suspicions and worries in interrelations with them. The Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence initiated by China have become the common ground for many developing countries. Therefore, it is easy for them to achieve equality, mutual benefit and mutual respect in their relations. Because the degree in which Western developed countries’ recognize these principles is lower, anti-power sentiments often crop up in developing countries’ dealings with them. This shows that initiating creative ideas and principles for world affairs, which are subsequently accepted by other countries, will be an important mark of a country’s ability. This kind of ability depends on whether its material carriers are strong, that is, that it is taken for granted that more and better goods and cultural products are delivered to the world through these carriers. In this respect, developed countries, especially the U.S., are strong. What Coca-Cola and McDonald market is not only beverage and food, but also the meaning of the culture and lifestyle attached to them. Hollywood’s swift and fierce attacks move triumphantly with hundreds of millions of people enjoying US movies. From the angle of culture, the ability of producing collective recognition takes root first in domestic cultural recognition and innovative awareness. If the people even of one country have divergent and confused awareness, how can they convince peoples of other ethnic groups? To reach domestic consensus in culture, a country is bound properly to deal with relations between foreign and native cultures and to better resolve contradictions between traditional culture and modernity. Only on the basis of a collective national recognition can innovative ability sharply increase. Secondly, it depends on a country’s awareness of the world. If a country takes care only of its own domestic affairs and speak only when having something to do with its own direct interests, its ability to promote collective recognition will

certainly be extremely low. Only by paying close attention to international affairs, upholding the force of morality and holding humankind’s future destiny in mind, can such a culture contribute more ideological elements to international relations. The third layer of research in international culture is the ability to explore systems of culture. Where a number of countries recognize some kind of concepts, ideas and principles, this provides only a common ground in thought and speech. Turning this into behavior in international relations requires the support of a system. Some cultures have a strong ability at systematization and some, though contributing new thinking, lack initiative in systematization, and thus fall short of success for lack of an integral effort. After the victory of WWII, Roosevelt and Churchill did their utmost to design the U.N. to put the spirit of the “Atlantic Charter” into practice. To prevent the economic crisis in the 1930s from reemerging, all the countries set up a series of economic organizations at the Bretton Woods Conference. All these reflect the U.S.-led ability of Western culture for systematization. Western countries occupy great superiority in cultural systematization, because they have advanced most of the basic principles of international law and the world system, and hence dominate the current world order. The system of innovation comes down in one continuous line from the original culture and is well reasoned. Developing countries must take into account current international law and the world system in pursuing their own cultural systems in international relations so that there will be no great conflict and their cultures will be widely accepted. Their cultures and Western culture do not belong to the same system, so their combination and integration requires a lot of work. But this does not mean that developing countries cannot make innovations in cultural systems. On the contrary, their non-Western pluralistic traditions can inject new strains of thought into the world. China has advanced the “Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence” and achieved ideas such as “pursuit of joint development while preserving differences”. These are all full of creativity; their drawback is that their systematization has not been explored. Fortunately, in recent years, some progress has been made. The border security guarantee of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan is a successful example of systematization of the “Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence” on the issue of the border between China and Central Asia. Putting forward new thinking demands a creative and forward-looking culture. Promoting systematization requires flexibility, coordination, inclusiveness and pragmatism of culture. New thinking often reflects the ideal appeal of international relations, while systematization takes into greater consideration feasibility and serviceability. The perfect combination of the two is a severe test for any culture. Both the development and dissemination of concepts and the initiation of systems need the support of the comprehensive national strength. However, simply to equate cultural ability with economic or military strength is mechanical and one-sided. The solution of difficult problems depends on wisdom. The role of culture can also be manifested in the ingenuity of “moving 1000 jin with 4 liang force”. It is especially so under the conditions of the post-Cold War new technological revolution and in the environment of the development of both globalization and diversification. For instance, Canada initiated the Anti-Mine Treaty, gaining a reputation all over the world. Australia-advanced APEC has become one of the most important organizations in the Asia-Pacific region. ASEAN has raised its international position by actively launching dialogues and cooperation between East Asian countries, between Europe and Asia, as well as across the Pacific. The fourth layer of research in international culture is the above-mentioned role of culture in world politics and the world economy in dynamically changing and delineating international relations. First, let us look at the impact of culture on the world economy. As Francis Fukuyama pointed out, the key field where culture plays the most direct role in domestic welfare and international order is the

economy.8 People have a misunderstanding: Economy seems to be a field separated from other sectors of the social life and ruled by an independent law. In the economy or market natural forces dominate everything and man is seen as only a cold-blooded animal haggling over everything. In fact, the economy has to operate against a non-economic background, where culture is the main factor. Today everyone marvels at the width, depth and speed of economic globalization, whose powerful motive force is scientific and technological progress. But both science and technology belong to culture in a broad sense. At the turn of the millennia there has appeared an inkling of a knowledge economy depending mainly on intellectual resources. Human resources have become central to economic development and input from science, technology and culture has become the main motive force of social development. Without a rapid development of information technology, there will possibly be no putting out the Southeast Asian financial storm and no reexamination of the world economic system and mechanism. The economy is also the most fundamental and active field in the socialization of humankind, and modern economic activity needs the cooperation of people. Through economic activity, individuals and state are linked and are recognized by other and by the world. In the past, people won recognition through cold blooded wars and conquest; now they do so through economic activity and the social benefit derived from creating rather than destroying wealth. This is historic progress. The increase of interdependence in the world economy has made cultural exchanges between ethnic groups more central. The world market is, of course, an indispensable system, but if what flows in the market is only economic capital and there is no social capital to bind it, the market will not create maximum value. If the ethnic groups think only of their own interests and shift their own troubles onto others, they will finally damage their own development. So, what a culture proposes in social capital for the world operation will be a new issue for research. Let us observe the impact of culture on world politics. Obviously, the basic contradiction of world politics is that between effective rule in various countries and anarchism of the whole world. The current world pattern is one superpower, as several great powers and multi-polarization and diversification develops. Although the U.N. and various international organizations advance equality between countries in the hope of creating a democratic system in the world family, in practice, “one vote for each country” is incapable of resolving questions. Most countries are unsatisfied with the current political world system and have put forward a variety of reform options, but with very little effect. A change of cultural concepts is of vital importance for the better integration and resolution of imminent common questions. Hegemony and power politics have met with opposition from more and more countries. But what kind of world order is fair, reasonable and efficient? How to make use of the achievements in world politics in order to overcome its malpractice? Without applying the cumulative cultural heritages of humankind, people cannot look forward to the future. World politics was originally referred to as the sum total of behavior between sovereign states. Proceeding from that reality, sovereignty remains the key concept in world politics. Safeguarding sovereignty is an important aspect of increasing the political resources of developing countries in particular, which have gained their independence more recently. But the concept of sovereignty also took shape in the modernization process of Western countries. This has been spread to the rest of the world with the occupation by these countries of the dominant position in the world system. The EU countries are no longer scattered entities with distinct identities, but have created a common political identity from within, transcending the definition of traditional theories. Though other countries and regions have not reached such a high degree of integration, there have appeared frequent contacts between the government and economic and civil organizations, non-governmental organizations and individuals, as well as between individuals, enriching and supplementing the relations between sovereign states. A change in concepts is often the precursor of political reform;

this is the task of cultural research. The framework of research in international culture can be shown with the following diagram: Ideas, Concepts and Principles ? Systemic Identity of Ideas and Concepts ? Cultural System ?? ——World Economy World Politics—— ? ? ?_ International Relations ______? As for the new field of research in international culture, it is better to say that this paper has put forward questions, rather than given answers. The hope is to stimulate criticism and discussion, and to ask for advice from all. NOTES 1. See this author’s article, “A Summary of America Cultural Research,” Pacific Journal, No. 1, 1999, p. 38. 2. Graham Forer, “The Next Ideology”, Foreign Policy, Spring 1995. 3. Amitai Etzioni, “Conclusion”, The New Golden Rule: Community and Morality in a Democratic Society (New York Basic Books, 1997). 4. Akira Iriye, Cultural Internationalism and World Order (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997). 5. Chen Lemin, “Widening the Fields of International Politics Research”, Pacific Journal, No. 2, 1997. 6. Cheng Zhongying, “The 21st Century: Blend of Chinese and Western Cultures and Globalization of Chinese Culture”, Pacific Journal, No. 1, 1995. 7. Tanaka Akihiko, “Japanese Diplomacy in the Era of ‘Word Politics’”, Chuokoron, Sept. 1998. 8. Francis Fukuyama, Trust: The Social Virtue and the Creation of Prosperity (Free Publishing House, 1995), p. 6. **** http://www.crvp.org/book/Series03/III-17/chapter_vii.htm CHAPTER VII INCULTURATION OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH IN ASIA THROUGH PHILOSOPHY: A DIALOGUE WITH FIDES ET RATIO OF JOHN PAUL II PETER C. PHAN This study examines first what Fides et Ratio says about philosophy in general and about Asian philosophies in particular. Next, it expounds the principles which, according to Fides et Ratio, Christians must observe in inculturating the Christian faith into local cultures. The third part evaluates the applicability of these principles to the task of inculturating the Christian faith into East Asian cultures, with special reference to some central ideas of Confucianism. Before his election to the see of Rome, Karol Wojtyla was already a celebrated philosopher in his own right, especially in the fields of philosophical anthropology and ethics, with a widely recognized expertise in Thomism and phenomenology.1 For helpful comprehensive introductions to John Paul II’s thought in English, see George H. Williams, The Mind of John Paul II: Origins of His Thought and Action (New York: Seabury, 1981); Ronald Lawler, The Christian Personalism of Pope John Paul II (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1982); Andrew Woznicki, A Christian Humanism: Karol Wojtyla’s Existential Personalism (New Britain, CT: Mariel, 1980); Rocco Buttiglione, Karol Wojtyla: The Thought of the Man Who Became Pope John Paul II, trans. Paolo Guietti and Francesca Murphy (Grand Rapids, MI: William Eerdmans, 1997); and Kenneth Schmitz, At the Center of the Human Drama: The Philosophical Anthropology of Karol Wojtyla/Pope John Paul II (Washington, DC: The Catholic University Press, 1993). As Pope, John Paul II has continued to demonstrate a deep concern, already pronounced in his philosophical

writings, for the unity of human knowledge that is born out of the harmonious marriage between reason and faith. This concern is especially evident in the Pope’s encyclicals on Christian ethics in which he insists both on the autonomy of human reason and on the necessity of divine revelation, and urges a close collaboration between these two epistemological orders for a full knowledge of ethical truths.2 In the encyclical the unity of reason and faith constitutes the central focus of John Paul II’s reflections. No doubt the title Fides et Ratio (FR) with the et (and) rather than the aut (or) is emblematic of the Pope’s fundamental stance in this matter.3 This essay will carry out a critical dialogue with John Paul II’s teaching on the relationship between reason and faith as expressed in FR, especially with respect to the use of philosophy as a tool for the inculturation of the Christian faith in Asia.4 Again, the first part expounds the Pope’s view of the relation between reason and faith; the second part evaluates his proposal to use philosophy as an instrument for inculturating the Christian faith in Asia; the concluding part assesses the usefulness of this proposal with regard to some aspects of Confucianism. REASON AND FAITH ACCORDING TO FIDES ET RATIO The basic theme of the encyclical is beautifully expressed in its opening lines with a metaphor depicting faith and reason as "two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth." By this, says John Paul II, the human heart fulfills its God-given "desire to know the truth." Before examining how FR understands the relation between reason and faith, it would be helpful to delineate the context in which this relation is broached.5 Overview of the Encyclical The encyclical begins with a preamble (nos. 1-6), entitled the Socratic injunction "Know Yourself," on the role of philosophy in asking about and answering questions concerning the meaning of human life. It states that the church regards philosophy as "the way to come to know fundamental truths about human life" and at the same time as "an indispensable help for a deep understanding of faith and for communicating the truth of the Gospel to those who do not yet know it" (no. 5). Unfortunately, according to FR, contemporary philosophy "has lost the capacity to lift its gaze to the heights, not daring to rise to the truth of being," and as a result, is wallowing in agnosticism and relativism (no. 5). This lamentable situation prompted the Pope to write his encyclical FR with a twofold purpose: first, "to restore to our contemporaries a genuine trust in their capacity to know and challenge philosophy to recover and develop its own full dignity" and, secondly, to concentrate "on the theme of truth itself and on its foundation in relation to faith" (no. 6). The body of FR is composed of seven chapters, entitled successively as "The Revelation of God’s Wisdom" (nos. 7-15), "Credo ut intellegam" (nos. 16-23), "Intellego ut credam" (nos. 24-35), "Relationship between Faith and Reason" (nos. 36-48), "Magisterium’s Interventions in Philosophical Matters" (nos. 49-63), "Interaction between Philosophy and Theology" (nos. 64-79), and "Current Requirements and Tasks" (nos. 80-99). FR concludes (nos. 100-108) with appeals to philosophers, theologians, seminary professors, and scientists to "look more deeply at man, whom Christ has saved in the mystery of his love, and at the human being’s unceasing search for truth and meaning" (no. 107). Just from the titles of the chapters, especially chapters 2, 3, 4, and 6, it is obvious that the central theme of the encyclical is the relationship between reason and faith, or correlatively, between philosophy and theology. Faith and Reason: Basic Issues The issue of the relationship between faith and reason is as old as Christianity, and, arguably, as old as revelation itself.6 Against biblical fundamentalism and fideism, it must be maintained that reason is unavoidably and inexplicably intertwined with revelation, at least in the sense that revelation, however supernatural and gratuitous a gift it may be, cannot but be received within the horizon of some particular human, even philosophical, understanding.7 In addition

to this direct implication of reason within revelation, there is a further task that believers must perform, namely, to decide reflectively, on philosophical and theological grounds, which philosophical horizon, for example, Platonic, Aristotelian, or existential, is the most appropriate and valid (and not merely historically accepted) philosophy for an elaboration of the contents of the Christian faith. Finally, there are three other tasks that are incumbent upon believers in God’s self-revelation in history as they address the issue of the relation between reason and faith: first, to justify philosophically the possibility of such a self-revelation; secondly, to vindicate historically the credibility of such a divine self-revelation if it has occurred at all; and thirdly, and more fundamentally, to demonstrate whether this philosophical and historical foundationalism is compatible with the nature of the Christian faith, that is, whether the Christian faith would not be emptied of its specific character were it to be subjected to the tribunal of secular reason, be it historical or philosophical.8 In particular, on the issue of foundationalism in theology, see the helpful introduction by John E. Thiel, Nonfoundationalism (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994) with discussions on philosophers such as Ludwig Wittgenstein, Wilfrid Sellars, Willard Van Orman Quine, and Richard Rorty and on theologians such as Karl Barth, George Lindbeck, Ronald Thiemann, Kathryn Tanner, Hans Frei, and Stanley Hauerwas. See also a good survey by Thomas Guarino, "Postmodernity and Five Fundamental Theological Issues," Theological Studies 57 (1996): 654-89. For a helpful collection of essays on post-modern theology, see Theology After Liberalism, ed. John Webster and George P. Schner (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000). Among Roman Catholic theologians who argue for a nonfoundationalist approach, besides Francis Schüssler Fiorenza mentioned above, see Frans Josef van Beeck, God Encountered: A Contemporary Systematic Theology, vol. 1; Understanding the Christian Faith (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989); Nicholas Lash, Easter in Ordinary: Reflections on Human Experience and the Knowledge of God (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990); and James J. Buckley, Seeking the Humanity of God: Practices, Doctrines, and Catholic Theology (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1992). In his encyclical, John Paul II does not treat in any detail the above-mentioned issues, which are much debated in contemporary theology, though, of course, his answers to any of them can be inferred from his teaching on the relation between reason and faith. The Pope begins, on the one hand, by affirming the fact of God’s utterly gratuitous and supernatural self-revelation in history and consequently rejects the rationalist critique of the possibility of such a divine selfrevelation. On the other hand, he also affirms the capacity of human reason to know God. As to the relation between the knowledge of God through divine revelation and that of God through reason, John Paul II contents himself with repeating Vatican I’s teaching that "the truth attained by philosophy and the truth of revelation are neither identical nor mutually exclusive" (no. 9).9 These two "orders of knowledge," are, according to Vatican I’s Dei Filius, distinct from each other both in their "source" and in their "object." This double distinctness does not, however, mean that reason, though autonomous (because of its distinct source and object), can and should function apart from, much less in ignorance of, Christian faith: Revelation has set within history a point of reference which cannot be ignored if the mystery of human life is to be known. Yet this knowledge refers back constantly to the mystery of God, which the human mind cannot exhaust but can only receive and embrace in faith. Between these two poles, reason has its own specific field in which it can inquire and understand, restricted only by its finiteness before the infinite mystery of God (no. 14). The basic issue to be elucidated then is the interplay between reason and faith. FR explicates this relationship in four parts. The first two (chapters 2 and 3) invoke the Augustinian-Anselmian formulas of "intellego ut credam" and "credo ut intellegam." The third (chapter 4), the heart of the encyclical, deals with the

relationship between faith and reason; and the fourth (chapter 6) narrows this relation down to the "interaction between philosophy and theology."10 Faith in Search of Understanding: Credo ut intellegam It is significant that in explicating the relationship between reason and faith, FR begins with the "credo" rather than the "intellego." While deeply convinced that "there is a profound and indissoluble unity between the knowledge of reason and the knowledge of faith" (no. 16), John Paul II clearly and repeatedly privileges the role of faith over reason as the path to the truth: ". . . Reason is valued without being overvalued. The results of reasoning may in fact be true, but these results acquire their true meaning only if they are set within the larger horizon of faith . . . . Faith liberates reason insofar as it allows reason to attain correctly what it seeks to know and to place it within the ultimate order of things in which everything acquires true meaning" (no. 20). This need of faith is of course caused by human sin whereby "the eyes of the mind were no longer able to see clearly: Reason became more and more a prisoner to itself" (no. 22). This is why, says the Pope, "the Christian relationship to philosophy requires thoroughgoing discernment" (no. 23). Here he invokes the Pauline opposition between "the wisdom of this world" and "the foolishness of the cross," not in order to suppress the indispensable role of reason but to affirm the necessity of faith for the discovery of truth: "The preaching of Christ crucified and risen is the reef upon which the link between faith and philosophy can break up, but it is also the reef beyond which the two can set forth upon the boundless ocean of truth. Here we see not only the border between reason and faith, but also the space where the two may meet" (no. 23).11 Reason in Search of Faith: Intellego ut credam "Credo," however, is not to be separated from "intellego." Human life is a "journeying in search of truth." The quest for truth and understanding, says John Paul II, echoing Augustin’s memorable phrase, is native to humans: "In the far reaches of the human heart there is a seed of desire and nostalgia for God" (no. 24). This quest for truth has been carried out by humans, "through literature, music, painting, sculpture, architecture, and every other work of their creative intelligence," but "in a special way philosophy has made this search its own and, with its specific tools and scholarly methods, has articulated this universal human desire" (no. 24). This quest, however, is performed not only in theoretical reflection, but also in ethical decisions. Hence, the object of this quest is both truth and value. This quest, the Pope points out, often begins with questions about the meaning and direction of one’s life. But the decisive moment of the search, he maintains, comes when we determine "whether or not we think it possible to attain universal and absolute truth." The Pope goes on to affirm categorically: "Every truth–if it really is truth–presents itself as universal, even if it is not the whole truth. If something is true, then it must be true for all people and at all times" (no. 27). Ultimately, the Pope claims, the search for truth is nothing but the search for God: ". . . People seek an absolute which might give to all their searching a meaning and an answer–something ultimate which might serve as the ground of all things. In other words, they seek a final explanation, a supreme value, which refers to nothing beyond itself and which puts an end to all questioning" (no. 27). Two further points made by FR concerning the "intellego ut credam" need to be mentioned. The encyclical notes that there are "different faces of human truth" or "modes of truth," or more simply, there are three ways of arriving at truth (no. 30): first, through immediate evidence or experimentation ("the mode of truth proper to everyday life and to scientific research"); secondly, through philosophical reflection ("philosophical truth"); and thirdly, by means of religious traditions ("religious truths"). In addition, FR emphasizes the social character of the quest for truth. Though recognizing the necessity of critical inquiry, the encyclical points out that "there are in the life of a human being many more truths which are simply believed than truths which are acquired by way

of personal verification" (no. 31). Hence, the necessity of entrusting oneself to the knowledge acquired by others and of bearing personal witness, even by way of martyrdom, to the truth (no. 32). Relationship between Faith and Reason Having affirmed the necessity of both faith and reason in the search for truth and value, FR moves on to discuss the ways in which their relationship has been enacted throughout Christian history (chapter 4). The purpose is not to present an exhaustive overview of how reason and faith interacted with each other in the past, but to derive instructive lessons for a proper understanding of their relationship.12 The first encounter between Christianity and philosophy took place of course in the first centuries of the Christian era. Of this phase, FR summarizes the main features as follows: (1) The earliest Christians preferred to dialogue with philosophy rather than with the prevalent religions of their times because the latter were judged to be infected with myths and superstition, whereas the former made a serious attempt to provide a rational foundation for a belief in the divinity. (2) The first and most urgent task for the early Christians was not an intellectual engagement with philosophy for its own sake but "the proclamation of the risen Christ by way of a personal encounter which would bring the listener to conversion of heart and the request for baptism." Indeed, the Gospel offered them such a satisfying answer to the hitherto unresolved question concerning the meaning of life that "delving into the philosophers seemed to them something remote and in some ways outmoded" (no. 38). (3) The early Christians were quite cautious in approaching the surrounding cultures. While deeply appreciative of their true insights, the early Christian thinkers were critical in adopting the philosophies of their times. FR highlights "the critical consciousness with which Christian thinkers from the first confronted the problem of the relationship between faith and philosophy, viewing it comprehensively with both its positive aspects and its limitations" (no. 41). (4) The early Christian thinkers did more than perform "a meeting of cultures"; rather their originality consists in the fact that "they infused it [reason] with the richness drawn from revelation" (no. 41). FR summarizes its survey from the patristic era to Anselm: "The fundamental harmony between the knowledge of faith and the knowledge of philosophy is once again confirmed. Faith asks that its object be understood with the help of reason; and at the summit of its searching, reason acknowledges that it cannot do without what faith presents" (no. 42). This harmony, which exists between faith and reason, was well established by Thomas Aquinas for whom "just as grace builds on nature and brings it to fulfillment, so faith builds upon and perfects reason" (no. 43). For this reason FR calls Thomas "a master of thought and a model of the right way to do theology" (no. 43). Thomas is also praised for his emphasis on the role of the Holy Spirit in the process by which knowledge matures into wisdom. This gift of wisdom "comes to know by way of connaturality; it presupposes faith and eventually formulates its right judgment on the basis of the truth of faith itself" (no. 44). Thomas’s granting of primacy to the gift of wisdom did not, however, make him belittle the complementary roles of two other forms of wisdom, that is, philosophical wisdom and theological wisdom. Unfortunately, the delicate balance between reason and faith that Thomas established and maintained, according to FR, fell apart toward the end of the Middle Ages: "From the late medieval period onward, however, the legitimate distinction between the two forms of learning became more and more a fateful separation. As a result of the exaggerated rationalism of certain thinkers, positions grew more radical and there emerged eventually a philosophy which was separate from, and absolutely independent of, the contents of faith" (no. 45). This "fateful separation" between faith and reason brought in its wake disastrous consequences, not least for reason itself. FR enumerates some of these: a general mistrust of reason and fideism, idealism, atheistic humanism, positivism, nihilism, the instrumentalization of reason, and pragmatic utilitarianism (nos. 46-47 and 86-90). Nevertheless, John Paul II discerns even in these errors

"precious and seminal insights which, if pursued and developed with mind and heart rightly tuned, can lead to the discovery of truth’s way" (no. 48). These insights include "penetrating analyses of perception and experience, of the imaginary and the unconscious, of personhood and intersubjectivity, of freedom and values, of time and history" (no. 48). Interaction between Philosophy and Theology After its overview of the history of the relationship between reason and faith, FR addresses the narrower question of how philosophy (as representative of reason) should interact with theology (as representative of faith). The Pope states that his purpose is not to impose a particular theological method, but to reflect on some specific tasks of theology that by their nature demand a recourse to philosophy. Following the time-honored tradition, John Paul II distinguishes two functions of theology, namely, the auditus fidei and the intellectus fidei and shows how philosophy contributes to the performance of each. With regard to the auditus fidei, philosophy helps theology with "its study of the structure of knowledge and personal communication, especially the various forms and functions of language" as well as its "contribution to a more coherent understanding of church tradition, the pronouncements of the magisterium and the great teaching of the great masters of theology" (no. 65). With regard to the intellectus fidei, FR explains the indispensable contribution of philosophy to dogmatic theology, fundamental theology, moral theology, and the study of cultures. I will postpone the discussion of the study of cultures to the next section of the essay; here I will mention only how FR understands the role of philosophy in two theological disciplines. First, with regard to dogmatic theology, FR argues that "without philosophy’s contribution, it would in fact be impossible to discuss theological issues such as, for example, the use of language to speak about God, the personal relations within the Trinity, God’s creative activity in the world, the relationship between God and man, or Christ’s identity as true God and true man" (no. 66). Secondly, with regard to fundamental theology, John Paul II argues that its task is to demonstrate the truths knowable by philosophical reason that "an acceptance of God’s revelation necessarily presupposes" and show how "revelation endows these truths with their fullest meaning, directing them toward the richness of the revealed mystery in which they find their ultimate purpose" (no. 67). These truths include, for example, "the natural knowledge of God, the possibility of distinguishing divine revelation from other phenomena or the recognition of its credibility, the capacity of human language to speak in a true and meaningful way even of things which transcend all human experience" (no. 67) To conclude his exposition on the relationship between theology and philosophy, John Paul II uses the image of a "circle" with two "poles" to describe it.13 On the one hand, is the Word of God that is the "source and starting point" of theology; on the other, is "a better understanding of it." Moving between these two poles is reason that "is offered guidance and is warned against paths which would lead it to stray from revealed truth and to stray in the end from the truth pure and simple. . . . This circular relationship with the word of God leaves philosophy enriched, because reason discovers new and unsuspected horizons" (no. 73). PHILOSOPHY AND INCULTURATION OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH IN ASIA For those familiar with the Roman Catholic traditional understanding of the relationship between reason and faith, especially as mediated by Thomas Aquinas and the two Vatican Councils, John Paul II’s teaching offers no new or surprising insights, and rightly so, since his primary task is not to innovate but to stand in continuity with the Tradition.14 Thus, he continues to affirm the autonomy of reason and philosophy vis-à-vis faith and theology, as well as their necessary harmony and mutual collaboration, while at the same time categorically emphasizing the primacy of Christian revelation over philosophy as its guide and norm. Not surprisingly, to non-Catholic philosophers John Paul II seems to want to have his

cake and eat it, too. Whether this charge is valid or not is an open question, but the blame should not be laid at the Pope’s feet since he does nothing more than restate the traditional Catholic position on the relationship between faith and reason. This does not mean that FR does not contain novel accents and perspectives. For one thing, in spite of his severe critique of contemporary Western philosophy, John Paul II, as we have seen above, recognizes several of its positive achievements. Moreover, his recommendation of Thomas Aquinas as the master and model for theologians is a far cry from Leo XIII’s elevation of Thomas to the status of official philosopher of the Catholic Church and Pius X’s imposition of 24 theses of Thomistic philosophy to be taught in all Catholic institutions. In addition, while reiterating the importance of philosophical inquiry, John Paul has not forgotten the power of personal witness, in particular martyrdom, in convincing others of the truth of one’s faith. But there is no doubt that one of the most interesting and challenging elements of John Paul II’s teaching on faith and reason is his proposal to use philosophy as a tool for the inculturation of the Christian faith, especially in Asia. And to this we now turn. John Paul II and Asian Philosophies It is well known that the relationship between the Christian faith and cultures, or to use a neologism, inculturation, has been a constant and deep preoccupation of John Paul II’s pontificate.16 For helpful overviews of inculturation as a theological problem, see Marcello de C. Azevedo, "Inculturation," in Dictionary of Fundamental Theology, ed. René Latourelle and Rino Fisichella (New York: Crossroad, 1995), 500-10 and Hervé Carrier, "Inculturation of the Gospel," ibid., 510-14. General works on inculturation have recently grown by leaps and bounds. Among the most helpful, from the Catholic perspective, are: Aylward Shorter, Toward a Theology of Inculturation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1988); Robert Schreiter, Constructing Local Theologies (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1985); idem, The New Catholicity: Theology between the Global and the Local (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1997); Stephen Bevans, Models of Contextual Theology (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1992); Gerald Arbuckle, Earthing the Gospel: An Inculturation Handbook for the Pastoral Worker (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1990); Michael Gallagher, Clashing Symbols: An Introduction to Faith & Culture (New York: Paulist Press, 1998); Peter C. Phan, "Contemporary Theology and Inculturation in the United States," in The Multicultural Church: A New Landscape in U.S. Theologies, ed. William Cenkner (New York: Paulist Press, 1996), 109-30; 176-92; idem, "Cultural Diversity: A Blessing or a Curse for Theology and Spirituality?" Louvain Studies 19 (1994): 195-211. In this essay, we will focus on the Pope’s proposal of philosophy as a tool for inculturation of the Christian faith in Asia.17 At the outset, it would useful to preface our discussion with a few remarks. First, it is important to recall that FR’s immediate objective is not to conduct a dialogue between the Christian faith and Asian philosophies and religions as such, but to defend the necessity of philosophy, particularly metaphysics, for theology and to heal the rift between the two disciplines: "Metaphysics thus plays an essential role of mediation for theological research. A theology without a metaphysical horizon could not move beyond an analysis of religious experience nor would it allow the intellectus fidei to give a coherent account of the universal and transcendent value of revealed truth" (no. 83). It is within this context that John Paul II speaks of the encounter between faith and culture. For a more complete presentation of the Pope’s view on inculturation, recourse must be made to his other writings.18 Secondly, in his discussion of inculturation of the Christian faith in Asia in FR, John Paul remains at a very general level. It is no disrespect to him to point out that he is no expert in Asian philosophies and religions. Among recent thinkers whom he mentions as exemplifying a "courageous research" into the "fruitful relationship between philosophy and the word of God," no Asians or non-Asian thinkers who have worked in Asia, and of course no Asian religious founders, are named.19 Even though FR mentions the Veda and the Avesta, Confucius and Lao Tzu,

Tirthankara and Buddha (no. 2), and Indian, Chinese, and Japanese philosophies (no. 72), it is clear that John Paul II’s knowledge of these is rudimentary.20 By my counting, there are six significant, direct or indirect, references in FR to Asian philosophies. The first reference occurs when FR claims that people in different parts of the world with diverse cultures have dealt with the same fundamental issues such as "Who am I?" (anthropology), "Where have I come from and where am I going?" (cosmology), "Why is there evil?" (Theodicy), and "What is there after this life?" (Eschatology). As evidence, FR invokes the sacred texts of Hinduism (the Veda) and of Zoroastrianism (the Avesta), the writings of Confucius and Lao Tzu, and the preaching of Tirkhankara and the Buddha (no. 1). The second reference is found in FR’s remark that philosophy has exerted a powerful influence not only in the formation and development of the cultures of the West, but also on "the ways of understanding existence in the East" (no. 3). The third reference takes place in the context of FR’s discussion of agnosticism and relativism. Lamenting the fact that a legitimate pluralism of philosophical positions has led to an undifferentiated pluralism that assumes that all positions are equally valid and, therefore, betrays "lack of confidence in truth," FR goes on to say that "[e] ven certain conceptions of life coming from the East betray this lack of confidence, denying truth its exclusive character and assuming that truth reveals itself equally in different doctrines even if they contradict one another" (no. 5). The fourth reference occurs when FR explains the three stances of philosophy visà-vis Christian revelation, that is, a philosophy completely independent of the Gospel, Christian philosophy, and philosophy as ancilla theologiae (no. 75).21 Asian philosophies are said to belong to the first category because they were elaborated in "regions as yet untouched by the Gospel" and because they aspire to be "an autonomous enterprise, obeying its own rules and employing the powers of reason alone." This does not mean that they are cut off from grace, because "[a] s a search for truth within the natural order, the enterprise of philosophy is always open–at least implicitly–to the supernatural" (no. 75). The fifth reference is made in FR’s recommendation that Christian philosophers develop "a reflection which will be both comprehensible and appealing to those who do not yet grasp the full truth which divine revelation declares" (no. 104). This philosophy is all the more necessary today since "the most pressing issues facing humanity–ecology, peace, and the coexistence of different races and cultures, for instance–may possibly find a solution if there is a clear and honest collaboration between Christians and the followers of other religions" (no. 104). The last and by far the most important reference to Asian philosophies is given in the context of FR’s discussion of the encounter between the Gospel and cultures, or inculturation. Because the text touches the core of our theme, it is appropriate to cite it in full: In preaching the Gospel, Christianity first encountered Greek philosophy; but this does not mean at all that other approaches are precluded. Today, as the Gospel gradually comes into contact with cultural worlds which once lay beyond Christian influence, there are new tasks of inculturation, which means that our generation faces problems not unlike those faced by the church in the first centuries. My first thoughts turn immediately to the lands of the East, so rich in religious and philosophical traditions of great antiquity. Among these lands, India has a special place. A great spiritual impulse leads Indian thought to seek an experience which would liberate the spirit from the shackles of time and space and would therefore acquire absolute value. The dynamic of this quest for liberation provides the context for great metaphysical systems. In India particularly, it is the duty of Christians to draw from this rich heritage the elements compatible with their faith in order to enrich Christian thought. In this work of discernment, which finds its inspiration from the council’s declaration Nostra Aetate, certain criteria will have to be kept in mind. The first of these is the universality of the human spirit, whose basic needs are the same in the most disparate cultures.

The second, which derives from the first, is this: In engaging great cultures for the first time, the church cannot abandon what she has gained from her inculturation in the world of Greco-Latin thought. To reject this heritage would be to deny the providential plan of God, who guides the church down the paths of time and history. This criterion is valid for the church of every age, even for the church of the future, who will judge herself enriched by all that comes from today’s engagement with Eastern cultures and will find in this inheritance fresh cues for fruitful dialogue with the cultures which will emerge as humanity moves into the future. Third, care will need to be taken lest, contrary to the very nature of the human spirit, the legitimate defense of the uniqueness and originality of Indian thought be confused with the idea that a particular cultural tradition should remain closed in its difference and affirm itself by opposing other traditions. What has been said here of India is no less true for the heritage of the great cultures of China, Japan and the other countries of Asia, as also for the riches of the traditional cultures of Africa, which are more the most part orally transmitted (no. 72). Philosophy and Inculturation of the Christian Faith in Asia It would be useful to highlight and comment briefly upon some of the more important points FR makes with regard to philosophy as a tool for inculturation in this lengthy excerpt. First of all, the interaction between philosophy and theology is here seen in the context of the inculturation of Christianity into the local cultures. There is recognized the necessity for Asian Christians to develop a philosophy by which their cultures may "open themselves to the newness of the Gospel’s truth and to be stirred by this truth to develop in new ways" (no. 71). Secondly, of the cultures of Asia "so rich in religious and philosophical traditions of great antiquity," FR singles out that of India which is said to be endowed with "a great spiritual impulse" and whose quest for the liberation of "the spirit from the shackles of time and space" provides the context for "great metaphysical systems." Thirdly, it is incumbent upon Indian Christians to draw from their rich cultural resources elements compatible with Christian faith in order to enrich the Christian thought. It is interesting to note that FR sees inculturation as a reciprocal process, with Christian faith and theology not unilaterally enriching local cultures, but being enriched by them as well. Fourthly, in order for inculturation to reach this goal, certain criteria and norms must be observed, and FR enumerates three: (1) The first criterion is "the universality of the human spirit, whose basic needs are the same in the most disparate cultures." By "universality of the human spirit" FR presumably means not only that certain fundamental philosophical and theological themes have been addressed by all cultures such as the nature of the self, the origin of the world, the problem of evil, and the eternal destiny of the individual (no. 1), but also that humans, despite their cultural diversities, can and should communicate with each other. In other words, FR indirectly rejects the theory of incommensurability proposed by some pluralists according to which humans are so socially situated that genuine mutual understanding and judgment of another person’s culture and values is logically impossible. As to the "basic needs" of the human spirit, FR does not elaborate on them, but in light of what FR has said elsewhere, these needs include the "need to reflect upon truth" (no. 6), and more specifically, the "truth of being" (no. 5).22 In addition, there is the need to formulate the certitudes arrived at in a rigorous and coherent way into a "systematic body of knowledge" (no. 4) and to proclaim them to others. (2) The second criterion is that the church cannot "abandon what she has gained from its inculturation in the world of Greco-Latin thought." To reject this heritage, according to FR, is to "deny the providential plan of God, who guides the church down the paths of time and history." FR does not explain what it means when it says that Asian Christians cannot abandon what the church has gained from its encounter with the Greco-Latin heritage.23 Furthermore, because it is also

part of the plan of divine providence that the Gospel be inculturated into the Asian soil, FR explicitly says that the fruits of this encounter will become in their turn "fresh cues for fruitful dialogue with the cultures which will emerge as humanity moves into the future" (no. 72).24 (3) The third criterion is a corollary of the first. FR cautions that given the universality of the human spirit, one culture cannot close itself off from other cultures in the name of its "uniqueness" and "originality." There is, however, an ironic twist to this warning. Whereas Western culture has long regarded itself so unique and original that it considered itself superior to and normative for all other cultures, now the cultures of Asia are seen more liable to fall to this chauvinistic temptation. Critical Questions No doubt there is much in John Paul II’s proposal to use philosophy as a tool for the inculturation of the Christian faith into Asia that is valuable.25 His admiration for the riches of Asian philosophies and religions is genuine. His insistence on the possibility and necessity of dialogue across cultures and religions is well taken. His reminder that inculturation has been a practice of the church from its very beginning and that there are lessons to be learned from the past is helpful. His warning against the danger of cultural chauvinism and xenophobia is also salutary. There are however certain affirmations in FR that are open to challenge or even seriously misleading. A word should be said first of all about FR’s charge that "certain conceptions of life coming from the East" betray "a lack of confidence in truth, denying its exclusive character and assuming that truth reveals itself equally in different doctrines even if they contradict one another" (no. 5). Because the encyclical does not specify which "conceptions of life coming from the East" it refers to, it may be presumed that it has in mind the celebrated capacity of Asian religions to absorb various and apparently conflicting philosophies and practices and the Asian inclusive worldview that is embodied in Daivism, the Middle Way of Nagarjuna, and the concepts of yin and yang. Admittedly, this Weltanschauung tends to see complementarity in different and even opposite (not contradictory) views and practices, but it is a caricature to say that it lacks "confidence in truth" because it is precisely in order to reach the truth that such opposites are held together. Needless to say, no Asian "conception of life" can be accused of holding "different doctrines, even if they contradict one another," if by contradiction is meant logical self-contradictory negation and not simply opposites.26 Perhaps, this charge is not simply a misunderstanding of a minor point in Asian philosophies, but is symptomatic of the fundamental difference between two ways of seeing reality. In addition, it is significant that FR emphasizes the "exclusive character" of truth, which certain Asian "conceptions of life" are alleged to deny. The encyclical consistently speaks of "truth" in the singular and in the abstract, especially when it affirms the universal and absolute character of truth. This is particularly evident in the already cited text: "Every truth–if it really is truth–presents itself as universal, even if it is not the whole truth" (no. 27). Asian philosophies will have no problem with the first part of the Pope’s statement, namely, that every truth presents itself as universal. In terms of Bernard Lonergan’s cognitional theory with its four transcendental precepts (that is, "be attentive, be intelligent, be reasonable, and be responsible"), truthclaims are well-founded and so can be true when they are made as the result of due attention to relevant evidence (attention), careful consideration of a range of hypotheses (intelligence), reasoned affirmation of a particular hypothesis as best corroborated by the available evidence (judgment), and choice of the values implied in the affirmation (responsibility).27 Asian philosophies would however make three significant qualifications.28 First, truths are not the same as apprehension, understanding, and formulation of what is true. Truth, or better still, what is true (ontological truth) is by its very nature universal, and the judgment in which this truth is affirmed is true (truth

as adaequatio mentis ad rem), but a particular apprehension, understanding, and formulation of the truths need not and indeed cannot be universal, given the intrinsically finite, incomplete, and historical character of human knowledge. Furthermore, truths do not and cannot exist independently from particular apprehensions, understandings, judgments, and formulations, floating as it were above time and space like a Platonic form. Truth, or better, truths always manifest themselves and are grasped in these particular epistemological acts (truth as aletheia or manifestation); and their universality is always mediated in and through these limited and historically evolving acts of apprehending, understanding, judging, and formulating. Secondly, Asian philosophies maintain that reality itself or what is ontologically true is not or at least does not manifest itself as one but plural. This view of reality itself as plural, or of the necessarily plural manifestation of reality, is found, for example, in Indian philosophies, even though they privilege the concept of the unity of all things in the universal Self (Brahman, atman) over the particularity of individual realities.29 It is espoused especially by the Chinese philosophy of yin and yang and of the Five Elements (wu-hsing), according to which the movement of reality–humanity and nature–is governed by an alternating multiplicity of contrary but unifying forces.30 It follows then that no act of apprehending, understanding, judging, and expressing reality at any given time can fully and totally express reality. The best that can be achieved is relative adequacy between the mind’s affirmation and reality. Thirdly, Asian philosophies will draw out the implications of the second part of John Paul II’s statement, that is, "even if it is not the whole truth," with regard to the use of philosophy as a tool for the inculturation of the Christian faith in Asia. Asian philosophies would affirm that all apprehensions, understandings, judgments, and formulations of any truth, revealed or otherwise, cannot be anything but partial. Partiality in knowledge, which is not the same as falseness, is not just an occasional mishap that can in principle be overcome by dint of mental efforts, as might be implied by the Pope’s qualification ("even if it is not the whole truth"), as though most of the times the "whole truth" is readily available, in philosophy as well as in revelation. Rather it is our inescapable lot to possess knowledge always in fragments, that is, partial and relatively adequate apprehensions, understandings, judgments, and formulations of reality. This fact does not of itself invalidate the claim that Jesus is the perfect and full revelation of God (which Christians may of course legitimately make), because the church’s apprehensions, understandings, judgments, and formulations of this claim about Jesus and of the truths revealed by him will always remain partial and only relatively adequate, even in the case of infallible definitions. It follows that in the inculturation of the Christian faith, it is not simply a matter of adaption (much less translation) of the Christian truths (most if not all of which have been formulated in Jewish-Greek-Latin-European categories) to an alien tongue and mode of thought. Rather inculturation is a two-way process in which the Christian faith is given a better and more adequate apprehension, understanding, judgment, and formulation of itself, almost always at the cost of abandoning its own categories, and in which other faiths are in turn enriched by a better and more adequate apprehension, understanding, judgment, and formulation of themselves. Genuine intercultural encounter between the Christian faith and cultures always involves mutual challenge, critique, correction, and enrichment so that a new tertium quid will emerge. FIDES ET RATIO AND THE INCULTURATION OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH INTO CONFUCIANIST ASIA The concluding part of this essay will assess John Paul II’s teaching on philosophy, and more specifically metaphysics, as a tool for inculturating the Christian faith into Asia by exploring its applicability to some aspects of Confucianism. The theme is no doubt extremely vast, and limited space will permit consideration of only two issues, the one methodological and the other

substantive. The point here is neither to prescribe a method for the project of inculturating the Christian faith into cultures that are shaped by Confucianism, nor critically to review past efforts, both in theological reflection and church practices, to carry out this task.31 Rather attention will be drawn to some of the challenges and difficulties that the inculturation of the Christian faith into Confucianist Asia will encounter if the method recommended by FR is implemented in a simplistic manner. Metaphysics and Ontological Categories in Inculturation FR argues vigorously for the use of philosophy in general and metaphysics in particular not only in theology but also in the inculturation of the Christian faith. To cure the "crisis of meaning" which he discerns in contemporary culture infected with eclecticism, historicism, scientism, pragmatism, and nihilism (nos. 86-90), John Paul II prescribes a threefold therapy: a recovery of philosophy’s "sapiential dimension as a search for the ultimate and overarching meaning of life" (no. 81), a re-affirmation of human reason’s "capacity to know the truth, to come to knowledge which can reach objective truth" (no. 82), and the use of "a philosophy of a genuinely metaphysical range, capable, that is, of transcending empirical data in order to attain something absolute, ultimate and foundational in its search for truth" (no. 83). John Paul II points out that by metaphysics he does not mean "a specific school or a particular current of thought" (no. 83), and he has already affirmed that "the church has no philosophy of her own nor does she canonize any one particular philosophy in preference to others" (no. 49).32 As to whether metaphysics is necessary for the inculturation of the Christian faith into Confucian Asia, the answer is straightforward if by metaphysics is meant simply the general affirmation of the human mind’s capacity to know reality objectively. No Asian philosophers–indeed, no philosopher of any stripe–can deny this capacity without self-contradiction, because the very act of denying it necessarily affirms it. They would concur with John Paul II’s affirmation of the "universality" of "truth," though with the three important qualifications elaborated above.33 In this context, Asian philosophers would no doubt consider unfounded and even offensive FR’s accusation that "certain conceptions of life coming from the East" betray a "lack of confidence in truth" because they allegedly assume that "truth reveals itself equally in different doctrines even if they contradict one another" (no. 5). As to whether metaphysics can serve as an effective tool for inculturating the Christian faith into Confucians Asia, the answer depends on what is meant by metaphysics beyond the general meaning indicated above. Metaphysics may refer to a style of philosophizing or a way of thinking and a particular school of thought. The second meaning, though distinct from the first, is unavoidable since it is not possible to speak of metaphysics in the abstract. In spite of his disclaimer that he does not intend to propose "a specific school or a particular current of thought," John Paul II cannot but espouse a specific metaphysics. In fact, the Pope’s brand of metaphysics may be called "critical realism," since he insists– adamantly and repeatedly–that metaphysics ought to maintain the possibility "to know a universally valid truth" (no. 93). It does not matter much whether this critical realism is of the Thomistic stamp or some other varieties such as Lonergan’s or Rahner’s. Of course, there has not been anywhere one style of philosophizing and one school of metaphysics. As Kenneth L. Schmitz has shown, in the West metaphysics has been developed both as a style of thinking (metaphysics as "fundamental enquiry") and a philosophical discipline (metaphysics as "ontological discourse"), and in this double form it has undergone radical shifts as a result of the triple revolution in modernity, namely, the empirio-mathematical, historical, and linguistic turns.34 Therefore, if Western (and even Christian) metaphysics is used as a tool for the inculturation of the Christian faith into Confucians Asia, both as a style of thinking and an ontological discipline, there must be a deep sensitivity first of all to the distinctive style of philosophizing in Confucianism. In his masterful description of the Chinese way of thinking, Hajime Nakamura has

argued that the Chinese characteristically did not develop "non-religious transcendental metaphysics."35 This does not mean, of course, that there is no "metaphysics" in China. Indeed, among the ancient Chinese philosophies, Taoism can surely be said to have a metaphysical character. Neo-Confucians were attracted to certain aspects of Buddhist metaphysics and developed their own metaphysics (for example, Chu-Tzi’s Sung-hsüeh philosophy). The Hua-yen sect incorporated some metaphysical doctrines of Mahayana Buddhism. However, metaphysical thinking was completely abandoned when Taoism turned into a religious art of achieving immortality; even Chu-Tzi, the founder of Sung-hsüeh philosophy, did not elaborate a metaphysical system; and in the Hua-yen sect, the Buddhist all-important distinction between Absolute Reality and the phenomenal world is rejected. This anti-metaphysical trend of Chinese thought was not due to a lack of intellectual sophistication, but to a distinct way of thinking, and awareness of this difference will help overcome what Robert Solomon calls the "transcendental pretense" of the Enlightenment.36 The style of thinking which accounts for the nondevelopment of metaphysics among the Chinese has been referred to variously as "emphasis on the perception of the concrete," "non-development of abstract thought," "emphasis on the particular," "fondness for complex multiplicity expressed in concrete form," "the tendency towards practicality," and "reconciling and harmonizing tendencies."37 David Hall and Roger Ames characterize the Chinese way of thinking as "first problematic, or alternatively, analogical or correlative thinking" and the Western way as "second problematic" or "causal" thinking.38 The Chinese way of thinking is described as "neither strictly cosmogonical nor cosmological in the sense that there is the presupposition neither of an initial beginning nor of the existence of a singleordered world. This mode of thinking accepts the priority of change or process over rest and permanence, presumes no ultimate agency responsible for the general order of things, and seeks to account for states of affairs by appeal to correlative procedures rather than by determining agencies and principles."39 With this basic difference in modes of thinking in mind, it would be difficult to concur fully with John Paul II’s threefold recommendation for the inculturation of the Christian faith into Confucians Asia. First, he suggests that Christians in Asia should "draw from this [Asian] rich heritage the elements compatible with their faith in order to enrich Christian thought" (no. 72). This procedure seems to envisage inculturation as a straightforward business of adapting elements of one culture into another, without due attention to the different–at times, incommensurable–modes of thinking among cultures.40 Secondly, John Paul II appears to hold that nothing short of metaphysics can give a coherent account of divine revelation: "Metaphysics thus plays an essential role of mediation in theological research. A theology without a metaphysical horizon could not move beyond an analysis of religious experience nor would it allow the intellectus fidei to give a coherent account of the universal and transcendent value of revealed truth" (no. 83). Depending on what is meant by "metaphysics" and "metaphysical horizon," this view belittles the epistemological validity of the narrativistic and aphoristic mode of thinking, knowing, and expressing that is characteristic of Chinese philosophy and no less able to "give a coherent account" of its worldview. It seems to require that an Asian Christian theology must of necessity take the form of systematic exposition, as has been done so far in the West, if it were to achieve self-coherence.41 Thirdly, and perhaps in a piece with his second point, John Paul II specifies that "in engaging great cultures for the first time, the church cannot abandon what she has gained from her inculturation in the world of Greco-Latin thought. To reject this heritage would be to deny the providential plan of God, who guides the church down the paths of time and history" (no. 72). What John Paul II intends to say in this excerpt is highly ambiguous: (1) If the church cannot abandon its gains in its inculturation in the world of Greco-Latin thought in engaging great cultures for the first time, does it mean that the church is free to do so later, perhaps when the local church has reached sufficient maturity? (2) What is being included

in the church’s Greco-Latin "heritage"? Theology, liturgy, ethics, canon law, institutions, etc.? In terms of theology, does it mean for instance that an Asian Christology must employ categories such as person, nature, hypostatic union, and so on, perhaps in translation? And how far should this Greco-Latin heritage be extended? Until the Middle Ages, but no further? (3) What is meant by saying that denying the church’s Greco-Latin heritage is tantamount to denying the "providential plan of God"? Is it being implied that God has sanctioned and canonized the development of Western (even conciliar) theology? (4) If it is now God’s providential plan to bring the Christian faith into Confucianist Asia, should the new Asian theologies be incorporated into the heritage of the church? If so, what are the mechanisms whereby this incorporation can be carried out effectively? How can this be done when papal and other official documents are all written in Rome, in Western languages, and then promulgated (and at times enforced) with authority and power to the churches of the non-Western world? The Rites Controversy Revisited As a concrete example of the inculturation of the Christian faith into Confucians Asia, perhaps no doctrine and practice can be as illuminating and challenging, both historically and theologically, as the cult of ancestors.42 My interest here is neither to rehearse this painful episode in the history of the Asian churches in which cultural misunderstandings, theological dogmatism, ecclesiastical rivalries, and international politics were all deeply enmeshed with a praiseworthy desire to incarnate the Christian faith into the Chinese culture, nor to examine the theological and liturgical validity of the cult of ancestors in itself.43 Rather, I would like to show how the inculturation of the Christian faith into Confucians Asia with regard to the cult of ancestors cannot be adequately carried out on the sole basis of the method proposed by John Paul II in FR. As is well known, the cult of ancestors posed a difficult challenge to the earliest missionaries to China and other countries influenced by Confucianism.44 Basically, the question was whether the cult is theologically acceptable. At issue was the nature of this cult, that is, whether it has a "religious" character or is a purely civil or political ceremony. If the former, then it is superstition and, therefore, must be forbidden; if the latter, then it may be tolerated, and Christians’ participation in it would be permissible, due care being exercised to prevent misunderstanding and scandal. The final position of the Catholic Church toward the cult of ancestors, after repeated and severe condemnations by several Popes, was acceptance, and the ground for this complete volte-face is the alleged nonreligious nature of this cult.45 The question of interest here is whether the issue of the cult of ancestors would have been more correctly and speedily resolved had the method of inculturation, which is now advanced by John Paul II, been known and applied? No doubt there were many metaphysical and, more generally, philosophical issues at stake. Philosophically, the cult of ancestors obviously implies certain views regarding the human person, the person’s survival after death, the nature of this postmortem life, and the relationship between the dead and the living. Ethically, it concerns the heart of the moral life as Confucianism understands it, namely, as the proper performance of the duties entailed by various relationships, the most important of which being the relationship between the children and their parents.46 It has been rightly said that filial piety is the central virtue for every Confucian. Furthermore, the cult of ancestors has implications for marriage and the family, because a man who does not have children by his wife may be morally bound by filial piety to marry another woman and have children by her so as to perpetuate this cult. Politically, the cult of ancestors functions as the glue that binds society together, from the king as the August Son of Heaven to the humblest citizen of the country, and provides continuity across generations. Theologically, the cult of ancestors raises, at least for Christians, the question of the relationship between this cult and the worship of God. In view of these complex aspects of the cult of ancestors, it is questionable whether a method for the inculturation of the Christian faith into Confucians Asia

that relies principally on philosophy and metaphysics is adequate to the task. Indeed, were one to follow John Paul II’s three suggestions discussed in the previous section, one would run into intractable difficulties. First, it is impracticable, even counterproductive, simply to select from the Chinese cult of ancestors elements that are compatible with the Christian faith and incorporate them into the Christian worship because, apart from their immediate context, these rites lose all their meanings. In fact, it is only when it is viewed apart from its context that the cult of ancestors can be regarded as being nothing more than a civil and political act. The oft-endorsed practice of baptizing non-Christian rituals not rarely amounted to a cultural cannibalism and colonialism which divested these rituals of their own religious meanings and made them serve the Christian purpose. Furthermore, metaphysics would not be the most effective tool to evaluate the cult of ancestors. The issue here is not whether Chinese philosophy would deny personhood or post-mortem survival or even the immortality of the "soul," all of which are postulated by the cult of ancestors.47 Nor is it about whether Chinese philosophy is open to the affirmation of "God"; in fact, the existence of a transcendent being may be said to be implied in the Chinese concepts of t’ien, t’ien ming, te, and tao.48 Rather, even after all these metaphysical realities are affirmed, it still remains to be determined whether the cult of ancestors with all its manifold rituals is acceptable to Christians ethically, politically, and theologically. And on this question there is little that metaphysics can settle apodictically. Lastly, it would be even less helpful to invoke the church’s Greco-Latin heritage as the criterion for judging the validity of the cult of ancestors. Indeed, it was the early missionaries’ approach to this cult from the vantage point of the Western understanding of worship that prevented them from achieving a full understanding of its meaning. Even the basic terms framing the debate were misleading. Should the term "cult" be translated as "worship" (latria) or "veneration" (dulia)? Should one use "worship of ancestors" or "veneration of ancestors"? Needless to say, the validity of the cult of ancestors, according to Roman Catholic sensibilities, depends very much on which of these expressions is used. And yet, the cult of ancestors cannot properly be understood in these terms. Nor would it be very helpful to find equivalents for the cult of ancestors in Roman Catholic devotional practices such as the cult of Mary and the saints, because these practices are undergirded by very different theological worldviews. As has been said above, to obtain a comprehensive understanding of John Paul II’s teaching on inculturation, especially the inculturation of the Christian faith into Asia, one should not limit oneself to FR. The Pope’s fuller and richer insights can be found elsewhere, especially his Apostolic Exhortation Ecclesia in Asia, which he promulgated in the wake of the Special Assembly for Asia of the Synod of Bishops on November 6, 1999.49 FR’s somewhat narrow views should, therefore, be supplemented by those the Pope proposes in Ecclesia in Asia as well as in another Apostolic Exhortation, Ecclesia in Africa (1995). Only by taking these papal documents together can a relatively adequate method for the inculturation of the Christian faith into Asia be devised. The Warren-Blanding Distinguished Chair Professor of Religion and Culture, School of Religious Study and Education, The Catholic University of America Washington, D.C. NOTES 1 Wojtyla’s best-known philosophical work, though generally recognized as highly abstract and abstruse, remains his Osoba i Czyn (Crakow: Polskie Towarzystwo Teologiczne, 1969). Its English translation by Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, which bears the title The Acting Person (Dordrecht/Boston/London: Reidel, 1979), has been judged unreliable and criticized for having excessively phenomenologized Wojtyla’s language and thought. A collection of Wojtyla’s philosophical essays is

available as Person and Community: Selected Essays, trans. Theresa Sandok (New York: Peter Lang, 1993). 2 See his encyclicals Veritatis Splendor (August 6, 1993) and Evangelium Vitae (March 25, 1995). English translations of these encyclicals are available in The Encyclicals of John Paul II, ed. Michael Miller (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor, 1996), 674-771 and 792-894. 3 For the English translation of Fides et Ratio, henceforth FR, which was promulgated on September 14, 1998, see Origins vol. 28, no. 19 (October 22, 1998): 318-47. Citations of the encyclical will be followed by the number of the paragraph in parentheses. 4 I have already examined FR in relation to Asian philosophies in "Fides et Ratio and Asian Philosophies: Sharing the Banquet of Truth," Science et Esprit 51/3 (1999): 333-49. 5 For studies on FR, see Louis-Marie Billé et al., Foi et raison: Lectures de l’encyclique Fides et Ratio (Paris: Cerp, 1998); Fede e ragione: Opposizione, composizione? ed. Mauro Mantovani, Scaria Thuruthiyil, and Mario Toso (Roma: Libreria Ateneo Salesiano, 1998); Tomás Melendo, Para leer la Fides et Ratio (Madrid: Rialp, 2000); Faith and Reason: The Notre Dame Symposium, ed. Timothy Smith (South Bend, IN: St. Augustin’s Press, 2000); Per una lettura dell’enciclica Fides et Ratio (Città del Vaticano: L’Osservatore Romano, 1999); Peter Henrici, "La Chiesa et la filosopfia: In ascolto della ‘Fides et Ratio’," Gregorianum 80:4 (1999): 635-44; idem, "The One Who Went Unnamed: Maurice Blondel in the Encyclical Fides et Ratio," Communio (US) 26 (1999): 609-21; Joseph Kallarangatt, "Fides et Ratio: Its Timeliness and Contribution," Christian Orient 20 (1999): 22-39; Albert Keller, "Vernunft und Glaube," Stimmen der Zeit 217 (1999): 1-12; Job Kozhamthadam, "Fides et Ratio and Inculturation," Vidyajyoti 63 (1999): 848-59; Salvador Pié-Ninot, "La Encíclica Fides et Ratio y la Teología Fundamental: Hacia una propuesta," Gregorianum 80:4 (1999): 645-76; Kenneth Schmitz, "Faith and Reason: Then and Now [Dei Filius and Fides et Ratio]," Communio (US) 26 (1999): 595-608; Angelo Scola, "Human Freedom and Truth According to the Encyclical Fides et Ratio," Communio (US) 26 (1999): 486-509; Tissa Balasuriya, "On the Papal Encyclical Faith and Reason," Cross Currents 49 (1999): 294-96; Avery Dulles, "Faith and Reason: A Note on the New Encyclical," America 179 (Oct 31, 1998): 7-8; Anthony Kenny, "The Pope as Philosopher," The Tablet 253 (June 26, 1999): 874-76. 6 Pierre d’Ornellas, auxiliary bishop of Paris, offers helpful reflections on FR’s concern with the unity of human knowledge in "Une préoccupation déjà ancienne pour l’unité de la connaissance," in Foi et Raison: Lectures de l’encyclique Fides et Ratio, 15-29. 7 Awareness of this fact has profound implications for theology today, especially the discipline of historical theology, because it is the task of theology to bring about a contemporary understanding, which is itself historically conditioned, of another past understanding, which is also historically conditioned. Hence, the complex yet inevitable task of hermeneutics in theology. 8 For recent studies of these issues, see Christliche Philosophie im katholischen Denken des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts, ed. Emerich Coreth et al., 3 vols. (Graz: Styria, 1987-1990); Wolfhart Pannenberg, Theology and the Philosophy of Science (Philadelphia: Westminster,1976); Helmut Peukert, Wissenschaftstheorie Handlungstheorie Fundamentale Theologie (Frankfurt, 1978); Johann Baptist Metz, Faith in History and Society: Toward a Foundational Political Theology (New York: Seabury Press, 1979); Francis Schüssler Fiorenza, Foundational Theology: Jesus and the Church (New York: Crossroad, 1984); René Latourelle, Finding Jesus through the Gospels (New York: Alba House, 1979); idem, Man and His Problem in the Light of Jesus Christ (New York: Paulist Press, 1983); Problems and Perspectives of Fundamental Theology, ed. René Latourelle and Gerald O’Collins (New York: Paulist Press, 1982); David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism (New York: Crossroad, 1981); Franz-Josef Niemann, Jesus als Glaubensgrund in der Fundamentaltheologie der Neuzeit: Zur Genealogie eines Traktats (Innsbruck: Tyrolia-Verlag, 1983); George Lindbeck, The Nature of

Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984); Martin Cook, The Open Circle: Confessional Method in Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991); Avery Dulles, The Craft of Theology: From Symbol to System (New York: Crossroad, 1992); Thomas Guarino, Revelation and Truth: Unity and Plurality in Contemporary Theology (Scranton, PA: University of Scranton Press, 1993). 9 On the relationship between Vatican I’s Dei Filius and FR, see the balanced study of Mauro Mantovani, "Là dove osa la ragione. Dalla ‘Dei Filius’ alla ‘Fides et Ratio’," in Fede e ragione: Opposizione, composizione? , 59-84. Mantovani rightly points out that there is a basic continuity between the two documents in their stance on the relationship between faith and reason, though there are of course novelties in FR, such as its rejection of contemporary philosophical errors, its recognition of certain valuable aspects of contemporary thought, and its appreciation of Asian cultures. 10 André-Mutien Léonard, bishop of Namur and former professor of philosophy at the University of Louvain, provides a helpful overview of FR in "Un guide de lecture pour l’encyclique Fides et Ratio," in Foi et Raison: Lectures de l’encyclique Fides et Ratio, 31-73. 11 Obviously John Paul II’s appeal to the Pauline contrast between the "foolishness of God" demonstrated on the Cross and "human wisdom" elaborated in philosophy is no endorsement of fideism and fundamentalism. 12 For studies of FR’s view of the relationship between faith and reason, see Carlo Chenis, "‘Quid est veritas?’ Valore della ‘ratio’ nei processi veritativi secondo la ‘mens’ della Chiesa," in Fede e ragione: Opposizione, Composizione?, 85-105; Aniceto Molinaro, "La metafisica e la fede," in Fede e ragione: Opposizione, Composizione?, 107-118; Mario Toso, "La fede se non è pensata è nulla," in Fede e ragione: Opposizione, Composizione?, 119-30; Armando Rigobello, "Il ruolo della ragione, la filosofia dell’essere, la comunicazione della verità: Luoghi speculativi per un confronto tra ‘Fides et Ratio’ e pensiero contemporaneo," in Fede e ragione: Opposizione, Composizione?, 131-37; Francesco Franco, "La filosofia compito della fede: La circolarità di fede e ragione," in Fede e ragione: Opposizione, Composizione?, 155-75; and Rino Fisichella, "Rapporti tra teologia e filosofia alla luce di ‘Fides et Ratio,’ in Fede e Ragione: Opposizione, Composizione?, 177-85. 13 However evocative is the image, speaking of a "circle" with two "poles" is geometrically infelicitous. Perhaps it would be better to speak of an ellipse. 14 For a study of FR’s continuity with the Tradition and its relative originality, see Kenneth Schmitz, "Faith and Reason: Then and Now," Communio (US) 26 (1999): 595-608. 15 Of course, John Paul II is neither the first nor the only one to denounce the various errors of modern philosophy. As Anthony Kenney has correctly pointed out, in criticizing modern philosophy he stands in the company of philosophers such as Gottlob Frege and Lugwig Wittgenstein, and it may be added, Martin Heidegger. See Anthony Kenny, "The Pope as Philosopher," The Tablet 253 (June 26, 1999): 875. On the other hand, feminists will argue that other no less pernicious errors of modern philosophy such as its patriarchal and androcentric bias have not received the Pope’s attention. 16 This concern is demonstrated in John Paul II’s founding of The Pontifical Council for Culture in 1982 with its quarterly Cultures and Faith. John Paul II’s writings on the theology of culture are voluminous. For a study of this aspect of John Paul II’s theology, see Fernando Miguens, Fe y Cultura en la Enseñanza de Juan Pablo II (Madrid: Ediciones Palabra, 1994). 17 Some of the material that follows is taken from my earlier essay "Fides et Ratio and Asian Philosophies: Sharing the Banquet of Truth," Science et Esprit 51/3 (1999): 333-49. 18 Among the most important are: Catechesi Tradendae (1979), nos. 52-54; Slavorum Apostolorum (1985); Redemptoris Missio (1990), nos. 55-56, and Ecclesia in Asia (1999), nos. 21-22. 19 The thinkers mentioned are: John Henry Newman, Antonio Rosmini, Jacques

Maritain, Etienne Gilson, and Edith Stein "in a Western context" and Vladimir S. Soloviev, Pavel A. Florensky, Petr Chaadev, and Vladimir N. Lossky "in an Eastern context" (no. 74). Apparently, the "Eastern context" does not include Asia in general (at least insofar as recent thinkers with whom the Pope is familiar are concerned). The list underlines John Paul II’s European cultural formation. 20 For John Paul II’s comments on Buddhism, which have provoked a storm of protest from Asian Buddhists because of his reference to its "atheistic" system, see his Crossing the Threshold of Hope, ed. Vittorio Messori and trans. Jenny McPhee and Martha McPhee (New York: Alfred A. Knoff, 1994), 84-90. There is also a factual inaccuracy. FR mentions Tirkhankara as if he were an individual, like Gautama the Buddha, with whom he is paired. In fact, Tirkhankara (lit. making a passge, crossing, ford) is an honorific title in Jainism for a person who, by example and teaching, enables others to attain liberation. It designates 24 ascetic teachers in a line reaching back into prehistory, the most recent of whom was Mahavira (traditionally 599-527 BCE). 21 According to FR, the first stance is adopted by philosophy before the birth of Jesus and later in regions as yet untouched by the Gospel. By "Christian philosophy" FR understands "a Christian way of philosophizing, a philosophical speculation conceived in dynamic union with faith." It includes "those important developments of philosophical thinking which would not have happened without the direct or indirect contribution of Christian faith" (no. 76). By viewing philosophy as ancilla theologiae, FR does not intend to affirm "philosophy’s servile submission or purely functional role with regard to theology," but to indicate "the necessity of the link between the two sciences and the impossibility of their separation" (no. 77). FR does admit that the expression ancilla theologiae can no longer be used today, but asserts that in this stance philosophy "comes more directly under the authority of the magisterium and its discernment" (no. 77). 22 FR repeatedly asserts the duty of philosophy to search for ultimate and universal truth. Indeed, it laments the fact that contemporary philosophy "has lost the capacity to lift its gaze to the heights, not daring to rise to the truth of being" (no. 5). Instead of focusing on metaphysics, contemporary philosophers have concentrated their research on hermeneutics and epistemology, abandoning the investigation of being. On the contrary, John Paul II wants "to state that reality and truth do transcend the factual and the empirical and to vindicate the human being’s capacity to know this transcendental and metaphysical dimension in a way that is true and certain, albeit imperfect and analogical" (no. 83). Against postmodern agnosticism and nihilism (see no. 91), FR affirms that "[e]very truth–if it really is truth–presents itself as universal, even if it is not the whole truth. If something is true, then it must be true for all people and at all times. . . . Hypotheses may fascinate, but they do not satisfy. Whether we admit it or not, there comes for everyone the moment when personal existence must be anchored to a truth recognized as final which confers a certitude no longer open to doubt" (no. 27). 23 I will examine this criterion in detail in the last part of the essay. 24 I will draw out the implications of this statement for theological methodology today in the last part of the essay. 25 For an evaluation of FR in terms of inculturation, see Job Kozhamthadam, "Fides et Ratio and Inculturation," Vidyajyoti 63 (1999): 848-59; Scaria Thuruthiyil, "L’inculturazione della fede alla luce dell’Enciclica "Fides et Ratio," in Fede e ragione: Opposizione, composizione?, 249-55; and Mario Midali, "Evangelizzazione nuova: Rilevanti indicazioni del "Fides et Ratio," in Fede e ragione: Opposizione, composizione?, 257-76. 26 For the Nyaya-Vaisheshika epistemology which analyses human knowledge in terms of the knowing subject, the object to be known, the known object, and the means to know the object, see Satischandra Chatterjee (ed.), The Nyaya Theory of Knowledge, 2nd edition (Calcutta: University of Calcutta Press, 1950) and Karl H. Potter (ed.), Indian Metaphysics and Epistemology: The Tradition of Nyaya-Vaisheshika up

to Gangesa (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977). 27 See Bernard Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (London) and Method in Theology (New York: Herder, 1971). For studies on how FR understands the universality of truth, see Gaspare Mura, "L’universalismo della verità," in Fede e ragione: Opposizione, Composizione?, 139-43. 28 For an informative contrast between the Western and Chinese ways of conceiving truth, see David L. Hall and Roger T. Ames, Thinking from the Han (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1998), 103-46. Broadly speaking, Westerners ask, "What is the Truth?" ("Truth-Seekers"), whereas the Chinese ask, "Where is the Way?" ("Way-Seekers"). Western philosophy makes two assumptions, namely, that there is a single-ordered world and that there is a distinction between reality and appearance. The first assumption takes truth as coherence, the second takes truth as correspondence between mind and reality. These two assumptions are absent in classical Chinese philosophy. Instead of the single-ordered world, the Chinese hold that the world is but the "ten thousand things" (wanwu or wanyou) and, instead of the distinction between reality and appearance, the Chinese hold that reality is essentially polar (yin/yang). See also other works by the same two authors, Thinking through Confucius (Albany, NY: State University Press of New York, 1987) and Anticipating China (Albany, NY: State University of New York, 1995). 29 For an illuminating account of this characteristic of Indian philosophies, see Hajime Nakamura, Ways of Thinking of Eastern Peoples (Honolulu: The University Press of Hawaii, 1964), 93-129. 30 For a brief and helpful explanation of this theory, see A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, translated and compiled by Wing-Tsit Chan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), 244-88 and Fung Yu-lan, A Short History of Chinese Philosophy (New York: The Free Press, 1948), 129-42. 31 The works of seventeenth-century Jesuits in China and Vietnam, such as Matteo Ricci and Alexandre de Rhodes, are well known. See Peter C. Phan, Mission and Catechesis: Alexandre de Rhodes and Inculturation in Seventeenth-Century Vietnam (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1998). 32 This stance does not prevent the magisterium from acclaiming "the merits of St. Thomas’ thought" and making him "the guide and model for theological studies." But FR argues that "this has not been in order to take a position on properly philosophical questions nor to demand adherence to particular theses" (no. 78). There is no doubt a bit of revisionist history here, in light of Leo XIII’s Aeterni Patris (1879) and Pius X’s imposition of 24 "Thomistic" philosophical theses. For a study of the position of Thomas Aquinas in FR, see Georges Cottier, "Tommaso d’Aquino, teologo e filosofo nella "Fides et Ratio," in Fede e ragione: Opposizione, composizione?, 187-94. 33 FR itself explicitly acknowledges that "the objective value of many concepts does not exclude that their meaning is often imperfect" (no. 96). 34 See Kenneth Schmitz, "Post-modernism and the Catholic Tradition," American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly LXXIII/2 (1999): 242. Schmitz argues that because of the empirio-mathematical turn in modernity, metaphysics as philosophical enquiry was replaced by epistemology as the primary philosophical discipline and Aristotle’s concept of contingency as the result of the unintended conjunction of the causes ("causal contingency") was replaced by Pascal’s concept of contingency as probability ("predictive contingency"). Later, because of the historical turn, metaphysics as a mode of discourse was forced to recognize its intrinsic condition of historicity, and the concept of contingency as predictive contingency was replaced by the concept of contingency as unrepeatable event ("non-predictive contingency"). Finally, in the linguistic turn, contingency is understood as the arbitrariness of linguistic signs (as in Saussurean linguistics) or as the conventionality of relations (as in Anglo-American language analytic philosophy). See Kenneth Schmitz, "An Addendum to Further Discussion," American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly LXXIII/2 (1999): 277-79). This narrative of the recent career of metaphysics shows how complex the question about the use of metaphysics

as a tool for inculturation, especially the inculturation of the Christian faith into Confucianist Asia, is. 35 Hajime Nakamura, Ways of Thinking of Eastern Peoples, 243. 36 See Robert Solomon, The Bully Culture: Enlightenment, Romanticism, and the Transcendental Pretense 1750-1850 (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1993). The transcendental pretense refers to the claim that rational objectivity and universal science, allegedly the fruits of the Enlightenment, should be the norm to judge all non-Western cultures. 37 See Hajime Nakamura, Ways of Thinking of Eastern Peoples, 177-294. 38 David Hall and Roger Ames, Anticipating China: Thinking Through the Narratives of Chinese and Western Culture (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1995), xvii. 39 David Hall and Roger Ames, Anticipating China, xviii. Graphically, the difference between the Western and the Chinese modes of thinking is illustrated by the former’s preference for the circle and the latter’s for the square as images of perfection. 40 Apparently John Paul II is operating under the two Greco-Roman models of inculturation, that is, assimilation of non-Christian philosophy and incarnation in non-Christian culture, respectively. Aloysius has convincingly argued that these two models are not applicable to Asia. See his An Asian Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1988), 51-53. See also Peter C. Phan, "Fides et Ratio and Asian Philosophies," 345-46. 41 It is unfortunate that the ratio in Fides et Ratio is successively reduced from rationality to philosophy to metaphysics. This gradual reduction is all the more misleading since "metaphysics" is currently understood not as reflective thinking or fundamental inquiry but mainly as a mode of ontological discourse (e.g., "ontotheology") and even, in popular circles, as astrology! 42 Systems of ancestor veneration are best known from Africa, China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. In Asia, ancestor worship is an amalgamation of folk religion, Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, and Shinto. It has been suggested that ancestor worship may have emerged from the worship of guardian spirits. This shift occurred when the family supplanted the clan or tribe as the basic unit of society, so that prayers addressed to tribal spirits were now redirected to the deceased members of the family. In Asian countries, ancestor veneration has been connected with other Taoist practices such as magic, divination, witchcraft, geomancy, and so forth. 43 For a history of the controversy, see George Minamiki, The Chinese Rites Controversy from Its Beginning to Modern Times (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1985). 44 I prescind here from the special question of the cult of Confucius in the Temple of Literature. 45 See the instruction of the Propaganda Fide, Plane compertum est (1939). See Peter C. Phan, Mission and Catechesis, 28. 46 The Doctrine of the Mean XX, 8 specifies five relationships and three virtues: "The duties of universal obligation are five, and the virtues wherewith they are practiced are three. The duties are those between sovereign and minister, between father and son, between husband and wife, between elder brother and younger, and those belonging to the intercourse of friends. Those five are the duties of universal obligation. Knowledge, magnanimity, and energy, these three, are the virtues universally binding. And the means by which they carry the duties into practice is singleness." See The Doctrine of the Mean, trans. James Legg (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1893). 47 FR affirms that "it is metaphysics which makes it possible to ground the concept of personal dignity in virtue of their spiritual nature" (no. 83). If it is meant that it is in virtue of metaphysics alone that personal dignity can be defended, then FR’s statement is gratuitous. Moreover, even if the statement is granted, there is still a further question to be settled, namely, which metaphysical argument for the dignity of the person is apodictic. For a study of

the notion of person in FR, see Sabino Palumbieri, "Fides et Ratio": la persona, punto di sintesi," in Fede e ragione: opposizione, composizione?, 331-52. 48 For a discussion of t’ien and transcendence, as well as t’ien ming, te, and tao, see David Hall and Roger Ames, Thinking Through Confucius (albany, NY: University of New York Press, 1987), 201-37. 49 For an analysis and evaluation of this Apostolic Exhortation, see Peter C. Phan, "Ecclesia in Asia: Challenges for Asian Christianity," East Asian Pastoral Review 37/3 (2000): 215-32 as well as the essays by Michael Amaladoss, Edmund Chia, John Manford Prior, and James Kroeger in this issue. **** http://www.crvp.org/book/Series03/III-7a/chapter_viii.htm CHAPTER VIII HUMAN NATURE AND THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN INDIVIDUALS AND SOCIETY SHI DEFU Since humankind appeared on earth, it has tried continuously to obtain knowledge of all surrounding things. Furthermore, it has continuously speculated over what human beings are: for thousands of years philosophers and other thinkers have been probing the essence and nature of the human being and putting forward their own different ideas. HUMAN NATURE One of the oldest definitions of humankind is "a kind of two leggedanimal without feathers." But Xun Zi asserted, "What makes mankind to be such is not only that they have two legs without feathers, but also that they have the ability to discern." The problem of human nature is the deepest of the issues regarding human beings which have long been under discussion. In ancient Chinese philosophy, disputations between doctrines on the goodness and evil of human nature led to others between doctrines of "principle and desire". In modern western philosophies the dominant position defined reason as the essence of human being, meaning that it is reason which makes the human being to be human. But in modern philosophies definitions of reason differ greatly. For example, though classical philosophy defined reason as the human essence, Hegel considered it to be self-consciousness, while Feuerbach included will and feeling along with reason. In contrast to modern rationalists, con-temporary western philosophers have been being looking also to irrational elements. Thus Schopenaur and Nietzsche focused upon will, Bergson upon intuition, the existentialists upon feeling, and Freud upon human subconsciousness and sexual desire, etc. All the philosophical theories about human nature and essence constitute a precious spiritual endowment which is instructive for us. Based on different foundations they deepen our self-consciousness and ability to recognize ourselves. But their shortcomings also are evident: some are too abstract, others too onesided, the methods and starting points of others present obstacles to the achievement of scientific knowledge or the recognition of human nature. This chapter will focus upon this problem. THE OBJECTIVE CHARACTER OF HUMAN NATURE As humankind is an objective existent, in order to grasp human nature we should first recognize and analyze it as it is, just as we treat natural beings. Natural science has shown that humankind was not created by gods. Such ideas as "God created mankind" or "Death and life lie within fate, wealth and nobility lie with Heaven" have been shown to lack solid foundation, although they are believed by some. Humankind exists and develops according to the laws of the natural world of living things. But humankind is not simply an existent in the natural world; it is moreover a subjectively social existent, a unity of individual and species, of individual and society. Individuals are as cells which constitute society so that humankind as an organic whole constituted by individuals who on their own initiative actively and continuously exchange materials, energy and information with the outside world. This kind of special life process is the premise and foundation of individual and social existence and

development. This two-way passive-active process between humankind and the external world forms laws for human development; it produces and manifests the qualities and essence of humankind. Therefore, in order to learn about the general nature of human beings (i.e., of humankind generally), we should study thoroughly the process of human history. In order to recognize the manifestations of human nature in different times, societies, classes and even individuals, we should study concretely the practices of classes and individuals in different times, societies and communities. Methods which grasp only the general essence of human beings at most can explain only the distinction between humankind and other animals, but cannot reveal the difference between classes and individuals in different times and societies. But if we study only the special character of classes and individuals in different times and societies without grasping what is common to humankind, we will not be able to grasp the essence by which human beings are distinguished from other animals. Methods which try to get an eternal and abstract human nature in a manner separated from human practice and historical development are not worth the effort. Not only does the human being have a complicated physiological organization, but the multi-leveled and changing practice and relationship between himself and the external world, and among individuals, classes and society, has manifested that the human is the most complicated changing material system known. Therefore, we can achieve the truth about human nature and essence only when we regard it as a material living system and study it from a comprehensive and developmental viewpoint. This means that in order to bring to light the real essence of the human being not only should we analyze the concrete and manifest form of each level and aspect of human nature in the system of human qualities, but also we should study comprehensively and synthetically the position of different human attributes and qualities in the system of human nature and in the relationships among the qualities and attributes. This disqualifies the method of some philosophers who grasp only a certain human attribute or special quality and exaggerate it one-sidedly as the essence of the human being without paying attention to other aspects. THE SOCIAL CHARACTER OF HUMAN NATURE As an object of the study of philosophy and the social sciences the human being has natural attributes and social and spiritual qualities because the human being is a natural, social and conscious existent. But comparatively speaking, we must recognize that the human is first of all a social existent; thus the social is the essential quality of the human being. His natural qualities of physiological organization and function, such as appetite, sexual desire, and the tendency of self-protection, are the natural material foundation on which the human being as a physiological organism exists and multiplies. But these natural qualities are transformed in continuous social practice and life; they differ from the instincts of animals and are dominated or con-trolled by the human’s social essence. Were human nature to be reduced to merely physiological instincts, we could place it only in the category of animality. The spiritual qualities of human being, such as the ability to think, consciousness, will, feeling and the capacity to make aesthetic judgments are complicated conscious actions. Doubt-less they constitute important aspects of human nature and play an important part in social life. But when we study further the source and development of these conscious actions we will find that essentially they are products of a social practice and develop along with the development of practice. The social qualities of the human being are many-sided, such as the capacity to do productive work and other social practices, dependence upon other individuals and groups for one’s existence, communication and cooperation with other individuals and classes, etc. But for the following reasons productive work is the most essential and dominates the others: (A) External things and humankind itself both are objects of knowledge, but in this they differ greatly. There is a special epistemological

difficulty regarding knowledge of one. A person’s eyes can ob-serve external things, but cannot see themselves. External things can be presented to us, but our faces are special objects which cannot be observed directly. In order to reveal the secrets of human nature and essence, we must find means by which to observe ourselves, just as we must use a mirror in order to look at ourselves. Objectified action, namely, social practice, which is constituted of productive work and its products, can be used as this means. In productive work one’s inner essential strengths (physical and intelligential) are revealed and at last are reified in their products so that we can recognize ourselves in the objectified world we create. (B) One cannot do productive work in isolation, but only in the social relationships developed in productive work. Thus, in work people not only change the forms of natural materials and create products which meet people’s material and cultural needs, but in the material process of production also have created social, political, ideal, racial, family and ethical relationships which are based on economic relationships. It is in these working and social relationships that human nature is revealed. (C) To assert that productive work is the most essential dimension of human being which distinguishes humankind from animals does not deny that humankind has other qualities which distinguish it from animals, such as rational thought, self-consciousness, the desire for freedom, language, etc. It asserts only that productive work is more essential than these qualities, for they can be explained only starting from productive work. Therefore, society is not a collectivity of isolated individuals, but a living organism united in social practice constituted of productive work. The sum total of the connections and relationships formed in the social practice of myriads of individuals constitutes society. An individual cannot be absolutely separated from society because he or she is social, and society is a society of individuals. Because human nature and essence are determined by this social dimension, it is not helpful to separate the individual from social practice, relationships and development, and then to construct a completely inner human nature and essence on the basis of an isolated "man-himself". This would reduce the human being to an alienated human nature and essence and see the future of society as the realization or return to this alienated human nature. But neither is it correct to deny the existence of individual differences produced in different interior and exterior conditions because human nature and essence must be understood upon the basis of social practice and relation-ships. **** http://www.crvp.org/book/Series03/III-11/chapter_ix.htm CHAPTER IX CONFUCIANISM AND SCIENCE A Philosophical Evaluation VINCENT SHEN PRACTICAL WISDOM VERSUS THEORETICAL KNOWLEDGE When searching for an explanation of the fact that no science in the Western modern sense was produced in traditional Chinese culture under the dominant ideology of Confucianism, we should first of all trace back to the philosophical origins of both Western and Chinese sciences, and compare their differences. To be brief, we could qualify Chinese science as a search for practical wisdom and Western science as a searching for theoretical knowledge. In other words, one of the fundamental reasons for the absence of modern science in Chinese culture is the latter’s lack of purely theoretical interest. Nowadays, modern science becomes more and more operational both in its theory formation and its data construction processes. This calls for more interaction between knowledge and action, thus disengaging itself f rom its former qualification as knowledge f or knowledge ‘ s own sake. But, we should not forget

that, in the beginning, it was produced as the last avatar of the Greek notion of theoria, the disinterested pursuit of truth and sheer intellectual curiosity.1 Compared with this, Chinese culture in general and Confucianism in particular seemed to be short of such theoretical interest. Generally speaking, Western philosophy began as a result of the attitude of wonder, which led to the theoretical construction of scientific knowledge. In contrast, Chinese philosophy began as a result of an attitude of concern, which led finally to practical wisdom for guiding human destiny. Therefore, in the beginning, the difference between them was that between "wonder" and "concern". With regard to wonder, Aristotle wrote in Metaphysics: For it is owing to their wonder that men both now begin and at first began to philosophize; they wondered originally at the obvious difficulties, then advanced little by little and stated difficulties about the greater matters, . . . therefore since they philosophized in order to escape from ignorance, evidently they were pursuing science in order to know. and not for any utilitarian end.2 Aristotle continued to point out that the way of life in which science began was constituted of leisure (rastone) and recreation (diagoge), as enjoyed by Egyptian priests who discovered geometry. Aristotle believed that in such a state of life, human beings did not need to care about the daily necessities of life and could wonder about the causes of things and search knowledge for knowledge’s own sake. The result of wonder was theories. These came from an important transformation of the originally religious meaning of the Greek term "theoria"into its philosophic meaning. Such a transformation was an essential event in the European intellectual history. In the beginning, the "theoros" were the representatives sent by Greek cities to Athenian public ceremonies. Through "theoria", that is, through looking on and not through praxis (actions), they participated in the sacred events. This religious meaning was transformed into the contemplation of the cosmos, of the totality of beings.3 The philosophical meaning of"theory", therefore, was determined in one sense with respect to praxis -- as Aristotle put it, "not in virtue of being able to act, but of having the theory for themselves and knowing the causes."4 -- and second, in another sense, with respect to a universal object, which was seen by Aristotle as the first characteristic of science.5 Modern science was historically grounded in this Greek heritage of theoria, which regarded our human life no longer as determined by diverse practical interests, but as submitting itself hence forward to a universal and objective norm of truth. By contrast, Chinese thought in general and Confucianism in particular were originated as a result of the attitude of concern which led not to universal theorization, but to universal praxis. It was because of his concern with the destiny of the individual and society that the Chinese mind began to philosophize. The Great Appendix to the Book of Changes, traditionally attributed to Confucius as its author, proclaimed that the author of Yi must be face anxiety and calamity with compassionate concern. It reads: Was it not in the last age of Yin, when the virtue of Chou had reached its highest point, and during the troubles between King Wen and the tyrant Dzou, that the study of Yi began to flourish? On this account the explanations in the book express a feeling of anxious apprehension, and teach how peril may be turned into security, and easy carelessness is sure to meet with overthrow. The way in which these things come about is very comprehensive, and must be acknowledged in every sphere of things, If at the beginning there is a cautious apprehension as to the end, there probably will be no error or cause for blame. This is what is called the Way of Yi.6 This important text shows that in the eyes of Confucius, philosophy as a serious intellectual activity began with an attitude of concern in the situation of anxiety and calamity, not at all in the situation of leisure and recreation, as Aristotle would suggest. The proposition that "the way in which these things come

about is very comprehensive, and must be acknowledged in every sphere of things" would suggest that Chinese philosophy intended to be a practical wisdom that could serve as guidance for a universal praxis. Consequently, Confucianism did not have any distinctive method of dialectical discourse, taking no explicit system of logic as canon of reasoning. Neither did it, as did modern science, take mathematics as model of true knowledge. The dialogues that we read in the Analects (or Lun Yu) do show us a way of discursive interaction, yet they contain no explicit logic. Dialogues are not yet dialogic. Still we can recognize, as did B. Schwartz, that, to a certain degree, the Confucian pleasure in learning may reflect a pure interest in "the mastery of a body of significant knowledge as such."7 Confucius himself had shown his regret for those who did not have such an interest. "In days gone by, he said, men studied for their own sake. Today men studied for the sake of impressing others."8 Therefore the learning of practical wisdom could be seen as possessing an independent value in Confucianism. But this is not the same as knowledge for knowledge’s own sake, as in the case of modern Western science. AMBIVALENCE OF THE CONFUCIAN RELATION TO SCIENCE The difficulty of evaluating Confucianism’s import upon science consists in its ambivalent attitude towards the latter. Joseph Needham has pointed out this paradoxical position of Confucianism which helped the beginnings of science, on the one hand, and injured them, on the other. On one side, Confucianism was basically rationalistic and opposed to any superstitious or even supernatural forms of religion. . . . But on the other side its intense concentration of interest upon human social life to the exclusion of non-human phenomenon negated all investigation of Things, as opposed to Affairs.9 Here we have the contrast between "Natural Things" and "Human Affairs". The above judgment of Joseph Needham is correct to a certain degree, but it has to be developed by deeper reflection. We can ask, does this paradoxical attitude imply a contradiction within the system of Confucianism, or, on the contrary, does it manifest a coherent philosophical attitude that insists on developing science only in a humanistic context? Confucianism’s agnostic rationalism is manifested in the texts where Confucius expressed his distance from such supernatural powers as ghosts and spirits. Fan Chih asked what constituted wisdom. The Master Confucius said, "To give one’s self earnestly to securing righteousness and justice among the people, and while respecting the gods and demons, to keep distantiated from them, that may be called wisdom.10 Chi-Lu asked about serving the ghosts and spirits. The Master Confucius said, "While you are not yet able to serve human beings, how can you serve ghosts?" Chi-Lu then ventured upon a question about the dead. The Master said. "You do not yet know about the living, how can you know about the dead?"11 These texts show not only a negative attitude towards supernatural powers, but also a positive emphasis on this life and social activities such as serving human beings and securing righteousness. Max Weber was correct when he said, "Confucianism maintained that magic was powerless in the face of virtue. He who lived the classical way of life need not fear the spirits; only lack of virtue in high places gave power to the spirits."12 Humanism with an ethical orientation is therefore fundamental to Confucian teaching. This explains also why Confucius’ frequent themes of discourse were the Odes, history and the maintenance of the rites.13 He took four subjects for his teaching: culture (letters), the conduct of affairs, loyalty to superiors and the keeping of promises.14 Subjects on which the Master never talked were: extraordinary things, unnatural forces, disorders and spiritual beings.15 In J. Needham’s eyes, Hsun Tzu’ humanism perfectly exemplifies the ambivalent relation of Confucianism to science.16 On the one hand, Hsun Tzu preached an

agnostic rationalism and even a denial of the existence of spirits. For him, the term "Tao" means the order of nature and the right way of human society. His socio-ethical orientation was shown in his exaltation of Li, the essence of rites, good customs and traditional observances. On the other hand, he strongly opposed to the efforts of the School of Names and the Mohists to work out a kind of discursive logic. He insisted on the practical and social uses of technological process while denying the importance of theoretical investigation. J. Needham’s judgment upon Hsun Tzuis sound, but it does not tell the whole story.Viewed from the philosophy of science, Hsun Tzu’s ideological framework is favorable for the development of modern science and even for that of technology: an attitude of domination over nature by seizing her causal regularities and her transformation by technical process. In the following text, Hsun Tzu said: Your glorify Nature and meditate on her, Why not domesticate her and regulate her? You obey Nature and sing her praises, Why not control her and use her? You look on the seasons with reverence and await them, Why not respond to them by seasonal activities? You depend on things, marvel at them, Why not unfold your abilities and transform them? You meditate on what make a thing, Why not so order things, that you do not waste them? You vainly seek into the cause of things, Why not appropriate and enjoy what they produce?"17 Notice that this important text is interpreted by Needham as merely a protest against Taoists, especially Chuang Tzu’s preference for nature and negligence of man, and as exhibiting a certain legalist learning. In fact, it was not so simple, because here "to domesticate and regulate" and "control over the course of Nature" would mean an attitude of domination over Nature by using her causal regularities. "Unfold one’s abilities", "transform things" "order things and appropriate what they produce" would mean the application of technology in accomplishing things and transforming natural process. Therefore Hsun Tzu had an ideological framework favorable to the development of science and technology in the modern sense. His difficulty consisted in the fact that he did not understand the importance of investigating "what makes a thing" and consequently missed the dimension of knowledge for knowledge’s own sake, the disinterested pursuit of truth. What he had in mind was a pragmatic and utilitarian vision of domination over nature and technological application. As to the Neo-Confucians in the period of Sung and Ming Dynasties, their vision of the world was also very congruent with that of the modern natural sciences. In fact, as Needham’s studies have shown, Neo-Confucian philosophy in the Sung dynasty was connected with the golden period of natural sciences and technologies such as mathematics, astronomy, botany, zoology, architecture and military technology in Chinese civilization.18 For example, Chu Hsi’s (1033-1170 A.D.) emphasis on "the investigation of things" and "the extension of knowledge" were quite positive for the development of science. Chu Hsi held that all actual and potential principles are contained in the Great Ultimate, which is complete in all things as a whole and in each thing individually. The Great Ultimate involves both Li (logos) and Chi (physis) which, while seemingly dualistic, are never separate but in mutual complementarity. This philosophy of organism is, as Needham would suggest, quite analogous to that of Whitehead, without having passed through the stages corresponding to Newton and Galileo. But it is not fair to say, as Needham does, that this philosophical system was produced only by "flights of genius."19 I would suggest that it was rather a philosophical system achieved by deep philosophical meditation on the nature of reality and also by creative interpretation of the Confucian tradition. The function of reason it implied was therefore speculative and hermeneutic, without being scientific and operational. Classical Confucianism and Neo-Confucianism never took into consideration the

interaction of the logico-mathematically structured theories with the systematically controlled experimentation, which, on the contrary, was the essence of modem science. EMPIRICAL KNOWLEDGE INTERACTING WITH INTELLIGIBLE UNITY Modern Western science is a rational way of constructing knowledge of the world in view of its valid explanation and efficient control . Science is a product of human construction as well as a continuing process of construction. As we have said in the first chapter, this process of construction consists in three aspects. - First, on its rational side, modem science is an activity of constructing theories that use logical-mathematically structured language to formulate knowledge of local validity, that is, knowledge about a particular domain of phenomenon with explanatory and predictive power. - Second, on its empirical side, modem science is characterized by its wellcontrolled systematic experimentation which, by elaborating on the sensible data and our perception of them, assure itself of keeping in touch with the Environment, the supposed "Real World", but in an artificially, technically controlled way. - Third, there is a conscious checking of the correspondence between the rational side and the empirical side in order to combine them into a coherent whole to serve man’s objective in explaining and controlling the world. The rational side of science builds up a theoretical vision of the world, while the empirical side relates this vision to the scientist’ s sensible construction and controlling experience of the world. Philosophical reflection, in checking the correspondence between these two aspects, assures us of their coherence and unity. Now, let us compare Confucianism with Western modem science. Apparently speaking, Confucianism seemed to have emphasized the accumulation of empirical knowledge on the one hand and their intelligible unity on the other. B. Schwartz is right when he says, To Confucius knowledge does begin with the empirical cumulative knowledge of masses of particulars, . . . then includes the ability to link these particulars first to one’s own experiences and ultimately with the underlying unity that binds this thought together.20 This judgment is supported by texts where Confucius affirmed the necessity of unifying diverse empirical knowledge. To his disciple Tzu Kung the Master put the question: "You think, I believe, that my aim is to learn many things and retain them in my memory?" Tzu Kung replied, "Is that not so?" The Master replied, "No, there is an unity which binds it all together."21 Besides, Confucius seemed to affirm, as did Kant, the complementary interaction between empirical data and thinking. He said, "He who learns without thought is utterly confused. He who thinks without learning is in great danger."22 These words of Confucius remind us of Kant’s proposition that sensibility without concept is blind, whereas concept without sensibility is void. "I have spent, elsewhere he said, a whole day without eating food and a whole night without sleep, thinking. It was of no use. It is better to learn."23 So it seems that for Confucius, learning, analogous to modem science, is a process of interaction between empirical knowledge and their intelligible unity. Unfortunately, further reflection shows that, first, the empirical knowledge in Confucius was not technically controlled data collection; second, the ultimate unity for him was not merely the logico-mathematically structured theories; and finally the mode of interaction between the above two moments was not that of deduction and falsification in Popper’s sense, or induction and verification in Logical Empiricists’ sense or in other looser concepts such as testing and confirmation. Let us explain this more explicitly in order to evaluate the epistemological import of Confucianism. First, concerning the empirical side of Confucian learning, Confucius did not have in mind any sensible data gathered by technically controlled process. What he

stressed consisted rather in the concrete and factual knowledge of the institutions, the code of behavior, the achievement of an idealized culture, that of Chou dynasty for example, and the realities of our life environment. This extended from knowledge in respect to the names of birds, animals, plants and trees, to that of the meaning of a religious rite. This empirical knowledge concerns mostly the meaningful world of human being, rather than with the savage world of nature, which in Confucius’ eyes was to be constructed in terms of codes congenial to human nature, not to be controlled by mere technical process. Even if we take the broad concept of"technique" such as the one given by Weber, which means the rule-governedness of reproducible behavior to which others can adapt themselves in a calculative manner, we cannot say that empirical knowledge in the Confucian sense is technically controlled. Perhaps it is for this reason that Confucianism did not offer any method conducive to modem scientific development. Second, concerning the rational side of Confucian learning, there seemed to be no regard paid to the rigorous logico-mathematic structure of discourse. One thing Confucius proposed which was connected with the rationality of discourse was his emphasis on the correctness of names. This concerned mostly the use of language and the relation of language to reality. In fact it was not proposed by Confucius as a semantic theory, not to mention any concern for syntactical issues. It concerned terms not in themselves, but as used in human speeches and actions. Therefore it had some pragmatic significance determined in term of the social, rather than theological. Confucius said: Would it not be necessary to correct names? . . . If names are not correct then one’s words will not be in accord [with one’s actions]. If words are not in accord, then what is to be done cannot be [correctly] implemented! . . . Therefore a noble man uses names only in their appropriate way, so that what he says can be appropriately put into effect. A noble man in his speech leaves nothing to chance.24 This text shows that the Confucian theory of language refers not to any observed physical entity, but to modes of human behavior. Confucius never tried to formulate any definition in the sense of Aristotelian logic. Neither did he propose any semantic theory. What we can discern here is only an ethically oriented pragmatic vision of language. In the long history of Chinese science, mathematics was never considered by Confucians as the measure of rationality, not to mention taking it as necessary for structuring a meaningful discourse. The only exception was perhaps Shao Yung, who gave a very high place to numbers, seen by him as the manifestation of Tao. But this is a metaphysical rather than scientific thesis. Anyhow, mathematics was not highly evaluated in itself. The priority of social and ethical concern in Confucianism seems to explain this attitude. As Needham suggests, Mathematics was essential, up to a certain point, for the planning and control of the hydraulic engineering works, but those professing it were likely to remain inferior of facials.25 This social and political reason given be Needham explains partly the unimportance of mathematical discourse in Confucianism. A more internal reason might be that mathematics was considered as technique of calculation and instrument of organizing empirical data, not as the objective structure of reality and discourse. Third, concerning the mode of relation between empirical knowledge and the intelligible ground of unity, Confucianism had not conceived of any interactive relation in the mode of deduction/falsification, or induction/verification, or testing/confirmation. The mode of unity was for Confucianism a kind of mental integration in referring to the ultimate reality through the process of ethical praxis. Here praxis or practical action was not interpreted as a kind of technical application of theories to control concrete natural or social phenomena. It was understood rather as an active involvement in the process of realizing what is

properly human in the life of the individual and that of the society. As to science and technology, they are not to be ignored but must be reconsidered in the context of this ethical praxis. Marx Weber does not appreciate this integral Confucian humanism, which, compared with Occidental natural science, fails in rationalistic ambition. He also believes that Occidental natural science, with its mathematical foundation, is a combination of rational form of thought grown on the soil of ancient philosophy and the technical "experiment" originated on the soil of the Renaissance. The "experimenting" great art of the Renaissance was considered by Weber as a unique blend of two elements: the empirical skill of artists based on craftsmanship, and their historically and socially determined rationalist ambition, while the masterly refined Chinese art lacked all these understood incentives to rationalist ambition.26 Although Weber’s judgment here is convincing to a certain degree, still we have to distinguish what is rational from what is reasonable. To be "rational", as we have said before, we have to control the gathering of empirical data through systematic technical process, to formulate theories in a logico-mathematic manner, and to establish their correspondence through an interactive checking process. On the contrary, to be "reasonable", we have to refer to the totality of our existence and to its meaningful interpretation by human life as a whole. Confucianism endeavored to be reasonable, while neglecting its own rational potentiality. Without scientific rationality, Confucianism did not produce modem science in the long history of Chinese culture. But with its reasonableness, it can serve today as remedy to modem science when the scientific rationality has brought humankind to the impasse of the impoverishment of reason. THE REASONABLE IN CONTRAST TO THE RATIONAL In modem times, science and technology, characterized as problem solving mechanisms, serve as the model of cultural rationalization and as the measure of progress in the history of humanity. In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Weber sees cultural rationalization in modem science and technology, in autonomous art, and in a religiously anchored normative system (both ethical and legal).27 Modem science, as theoretical knowledge expressed in logical mathematic form and tested with the help of controlled experiments, represents in an excellent way this phenomenon of rationalization. Weber designates as "rationalization" every expansion of empirical knowledge, of predictive capacity, of instrumental and organizational mastery of the empirical process. Modem science not only concretizes this rationality in its logic of research, but also becomes the leading factor of rationalization in the world history. This has two reasons. First, modem science was institutionalized in university settings and other research organizations, the university being regarded as the concrete image of rationality. Second, in being applied to the process of industrialization, modem science penetrated into the area of economic life. In the latter sense, modem science and technology could also be seen by the Marxists as a model of rationalization. Because, according to Marx, the rationalization of society takes place in the development of productive forces, that is, in the expansion of empirical knowledge, in the improvement of production techniques and the increasingly effective mobilization, quantification and organization of socially useful labor power. This conception of modem science and technology as model of rationalization and measure of progress could be traced back to the time of the Enlightenment. For example, Condorcet had, under the influence of Turgot and d’Alembert, well articulated this ideology in his famous Esquisse d ‘un tableau historique des progres de l’esprit humain of 1794. The mathematical sciences of nature were seen there as the model of rationality. Especially, Newtonian physics was taken as a paradigm for knowledge in general. In his Tableau ge’nerale de la science qui a pour object I ‘application du calcul aux sciences morales et politiques of 1793, Condorcet took as examples the questions concerning demography, electoral operations, the theory of value and that of prize. He took probability calculation

as technique indispensable for the progress of human spirit. With what he called as "social mathematics", he hoped for the elimination of superstition and skepticism, and for the possibility of relating humankind to reason. The methodology of the natural sciences thereby was extended to the social sciences, human sciences and even to the philosophical vision of history in general. Habermas has well pointed out that this philosophy of progress has four basic presuppositions. - First, it interpreted the concept of perfection according to the model of scientific progress and thus based a linear conception of progress on the advancement of natural sciences. - Second, it universalized the rationality represented by modem science which took on the function of enlightenment and emancipation. - Third, it connected the cognitive aspect of scientific progress with the moralpractical aspect of the coming of age of mankind. - Fourth, it based the progress of civilization on the progress of the human spirit only by counting on the empirical efficacy of an ever-improving theoretical knowledge. In other words, the progress of human spirit could also be measured by laws of nature discovered by natural science.28 This positivist philosophy, with all its presuppositions, has long dominated our visions of science, society and reality. It constitutes a dominant paradigm of scientific research and social development in general . But recently, with the fall of this dominant paradigm, we see quite clearly now that this conception of rationality has many unacceptable implications. It implies that, first, science and society follow a linear and irreversible way of development. But in reality, it fails to recognize the fact that desired changes in a few indices do not necessarily lead to overall development of the society in question, and that growth rarely follows an irreversible, unilinear path. It implies also an overemphasis on the rupture of the modern society with traditional values and practices as a precondition to modernity. Tradition and cultural values are viewed as obstacles to growth and have to be removed. This tradition/modernity dichotomy leads to an erroneous assumption that there is only one way to modernity which too can be manifested in but one single model. In reality, new discoveries in science and technology must find support from the existing cultural tradition before they can take hold in the system. Finally, on the cognitive level, it implies a sort of domination of empirical data by theories. On the social level, it implies also a strategy of domination of the more developed over the less developed, and of the center over the periphery. To a certain degree, we could say that scientific rationality means domination. In contrast to the rationality of modern science, Confucianism is a system of reasonable ideas which refers ultimately to the totality of human existence and its realization as the horizon within which the meaning of human actions, and even that of natural phenomena, is to be determined. Instead of thinking of explaining natural phenomena by law-like theories and of my technical control over the world, Confucianism thinks in terms of our relation to others, to Nature and even to the transcendental. It thinks in the framework of the totality constituted of Humanity, Nature and Heaven. In the case of Classical Confucianism, as we have said, this system of ideas was constituted essentially of Jen, Yi and Li. Jen could be seen as the dynamic interconnectedness of one’s Self with others, with nature and even with Heaven, seen as the ground of the transcendental dimension of existence. It is the ultimate ground of cosmic harmony and the transcendental foundation of men’s ethical life. It is our subjectivity as well as our intersubjectivity to be manifested especially in and through our moral awareness. From Jen, the Confucians would derive Yi, which represents respect of, and the appropriate behaviors towards, others. From here emerge all moral norms, moral obligations, moral judgments, our consciousness of these obligations and even the virtue of acting always according to moral norms. From Yi, the Confucians would derive Li which represents code of behavior, religious and political ceremonies

and social institutions. Both Yi and Li represent the "ought to be" of human existence, whereas Jen represents the Being of beings, natural, divine and especially human. The rulegovernedness of human nature is not to be understood in light of natural laws, or to be reduced to them. On the contrary, it is to be understood in accordance with the to be and the ought to be of human beings as expressed in the conceptual framework of Jen, Yi and Li. Even the laws of nature have to be reinterpreted by, and reintegrated into, the dignity of human existence and its transcendental foundation. Arthur F. Wright seems to have grasped this reasonable system centered around the human agent when he says: Confucianism of all ages viewed the natural and human worlds as an organism made up of multitudinous interconnected parts. When any one of the parts fell from its place or was disrupted in its functioning, the harmony of the whole was impaired, Heaven . . . presided over this organic whole and was a force for harmony and balance. But man was the principle agent of both harmony and disharmony. Out of ignorance or perversity, men could cause serious disruptions; by the application of knowledge, wisdom, and discipline, men could restore harmony.29 Compared with the Western scientific rationality, the Confucian vision of reasonableness has the following implications: First, in place of the linear conception of progress presupposed by scientific rationality, Confucianism proposes a creative movement which cherishes the sedimentated traditional values while moving forward towards novelty. Confucianism does not presuppose a linear and eschatological concept of time. In the Confucian eyes, progress must not be an excuse for entering into the situation of dependence. On the contrary, it must be an authentically creative act based on the dynamism of each tradition. Second, in place of a radical rupture from the past, Confucianism cherishes the notion of continuity. In the Confucian eyes, "modernization" should not be understood in rupture with tradition. On the contrary, it is but a modern manner of interpreting traditional values and of forming a novel tradition according to the demand of modern times. Third, in place of the strategy of domination implicit in the scientific rationality, Confucianism proposes a strategy of harmonious coordination. Science and technology are not to be seen as instruments for domination over nature and society. They are but knowledge of, and technique for, coordinating human being and nature, individual and society. In view of the above, even if Confucianism did not produce any science of the modern Western type, it could have the following advantages in facing today the challenge of science and in overcoming its malicious presuppositions and ill effects. On the theoretical level, Confucianism emphasizes the priority of human subjectivity and intersubjectivity over logical and technological systems. In other words, according to Confucianism, the human being has to be master and not slave of science and technology. All development of the latter must be in the service of the unfolding and realization of human potentiality. Confucianism also accentuates the priority of the meaningfulness of human life over the rigor of mathematical and experimental structures. In short, it emphasizes the existentially meaningful, rather than the semantico-syntactic side of discourse. Finally, it stresses the priority of the human and social sciences over the natural sciences. Because human sciences concern mostly the ways through which human beings understand themselves in history, rather than the mathematical structure of natural laws in the case of natural sciences. They are characterized by human being’s historicity and therefore cannot get rid of traditional values. On the practical level, Confucianism would not favor modernity to the detriment of tradition. On the contrary, it would try to adapt to the demands of modern world on the basis of the dynamism and resources of the cultural tradition. All new developments in the domain of science and technology are to be conceived in a way to be absorbed into the cultural dynamism of each historical community. In short,

it prefers acculturation, rather than westernization. Finally, it would protest against any policy of domination, but will agree with any policy of harmonious coordination on both the national and on the international levels. CONCLUDING REMARKS: HOPING FOR A NEW SYNTHESIS Today these Confucian principles have already proved their effectiveness in promoting modernization on the societal and economic level. Herman Kahn affirms in World Economic Development -- 1979 and Beyond: In the Confucian hierarchic society, the emphasis is on cooperation among complementary elements, much as in the family (which is in fact the usual paradigm or model in a Confucian culture). The husband and wife work together and cooperate in raising the children; each has different assigned duties and responsibilities, as do the older and younger siblings and the grandparents. Synergism -complementarity and cooperation among parts of a whole -- are emphasized, not equality and interchangeability.30 As opposed to the earlier Protestant ethic, the modern Confucian ethic is superbly designed to create and foster loyalty, dedication, responsibility, and commitment and to intensify identification with the organization and one’s role in the organization. All this makes the economy and society operate much more smoothly than one whose principles of identification and association tend to lead to egalitarianism, to disunity, to confrontation, and excessive compensation or repression.31 The problem now is that mere economic development is not enough. There is no modernity without science. The concept of modernization is inextricably bound up with advancing modem science and technology. How could Confucianism, in mastering the creative tensions between theoria and praxis, logical structure and empirical data, the reasonable and the rational, produce novel development in science and technology worthy of its noble principles and create thereby a new cultural synthesis, this is still a task for those who are Confucian-minded in the days to come. But, on the other hand, when Western science is now more and more trapped in a menacing scientific rationality, Confucian emphasis on reasonableness, on the holistic relation of human beings to the Reality, can help us to redefine science’s place in human existence as well as man’s place in the cosmos. In this perspective, we need more a reasonable system of ideas such as the one offered by Confucianism, rather than the modern Western science. Also Confucianism can help humankind to think over the urgent problem of how to reintegrate science into the context of human existence. NOTES 1. Vincent Shen, Disenchantment of the World (Taipei: China Times Publishing Co., 1984), pp. 31-37. 2. Aristotle, Metaphysics, 982b, 12-22. 3. Georg Picht, "Der Sinn der Unterscheidung von Theorie und Praxis in der griechischen Philosophie," in Evangelishe Ethik (1964), pp. 321ff. 4. Aristotle, Metaphysics, 981b, 6-7. 5. Ibid., 982a 3-10, 20-23. 6. The Text of Yi Ching. Chinese original with English translation by Z.D.Sung (Shanghai, 1935), p. 334. 7. Benjamin Schwartz, The World of Thought in Ancient China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985), p. 99. 8. Lun Yu, XIV 24, my translation. 9. Joseph, Needham, Science and Civilization in China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), Vol. II, p. 12. 10. Lun Yu, VI 20, tr. Legge, modified by myself. 11. Ibid., XI, 11, tr. Legge, modified by myself. 12. Max Weber, The Religion of China, tr. by H. Gerth (New York: The Free Press, 1964), p. 155.

13. Lun Yu, VII, 17. 14. Ibid., VII, 24. 15. Ibid., VII, 20. 16. Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China, vol., pp. 26-29. 17. The Works of Hsun Tzu. Tr. Dubs (London: Probstain, 1928), p. 236. 18. Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China, vol. II, pp. 493-495. 19. Ibid., p. 458. 20. Benjamin Schwartz, The World of Thought in Ancient China, p. 89. 21. Lun Yu, XV 3. (tr. Waley). 22. Ibid., II 15. 23. Ibid., XV 30. 24. Ibid., XIII 3. 25. Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China, vol. II, p. 30. 26. Max Weber, The Religion of China, trans. by H. Gerth, pp. 150-151. 27. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. T. Parsons (New York: Charles Scribner’s Son, 1958), pp. 13-31. 28. Jurgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, vol. I, trans. T. McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984), pp. 145-153. 29. Arthur F. Wright, ed., Confucianism and Chinese Civilization (California: Stanford University Press, 1964), p. ix. 30. Herman Kahn, World Economic Development--1979 and Beyond (New York: Morrow Quill Paperbacks, 1979), pp. 121-122. 31. Ibid., p. 122. 1. The Broken World, a Four Act Play by Gabriel Marcel, trans. by K.R. Hanley (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1998). 2. "Concrete Approaches to the Ontological Mystery", in Gabriel Marcel (Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press, 1980), pp. 9-46. See also: Two Play, by Gabriel Marcel: "The Lantern" and "The Torch of Peace" plus From Comic Theater to Musical Creation, a Previously Unpublished Essay, ed. Katharine Rose Hanley (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1988). "The Dangerous Situation of Spiritual Values", in Home Viator, an Introduction to a Metaphysic of Hope (Glouster, MA: Peter Smith, 1978); Katharine Rose Hanley, Dramatic Approaches to Creative Fidelity: A Study in the Theater and Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel (1889-1973) (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1987), esp. ch. VII, "Colombyre or the Torch of Peace: The Role of Person-Communities in Living Creative Fidelity to Values", pp. 129-136. *** http://www.crvp.org/book/Series03/III-7a/chapter_x.htm CHAPTER X ON THE THEORY OF THE "ETHICAL CODE AND NATURE" IN WEI JIN METAPHYSICS LOU YULIE Inevitably every one lives in a web of social, economic, political and human relations and must be restricted by his or her profession, social status, law and morality. We are, therefore, social beings. On the other hand, everyone has his or her own character, independent spiritual world, and free will. Hence, we are also individual beings. Everyone has these two aspects which constitute contradictory rela-tions in reality. Societies demand that individuals be subordinated to the integral web of social relations, whereas individuals want to act according to their independent character and wills. Sometimes so-ciety and individuals in certain societies are unified, but in others they may strongly contradict each other. Such contradiction between so-ciety and individuals has been one of the most important problems with which Chinese and foreign philosophers and thinkers have been mainly concerned throughout history. One of the characteristics of Chinese philosophy is that it has paid special attention to society, human life, and ethics, and that it has developed many theses on the relations between societies and indivi-duals. SUBORDINATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL TO SOCIETY According to the classic Confucian idea, social beings were prior to

individual beings, and it was an unalterable principle that indi-viduals should be subordinated to societies. This however, had many forms. Confucians emphasized the duty or obligation of individuals to societies. They considered that everyone who had a definite position in a society certainly had a title suitable to his or her identity, and therefore should implement this duty or obligation to society on the basis of his or her own identity or title. If people did not carry out their appropriate duty or obligation according to their identity, they would destroy the normal social order, and bring about a confusion of society. On this ground, Confucians demonstrated that everyone had the possibility of cultivating his or her own morality and becoming a moral example, thus that everyone had a conscious obligation to mo-rality. Hence, they advocated that all should harmonize the relations between individual and societies on the basis of the conscious prin-ciple of morality (Confucians seldom talked about voluntary principle of morality). From a certain point of view, Confucianism also attached im-portance to individuals, but in the sense that everyone raise their own moral consciousness, and submit themselves to society. It is obvious that Confucian theory is reasonable in sustaining social integrity, but Confucianism went further to have individuals submit totally to social relations while neglecting the function of their individual free will. Legalists in the pre-Qin Dynasty also emphasized subordination of the individuals to society, but their theory and practice differed greatly from that of the Confucians. Where the Confucians advocated curbing self by moral consciousness in order to submit to society, the Legalists did not believe that men had such moral consciousness. Thinking that men had no moral sense at all, they argued that human nature was so extremely selfish that only severe laws could make people submit to integration into society. Thus, the Legalists went farther in rejecting individuality than the Confucians, and their theory was the main basis of the feudal monarchies. Daoists in pre-Qin Dynasty, especially Zhuang Zi, developed ideas contrary to both the Confucians and the Legalists. As they thought that the individual was prior to the social, they condemned the varied limits societies put upon individual persons and emphasized the importance of acting according to the natural instincts of the individual. When people are too concerned with their position and title, right and wrong, gains and losses, they lose their personal freedom. Hence law systems and moral norms constructed by societies in order to maintain varied kinds of human relations not only restrict individual persons, but are the main sources of social unrest. Daoism thought that Heaven and Earth should allow myriad things to grow according to their nature and not disturb or limit their growth and development; this is called the Dao of "acting naturally". Human societies should not only consider nature as their example, but also follow the Dao of acting naturally in not limiting and disturbing individuals’ actions, but allowing them to develop on the basis of their natural instincts. Lao Zi thought that if a society followed the Dao of acting naturally, people would regain their simple and honest dis-position and lead peaceful lives; in this way societies would become stable. However, since as a matter of fact it was impossible for indiv-iduals entirely to break away from the yoke of societies, they could not fully gain their personal freedom. Zhuang Zi held that he was able to solve this problem by adjustment of methods of recognition, that is to say, people were able to free themselves from dependence on society and the trammels it put upon them; in this way individuals could gain full freedom in their personal spiritual lives. Obviously the Daoist theory is reasonable in emphasizing personal free will, but it went to the other extreme by setting individuals totally against society and hoping to free them completely from social relations. The theory advocated by Confucians, which stressed that every-one’s social duty or obligation was determined by his status and title, has been called

the "ethical code". The Daoist theory, which main-tained that people’s action should conform to their personal nature, has been called "nature". The problem is whether there is any pos-sibility of harmonizing these two kinds of theories and transforming the relation between individuals and societies from one of tension or an-tithesis to one of harmony. The metaphysicians during the Wei Jin Dynasty inquired into this possibility. WEI JIN METAPHYSICS ON THE RELATION BETWEEN NATURE AND THE ETHICAL CODE The Confucian theory of the "ethical code" played an important part in social life during the Han Dynasties, especially the East Han Dynasty when it was the main standard for appraising competency and selecting qualified personnel. Later it resulted in abundant abuses at the end of Han Dynasty when the "ethical code" became a useful tool not only of the rulers to oppress people, but also for cunning persons to gain fame by deceiving the public. This destroyed the personal character of human beings and corroded social morality. In order to correct the social evils, Wei Jin Metaphysics praised highly the theory of "Nature" and affirmed the essential and rational character of the natural instincts of individuals. The metaphysicians thought that the "ethical code" was constructed on the basis of the natural instincts of human beings that is, that the "ethical code" originated or resulted from "Nature". "Nature" was the original substance; the "Ethical Code" was its manifested function. They sharply criticized the theory that rigidly adhered to the form of the "Ethical Code" but threw away the original substance to retain only the manifested function. The main failure here was the separation of the "Ethical Code" from the essence or basic spirit of human beings. If their natural instincts were truly understood, if the basic spirit of "Ethical Code" was truly grasped, the social norms of "Ethical Code" would be not in conflict but in tune with people’s natural instincts. Wang Bi (A.D.226-249), one of the main pioneers of Wei Jin Metaphysics, was a talented thinker who died quite young. He ad-vo-cated that "nothing was the origin" and the "sage could experience nothing", meaning that people should follow the natural instincts of humans and things. He thought that pleasure, anger, sorrow and joy were natural human instincts, but that the sages could not have such feelings. For example, even though Confucius already had a fairly good idea of Yan Hui’s moral character and talent, when Yan Hui came to him and wanted to learn from him he could not help but feel de-lighted, and was filled with deep sorrow when Yan Hui died at a young age. It can be seen from this example that it is impossible for people to get rid of natural human instincts. He pointed out that people’s moral actions were natural expressions of their nature: for example, natural love for parents was a kind of expression of filial piety. Social norms of morality (and rules) expressed varieties of natural feelings in human nature, while giving full expression to men’s natural instincts. Thus, what sages taught was also able to rouse people’s natural instincts. Hence, Wang Bi argued that natural human instincts were the original substance, while the "Ethical Code" was its manifested func-tion. But as people had almost always given up the original sub-stance and looked for the manifested function in social reality, they could not cling to "Nature’, but were anxious vainly to pursue external reputa-tions by following moral norms. As a result, a hypocritical mood pre-vailed throughout the country, which completely destroyed the moral order. As these phenomena ran counter to the real intention of morality, in order to eliminate them Wang Bi wanted to establish new social rules on the basis of folk customs. He suggested reviving in-nocent human nature to resist the hypocritical mood. In brief, Wang Bi thought that the "Ethical Code" should be controlled by "Nature", and that one should return to "Nature" on the basis of his theory of the "Ethical Code" originating from "Nature". In this way, he wanted to re-concile the differences between social ethical norms and the in-dividuals’ feelings and free will. Ji Kang (A.D.210-263) and Ruan Ji (A.D.223-262), represented another school of Wei Jin Metaphysics which further emphasized that "Nature" was the

original substance. They held that people should let natural instincts take their own course and be rid of the trammels from the "Ethical Code". If people had no intention of self-glorification, they would thoroughly break away from the yoke of an "Ethical Code" and their natural instincts would develop fully. Therefore, members of this school acted unconventionally and unrestrainedly, paying much attention to the expression of the true feelings of "Nature", and showing contempt for restrictions from the "Ethical Code". For example, it was said that Ruan Ji was very filial to his parents. While he was playing chess with his friend his mother passed away. The friend asked him to stop playing, but he insisted on seeing who was the stronger. When his friend Pei Kai came to express condolences on the death of his mother, he was sitting on the ground with hair in disarray and legs stretched out straight. His eyes were drunken and bleary, and fixed on his friend. Their thoughts and actions exerted great influence on the society, and soon became so prevailing a social custom that many celebrities tried to imitate Ji Kang’s and Ruan Ji’s self-will and dissoluteness. This went so far that it endangered ritual and law, which were rudimentary in maintaining social order. The spreading of this social mood was obviously inconsistent with the real intention of Wang Bi. It went to another extreme, and caused many people much anxiety. A famous metaphysician, Yue Guang, criticized the people who tried to please the public with claptrap and sought fame. He said that since there was no lack of place in "Ethical Code" to express the true feelings of "Nature", they did not have to be unruly and artificial. This meant that it was unreasonable to completely scorn the "Ethical Code" and that feelings that strayed from the norm of "Ethical Code" were bound to be unruly and fantastic. Here Yue Guang restated Wang Bi’s theory advocating that "Nature" was the original substance, and the "Ethical Code" its manifestation; both were necessary. Guo Xiang (about A.D.252-312), a famous thinker of Wei Jin Metaphysics, pushed the theory of the metaphysics to a new level by enriching and improving Wang Bi’s thought about the problem of the relations between Ethical Code and Nature. We have been told that on the relations between original substance and manifest function Wang Bi emphasized that the original substance commanded the manifest functions, that is to say that "Nature" commanded the Ethical Code, which then should return to "Nature". There was more or less a vestige of separating the original substance and the manifested function, nature and Ethical Code in Wang Bi’s thought. From this there could arise a tendency to get rid of the Ethical Code in order to allow Nature to express itself freely. Taking note of this problem Guo Xiang, who emphasized the identity of the original substance and the manifest function, held that the "Ethical Code" existed in men’s natural instincts and that the natural ex-pression of men’s instincts was sure to be in keeping with the "Ethical Code". Guo Xiang said that moral norms, such as "humanity and righteousness", were complete human nature; we should allow them to unfold and reveal themselves in life. He also held that it was un-necessary to think that "humanity and righteousness" were not human nature at all. To illustrate that "humanity and righteousness" existed in human instincts he noted that cattle did not refuse having holes to pierce through their noses, nor did horses refuse to wear harnesses. By these examples he suggested that the norms of the Ethical Code, which seemingly resorted to external forces to establish themselves, actually existed in men’s natural instincts. Therefore, to submit to the norms of Ethical Code, such as "humanity and righteousness", cer-tainly conformed to the natural instincts of human beings. He further noted that humans and things had different natures from birth, each with his or her own quality that neither could be got rid of nor changed, just as natively clever people and fools could not be changed. He argued that every human being or thing should be satis-fied with its own nature; demands which go beyond their nature not only throw a society into conflict, but also do

harm to themselves. If people or things, no matter how great the differences existing between them, were satisfied with the stipulations of their nature, what they achieved would be the same without any differences. Relations among men or things were no more than their acting according to their nature; there were no other kinds of relations than this. It was like a human body with a head at the top and feet below, the five internal organs within, and fur without: all the parts of the body tried their best to do their duty to construct the whole body. Beyond this one, there were special relations among them. Hence, Guo Xiang declared that men’s social strata were determined by their nature. If people were satisfied with their nature, the order of the Ethical Code naturally would be stable. In brief, Guo Xiang drew the conclusion that the "Ethical Code" was natural from the thought that "Ethical Code" should be in accord with "nature". Guo Xiang’s theory has been called the theory of the "Ethical Code and Nature". It integrated the external norms of social morality with internal human nature in such wise that the "Ethical Code" was a natural and rational form, and the "Nature" was satisfied to some extent. Wei Jin Metaphysics held that the Ethical Code originated from human nature and thereby provided a foundation for freely observing the norms of social morality. This was a supplement to classical Con-fucianism which had laid particular stress on moral consciousness, but neglected the theory of moral consciousness. Later the Song-Ming Confucians explained the "Ethical Code" as the Heavenly Principle and considered it to originate from human nature by the theory that "human nature was the Heavenly Principle". Obviously, the Song-Ming Confucians were influenced by Wei Jin Metaphysics. Tension between the individual and society will always exist, but its content and form will change as time goes on. So it is necessary for us continuously to seek new theories to harmonize this tension. The theory of "Ethical Code and Nature", as harmonizing relations between individuals and society, already has become a thing of the past, but it remains a useful reference in seeking new theories to harmonize the tension between individuals and society. Peking University Translated by Hu Jun *** http://www.crvp.org/book/Series03/III-1/chapter_xi.htm CHAPTER XI WESTERN AND CHINESE PHILOSOPHY ON MAN AND NATURE RICHARD T. DE GEORGE Western philosophy differs significantly from traditional Chinese Philosophy and Professor Chen Kuide's paper perceptively notes a number of the differences. Western philosophy, with its roots in both Greek philosophy and the Hebraic tradition developed a dualistic approach to reality, distinguishing man from nature, subject from object, mind from matter. The Hebraic-Christian tradition added the notion of transcendence, completing the ultimate separation--that of God from this creation. Chinese philosophy, by contrast, has from the start emphasized immanence and unity. Where Western dualism led to an opposition of man and nature, Chinese monism led to a harmony between the two. The Western division led to considering nature as an object and its study as science; whereas the study of the human subject or spirit led to logic, to epistemology, and to the study of human psychology and freedom. By contrast the Chinese emphasis on monism and harmony led to aesthetics more than to logic, to a search for deeper meanings rather than for falsification or verification of propositions. As a result Chinese philosophy has less tension in it then Western philosophy. Where the contrasts present in the West were a source of dynamism, the harmony of the Chinese view, the respect for tradition and the search for wisdom led historically to a more static worldview. These generalizations based on Professor Chen Kuide's paper are acute, plausible

and suggestive. His paper does more than just note them. He attempts to account for the differences and argues that a number of important contemporary philosophers and scientists find the insights of Chinese monism more compatible than Western dualism and transcendence with the theories to which they are being led by the internal logic of their research and thought. Suggestive though they be, Professor Chen Kuide's paper and his explanatory hypothesis are not convincing as they stand. To criticize them is to exemplify the concern with logical argument, analysis, and the truth and falsity of propositions that he correctly notes are typical of Western philosophy. Professor Chen Kuide traces Western philosophy back to its Greek and Hebraic roots. He explains the Greek contrast between man and nature, subject and object as resulting from Greek environmental conditions, and the Hebrew notion of transcendence as resulting from the difficulties of the Israelites. Although there may be some link between a country's physical environment and the thought developed there, any serious attempt to demonstrate that link must show how the thought comes from the environment. We cannot simply take what we know of Greek, Israeli, and Chinese environmental and historical conditions and claim that these determined what we know their thought to have been. Explanations require that the causal links be found and demonstrated. Nevertheless, suppose that together with Professor Chen Kuide we believe that conditions determine (in some sense of that term) the thought or world view of a society. A difficulty then arises in explaining why and how the Greek and Hebraic traditions were successfully transported out of Greece and Israel and why they were accepted and developed in Europe, Great Britain, and the New World. The many Western societies that are so greatly influenced by Greek and Hebraic thought are very different environmentally from the conditions of Greece and Israel. Agriculture was the backbone of Western Europe, just as it was the backbone of China. Why did the Greco-Hebraic tradition, rather than something like the Chinese view, take root and survive in these lands? It is clear that natural environmental conditions are insufficient by themselves to determine thought. It is also clear that origins are different from validity and the one is not sufficient to explain the other. If the environmental thesis were accurate, we would expect different philosophies to have developed originally in what is now France, Germany, Great Britain and America than that in Greece. Since Greek thought influenced and to some extent was adopted by the Romans, it must have had something to recommend it over the indigenous philosophical counterpart. Similarly, for Christianity to have triumphed in the Roman Empire requires more of an explanation than can be provided by environment and the hardships of the Israelites. Chinese thought may be traced to its original roots and the influence of tradition may there be used to explain later Chinese thought. Original roots might help explain later Greek thought in Greece. But it does not easily explain why Greek thought was adopted by the countries to which it was transported, where it was partially lost and then rediscovered. Moreover, Greece gave rise to both Plato's rationalism and to his pupil's, Aristotle's, empiricism. They do not share a similar view of the relation of man and nature although they grew from the same society, the same geographical environment. Both exerted a strong impact on Western thought. Why they dominated Western European thought arguably has to do with their comprehensiveness, logical consistency, coherence, and their power in making sense of human experience in comparison to the other available worldviews. Neither environmental nor historical conditions by themselves are adequate to explain either the specific views or their continuing power. If worldviews as a whole are not true or false, they are more or less adequate to experience, more or less fruitful. They can be and are evaluated, changed, discarded or exchanged for other views, as the history of Western thought demonstrates. The development and power of Christianity and of the Judeo-Christian traditions is also difficult to explain only in terms of environment and socio-cultural

conditions. The rapid rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire from the status of a slave religion to the religion of the Empire requires more than geographical and cultural causes. The Judeo-Christian notion of transcendence was joined to an ethic that had, and continues to have, strong human appeal, both logically and emotionally. Professor Chen Kuide's paper, as well as a common view of comparative East-West philosophy, presents a picture of a dynamic West and a static East. But the picture is not entirely accurate. China developed many inventions before the West. At least until the 16th Century China was more inventive than the West. If the traditions were the same in China for 2,500 years and in the West for 2,500 years, how do we explain the change as of 500 years ago when the West started to develop science and technology in a way China did not? There may be something in the claim that Western thought with its subject-object dichotomy lent itself more easily to the scientific study of nature than did the Chinese view of harmony with nature. But that is not even plausibly the whole story. The Chinese inventions discovered and borrowed by the West were made by Chinese who viewed man and nature in harmony. That harmony did not in itself preclude inventiveness and in some sense for a time fostered it. Why and how it did, and why it failed to continue to do so are questions that deserve investigation. But the historical facts indicate that the answer cannot be obtained by looking only at a society's view of the relation of nature and man. Western culture for many centuries did not produce as much in the way of inventions as did Chinese culture. Western Europe experienced "dark ages" that China did not. The rediscovery of Greek thought in the West in the late Middle Ages helped bring about the Renaissance and the rise of modern science, which the Greeks had not themselves developed. Clearly the story of the development of science is a complicated one and we should not place too much weight on oversimplifications. Professor Chen Kuide notes that advanced Western philosophers and scientists are learning from Chinese thought and that they quote Chinese monistic views favorably. What we are to make of this is not clear. If it is that Chinese monism is more favorable to the findings of contemporary science than Western philosophical views, it is puzzling why the Western rather than the Chinese views have led to the developments of contemporary science. There is, of course, a monistic line of thought in the West--the Greek atomists, Spinoza, the materialists of modern European philosophy from Hobbes to Marx. Did modern science in fact develop from Western monism rather than from Western dualism? Is the source of Western dynamism less monism or dualism than the tension between different views, e.g., between monism and dualism, idealism and materialism? What is the attraction of some contemporary philosophers and scientists to Chinese thought? These are questions that call for detailed examination and explanation. Whether in fact the best--whatever that may be--of both Eastern and Western thought can be combined is yet to be decided. If the claim that Western thought is built on dualism and transcendence is correct, are they compatible with Chinese monism and immanence? If the dynamism of the West is due to dualism (of many sorts) and transcendence, should they be given up? If monism and dualism, transcendence and immanence are opposites, then they cannot be held simultaneously. If Western dualism and transcendence are really at the base of Western scientific development, then the argument from the success of the West in developing science and technology is a reason for not giving up dualism and transcendence. If one places dualism and transcendence at the heart of Western thought and then claims them false or mistaken or misleading, one is forced to hold that error is more fruitful than truth or that misleading notions are better than correct ones--views that seem both to be implausible and to be contradicted by the advances of science. We are thus lead to reconsider the accuracy of the claim both that dualism and transcendence are at the heart of Western thought and that they are the reasons for the dynamism of the West, especially since the Renaissance. No doubt it helps to study nature if it is seen as an object, as Western science views it.

Transcendence, it might be argued, led to Western philosophers placing emphasis on subjectivity, spirit, and freedom. A combination of human freedom, of intellectual curiosity, logical thought, and an approach to nature as an object to be investigated are probably necessary to the development of science as we find it in the West. The rise of modern science went hand in hand with the rise of modern economics, which required a degree of political freedom. It is not clear that we can separate science from economics from politics. The development of science may well require not only a view of nature as object but also a degree of human freedom which requires a view of man as subject. The latter, in turn, has developed together with the notion of human beings as moral persons with human rights. Whether the pieces can be separated, whether science can develop without freedom, and intellectual freedom flourish without political freedom are empirical, as well as logical questions. Historically we find them together; logically we can distinguish them. Whether Western and Chinese views of nature and man can be combined, and if so how, are questions of both logic and experience. The introduction of Marxism into China, which might be seen as an attempt at integrating Western and Chinese thought, also poses a special puzzle. Marxism is thoroughly Western in its origin and in its original development. It had no Chinese roots, yet it has been widely adopted in China. Ironically, Marxism has long been criticized in the West for its inability to explain Asiatic development as clearly as Western development and for its Western bias. Marx studied primarily Western bourgeois capitalist society and its development. He saw industrialization and the development of productive forces necessary for the development of the post-capitalist phase, which he called socialism. Yet we find a version of Marxism strong in China, which is still heavily agricultural, while Marxism does not flourish in the Western industrial countries about which Marx wrote. This paradox raises the question of the compatibility of Marxism and traditional Chinese thought. Marxism claims to be monistic and lacks the notion of transcendence, yet it is Western and claims to be scientific. Its monism is not Chinese monism and it emphasizes contradiction as the heart of reality rather than harmony. Despite its claims to being scientific, the natural sciences arguably continue to develop more fruitfully in the West than in countries that have adopted Marxism as their ideology. All this implies that although Chen Kuide's paper is suggestive, it may be more fruitful to ask where it is incomplete, misleading, or incorrect than in simply agreeing with its undoubted insights. This is, in fact, an essential part of Western method. Popper has argued that in physical science we look for falsifications. The same is true in Western philosophy: we are clearer and surer about what is false than we are about what is true. A pragmatic stream of Western science and philosophy seeks for fruitfulness. In the approach to the relation of man and nature Western philosophers seek fruitfulness as well. Some Western thinkers are attracted by the traditional Chinese view of the harmony of man and nature. Whether it can be integrated fruitfully with Western views we can determine only by trying. So far the attempts have been few and the fruits minimal. In the East the attempt is to learn the science of the West while avoiding the many pitfalls of Western development. The practical Chinese adoption of Western science is further advanced than either the reconciliation of the Western scientific view with the traditional Chinese views of nature and man, or the intellectual task of attempting to combine the best of the Chinese and Western views. The hope of many is that the best of Chinese thought can be preserved and that it can assimilate Western science. The success so far is also minimal. Nonetheless there is reason to believe that both China and the West can learn from each other's traditions in rethinking a relation of man and nature that is appropriate and that will be fruitful for our respective societies. Such rethinking need not lead to identical views, unless one believes there is only one proper relation between man and nature. History provides a basis for arguing that

this is not the case. Although physical, social, and economic conditions are not the sole determining factors of thought, they undoubtedly exert an influence. The present growing interdependence and interconnection of East and West thus provide both the impetus and the general ambience for seeking new, fruitful, and mutually compatible views of the relation of man and nature. The growing interrelation of peoples demands a reconciliation of differing views as the interaction of one society with nature impacts on other societies, e.g., through failure to control the pollution it generates. Yet here, too, practice demands compatibility, not identity of views. Mutual learning is the ideal, rather than dominance by any view or forced conversion, both of which would lead to the loss of the best in each tradition. The intellectual task of combining the best of Chinese and Western thought on the relation of man and nature, is a task still to be done. It is clearly one worth attempting. University of Kansas Lawrence, Kansas, U.S.A. **** CHAPTER XII CULTURAL DIVERSITY AND A PATH TOWARD WISDOM: Perspectives of Gabriel Marcel K.R. HANLEY To appreciate storytelling as a way of communicating wisdom consider the stories about the Buddha and Mohammed and the parables of Jesus. Gabriel Marcel uses this approach as an introduction to philosophic reflection that can lead to wisdom. A Parable of Unity and Conflict In The Broken World,1 one of Gabriel Marcel’s strongest and most important plays, we encounter concretely a dramatic portrayal of our situation, namely, that of living in a broken world. Christiane evokes the following situation in Act I, Scene Four. We are fragmented and dispersed. We live superficially and try to lose ourselves in overworking, business, productivity, diversions. If asked who we are, or if we try to estimate our worth before others and even ourselves, we articulate our identity as a bundle of functions and roles. Yet in this we suffer a sense of metaphysical uneasiness. We have lost our center and feel alienated from ourselves, from others and from God. This impression of living in a broken world is perhaps even more vivid today than at the time Marcel wrote the play, i.e. 1932. In a philosophic reflection that accompanied the publication of The Broken World, "Position and Concrete Approaches to the Ontological Mystery",2 Marcel pointed out that we live in a world riddled with problems but devoid of mystery. We have become so fascinated with technical knowledge that we have let our sense of wonder atrophy. And while we can scientifically accomplish any task we set before ourselves, we no longer have the wisdom to know what projects are worth doing. We no longer know who we really are, nor do we know the value and purpose of life. Philosophic Reflection Marcel’s philosophic reflection in "On the Ontological Mystery", opened a path for rediscovering the perspectives of wisdom. He distinguished between problems that are exterior to us and to be solved scientifically, and mysteries that include us vitally. The latter are part of our being, and can only be experienced and clarified if we accept their presence and reflectively clarify them as they affect our being. Marcel affirms that while certain issues are adequately dealt with by problem solving approaches, some realities can be studied adequately only through reflection on mystery. For example, consider friendship: two persons meet and become friends. A problem approach takes into account economic, sociological and psychological factors and explains that these two individuals were in the same place at the same time, e.g. a health spa or a ski resort, because they come from the same socio-economic

bracket and share the same illness or philosophic or sporting interest. Still an encounter, a meeting that has left a deep and lasting trace upon my life, requires another type of reflective analysis that draws on my recollecting the experience and clarifying how it affects me in my subjectivity or personhood and what conditions were required for this to happen. An encounter, and then a friendship, develops through a dialogue of freedoms involving an appeal, a response and, if freely affirmed, a gratuitous gift to be with and for one another. It is specifically in this manner that an I-Thou relation is constituted. The first part of Marcel’s essay addresses the question: "Who am I?", which he asserts cannot be separated arbitrarily from its counterpart: "Is Being empty or full?" It reminds us that metaphysics is the logic of freedom. Varying attitudes and stances will produce different interpretations of the meaning of life and of human dignity, both individual and familial. So the attitude or mode of presence I freely adopt toward the world, will influence the response I evolve to the questions Who am I? Is Being empty or full? Presence to the world in an attitude of "having" leaves one dissatisfied and uneasy. What one "has" remains always exterior to oneself, so one is never fulfilled interiorly or deeply satisfied by mere "having". Moreover, one is always covetous and threatened because one’s possessions can be stolen or overshadowed by someone else’s even greater collection. One has no true sense of self worth because worth is defined only exteriorly and precariously on the basis of quantifiable and horizontally comparable possession of things, prestige or power. By contrast, through the authentic attitude of "being" one is open and available to unite with realities encountered. One who is capable of admiration can be enriched and uplifted by the presence of excellence wherever it occurs. An attitude of "being" lets one participate in the enriching gift of presence -- of objects, of persons and of the Transcendent. The second part of "The Ontological Mystery" establishes how each of us can illumine the mystery of who we are by reflectively clarifying our experience of being. As we saw earlier Marcel distinguishes between problem and mystery, and welcomes the presence of life-enhancing mysteries. Recollection enables one to gather within one’s reflective experience those things which are part of one’s life and which affect who one is. One can then discriminate what attitudes freely adopted allow one to participate in the life enhancing gift(s) offered by being. Recollection is an act whereby I gather myself and also that which is other and more than myself, yet this hold or grasp upon myself is also relaxation and abandon. Marcel’s own answer to the questions "Who am I?" and "Is being empty or full?" comes in terms of fulfilling encounters one can have in the regions of objects, persons, and Transcendence. One can find fulfillment by participating in the material world as an extension or enrichment of one’s embodied subjectivity. One finds fulfillment in the gratuitous gifts of loving communion with family and friends, the enrichment of one’s subjectivity by the uplifting and life enhancing presence of another in a communion of love. Ultimate fulfillment can be found in experiencing that grounding and personalizing force of a Transcendent Absolute Thou or Sacred Other. Only the most patient probative searching unearths this dimension of reality as a trans-subjective source radiating a light of wisdom inseparable from love. The third moment of his essay illumines who I am called to be if I strive authentically to fulfill my highest human possibilities as a person of hope. This means being available to, with and for others; it means welcoming life not as a series of events and objects to be possessed, but rather as a presence that reveals itself and invites me to become myself as gift. My response must be one of creative fidelity to an abiding, yet ever freshly renewed call, revealed to me through others. It is in such personalist terms that Marcel clarifies what it means to be in a free and authentic manner. In a comedy, Colombyre or the Torch of Peace, Marcel portrays a peace commune gathered in the high Swiss alps in the summer of 1937. The pretention was to be a

refuge of peace, yet there was so much selfishness and chauvinism that the socalled haven of peace became a hotbed of war. In the end the chalet explodes and the experiment fails utterly. The play is a farcical satire, but it portrays the erroneous attitudes that doom the project from its outset. It raises the question of whether people of different nationalities, religions and cultures can ever live together in peace and harmony. Discovering Human Meaning Marcel addressed those questions in an essay, "The Dangerous Situation of Ethical Values", stating that what is at stake is the survival of human life itself. Each of us is in danger of death because we are separated from other members of the human family; we are in danger of death also because we are uprooted from the natural foundations of wisdom and virtue. If values are to survive it must be in the context of a community, a human family. With his friend, Max Scheler, he remarked poignantly that values are not mere concepts. they are real when carried on the backs of human actions. They then become the life-enhancing qualities of human relations. Whereas the play characterizes attitudes that undermine and destroy community, philosophic reflection critically clarifies issues to be resolved and the requisite attitudes in order for any life with dignity to survive. First, can we do anything to preserve and communicate values? He recognizes that it is divisive to separate those who believe in values and those who do not. He is aware that cooperating with groups that have different philosophies and purposes -- some selfish and limited, others focused on the sacred dignity of persons -entails a danger of being compromised and exploited. Yet a failure to cooperate, i.e. not to promote values concretely and in cooperation with others, is to abandon the values we profess to cherish. How can values be communicated and shared? To pretend that our knowledge should inform the ignorant, or to pretend that from our wealth we will remedy the other’s poverty, are erroneous and harmful approaches. Attitudes of the haves dealing with the have-nots only incite anti-religious resentment. Besides, faith, spirituality or values are not something we "have", they are genuine only on the condition these gifts radiate through us as grace. We cannot provide for the survival and growth of values by instructing the ignorant, by doles to the "have-nots". Marcel suggests rather that we address the other person with deep respect and a love of his or her sacred uniqueness. Marcel goes so far as to say that we address that unique act of adoration which is owed to the divine reality to the particle of the divine that is this other person. In this manner one does not pretend to instruct or give to another; one merely awakens the other’s awareness of his or her divine filiation. This approach Marcel calls a kind of maieutic in that it brings to birth the other’s sense of their sacred dignity and worth. With this model of how values may survive and grow, we can imagine a different development of the story of the international colony at Colombyre. Each one of us seeks, or at least needs to strengthen our grasp and deepen our rootedness in values. When others invite me to reflect on the values I cherish, and encourage me to share the ways in which these values are expressed in the particular cultural rituals or traditions with which I am familiar, I deepen and enrich my celebration of these values. As I recollect my values and my culture’s way of observing them, that in turn encourages and enables others reflectively to clarify their own experience of values and the cultural traditions they use to communicate them. As we encourage one another to come more fully in touch with our true selves, and the values we personally love and want to live for, we can help one another to find new and fresh ways of incorporating our values and traditions into the changing circumstances of our lives. Marcel calls this effort to find fresh ways to carry forward our revered and cherished values creative fidelity. For example, the growth in popularity of the martial arts T’ai Chi ch’uan, Aikido, Tae Kwon Do, and Karate, has done to lead new generations of young people into a disciplined, meditative and noble spiritual way of life. For example, the recent

concern for physical fitness has done much to revive the ancient art of T’ai Chi Ch’un, introducing many to its graceful philosophy of life. Many Western young people have been drawn to the meditative techniques and the ways of wisdom of Zen, Buddhism, and Yoga. Children from ghettos and suburbs find discipline and dignity through such programs. Some of the traditions of Islam also have brought a renewal of respect for woman and family to many in the United States through Black Islam. Marcel saw hope for the survival and growth of values as many small group communities emerge with humble beginnings and modest goals. The one-to-one relations of members of these communities are characterized by a spirit of light and love which comes to them from above. The spirit animating their community extends beyond their members and shines through their use of natural resources and of the physical things they own. Without the development of such small groups striving in creative fidelity to preserve and promote the spiritual values they cherish, the masses will fall into infra-human levels of behavior precipitating an apocalyptic destruction whose terrible first symptoms we are now witnessing. The key to the survival of values lies in the quality of interpersonal relations that characterize a community, viz., an attitude and regard of love, a profound respect that quickens the other’s sense of his or her own sacred dignity and worth. Social transformation and/or cultural tradition always require personal conversion, an encounter with truth as a personal presence. One’s personal witness and interpersonal testimony is a requisite occasion for another’s personal discovery of, or growth in, wisdom. Individuals experience this when they are inclined to go beyond scientific knowledge of techniques to open onto the mysterious dimensions of life which can be enlightened by wisdom’s compassion and love. In turn, however, any introduction to wisdom’s truth as a personal presence must always be mediated by the witness or testimony of a loving mentor, teacher, friend or family member. NOTES 1. The Broken World, a Four Act Play by Gabriel Marcel, trans. by K.R. Hanley (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1998). 2. "Concrete Approaches to the Ontological Mystery", in Gabriel Marcel (Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press, 1980), pp. 9-46. See also: Two Play, by Gabriel Marcel: "The Lantern" and "The Torch of Peace" plus From Comic Theater to Musical Creation, a Previously Unpublished Essay, ed. Katharine Rose Hanley (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1988). "The Dangerous Situation of Spiritual Values", in Home Viator, an Introduction to a Metaphysic of Hope (Glouster, MA: Peter Smith, 1978); Katharine Rose Hanley, Dramatic Approaches to Creative Fidelity: A Study in the Theater and Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel (1889-1973) (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1987), esp. ch. VII, "Colombyre or the Torch of Peace: The Role of Person-Communities in Living Creative Fidelity to Values", pp. 129-136. **** http://www.crvp.org/book/Series03/III-7/chapter_xiii.htm CHAPTER XIII TEACHING VALUES IN THE NATURAL AND PHYSICAL SCIENCES IN THE PHILIPPINE SERAFIN D. TALISAYON This paper is based on three assumptions: First, the values that must be taught in schools are (1) those specified in the Constitution and (2) those indigenous Filipino values in harmony with the first. We shall call or define them as socially-desirable values. Second, science and technology are not value free. Third, in case of conflict, the values inherent in science and technology must be subordinated to those values we deem socially desirable. "We" refers to us Filipinos. However in case of conflict in facts or empirically testable statements, the methods of science must prevail. SOCIALLY-DESIRABLE VALUES

The 1987 Constitution is a formal document embodying social values deemed desirable for the nation. It has been claimed that the Philippine Constitution is the only constitution in the world which mentions the two words `God' and `love'. The Preamble states: We, the sovereign Filipino people, imploring the aid of Almighty God, in order to build a just and humane society and establish a Government that shall embody our ideals and aspirations, promote the common good, conserve and develop our patrimony, and secure to ourselves and our posterity the blessings of independence and democracy under the rule of law and the regime of truth, justice, freedom, love, equality, and peace, do ordain and promulgate this Constitution. This is consistent with the "maka-Diyos" and "maka-tao" elements of some indigenous Filipino millenarian movements which were adopted into the Filipino ideology during the previous regime. Article XIV, Section 3 echoes the importance of ethical and spiritual values, good moral character and personal discipline. Other values in the 1987 Constitution are: (1) national self-reliance and an independent foreign policy (Article II, Sections 7 and 19; Article XII, Section 12); (2) recognition of the role of women (Article II, Section 14; Article XIII, Section 14) and the rights of the indigenous cultural communities (Article II, Section 22; Article X, Section 15); (3) free enterprise (Article II, Section 20); (4) ecological balance (Article II, Section 16); (5) negative values are placed on war, nuclear weapons, military supremacy, degrading and inhuman punishment, political dynasties, graft and corruption, monopolies and social inequities (Article II, Sections 2, 3, 8, 26 and 27; Article III, Section 19; Article XI; Article XII, Section 19; Article XIII); (6) democratic values, and human values in the Bill of Rights, social justice (Article XIII); (7) patriotism and nationalism, love and humanity, respect for human rights, appreciation of the role of national heroes (Article XIV, Section 3.2); and (8) critical and creative thinking, invention and innovation, scientific and technological self-reliance, and vocational efficiency (Article XIV, Section 3.2 and Section 10). From the way the 1987 Constitution underscores science and technology, it may be gathered that the implicit aim is not science and technology itself, but its role in serving such national goals as self-reliance and development. FILIPINO VALUES There have been numerous studies on Filipino values, ranging from scientific surveys and tests to essays of personal opinions and anecdotes (Church 1986). The most accurate indicator of social values is spontaneous mass behavior. In this regard, perhaps the best example of mass spontaneous behavior is the People Power Revolution of February, 1986. This action on a rare scale of magnitude could only reflect the common denominators in the traits of its millions of participants. It spawned a number of descriptions of the Filipino character. One writer (Hornedo 1988) summarized his observations of this social phenomenon as follows: The authentic and truly classic EDSA people power was therefore: (1) popular and cutting across socio-economic lines; spontaneous and therefore unstructured, (2) joyful and humanitarian, (3) religious in temperament and persuasion, (4) pacifist and conciliatory, (5) non-confrontational as the third party go-between or namamagitan of traditional Filipino society and culture, and by this fact (6) rooted in the Filipino national consciousness and soul . . . (it was also) (7) pro-freedom. Nationwide surveys conducted by the Bishops-Businessmen Conference and the Ateneo Social Weather Station suggest the following elements of the Filipino character and value system: pessimism concerning the present but optimism concerning the future, care and concern for others, hospitality and friendship, respect, religiosity and fear of God, respect for women, a pro-American attitude, and a dislike for cheats and thieves.

After reviewing the literature on Filipino values, I have proposed a schema (Diagram 1) for visualizing the clustering, linkages, and internal coherence among these values (Talisayon, S. 1988). The core values found are also those studied by the leading researchers in this field: family solidarity and economic security (Bulatao 1973), personalism and small-group orientation (Jocano), smooth interpersonal relations (S.I.R. of Lynch 1973), "loob" (Mercado 1974), "pakikiramdam" and "pakikipagkapwatao" (Enriquez 1977). Five macroclusters were identified in their order of strength: the relationship cluster, social cluster, livelihood cluster, inwardness cluster, and optimism cluster. TEACHING VALUES THROUGH SCIENCE The importance of science and technology, and the teaching of both, are recognized by the Constitution. The operative question before us is this: how do we teach the natural and physical sciences so as to develop in students socially-desirable values? Note that the issue we are addressing here is not "how to teach science" but "how to teach values through science". The teaching of science can be viewed as an end in itself, but for the purposes of this Seminar, we are viewing it as a means to social ends. Values enter into the teaching of science in three ways: (1) values inherent in the subject matter or content of science and technology, (2) values developed in learning the processes and methods of science, and (3) values related to the benefit or harm generated by the application of science and technology. Values Inherent in Science Values in this category are few. The reason is that science and technology provide man with excellent answers to questions of means, but often they cannot provide him with satisfactory answers to questions of ends. Science can tell man how to make fire or start a nuclear reaction. But it is not science that can tell him whether to use the fire to cook his food or burn his neighbor's house, and whether to use atomic energy to power industry or to destroy millions of people. Scientists limit themselves to what they, using present means, can observe with their known senses. As a result science and technology conduces to values that tend to be focused on the material, sensate world. The scientific method, as now understood and taught, is conducive to logical positivist, quantitative, and basically impersonal ways of thinking. In this sense science itself as we know it today is not value free. If not disciplined to serve man and his nobler purposes, science and technology have the capacity to insinuate these materialist values despite the avowed objectivity of science and its methods. This can be dangerous because, if we examine the Filipino value system, its merits and strengths appear to be almost polar opposites to the values inherent in science and its present methods, to wit: VALUES INHERENT FILIPINO IN SCIENCE VALUES Sensate (attention to ------> <------ loob complex or external environment) interiority; `pakiramdam' matter orientation ------> <------ spiritual orientation impersonal ------> <------ personalism attention to ------> <------ attention to physical phenomena social phenomena If Filipino teachers of science and technology are not aware and careful, their very success may be equivalent to the elimination of core values in our culture and their replacement with those Western values tending to materialism, sensate orientation, and impersonality. This is particularly true in the teaching of the physical sciences such as physics, chemistry and geology. The success of eliminating superstitions and erroneous beliefs may, unless guarded against, be sadly accompanied by the loss of socially desirable values. Awareness on the part of the teacher is a necessary antidote because admittedly science teaching is a form of enculturation.

Fortunately, there are branches of study in the natural sciences which, if properly handled, can avoid this outcome and even achieve desirable reinforcement of socially desirable values. Ecology is one of them. I say "properly handled" because teaching values always involves intelligent selection by the teacher of the value to be taught. In terms of inherent value content, ecology is perhaps the richest among the natural sciences. Ecology is the exception to the rule that science and technology provide man with answers largely to questions of means and not of ends. Although the teacher will exercise some judgement in selecting which social values to emphasize on the basis of ecological facts and principles, the job of teaching socially-desirable values is easy while teaching ecology. Some examples are the following: 1. Interrelatedness of nature, that what happens in a part of the web of nature ultimately affects every other part, thereby leading to 2. Systemic and holistic thinking; 3. Man is part of nature, that hurting the natural ecosystem will eventually hurt man, and that man is a part of the cycles of nature; thereby leading to 4. Respect for, or responsibility towards, nature; and the reality that this responsibility, to be effective, must be socially shared rather than pursued by only a few individuals in a society; that the more valid attitude towards nature is harmony and balance, rather than conquest; 5. Diversity of species leads to stability; monocultures lead to vulnerability; 6. Global and internationalist values from the biophysical ecological web that ties every man to every other man; and from the common threat to mankind posed by harming the biosphere (greenhouse effect from carbon dioxide and deforestation, thinning of ozone from use of flourohydrocarbons, nuclear winter from global nuclear war, irretrievable loss of species, etc.); 7. Conservation, from the physical limits placed by non-renewable and slowlyrenewable natural resources. Consequently, there is a school of thought that a moral system can be derived from ecology, or biology in general. In other words, science by itself can be used to derive a bioethics. However, science alone cannot be the basis even for a bioethics because certain biological principles and applications have either an ambiguous, controversial, or perhaps even socially undesirable implications. Examples are competition and survival of the fittest, population control, surrogate motherhood, vegetarianism, artificial insemination, and eugenics. Certain topics of science must be treated with care when taught to certain cultural communities. For example, using pigs and dogs as textbook examples or laboratory subjects is abhorrent to Muslim students. Scientific study of the moon may also present some problems. Certain forms of birth control are unacceptable to conservative Catholics. According to our definition, as long as there is no clear consensus among most Filipinos on a particular value, we cannot claim that value to be socially-desirable. Geography is a branch of science where the linkages between natural and social phenomena are delineated. When applied to the study of Philippine geography, values can be taught thereby, such as appreciation of other ethnic and cultural groups, understanding of certain regional idiosyncrasies, and pride in the natural endowments and unique assets of the nation. Unfortunately geography is no longer taught as a separate course in the primary and secondary levels. In the physical sciences, certain principles may be construed to have value implications, although their conformity with our Filipino definition of sociallydesirable values is either an open issue or subject to question. Some physicists have waxed philosophical and written metaphysical discourses after contemplating these principles: 1. Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle: the process of observation inevitably disturbs that which is being observed; 2. Quantum mechanics: nature behaves in a probabilistic fashion; 3. Theory of Relativity: matter and energy are equivalent; time intervals and

distances depend on the velocity of the observer; the universe is curved and thus it is boundless but limited; and 4. Mathematics underlies the physical behavior of the universe. Values from Learning Scientific Processes The scientific method demands personal discipline; science itself is a form of personal discipline. It may not be explicitly taught as such, but nevertheless effects the student. Certain values and personality traits can be taught through the practice of the scientific method. Values derivable from learning scientific methods and processes offer a wider field of action to the science teacher. The pursuit of the scientific method carries certain rather difficult attitudinal and behavioral demands on the researcher, among them: 1. Honesty and accuracy in recording and reporting observations; avoiding shortcuts that compromise honesty and accuracy; 2. Ability to suspend judgement whenever warranted; the ability to prevent one's personal preferences from affecting observations and results; 3. Willingness to admit error and to change views when confronted with data to the contrary; 4. Giving credit to another author for using his idea; or never claiming somebody else's idea as his own; 5. Resourcefulness and creativity in formulating a problem, developing a new method or theory, or finding new applications; 6. Persistence and patience while preparing and waiting to produce results; 7. Sensitivity to social needs in selecting a research topic and in testing applications of a principle; 8. A sense of appropriateness and proportion in matching research technique to research problem, deciding the level of precision, or seeking a trade-off between scope and cost; and 9. Skepticism unless sufficient and relevant data supports a hypothesis. In ancient Japan, an iemoto is a traditional school where students place themselves under the tutelage of a Master in a skill specific to the school. The skill may be flower arrangement, the tea ceremony, kendo (a form of swordsmanship), koto (a guitar-like instrument) playing, calligraphy, or some handicraft. In an iemoto, the values pursued are practice and learning, obedience to the Master, loyalty to the school, and of course, perfection in the skill according to the specific tradition of the iemoto. In this setting, learning embraces more than content and process. It includes a third and most important consideration: internal discipline. In the West, sportsmen and athletes are beginning to discover--while aiming to run the fastest, jump the highest, or play ball best--the extent to which perfection is greatly influenced by the state of mind. It is quite conceivable for an athlete to train and perform, not only to win, but to achieve internal discipline and to develop one's character. A similar viewpoint could be held as far as learning the scientific method is concerned. Using and teaching science and its methods as a personal discipline, over and above the usual considerations of content and process, is a rather Asian way of viewing science. After all, the separation between the scientific method and the scientist is only an artifice and it may serve both better if the scientist admits and manages the intimate linkage between the two. This proposal could be more feasible among more mature graduate students, especially in the social and behavioral sciences. In graduate school, there is a close relationship between the graduate adviser and the graduate student which can be handled from the triple criteria of content, process, and internal discipline. A value mentioned in several places in the 1987 Constitution is creativity, and the related values of innovation, invention, and technological self-reliance. From a review of the Constitution, the members of the Constitutional Commission appear to have decided to emphasize scientific creativity and technological innovation and invention, knowing that they contribute to national self-reliance.

Unfortunately, creativity as an educational objective and process is among the least understood and attended to elements in our school system. The great majority of the subjects taught in our school system train children to understand, remember, and apply rules in order to obtain the single correct answer--in short, they are trained largely in convergent thinking. Learning in school is a continuous process of eroding and narrowing a child's conception of what things are possible. As a result, creativity and open-mindedness appear to vary inversely with age. According to John Nuveen, "You can judge your age by the amount of pain you feel when you come in contact with a new idea." Divergent thinking is a component of creativity, and is called into action when the mind is confronted with a problem which can have many possible solutions. It comes into the picture at two points in the scientific research process: at the beginning and at the end. Divergent thinking is required in defining a research problem, including formulating the hypotheses. Divergent thinking is again required in seeking useful applications of the findings or conclusions. In between, convergent thinking is, of course, required if the classical scientific method is to be correctly followed. If we are to encourage more children to be creative, and if we are to aim to develop more Filipino innovators and inventors, programmatic efforts must be made to develop scientific creativity and inventiveness. Related closely to creativity and inventiveness is entrepreneurship. Science and mathematics can be taught to secondary students in such a manner as to teach also creativity and entrepreneurship. (Talisayon, S. 1986). Values Related to Consequences of Technology This third avenue for teaching values offers rich possibilities. Values that motivate the use of technology. The beneficial and harmful consequences of producing and using technology can be dramatic, such as putting men on the moon, destroying two Japanese cities, transplanting a human heart, storing an encyclopedia inside a desktop computer, mercury pollution, and commercial travel at speeds exceeding that of sound. The credit or blame, of course, cannot be placed on technology, but on the motives and values behind the producers and users of technology. Technology merely amplifies the power of man for good or for evil. Hence, teaching the consequences of technology can be an indirect, but effective way of highlighting the consequences of those motives and values behind the user of technology. This avenue is indirect because it does not teach values, but teaches about values and their consequences. A powerful social value which can be taught is the proper use of technology to alleviate poverty and pain. The process of teaching certain technologies can be so planned as to convey and reinforce this socially, desirable value, in addition to the primary aim of teaching the technology itself. This approach can be employed in teaching the following technology courses: appropriate technologies for rural applications, medical technologies, livelihood skills and technologies, medicinal plants, and food processing. A related value implicit in the Constitution and very relevant to Philippine conditions is that technology must be made maximally relevant to the improvement of livelihood. The concern to link the teaching of science, technology and vocational skills to gaining a livelihood is old and well-recognized. What remains is the issue of how best to make this linkage more direct and efficient. The following are some suggestions, some of which have been tried: 1. To the extent feasible, select and design lessons and school projects so that outputs are marketable and use income from sales as the basis for grading; 2. Make use of successful skilled workers, craftsmen, and entrepreneurs in the locality as resource persons; 3. If accessible to the school, arrange to visit and talk with a successful Filipino inventor and make a tour of his workshop; 4. Conduct a practicum on vocational subjects taught through short-term secondment of a student to a local factory, cottage industry, store, shop or farm; 5. Develop or adapt curriculum materials from agencies dealing with livelihood-

oriented technology transfer such as the Technology Resource Center, Nonconventional Technology Resources, Department of the Bureau of Energy Development, UP Los Baños for agricultural technologies and UP Visayas for fisheries and marine technologies, Department of Science and Technology and its regional offices, Livelihood Corporation, Bureau of Animal Industry, Bureau of Plant Industry, NACIDA, etc. Values resulting from the use of technology. By itself, technology can shape values. It can affect our value system by making certain choices easier. For example, the invention of contraceptives makes sexual promiscuity safer. Toothpaste and mouthwash make bad breath a social offense. Ladies make-up, orthodontal braces, and nose lifting influence our conceptions of beauty. The pocket watch and wristwatch can impose personal discipline, but also can kill spontaneity. The automobile can make people lazy. It can also spawn entire lifestyles in the same way that the automobile shaped the American way of life: drive-in movies and drive-in churches, interstate highways, parking meters and parking tickets, mobile homes, trailers, hitch-hiking, and so on--all in the name of "service to mankind". This phenomenon, where technology results in unanticipated or unplanned cultural changes and in rearrangements of social relations, is very common. Hence, how technology itself can shape values should also be taught. However, this requires cross-disciplinary expertise on the part of the teacher, which is rare, or else a multi-disciplinary team of teachers, which is expensive. The solution is often an inter-departmental program at the tertiary level. Academic programs relating science and technology to society thus have become popular in university campuses since it started in the United States and Europe. The utility of such programs can be extended to the secondary level by developing enrichment materials or by their incorporation into integrated science courses or social science courses. Again, this avenue does not teach values directly, but teaches about values resulting from technology. Teaching about values is inferior to teaching values because the former can get bogged down in the conceptual level without reaching the affective and behavioral levels. It is appropriate to university-level students and to more mature students at the secondary level. It can be recommended above all for college and graduate students majoring in education. Community-based teaching of science. A third avenue for teaching values is through the "community-based" teaching of science. The U.P. Institute for Science and Mathematics Education has been experimenting for some time now with the "community-based" teaching of biology, chemistry, and physics (Talisayon, S. 1986). In this approach, the starting point is not a science principle or lesson, but the community and its needs. The essence of the approach is two-fold: (1) the selection, design and implementation of lessons most relevant to the needs and conditions of the community where the student lives, and (2) the use of community resources and expertise in the teaching-learning process. Technology is heavily culture-bound. The effectiveness of technology generally changes when it is transferred from a source culture to a recipient culture. Thus a modern digital wristwatch is very useful or even essential in an urban setting like Metro Manila for keeping track of time appointments in that fast-paced, highly organized and formalized working environment. But when the user visits remote rural areas the same device becomes useless for there are no precise schedules to keep, any appointment is treated flexibly, and there is no pressing need to know the exact time. Transported into a rural environment, the utility of this technology is drastically reduced. A microcomputer in the hands of upland forest dwellers is not technology at all, but becomes a piece of junk. Transported into a frontier environment, the utility of this technology becomes zero. We can see clearly that technology is such because it is useful to the user. This should be true also of educational technology, including transfers from urban

to rural and frontier cultures in the same country, especially a multi-ethnic country like the Philippines. What is useful to a Japanese pupil in a Tokyo school may not be useful to a Bilaan pupil in a mountain school in Cotabato. Not all experiments and laboratory equipment prescribed in textbooks developed in Metro Manila have equal relevance and meaning in the context of a rural or frontier community. This approach places societal needs before technology, and consciously reverses the usual process in which technology modifies society--which is precisely the philosophy behind the "appropriate technology" movement. It places technology where it should be all along--as servant to man. Local resources and expertise are usually available in a rural community for science teaching. For example, physics concepts can be usefully and meaningfully learned by visiting a local baker, an auto mechanic, or a radio-TV repair shop. The practical experiences and techniques employed by these people are largely unrecognized resources for teaching science and technology. Even self-made technicians in small vulcanizing shops can be assets to a creative and wellprepared teacher. There is nothing `high brow' about technology. CONCLUDING SUMMARY The science teacher must recognize that science teaching is an enculturation process. Values are learned in the process. Values can therefore be taught through science teaching. Some guidelines that may be adopted in planning this process follow: (1) Scientific principles in geography, physics, and especially ecology provide bases for teaching many desirable social values. (2) The scientific method can also be viewed as a basis for teaching many desirable personal disciplines. (3) A trait recognized as desirable in the 1987 Constitution is creativity and inventiveness. The teaching of creativity in connection with teaching science and technology may have to be given more emphasis than it is receiving at present. (4) Teaching the consequences of the use or misuse of science and technology is a fertile avenue for teaching values. Seeking beneficial applications in alleviating poverty and pain, in improving livelihoods, and in developing communities are processes which can be used to develop positive values about the use of technology. So-called "community-based" teaching of science and technology is a useful method for teaching socially-desirable values. (5) Educational technology, like technology in general, is culture-bound. Therefore, the teacher needs to exercise care in adopting educational technologies from cultural contexts alien to that of the students. University of the Philippines Manila REFERENCES Church, A.T. Filipino Personality: A Review of Research and Writings. (Monograph Series No. 6.) De La Salle University Press, 1986. Bulatao, Jaime. "The Manileños' Mainsprings", in Frank Lynch, and Alfonso de Guzman II, eds., Four Readings on Philippine Values. Fourth edition revised. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1973. Enriquez, Virgilio G. Filipino Philosophy in the Third World. Quezon City: Philippine Psychology Research House, 1977. Hornedo, Florentino. "People Power As The Traditional Filipino Go Between," in Pantas: A Journal for Higher Education. Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1987, Ateneo de Manila University. Lynch, Frank and Alfonso de Guzman II, eds. Four Reading on Philippine Values. Fourth edition, revised. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1973. Mercado, Leonardo N. Elements of Filipino Philosophy. Tacloban City: Divine Word University Publications, 1974. Talisayon, Serafin. "Decomposition of `Entrepreneurial Skills' into Unit Skills". U.P. Institute for Science and Mathematics Education Development, January 1986. "Filipino Values: A Determinant of Philippine Future". Paper submitted to the Economic Development Foundation, December, 1988.

Talisayon, Vivien, Joel Koren, and Bal Krishna. Teacher-Training Material on Using Community Resources in Teaching Physics. UNESCO Regional Workshop on the Training of Physics Teachers. Quezon City, Philippines, 18-28 November, 1986. **** http://www.crvp.org/book/Series03/III-10/chapter_xiv.htm CHAPTER XIV THE CONFUCIAN JEN, A CRITICAL HERMENEUTICS MANUEL B. DY JR. Jen is a central concept in Confucian philosophy. Its philosophy of the person is built on the man of jen; "Humanity (jen) is the distinguishing characteristic of man. . . ."1 It is also the principal virtue of Confucian ethics,2 and the ethos of its social philosophy and metaphysics. No doubt, Confucianism would not be what it purports to be without jen. The aim of this paper is to subject Confucian jen to a critical hermeneutics as understood by Jürgen Habermas and inspired by his debate with Hans Georg Gadamer. The basis for such an ap-plication is the similarity of Habermas’s emphasis on the link of knowledge and human interests with the Confucian unity of know-ledge and action. A parallelism can also be noted between Ha-bermas’s three processes of symbolic reproduction of the human species: cultural transmission, social integration, and socialization, and Confucius’s three goals of life and thought: to transmit the Chou culture, to reform society, and to educate the people. JEN AND ITS EVOLUTION3 The richness of the notion of jen is manifest in the diversity of its translations. It has been translated as benevolence, com-passion, magnanimity, goodness, love, human-heartedness, hu-maneness, humanity, true manhood, manhood at its best, kind-ness, charity, perfect virtue, and man-to-manness.4 The character jen is a composite of two characters: jen meaning "man", and erh meaning "two". Thus, jen has come to mean the virtue or principle governing the relationship of man and fellowman. Confucius: Jen as Responsibility to Self and Others Confucius is reputed to be the first to make jen a general virtue, whereas before him jen was simply a particular virtue, the kindness of a ruler to his people. When asked by his disciple Fan Chih for the meaning of jen, Confucius replied, "It is to love men."5 And this love extends to all, though more intimately with men of jen.6 As a general virtue, jen is the principal virtue that unites all others.7 It is "to master oneself and return to propriety";8 so without jen, propriety does not make sense.9 If jen is to love man, wisdom is "to know man".10 "The man of wisdom cultivates jen for its advantage."11 As the central virtue, jen frees man from evil,12 and is above everything else,13 even one’s life.14 Confucius describes the man of jen in many ways. He can endure prosperity and adversity for long;15 he is "strong, resolute, simple, and slow to speak;"16 he is earnest, liberal, truthful, diligent and resolute;17 he studies extensively, is steadfast in his purpose, inquires earnestly, and reflects on what he can put into practice.18 In himself he is respectful in private life; in relation to things he is serious in handling affairs; and in relating with other human beings he is loyal.19 These descriptions of the man of jen show the equal emphasis that Confucius places on personal cultivation and social responsibility. These two poles of responsibility (to oneself and to others) form the thread that runs through all of Confucius’s sayings. "The moral way . . . is none other than conscientiousness (chung) and altruism (shu)."20 Chung and shu are the two aspects of jen. Both characters are written with the character hsin at the bottom. Hsin literally means "heart" and denotes many things: intentions, feelings, cognitive and evaluative activity.21 Hsin means the very core of man, the heart-mind; in phenomenological terms it is human subjectivity, in Philippine it

is the persons’ kalooban. Shu, translated inadequately as "altruism", has the character ju above, meaning "just as". Shu thus means "do or act just as the heart dictates," or in other words the Golden Rule, "Do not do unto others what you do not want others to do unto you."22 Lest Con-fucius’s Golden Rule be compared as negative to Christ’s as positive, let us cite one positive formulation of the Golden Rule by Confucius:23 A man of humanity (jen), wishing to establish his own character, also establishes the character of others, and wishing to be prominent himself also helps others to be prominent. To be able to judge others by what is near to otherselves may be called the method of realizing humanity (jen). On the other hand, chung, translated also inadequately as "conscientiousness", has for its character "above" or chung, meaning "center" or "middle". Together with the character for "be-low" or hsin, chung literally means "to put one’s heart in the center of whatever you are doing"; this means wanting what you really want, being true to yourself. Chung and shu are inseparable, and are but two aspects of jen. Chung is fidelity to oneself, our duty to ourselves; shu is our duty to others. To separate the two would be to open the Golden Rule of Confucius to Kant’s objection that it is hypothetical rather than categorical as his Categorical Imperative.24 In any case, jen is primarily responsibility, rather than assertion of one’s rights. As responsibility, then, jen for Confucius is responsibility for man, both self and others. Jen is love of the humanity in man; love is man’s nature itself, for "by nature all men are alike; though in practice they have grown apart."25 In jen, all men "within the four seas (the world) are brothers.26 When a certain stable was burned down, Confucius asked, `was any man hurt?’ He did not ask about the horses."27 And again, Confucius says, "One cannot herd with birds and beasts. If I do not associate with mankind, with whom shall I associate?"28 Being grounded on human nature, it follows that jen is within one’s reach. Confucius says, "Is jen far away? As soon as I want it, then it is right by me."29 To practice jen depends on oneself, not on others.30 Nevertheless, Confucius placed the practice of jen heavily on the shoulders of those in positions of leadership: "his burden is heavy and his curse is long. He has taken humanity to be his own burden. . . . Only with death does his course stop."31 This is because "the character of a ruler is like wind and that of the people is like grass. In whatever direction the wind blows, the grass always bends."32 "The common people may be made to follow it (the Way), but cannot be made to understand it."33 Confucius promoted a government or leadership by example. He said, "To govern is to rectify. If you lead the people by being rectified yourself, who will dare not be rectified?"34 "If a ruler does not set himself right, even his commands will not be obeyed."35 Leadership by good example secures the confidence of the people, which for Confucius is the most important element in government.36 Tze-kung asked about government. Confucius said, "Sufficient food, sufficient armament, and sufficient confidence of the people." Tze-kung said, "Forced to give up one of these, which would you abandon first?" Confucius said, "I would abandon armament." Tze-kung said, "Forced to give up one of the remaining two, which would you abandon first?" Confucius said, "I would abandon food. There have been deaths from time immemorial, but no state can exist without the confidence of the people." Although the practice of jen rests more heavily on the official, every-one must practice this especially to one’s teacher.37 Uni-versal as it is, the practice of jen admits of gradation. One should start with the family, with filial piety and brotherly respect, the roots of jen.38 Love begins at home, with those nearest to one in time and space. Filial piety entails service and reverence. Confucius said, "In serving his parents, a son may gently remonstrate with them. When he sees that they are not inclined to listen to him, he should resume an attitude of reverence

and not abandon his effort to serve them. He many feel worried, but does not complain."39 And when told by the Duke of She that in his country there is an upright man named Kung who, when his father stole a sheep, bore witness against him. Confucius replied, "The upright men in my community are different from this. The father conceals the misconduct of the son and the son conceals the misconduct of the father. Uprightness is to be found in this."40 Mencius: Jen as Responsibility Confucius’s teaching of jen as graded was further elaborated by his follower, Mencius, a hundred years later who paired jen with i, "Righteousness is his straight path."41 and again, "Jen is the peaceful abode of man and righteousness is his straight path."42 A path implies priorities, and priorities involve gradation and dis-tinction.43 Righteousness is the virtue that naturally makes dis-tinctions in jen as responsibility and love. One cannot love every-body equally, although love by nature is all-embracing. By res-pecting the elders in my family, I can by extension also treat with respect the elders in other families. "Treat with tenderness the young in my own family, and then by extension, also the young in other families."44 It is unnatural for man to love all alike and to the same degree. The application of jen springs from within man, man’s nature; it is man’s nature to love. Mencius said, "Jen is the dis-tinguishing characteristic of the human when embodied in human conduct; it is the Way."45 Mencius’s greatest contribution to Confucianism is, of course, his doctrine of the innate goodness of man, that human nature is originally good. One of his famous arguments is the in-tuitive appeal to the experience of the "instinct" in man to save a child about to fall into a well.46 The feeling of commiseration is the beginning of jen, and all have this basic feeling.47 This feeling of commiseration forms the basis for a benevolent or compassionate government that cannot bear to see others suffer.48 The benevolent ruler institutes socio-economic measures (agrarian reforms, the green revolution, the establishment of schools) because, just as he cannot stand to see an ox being led to be slaughtered, so he cannot bear to see his people suffer.49 By extending his innate goodness, his filial piety and brotherly respect from those he loves to those he does not love (with affection)50 he becomes a parent to his people. The benevolent ruler gains the confidence of his people, the mandate of the people, which is synonymous with the Mandate of Heaven. "Heaven sees as my people see; Heaven hears as my people hear."51 For Mencius, following his master Confucius, the confidence of the people is the most important element of a state.52 And the way to gain the hearts of the people is "to collect for them what they like and do not do to them what they do not like. . . . The people turn to the humanity of the ruler as water flows downward and as beasts run to the wilderness."53 Mencius’s understanding of "nature" (hsin) paves the way for the metaphysical basis for the innate goodness of the human heart. Going beyond his opponent’s, Kao Tzu’s, understanding of nature as simply "what is inborn,"54 Mencius said that nature is "what Hea-ven has endowed."55 Therefore "he who exerts his mind (heart) to the utmost knows his nature. He who knows his nature knows Hea-ven. To preserve one’s mind (heart) and to nourish one’s nature is the way to serve Heaven."56 The person of jen by loving his family and extending that love to others knows his nature. Knowing one’s nature, thus serves Heaven by cultivating the nobility of Heaven. The harmony in human nature of man, nature, and Heaven finds expression in the Confucian classic The Doctrine of the Mean. Here jen, humanity, is jen, man. The government is compared to a fast growing plant, and the conduct of government depends upon men. "The right men are obtained by the ruler’s personal character. The cultivation of the person is to be done through the Way, and the cultivation of the Way is to be done through humanity (jen)."57 Therefore the ruler must not fail to cultivate his personal life. Wishing to cultivate his personal life, he must not fail to serve his parents. Wishing to serve his parents, he must not fail to know man. Wishing to know man, he must not

fail to know Heaven. The practical program for the application of jen is explicated succinctly in The General Learning through the three items of manifesting a clear character, loving the people and abiding in the highest good, and through the eight steps of investigation of things: extension of knowledge, sin-cerity of the will, rectification of the mind (heart), cultivation of personal life, regulation of family, na-tional order and world peace.58 When things are investigated, knowledge is extended; when know-ledge is extended, the will becomes sincere; when the will becomes sincere, the mind is rectified; when the personal life is cultivated, the family is regulated; when the family is regulated, the state will be in order; and when the state is in order, there will be peace throughout the world. Jen in Taoism and Buddhism After Mencius, the concept of jen evolved to include the in-fluences of Taoism and Buddhism. Chu Hsi (1130-1200) is the great synthesizer of the neoConfucian understanding of jen. His classic saying on jen is his interpretation of Chang Tsai’s (1020-1077) short essay, the Western Inscription:59 There is nothing in the entire realm of creatures that does not regard Heaven as the father and Earth as the mother. This means that the principle is one. . . . Each regards his parents as his own parents and his son as his own son. This being the case, how can principle not be manifested as many? . . . When the intense affection for parents is extended to broaden the impartiality that knows no ego, and when sincerity in serving one’s parents leads to the understanding of the way to serve Heaven, then everywhere it happens that principle is one but its manifestations are many. "The principle (li) is one but its manifestations are many" becomes the metaphysical basis of jen in Chu Hsi’s philosophy. He identifies jen with nature, it is one; but as function, it is many.60 Jen’s manifestations are many, but they are all one because they partake of one principle, that of Heaven and Earth. Now, this principle is identical with the Mind of Heaven and Earth61 which, in turn, is to produce things.62 Jen being the Mind of Heaven and Earth, it follows that jen is also the process of production and reproduction; "In man, it is the mind to love people gently and to benefit things."63 Chu Hsi’s antagonist, Wang Yang-ming (1472-1529),64 ex-tends this creative character of jen in his insight of "forming one body with the universe." Because of the characteristic of jen to grow and produce, the man of jen forms one body with the universe: The great man regards Heaven and Earth and the myriad things as one body. . . . That the great man can regard Heaven, Earth, and the myriad things as one body is not because he deliberately wants to do so, but because it is natural to the human nature of his mind that he does so. . . . Therefore when he sees a child about to fall into a well, he cannot help a feeling of alarm and commiseration. This shows that his humanity forms one body with the child. . . . When he sees tiles and stones shattered and crushed, he cannot help a feeling of regret. This shows that his humanity forms one body with tiles and stones. This means that even the mind of the small man necessarily has the humanity that forms one body with all. Wang Yang-ming sees the creativity of jen as gradual:65 The process is like that of a tree which originally appears as a shoot, . . . the trunk follows, . . . and from the trunk emerge the twigs and branches. Below the shoot, moreover, must be a root which can grow. In the root is life; without the root the tree would die. Love between parents and children, and mutual regard between brothers are the first beginnings of humanity, and are analogous to the young shoots of the vegetable world. These first awakenings of love will later extend to embrace the love of all one’s fellow creatures, who are, as it were, the twigs and branches. The neo-Confucian contribution to the understanding of jen is in its metaphysical dimension: jen taken as the nature of mind (heart) and the principle of love, as the process of production and reproduction, as impartiality in one’s

extension of love, and as forming one body with the universe. The Confucian unity with the universe is different from the Taoist unity with the universe: while the latter is strictly individualistic and quietistic, the former is essentially social and active.66 THE CRITICAL HERMENEUTICS OF HABERMAS Habermas’s critical hermeneutics can be better understood as based on his notion of three basic human interests--technical, practical and emancipatory67 -- and seen in the light of his debate with Gadamer on the issue of critique of ideology. For Habermas, there are three specific viewpoints from which we apprehend reality, three general cognitive strategies, that he calls human interests. Although these interests are cognitive, they have their basis in the natural history of man and in the socio-cultural evolution of the human species. Technical interest refers to the human drive for instrumental action to master and control nature. Instrumental action here is purposive-rational, a means-end rationality whose aim is the ex-ploitation of the world. The empiricalanalytical sciences corres-pond to this interest. Practical interest refers to human symbolic interaction in cultural tradition(s), to the human need for interpersonal com-munication. While technical interest is born from the need of man to work in order to survive in a material world, practical or com-municative interest answers an equally important need to relate intersubjectively in ordinary language communication. Interaction here is governed by binding consensual norms, based on mutual understanding of intentions and secured by general recognition of obligation. Understanding takes place in ordinary language com-munication, in the interpretation of traditional texts, and in the internalization of norms which institutionalize social roles. The "historical-hermeneutic sciences" correspond to this interest. In terms of these two types of interests and action, we can distinguish in a society the institutional framework or socio-cultural lifeworld that guides symbolic interaction and subsystems (or social systems of purposiverational action, such as the economic system and the state apparatus.68 Emancipatory interest criticizes the ideological tendencies of the first two interests. The action here is one of unmasking the forces of domination, dogmatism, and repression lying behind the reproduction of labor and the institutionally secured forms of ge-neral and public communication. Emancipatory interest seeks to break the barriers to open communication between social groups and persons, raising their self-consciousness "to the point where it has attained the level of critique and freed itself from all ideological delusions."69 Both the technical and practical technical interest of self-preservation cannot be segregated from the cultural conditions of human life; social persons must first interpret what they consider as life. And these symbolic interpretations must likewise be given for evaluation to the ideas of the good life or "the criterion of what a society intends for itself as the good life."70 The critical sciences, philosophy and psychoanalysis, correspond to this interest. It is within the emancipatory interest that Habermas criticizes the hermeneutics of Gadamer as not going far enough. Gadamer had argued that in the interpretation of text (and text here refers to anything that is the work of man) one cannot escape the his-toricality of consciousness. To express, to explain, and to interpret (the three functions of hermeneutics) all involve language con-ceived not so much as a system of signs, but as a discourse in which we participate, a dialectical event. As an event, interpretation takes place in time; to interpret is always to understand from a certain standpoint or from a certain horizon, for an historical distance exists between the text and the interpreter. In interpretative understanding this distance is bridged by tradition. Lan-guage is the reservoir and communication medium of tradition, which hides itself in language. In hermeneutic understanding, a dialectic exists between one’s own horizon and that of tradition.71 Habermas criticizes this high regard of Gadamer for tradition and participation. For Habermas, it is not enough to interpret; what is developed

in understanding is the power of reflection to criticize. Hermeneutic understanding must be conjoined with a critique of ideology. Habermas refers to ideology in the Marxian and Freudian terminology as false consciousness, including science and technology insofar as they distort reality. Ideology consists of a type of communication that affects the capacity of a society to arrive at a consensus concerning common problems. In other words, ideology distorts communication, hampers the free flow of communication because of pre-existing dominant patterns of thought and action that are accepted uncritically as givens. Lan-guage can also be a medium of domination and of social power and can serve to legitimize relations of organized force.72 Tradition can reveal and express realities, but it can also conceal and distort the social, political, economic conditions of life, especially those that are injust. What is needed, therefore, is self-awareness, a critique of one’s own beliefs, values, and behavior. A critique of ideology requires, according to Habermas, a system of reference that goes beyond tradition and systems that have to do with the mode of production and power relations.73 Her-meneutic understanding must be conjoined with analysis of social systems, through which tradition can be criticized and a res-tructuring of world views can be initiated. This would require in turn a philosophy of history, a certain vision of the future of society, of what mankind ought to be. Any account of the past implicitly presupposes a projection of a future which the interpreter can work to bring about. A CRITICAL REINTERPRETATION OF JEN We have already mentioned at the start of this paper the si-milarity of the Confucian unity of knowledge and action with Ha-bermas’s notion of human interest. For the Confucianist, know-ledge is never for knowledge’s sake, but rather for praxis, which is ethical action. Similarly, Habermas looks at cognitive activities as governed by deep-seated human interests that are natural to the human in his evolution and need to be actualized. Moreover, jen as the principal virtue of Confucian ethics is also the outstanding characteristic of good government. Jen is both a personal and social moral standard. In the Confucian system, ethics is syno-nymous with politics. This is also similar to one of the attempts of Habermas to go back to the ancient Greek paradigm of the triad of theoria, praxis and techne where the practical is synonymous with the political, after criticizing the modern ideological tendency of science and technology where the practical has been identified with the technical, the theoretical with the scientific, and the political has been freed of any normative considerations. Notwithstanding the similarity of Confucius and Habermas in the unity of knowledge and action and in the continuity of ethics and politics, there is a conflation of jen in the Confucian system with the other spheres of life. This can lead either to the neglect of the instrumental reason that characterized the technical interest of man, as was the case in the early period of modernization period of China, or to the intrusion and predominance of interpersonal har-mony in the economic and state subsystems. The neo-Confucian notion of jen as forming one body with the universe, including phy-sical nature, has to be reformulated to mean forming one body with the human world, because in the modern scientific and techno-logical age what is of nature or natural is no longer what is inborn or endowed by Heaven and therefore sacred. Nor is it that which is the object of human reflection and contemplation, but that which is subjected to technology. For modern man, nature is the primitive, to be tamed and harnessed for the human goals of civilization. There is merit, of course, to the Taoist insight of harmony with nature and respect for its rhythm, if only to correct the abuses that modern man has inflicted on the ecology. But harmony with one’s fellowman is different from that with physical nature which is characterized by a different kind of rationality, namely, one that is purposive. The intrusion of jen into the sphere of the technical runs the risk of subverting the practical and communicative under technical interest for survival. In such a case, jen becomes a matter of good public relations, a technical "how-

to-win-friends-and-influence-people," a tactical diplomacy in order to secure one’s own position or gain material or political advantage. Persons and peoples are then treated simply as means (rather than as ends) to serve one’s own personal or group interests. Group interests refers naturally to the family. Filial piety and brotherly respect as the root of jen has led to over-emphasis on the family. The result is clannishness in society, competition among clans, family-run business empires and monopolies, and nepotism in government. Filial piety has indeed ensured the personal care of parents in their old age, rather than confining them to institutions; but in the modern context, this has come to mean treating children as investments, the more children the greater the chances of the parents being taken care of. Brotherly respect has not been ex-tended beyond that of the clan. And when it comes to a conflict between the good of the family and that of the community or so-ciety, the family interest comes first. In this regard, filial piety and brotherly respect need to be reinterpreted as the mutual love and respect of the person of both parent and child (not only of the parent), and of one’s fellow humans outside of the clan. The family-centeredness of jen must be made centrifugal, the closed family transformed into an open one. As graded love jen has made the Confucian society hie-rarchical and its benevolent government into an autocratic or pa-ternalistic state. Each has a role in the family and society with its corresponding duties and obligations, and fidelity and loyalty to the superior is a virtue to cultivate. Organizations are formed more in a vertical, than in an horizontal order. Greater responsibility falls on one in authority who has the trust and respect of his followers by virtue of age, lineage, and sometimes wisdom and experience. Power is centered on the leader, and any reform must come from the top, which, of course, is a carry-over from the feudal society of Confucius’s time. Though Mencius’s notion of the benevolent government with the people as its most important element may have made him the first democratic thinker in the history of philo-sophy, nevertheless, this kind of democracy is authoritative. How effective and relevant is authoritative democracy today? It has been noticed that one common trait of the new "small dragons" (Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore) is that they all have a more central or maximum government, where the populace instinc-tively appeals to the government for solutions to its problems.74 The agrarian reform programs emanating from Tokyo and Taipei were successful because they were initiated and implemented under authoritarian rule. Is Mencius’s benevolent government indeed the East Asian kind of democracy? If we were simply to apply the technical and practical interests of Habermas, the answer would be in the affirmative. But under the emancipatory interest, one must ask whether the wealthy, cultivated, cultured person under a benevolent but despotic ruler is truly free? The person of jen is the one who cultivates him or herself in order to be of service to others. The Confucian emphasis on ob-ligation and duties has led to a neglect of rights. The jen-ethic is communitarian, not individualistic. This is not to say that Confucius disregarded personal cultivation; after all, jen has two aspects: chung (conscientiousness) and shu (Golden Rule). But chung is still a duty, and not a right, albeit a duty to oneself. A duty is only a duty because there is a right. My duty to you is your right, and your right to me is my duty. For modern institutions and structures jen has to be reformulated to mean also a right, e.g. my right vis-a-vis society to be educated, to be cultivated. Now jen, when paired with i (righteousness) as a graded and prioritized responsibility, has given rise to hierarchical distinctions in responsibilities. As a result, the boundaries of responsibility are clearly delineated. If we were to reformulate jen as a right and not only as a duty, then we would have to extend these boundaries of responsibility to include those rights that are inherent in the person, regardless of whether or not they are related to me by blood or position. In the modern world where mass media has made the world

truly global, linking man to man from all over, jen must mean that I am responsible for the right of any other person in the world to live humanly. Chung, the Golden Rule which is the other aspect of jen, also needs to be reinterpreted in the context of a global humanity. There is a point to Kant’s objection to the Golden Rule as being hypo-thetical ("if you do not want this to be done to you, do not do it to others") should be based on one’s nature. The benevolent govern-ment of Mencius is based too on the innate natural goodness of hu-man nature, one that is endowed by Heaven. Thus, there is some-thing sacred in the Golden Rule. In Habermas’s proposal for the rationalization of the lifeworld to counteract the ideological ten-dency of the rationality of technical interests, one of the require-ments is the "linguistification of the sacred." This is the ration-alization of world views, in some contrast to their religious prejudgmental character. The Golden Rule can be reformulated in Ha-bermas’s logic of practical discourse: the claim to what is right is justified in terms of the principle of universalizability:75 what is right is what can be universalized. Here the focal point is not just the individual "I", but the person that every human being is. Finally, jen is to be critiqued as an ideology. There have been moves in some countries to promote the Confucian ethics of jen, making a fine distinction between Confucianism as a personal ethic and Confucianism as a political ideology. Habermas, however, in-sists that culture cannot be administered. To impose jen on the people is tantamount to making it ideological and therefore re-pressive. The harmony of jen as falling under the practical interest has to be re-interpreted as a harmony arrived at from consensus and not from coercion.76 In the light of the emancipatory interest, the benevolent government of Mencius that is authoritarian needs to be reinterpreted as a participative kind of democracy, where each citizen has a right and duty to participate in what constitutes the good life of man. CONCLUSION: PERSON AND SOCIETY We have critically interpreted jen in the light of Habermas’s framework of the three cognitive interests (technical, practical and emancipatory), following his proposal for a critique of tradition. It seems, however, that our critique of jen in the context of modernity boils down to the failure of the Confucian system to distinguish (not necessarily to separate) in the human being the person and the individual. It would seem that Confucian thought lacks the notion of person. To borrow Max Scheler’s insight,77 the person is more than an individual. For a human being to be considered a moral person, he or she must possess a sound mind, be in the process of becoming (maturity), have control over his or her lived body, and not be objectifiable. The last point is important for the person is not a substance, a thing. A person is a unity of different acts; he or she exists or is present in every act but is not exhausted by any one of them. One of the distinguishing acts of the person is the act of loving; as such the person is also a social person with social acts. To know another person as person is to know him or her as a unique being, which entails co-acting with them, for they are present only in their acts. This is possible because in loving we participate in the Absolute Person of God in whom the individual and social coincide. The solidarity of persons is founded ultimately in the personhood of God. Following Scheler’s insight, we may say that the human being as an individual is indeed subordinate to the state or society, and that the state therefore has the right to oblige one to subordinate one’s individual interests for the good of society as a whole. But as person, unique, non-objectifiable, irreducible and unrepeatable, the human being rises above the state which exists so that the person may grow as a unique being. Nevertheless, the human being can grow to become a person only by participating and by responding to the value of others in a community. The paradox of this unity of personal cultivation and community growth can be reconciled only if we admit of a relationship with an

Absolute Person that grounds the solidarity of moral persons. NOTES 1. Mencius VII B:16. The Doctrine of the Mean, ch. 20. Translation by Wing-tsit Chan, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1963). 2. The other virtues are chih (wisdom), i (righteousness), and li (propriety). 3. I am indebted for this part of the paper to Wing-tsit Chan, "The Evolution of the Confucian Concept Jen," Philosophy East and West, 4, (1955), 155 295-319. 4. Ibid., p. 195. 5. Analects XII, 22 6. Ibid., i, 6. 7. Wing-tsit Chan, op. cit., p. 296. 8. Analects XII, 1. 9. Ibid., III, 3. 10. Ibid., XII, 22. 11. Ibid., IV, 2. 12. Ibid., IV, 4. 13. Ibid., IV, 6. 14. Ibid., XV, 8. 15. Ibid., IV, 2. 16. Ibid., XIII, 27. 17. Ibid., XVII, 6. 18. Ibid., XIX, 6. 19. Ibid., XIII, 19. 20. Ibid., IV, 15. 21. Donald J. Munro, The Concept of Man in Early China (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1969), pp. 50-51. 22. Analects XII, 2. 23. Ibid., VII, 28. 24. Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, trans. by H.J. Paton (New York: Harper Torchbook, 1964), p. 97 footnote. 25. Analects XVII, 2. 26. Ibid., XII, 5. 27. Ibid., X, 12. 28. Ibid., XVIII, 6. 29. Ibid., VII, 29. 30. Ibid., XII, 1. 31. Ibid., VIII, 7. 32. Ibid., XII, 19. 33. Ibid., VIII, 12. 34. Ibid., XII, 17. 35. Ibid., XIII, 6. 36. Ibid., XII, 7. 37. Ibid., XV, 35. 38. Ibid., I, 2. 39. Ibid., IV, 18. 40. Ibid., IV, 18. 41. Mencius VI A:11. 42. Ibid., IV A:10. 43. Wing-tsit Chang, "Evolution of . . . Jen," p. 302. 44. Mencius I A:7. 45. Ibid., VII B:16. 46. Ibid., II A:6. 47. Ibid., VI A:6, II A:6. 48. Ibid., II A: 6. 49. Ibid., I A:7.

50. Ibid., VII B:1. 51. Ibid., V A:5. 52. Ibid., I B:7. 53. Ibid., IV A:9. 54. Ibid., IV A:3. 55. Ibid., IV A:15. 56. Ibid., VII A:1. 57. The Doctrine of the Mean, ch. 20. 58. The Great Learning, trans. by Wing-tsit Chan. 59. Wing-tsit Chan, Source Book, pp. 499-500. 60. Ibid., "Evolution of . . . Jen," p. 316. 61. Source Book, p. 642. 62 Chu Hsi, "Treatise on Jen," in Wing-tsit Chan, Source Book, p. 593. 63. Ibid., p. 595. 64. Wang Yang-ming, "Inquiry on the Great Learning," in Instructions for Practical Living, trans. by Wing-tsit Chan (New York: Columbia, 1963), p. 272. 65. Ibid., sec. 93. 66. Wing-tsit Chan, "Evolution of . . . Jen," p. 309. 67. Jürgen Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971). 68. Jürgen Habermas, Towards a Rational Society (Boston: Beacon Press, 1970), pp. 92-94. 69. Thomas McCarthy, The Critical Theory of Jürgen Habermas (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT, 1978), p. 88. 70. Jürgen Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, p. 313. 71. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (New York: Crossroad, 1982). 72. Jürgen Habermas, "A Review of Gadamer’s Truth and Method," in Fred R. Dallmayr and Thomas McCarthy (eds.), Understanding and Social Inquiry (South Bend, Ind.: University of Notre Dame, 1977), p. 365. 73. Ibid., pp. 358, 361. 74. Lynn Pann, "Playing the Identity Card," Far Eastern Economic Review (February 8, 1989), p. 31. 75. Thomas McCarthy, op. cit., p. 313. 76. Cf. Tran van Doan, "Confucius and Habermas on Politics," The Asian Journal of Philosophy, 1 (1987), 101-130. 77. Max Scheler, Formalism in Ethics and Non-formal Ethics of Values, trans. by Manfred Frings and Roger L. Funk (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), pp. 476-501. **** http://www.crvp.org/book/Series03/III-1/chapter_xv.htm CHAPTER XV THE CONCEPT OF AN ECO-ETHICS AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF MORAL THOUGHT TOMONOBU IMAMICHI THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE NOTION OF VIRTUE Semantic Transposition The history of moral philosophy is the history of the development of virtue through a series of dramatic changes. "Virtue" derives from the Latin word "virtus," which means "to be strong". It suggests the ideal situation of the male as posssessing the strength to combat uncivilized enemies in defense of his family or society. This original sense of the word did not express a transexual moral quality or general human virtue. In the course of time, however, with the development of human culture and changes in the environment the daily physical struggle for which virile and even savage strength was needed become no longer necessary. Thus, the ideal situation of being human changed into today's transsexual notion of virtue. This semantic transposition of the moral concept is clearly manifest regarding the Greek word areté, virtue in classical times meant virtue. In the text of Homer this meant only a military strength for battle. From the time of the tragic poets

to that of the classical philosophers, however, the semantic sense of areté changed. In uncivilized times persons needed physical strength to fight for the protection of the community. Bodily strength was important, admired and aspired to as the ideal; physical force was an ethical virtue. By the time of Socrates, however, virtue no longer had a functional sense, but had developed a more spiritual or moral meaning. The concept andreía, which long had meant courage or audacity, is an almost parallel case. This notion derived from the word aner in the sense of a virile male and had the same meaning as virtue. In the classical Platonic texts, however, it signified no longer only strength for battle against the enemy, but also human courage in general. Andreia as spiritual audacity or bravery thus became established in moral philosophy through the creativity of Socrates. In Chinese culture, too, one finds a parallel phenomenon regarding the notion of audacity (bravery or boldness). In uncivilized times when men needed physical strength for battle this effort was considered a moral virtue. Emphasis upon being strong which was expressed by the addition of the sign ( ) to the ideogram for man ( ) to signify a developed strength so that the ideogram ( ) meant audacity as andreía or virtue. Through the creativity of Confucius (552-479 B.C.) that notion of virility was deepened morally to become an interior force correlative to the virtue of responsibility which appears in the Lun-yu (dialogue between Confucius and his disciples) 1.1.14, "when one sees his responsibility and does not act responsibly he lacks andreía (audacity)." Boldness as andreia or virtue in Confucius also changed from a masculine to a transexual or general human virtue in a manner parallel to that of Socrates. Both were sensitive to changes in the human social environment from a village situated in nature to a cultured city, and this provided the basic motivation for their projects of ethical renewal. Objective Development Beyond the semantic transposition of virtue, its sociological renovation was taking place on the phenomenal level. For example, loyalty as fidelity of the nation to the king and of the citizenry to the city differ in their objects, but are entirely identical in their moral essence as fidelity. This transposition in the object of the virtue of fidelity constitutes a new discovery in moral virtue. Cicero in antiquity or Mencius in the classical Chinese texts perhaps first presented civic virtue as a new form of the fundamental virtue of fidelity. The above two types of changes, namely of virtue, namely of virtue from a physical to a spirital meaning and of loyalty from allegiance to a king to concern for a city, are not identical. The first is a semantic universalization of moral meaning, whereas the second is a specific determination in the object of a fundamental virtue. In both cases the renewal of virtue was carried out by philosophers sensitive to an ethical change; the theoretical clarification of such changes always has been one of the duties of philosophers. Ethical crises are signs of critical points in human history. In our epoch the environment is structured not solely by geography and human culture, but also by a universal scientific technology; this calls for a further development of moral philosophy for which the two above-mentioned factors, namely, semantic transposition and the objective modification, do not seem to suffice. A technological society so different from the past requires that we show that there is such a thing as the radical innovation of a virtue entirely unknown in the past. Moral Innovation as Discovery of New Virtue The history of humanity contains one not merely renewal as semantic transposition and objective modification, but also the invention of radically new virtue absolutely unknown in the past. One example is the virtue of tapeinophrosyné, which literally is the attitude of the beggar or mendiant, namely, modesty. The word in question is not found in classical Greek, but was constructed by a Christian in the second part of the first century where it appears first of all in the Didache and the letter to the Ephesians. Totally unknown in Western antiquity, this virtue of modesty undoubtedly found its origin in the precept of Christ:

"With perfect humility . . . bearing with one another lovingly" (Eph. 4:2). The mendiant as symbol of virtue is an invention of Christ. As the truly poor mendiant extends his or her hands for alms and accepts modestly whatever is given, the one whose heart is poor, like the beggar, extends his or her hand to God in order modestly to accept whatever difficult destiny is given. For such a person there is no discontent, grief or dissatisfaction. As a lessening of one's personal demands, modesty was unknown as a moral virtue to classical Western philosophers. Indeed Socrates felt at home at the table of Plytaneion; according to Aristotle megalopsychia as self-aggrandizement, the antithesis of tapeinophrosyne, and the pride of self-love were the virtues of a citizen of the city. Thus, at least once in human history there has beem discovered a new virtue which contradicted earlier axiology; modesty as tapeinophrosyne symbolizes of the possibility of moral discovery. This third type of moral renewal, namely, the creative discovery of moral virtue, is our moral task in these difficult times. But is it possible to invent a virtue in a modern intensively developed society? This can be answered affirmatively by showing the historical fact of the invention in modern times of the virtue of responsibility--a neologism in the context of 18th century social contact theories. As I have shown in Betrachtungen über des Eine (1968) and Studia Comparata de Aesthetica (1976), that term is not found in any classical Greek or Latin text of antiquity or the Middle Ages; but appears first in French in 1787 in places where the English word "responsibility" was used. Its content, however, was not always precise. In John Stuart Mill, for example, responsibility signified accountability understood as a justification or apology for one's self. In German the corresponding term, Verantwortlichkeit, appeared for the first time at the end of the 19th century. As the virtue of responsibility is essential to a contractual society it was invented only in modern times. The historical fact of the invention of a new virtue in modern times can be established then, and the history of philosophic reflection in morals is the history of the three types of innovation of virtue: (1) the semantic transposition of traditional virtue, (2) the objective modification of traditional virtue, and (3) the invention of new virtue. THE PRACTICAL SYLLOGISM: A SEMANTIC TRANSPOSITION OF TRADITIONAL VIRTUE In response to the present crisis of morals it is necessary to develop an appropriate ethic for our technological society. This is not a sociological compromise with technology or a psychological accommodation to our situation as a modern society, but a development of the moral horizons of humanity. Sociological compromise and psychological accommodations remain on the animal level; ethics as the morals of humanity is the self-establishment of the human spirit as conscious of its duty before the moral dilemmas of a technological society. We shall consider this development of ethics in relation to the three types of innovation of virtue. It is necessary to distinguish act from action: action is the physical movement of a person without regard to their human interiority; act is action in view of a personal decision made from within. For example: A runs towards a station at the speed of 13 seconds per one-hundred meters; B and C also run towards the same station at the rate of 13 seconds per hundred meters. Thus the action of A, B and C are the same. However, A is fleeing prison, B pursues A in order to arrest him, and C follows in order to impede B. In these circumstances although the actions are parallel, the acts differ entirely one from another: that of A is resistance against militarism, that of B is obedience to the system, while that of C is friendship for A. Despite the identity of the actions as physical movements, the human acts as personal decisions and interior practical thoughts differ one from another. Whether theoretical or practical, conscious or not, however, human thought must be structured logically because, as decisive, an act is not a mere reaction bereft of thought. As the structure of human thought is a syllogism, there must be a practical syllogism for decisive practical thought. The classical formulation of this

practical syllogism is found in Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics: A) A is desirable But p, q, r and s realize the A desired. Therefore, for some reason, I choose p as the means to achieve the A desired. In this practical syllogism the minor is the horizon of the freedom of choice, the object of which is a means to achieve the end or goal; thus, the end as ideal is prior to the choice of an effective means. This primacy of finality or goal orientation has made possible rapid progress of the technology of these means. Now, however, the effectiveness of the means, has taken a qualitative leap as the technical world has moved from heteronomous instruments to autonomous technology. As power now assumes an absolute primacy over the goal, and means over end, in the realm of all human acts the structure of the classical practical syllogism becomes problematic. Power in the form of systemic, atomic and electro-magnetic energy, or capital in the economic order, invert the order of premises of the practical syllogism in the following manner: (B) We have means P. But, P can realize a, b, c and d as goals. Therefore we choose A, for some reason, as the goal of these acquired means. The minor remains the horizon of our freedom of choice: its object, however, is not the means but the goal to be realized. Further, the goal in question is not a transcendent ideal--an end which the human spirit spontaneously desires--but only the natural outcome of technological power. Thus, the means controls the ends by determining which end will be realized. Technological power as means assumes priority over the end which becomes one of its consequences. Though the human spirit chooses one of the outcomes of that technological power, the choice no longer reflects spontaneous desire. This control by technological power considerably influences the problems of modern ethics. First of all, there is a change of grammatical subject between Aristotle's practical syllogisms and that of our technological age which substitutes the subject "we" for Aristotle's "I." This reflects a transposition of the earlier ethics of the individual into one of committee. In our technological society there remains a moral dimension in which the Aristotelian practical syllogism of the individual is necessary, but at the level of public interaction the individual is only a small part of large technologically organized whole which only committees acting in terms of "we" can manage effectively. Thus a semantic transposition of the virtue of responsibility takes place, from personal responsibility to that of a committee or of solidarity. Because responsibility is grounded ontologically in the person it should be especially individual, but in technical interaction responsible decisions are made by committees because technical power has become a public or common good. Hence, there is need to develop an ethic of solidarity or of committee for the virtue of responsibility. For example, when a person resigns from a committee which does not work well he or she may be psychologically purified, but such a solution remains on the level of personal responsibility. It is necessary to discover how to integrate this personal morality into the new social reality by a semantic transposition of the virtue of responsibility from that of an the individual to that of the committee or of solidarity. This is not a sociological or political science problem; it is one of eco-ethics. Information and Communication as Objective Modifications of Values The major of the contemporary practical syllogism is not a statement of a desired end, but the confirmation of technological power as a gigantic means which can serve for or against humanity. That the human spirit must accept the evident reality of this power as the situation of its actions means that the technological complex now is our environment. When this had been solely nature, prior to moral acts one needed only common information and good sense--for example, about which mushrooms are poisonous and which are edible, or about the power of water, fire,

wind, etc. Now that our modern environment is no longer solely one of nature but also of technical interaction, however, we must obtain at least enough information to be able to make sense of it, e.g., some basic knowledge of electricity, biochemistry, bio-technology and atomic physics. As sciences in their own domain these are not easy, but education in science should not be directed only towards the preparation of future specialists. Everyone needs at least basic scientific information regarding such basic aspects of our environment, for just as the study of classics is necessary for culture, the study of technology and scientific information is necessary for modern civilization. Similarly, just as some information and interpretation of the nation's history is a duty and hence a social virtue of the cultivated citizen, today an amateur's ordinary knowledge of technology also is a duty and thus a social virtue. To climb a tree or swim in water are sports with a touch of gymnastics; though not specifically ethical they enable one to aid a drowning person or one who wants to pick fruit: strength and gymnastic capabilities serve the ethical by making it active. This approximates an ethical virtue or at least can be transformed into ethical virtue. In a parallel manner in a technological society driving a car, steering a boat and managing a computer might be called gymnomechanics for they enable one to help many people. In effect, learning at least one machine technology in the modern world has become an ethical virtue. Information supposes communication which in specific domains entails the abbreviation of terminology and thus the use of jargon. This results in mutual alienation between specialists in different public domains. Naturally specialists must use scientific and technological abbreviations not mastered by the general public. For interdisciplinary exchange of exact information some control of jargon is a professional virtue. Further, for linguistic information in a technological world a new intellectual virtue is required of every citizen, namely, the acquisition of an appropriate language. Modern technology has so advanced the possibility of international travel and correspondence that as a technological unit today's society is characterized by mobility and communication; it constitutes a vast meeting place for the whole world, either by chance or by necessity. Because to communicate effectively with others one needs to know at least one foreign language, the atmosphere of the contemporary technological unity is entirely bilingual. This does not imply a disregard of the capacity to read texts in the esoteric language of the elite of one's society, but the need to speak effectively in today's mobile world means that learning a foreign language is a virtue for international friendship. Tolerance: An Objective Modification of the Traditional Virtue Having become a technopolis, the megalopolis is now one of the most important bases of international transportation and great cities have become meeting places for people of all nationalities. Their meeting is not only temporary, as with tourism, but also permanent because the megalopolis is able to provide job opportunities for foreigners due to the new primacy of sign over language and of universal technology over historical specificity. This means that the person in the technopolis as a factor in the technological effort can obtain citizenship in the megalopolis. For this only an ability for mechanical work is required; it does not include one's religious or cultural outlook. Tolerance as generosity of thought now becomes the first condition of such coexistence. Whereas the classical virtue of tolerance meant patience with another person who caused embarrassment, in our technological society tolerance implies the generosity to allow for the validity of other ideas or religious systems. In a technological age public professional interaction requires neutrality of thought for effective collaboration and political coexistence. As an administrative attitude neutrality differs from tolerance which is an ethical virtue; but neutrality in the professional sphere is implied and included within the ethical virtue of tolerance. Note that this objective modification of the virtue of

tolerance, from patience in regard to other persons' defective acts to permission of different types of activity, is an objective modification of virtue in our technological society. Progressively modern technology so expands the impact of machine efficiency that daily appliances can be run by remote control. When a citizen of Tokyo can telephone a person in Paris without difficulty they become technological neighbors. This technological relationship, however, is entirely different from classical relations in which neighbors are spatially close to one another, speak face-to-face, are mutually visible and limited in number. In modern technological structures one interacts with an unlimited number of persons while all remain mutually invisible. Due to distance one does not see directly the situation of one's indetermined and unknown interlocutors, and under cover of the technological apparatus one can forget shame and embarrassment. At midnight by telephone one can more easily engage an unknown person in a distant city than knock at the door of one's neighbor. Willingness to commit massive homicide by a bomb is made possible by the technological means which enable one to ignore those whom one attacks. One would have to imagine the suffering of unknown, undetermined and distant people in order to evoke the direct sympathy involved in a face-to-face meeting. To render moral our actions in technological structures it is necessary to cultivate the imagination through aesthetic activity in art, the learning of which becomes a propedeutic for eco-ethics in a technological civilization: aesthetics has become a necessary discipline for morality. In any case, the content of the virtue of love of neighbor has been modified effectively through contemporary technological structures which free one's outlook on love of neighbor from the limited surroundings of one's residence, opening it to the vast horizon of humanity, now and in coming generations. This, too, is an objective modification of virtue. The Invention of New Virtues First, in a technological context any delay through defects or errors in the operation of a machine becomes important inasmuch as such work requires punctuality. In the past this was not numbered among the virtues, but regarded as the sign of a narrow spirit, whereas generosity which did not attend to minor matters was a sign of the greatness of the person. While generosity remains one of the most important virtues, in the present technological society punctuality has become a new virtue. Second, as the technological horizon is also international, alongside national loyalty one must be international and world brotherhood has replaced feudal loyalties. Third, the need to limit population makes control of birth and Malthusianism necessary, and there are many new means for this. Sexual relations without generation are counseled so universally in married life that in this perspective the principle goal of sexual relations could become, not the birth of an infant, but sexual pleasure. As this would raise a question regarding restriction of sexual relations to marriage, an eco-ethics must discuss the problem of sexuality. Scriptures of the traditional religions concerned with the well-being of humanity which have viewed marriage as engendering many children begin to be out of harmony with ethical opinion confronting the present crisis of humanity. Such eco-ethical problems must be thought through for the future of humanity. Finally, technology has transformed men into bio-mechanisms for whom death becomes ever less necessary. Must one always extend one's life despite the misgivings of one's conscience in view of degenerating health? Can one not say that there is reason to die as well as to live? Thus, euthanasia becomes a topic for contemporary ethics. The research atmosphere for such an eco-ethics must be interdisciplinary. Ecoethics itself, however, is not a collective study, but must be constructed and systematized by each person thinking philosophically. It is, nevertheless, a discipline for humanity in its technological context. Broadening the Horizons of Moral Thought

We have cited the Lun-yu text of Confucius on the dynamic of the notion of virtue and used the word "responsibility." But that is a modernized interpretation of the ancient Chinese text, for the word "responsibility" originated in the modern European tradition. This suggests the need to broaden one's historical and philosophical horizon in order to think, not at a provincial level, but at the level of humanism. In the orient where society traditionally does not sufficiently appreciate the individual and overestimates inter-personal relations the outlook of traditional virtue differs from the West. In Confucius's ethical system charity and responsibility are the most important virtues. The Chinese word to which we apply the term "responsibility," Y, signifies idiogramatically the situation in which I take on my shoulders the lamb for sacrifice. That is to say, I must be responsible vertically to God and horizontally to members of my society. Y expresses responsibility as correspondence between two things, as for example between a signification and its word. This broadened reflection on the virtue of responsibility teaches us that innovations in virtue within a philosophic tradition is not new within the extended context of human culture. For the innovation in moral virtue required for spiritual progress a comparative study of philosophy is very important. It becomes a phase of eco-ethics as the human environment broadens into a generalized technological world and life in society comes to depend upon world information. This change of human environment demands international communication between different civilizations and thus knowledge of the ethics of other civilizations, not only in order to listen to others, but to be integrated with them. Finally, ethical innovation is not limited to the realm of virtue, but extends also to the ontology of human acts. Without the concepts of person and personality one cannot speak in a sufficiently philosophical manner of freedom or responsibility. In this sense Christianity has endowed humanity with a great ethical innovation. In the East where the Christian tradition is not truly rooted, the concept of responsibility still has not affected the notion of the person. At the end of the 17th century Wang Yang Min taught the notion Rientse, which meant conscience as the subject of knowledge (Gewissen); this perhaps is close to the notion of person. But in the East, as the ontological notion of person has not been distinguished from the historical notion of personality, the ontological notion of the dignity of the individual has remained confused with personal honor as an historical concern. University of Tokyo Tokyo, Japan **** http://www.crvp.org/book/Series03/III-11/chapter_xvi.htm CHAPTER XVI CONFUCIAN HARMONY AND TECHNICAL PROGRESS: Suggestions from Kant GEORGE F. McLEAN In 1919 it was suggested -- indeed vehemently declared -- that in order for Mr. Science and Mr. Democracy to be introduced to the history of China it would be necessary for Confucius to bow out. This paper explores the opposite thesis, namely, that in order for Mr. Science and Mr. Democracy to be introduced, Confucius is needed as their host. In the context of the search for modernization and for appropriate standing among the nations of the world there seems to be not doubt that science is needed. Certainly, necessary and universal laws have made it possible to interpret and predict natural forces, and the development of an objective and mathematical spirit has enabled humankind to manage the forces of nature. Together these have provided the ability to project and realize the great accomplishments needed in order to support the quantity and enhance the quality of human life -- and, by implication, that of nature as a whole.

Much -- very much -- has been accomplished in this direction; but there are reasons to fear that these accomplishments have been so single-minded as to place in question the broader context of human life, its meaning and dignity. THE PROBLEM In the history of philosophy brilliant new creative openings often degenerate into reductivist efforts to absorb all other meaning. This perverse dynamism is found in no less central a personage than Plato who inverted Parmenides’ relation of thought to being into a reduction of reality to what was clear to the human mind. Thus, he invited the mind to soar, but where it met his limits -- as in taking account of concrete realities and the exercise of human freedom -- he generated the classic blueprint for a suppressive communal state. Such temptations of all-controlling reason are characteristic as well of modern times, beginning from Descartes’ requirements of clarity and distinctness for the work of reason. The effect in his own philosophy was to split the human person between the extended substance or body and the nonextended substance or spirit. Much as he tried for a unity of these in the human person, this could not be done in the clear and distinct terms he required. As a result philosophers and then whole cultures proceeded according to either body or spirit, and modern thought polarized between the atomism of discrete sensations and the ever greater unities perceived by spirit. What is particularly frightening is the way in which theoretical philosophical experiments in either of these isolates were carried out by a fairly mechanical pattern of reason and then translated into public policy. It is fine for a thinker to give free range to the constructive possibilities of his or her mind by saying with Hobbes: let’s suppose that all are isolated singles in search of survival and then see what compromises and what rules will make survival possible. Over time we may have become so accustomed to that game that we have forgotten Hobbes’s identification of the wolflike basic instincts by which it is played, but we should listen to others from all parts of the Southern hemisphere when they perceive the resulting system as predatory, brutish and mean. Similarly, it could be helpful for a thinker to hypothesize that all is matter and then see how its laws can shed light on the process of human history. But when this was done by Marx and Lenin society began to repress the life of the spirit and term irrational everything except scientific historicism; the freedom of individuals and of peoples was suppressed and creativity died. Both are parallel cases of theoretical axioms becoming metaphysical totalities even while, or perhaps especially due to, denying such a thing as metaphysics. It is not surprising that the result for this century was a bipolar world armed to the hilt and subsisting by a reign of mutual terror. What is surprising is that the internal collapse of Eastern Europe in 1989 should have given popular credibility to the notion that the parallel road taken by the other partner, namely, the West, can be followed now without fear -- that the wolf has been transformed into a lamb for lack of a mirror in which to observe the effects of its own root problems. This suggests that it is necessary to look for additional dimensions of science beyond reductive analysis and universal and necessary laws. While there is much to be discovered here which will be, and indeed has been, very helpful, it is important to recognize not only what is common but what is unique and distinctive in reality. Though true that without the necessary and the universal life would be chaotic, it is no less true that without the unique and different there would be neither life nor progress: all would be static, rather than emergent. In this world logos must be realized in the concrete and unique. This points to events with their radical novelty. In human life this is the reality of promise and creativity, of uniqueness and freedom, of sharing and love. Surprisingly perhaps, it may be Confucius who can help to see how these can be not only juxtaposed to science and its offspring, technology, but enable technology to be integrated into Chinese culture and receive thereby the full force of this culture’s creative power. For Confucius to help it is necessary that technology

and culture not be placed on the same level or considered as alternatives one to the other. To see how they can be positively related, indeed how Confucius is needed for the introduction of science and the technological transformation of China, the threefold structure of Kant’s critiques can be instructive KANT’S RESPONSE The Critique of Pure Reason Kant provides an example of the requirement to move beyond an atomic reductionism in the direction of synthesis in his first and third critiques. In the former his problem is how, in the face of Hume’s empiricism science could have universal and necessary laws. It is unfortunate that the range of Kant’s work has been so little appreciated. Until recently, the rationalist impact of Descartes directed almost exclusive attention to the first of Kant’s critiques, The Critique of Pure Reason, which concerned the conditions of possibility of the physical sciences. Its rejection of metaphysics as a science was warmly greeted in materialist, empiricist and positivist circles as a dispensation from the need for any search beyond what was reductively sensible and phenomenal in the sense of being inherently spatial and/or temporal. Kant himself, however, quite insisted upon going further. If the terms of the sciences were inherently phenomenal, then his justifi-cation of the sciences was precisely to identify and to justify, through metaphysical and transcendental deductions respectively, the sets of categories which enable the phenomenal world to have intelligibility and scientific meaning. Since sense experience is always limited and partial, the universality and necessity of the laws of science must come from the human mind. Such a priori categories belong properly to the subject inasmuch as it is not material. We are here at the essential turning point for the modern mind, where Kant takes a definitive step in identifying the subject as more than a wayfarer in a given world to which one can but react. He shows rather that the subject is an active force engaged in the creation even of the empirical world in which one lives. The meaning or intelligible order of things is due not only to their creation according to a divine intellect, but also to the work of the human intellect and its categories. If, however, human beings are to have such a central role in the constitution of their world, then certain elements will be required, and this requirement itself will be their justification. First, there must be an imagination which can bring together the flow of disparate sensations. This plays a reproductive role which consists in the empirical and psychological activity by which it reproduces within the mind the amorphous data received from without, according to the forms of space and time. This merely reproductive role is by no means sufficient, however, for since the received data is amorphous, any mere reproduction would lack coherence and generate a chaotic world: it would be "a blind play of representations less even than a dream".1 Hence, the imagination must have also a productive dimension which enables the multiple empirical intuitions to achieve some unity. This is ruled by "the principle of the unity of apperception" (understanding or intellection), namely, "that all appearances without exception, must so enter the mind or be apprehended, that they conform to the unity of apperception."2 This is done according to the abstract categories and concepts of the intellect, such as cause, substance and the like, which rule the work of the imagination at this level in accord with the principle of the unity of apperception. Second, this process of association must have some foundation in order that the multiple sensations be related or even relatable one to another and, hence, enter into the same unity of apperception. There must be some objective affinity of the multiple found in past experience -- an "affinity of appearances" -- in order for the reproductive or associative work of the imagination to be possible. However, this unity does not exist, as such, in past experiences. Rather, the unitive rule or principle of the reproductive activity of the imagination is its reproductive or transcendental work as "a spontaneous faculty not dependent upon empirical laws

but rather constitutive of them and, hence, constitutive of empirical objects."3 That is, though the unity is not in the disparate phenomena, nevertheless they can be brought together by the imagination to form a unity only in certain particular manners, if they are to be informed by the categories of the intellect. Kant illustrates this by comparing the examples of perceiving a house and perceiving a boat receding downstream.4 The parts of the house can be intuited successively in any order (door-roof-stairs or stairs-door-roof), but my judgment must be of the house as having all of its parts simultaneously. Similarly, the boat is intuited successively as moving downstream. However, though I must judge its actual motion in that order of succession, I could imagine the contrary. Hence, the imagination, in bringing together the many intuitions goes beyond the simple order of appearances and unifies phenomenal objects in an order to which concepts can be applied. "Objectivity is a product of cognition, not of apprehension,"5 for, though we can apprehend appearances in any sequence, they can be unified and, hence, thought only in certain orders as ruled by the categories of the mind. In sum, it is the task of the reproductive imagination to bring together the multiple elements of sense intuition in a unity or order capable of being informed by concepts or categories of the intellect with a view to making a judgment. On the part of the subject, the imagination here is active, authentically one’s own and creative. Ultimately, however, its work is not free, but necessitated by the categories or concepts as integral to the work of sciences which are characterized by necessity and universality. The Critique of Practical Reason In his second Critique, that of practical reason Kant proceeded to recognize and provide a separate basis for human freedom. But how realistic is this talk about freedom? Do we really have the choice of which so much is said in the West? On the one hand, we are structured in a set of circumstances which circumscribe, develop and direct our actions. This is the actual experience of people which Marx and Hegel articulate when they note the importance of knowledge of the underlying pattern of necessity and make freedom consist in conforming thereto. On the other hand, we learn also from our experience that we do have a special responsibility in this world to work with the circumstances of nature, to harness and channel these forces toward greater harmony and human goals. A flood which kills thousands is not an occasion for murdering more, but for mobilizing to protect as many as possible, for determining what flood control projects need to be instituted for the future, and even for learning how to so construct them so that they also can generate electricity for power and irrigation for crops. All of this is properly the work of the human spirit which emerges therein. Similarly, in facing a trying day, I eat a larger breakfast rather than cut out part of my schedule; instead of ignoring the circumstances and laws of my physical being, I coordinate these and direct them for my human purposes. This much can be said by pragmatism. But it leaves unclear whether humans remain merely instruments of physical progress and, hence, whether their powers remain a function of matter. This is where Kant takes a decisive step in his second Critique. For if the above were the total explanation of science one might claim to explain necessary and universal laws, but this would not explain its creative dimension. On the contrary, human creativity would be suppressed in the search for the laws of necessity: freedom would be unwelcome, initiative would be suppressed and stagnation would follow. The Critique of Aesthetic Judgment It was well along in the so-called "critical decade’ in which Kant wrote his three critiques, and only after writing the first two, that Kant was in position to discover -- indeed, was forced to recognize -- what at the beginning of that decade he had not thought possible. Whereas he had once looked upon the human spirit only in order to uncover the universal and necessary laws at work therein, and considered the imagination only instrumentally as the power for reproducing in

an ordered manner what was perceived, he now became aware of a new, productive, indeed creative function of the imagination. It is in the third Critique of the Faculty of Judgment that Kant provides the needed context for such uniqueness and creativity,6 and thus approaches the aesthetic sensibility of Confucius in articulating the cosmic significance of freedom. Kant is intent not merely upon uncovering the fact of freedom, as in his second critique of practical reason, but upon protecting and promoting it. He faces squarely modern man’s most urgent question: how can this newly uncovered freedom survive when confronted with the necessity and universality of the realm of science as understood in his first Critique of Pure Reason? Will the scientific interpretation of nature restrict freedom to the inner realm of each person’s heart, where it is reduced at best to good intentions or to feelings towards others? When we attempt to act in this world or to reach out to others, must all our categories be universal and hence insensitive to that which marks others as unique and personal? Must they be necessary, and, hence, leave no room for creative freedom, which would be entrapped and then entombed in the human mind? If so, then public life can be only impersonal, necessitated, repetitive and stagnant. Must the human spirit be reduced to the sterile content of empirical facts or to the necessitated modes of scientific laws? If so, then philosophers cannot escape forcing upon wisdom a suicidal choice between either being traffic directors in the jungle of unfettered competition or being tragically complicit in setting a predetermined order for the human spirit. Freedom would, indeed, have been killed; it would pulse no more as the heart of humankind. Before these alternatives, Kant’s answer is a resounding No! Taking as his basis the reality of freedom -- so passionately and often tragically affirmed in our lifetime by such revered figures as Ghandi and Martin Luther King -- Kant proceeded to develop his third Critique of the Faculty of Judgment as a context within which freedom and scientific necessity could coexist, indeed, in which necessity would be the support and instrument of freedom. Recently, this has become more manifest as human sensibilities have opened to the significance of culture and to awareness that being itself is emergent in time through the human spirit. To provide for this context, Kant found it necessary to distinguish two issues as reflected in the two parts of his third Critique. In the "Critique of Teleological Judgment",7 he acknowledges that nature and all reality must be teleological. For if there is to be room for human freedom in a cosmos in which man can make use of necessary laws, if science is to contribute to the exercise of human freedom, then nature too must be directed toward a transcendent goal; it must manifest throughout a teleology within which free human purpose can be integrated. In these terms, nature, even in its necessary and universal laws, is no longer alien to freedom, but expresses divine freedom and is conciliable with human freedom. The structure of his first Critique will not allow Kant to affirm the metaphysical character of the teleology or its absolute and self-sufficient basis, but he recognizes that we must proceed "as if" all reality is teleological precisely because of the undeniable reality of human freedom in an ordered universe. If, however, in principle teleology provides the needed space, there remains a second issue regarding how freedom is exercised, namely, what mediates it to the necessary and universal laws of science? This is the task of his "Critique of the Aesthetic Judgment",8 and it is here that the imagination reemerges to play its key integrating role in human life. From the point of view of the human person, the task is to explain how one can live in freedom with nature for which the first critique had discovered only universal and necessary laws. How can a free person relate to an order of nature and to structures of society in a way that is neither necessitated nor necessitating? There is something similar here to the Critique of Pure Reason. In both, the work of the imagination in assembling the phenomena is not simply to register, but to produce the objective order. As in the first critique, the approach is not from a

set of a priori principles which are clear all by themselves and used in order to bind the multiple phenomena into a unity. Rather, under the rule of unity, the imagination orders and reorders the multiple phenomena until they are ready to be informed by a unifying principle whose appropriateness emerges from the reordering carried out by the productive imagination. In the first Critique, however, the productive work was done in relation to the abstract and universal categories of the intellect and carried out under a law which dictated that phenomena must form a unity. The Critique of Pure Reason saw the work of the imagination in assembling the phenomena as not simply registering, but producing the objective order. The approach was not from a priori principles which are clear all by themselves and are used to bind the multiple phenomena into a unity. Rather, in the first Critique, under the rule of unity the imagination moves to order and reorder the multiple phenomena until they are ready to be informed by a unifying principle on the part of the intellect, the appropriateness of which emerges from the reordering carried out by the reproductive imagination. Nevertheless, this reproductive work of the first Critique took place in relation to the abstract and universal categories of the intellect and was carried out under a law of unity which dictated that such phenomena as a house or a receding boat must form a unity -- and which they could do only if assembled in a certain order. Hence, although it was a human product, the objective order was universal and necessary and the related sciences were valid both for all things and for all people.9 Here in The Critique of the Aesthetic Judgment, the imagination has a similar task of constructing the object, but not in a manner necessitated by universal categories or concepts. In contrast, here in working toward an integrating unity, the imagination is not confined by the necessitating structures of categories and concepts, but ranges freely over the full sweep of reality in all its dimensions to see whether and wherein relatedness and purposiveness or teleology can emerge and the world and our personal and social life can achieve its meaning and value. Hence, in standing before a work of nature or of art, the imagination might focus upon light or form, sound or word, economic or interpersonal relations -- or, indeed, upon any combination of these in a natural environment or a society, whether encountered concretely or expressed in symbols. Throughout all of this the ordering and reordering by the imagination can bring about numberless unities. Unrestricted by any a priori categories, indeed it can integrate necessary dialectical patterns within its own free and therefore creative production, and scientific universals within its unique concrete harmonies. This work is properly creative. More than merely evaluating all according to a set pattern in one’s culture, it chooses the values and on that basis orders reality. This is the very constitution of the culture itself. It is the productive, rather than merely the reproductive, work of the human person as living in his or her physical world. Here, I use the possessive form advisedly. Without this capacity the human person would exist as another object in the physical universe, not only subject to its laws but restricted and possessed by them. He/she would be not a free citizen of the material world, but a mere function or servant. In his third Critique Kant unfolds how one can truly be master of his/her life in this world, not in an arbitrary and destructive manner, but precisely as creative artists bringing being to new realization in ways which make possible new growth in freedom. In the third Critique, the productive imagination constructs a true unity by bringing the elements into an authentic harmony. This cannot be identified through reference to a category, because freedom then would be restricted within the laws of necessity of the first Critique; rather, it must be recognizable by something free. In order for the realm of human freedom to be extended to the whole of reality, this harmony must be able to be appreciated not purely intellectually in relation to a concept (for again we would be reduced to the universal and necessary as in the first Critique), but aesthetically, by the pleasure or displeasure of the free response it generates. It is our contemplation or

reflection upon this which shows whether a proper and authentic ordering has or has not been achieved. This is not a concept,10 but the pleasure or displeasure, the elation at the beautiful and sublime or the disgust at the ugly and revolting, which flows from our contemplation or reflection. CONFUCIAN HARMONY AND THE DISTINCTIVELY CHINESE INTEGRATION OF TECHNOLOGICAL PROGRESS One could miss the integrating character of this pleasure or displeasure and its related judgment of taste11 by looking at it ideologically, as simply a repetition of past tastes in order to promote stability. Or one might see it reductively as a merely interior and purely private matter at a level of consciousness available only to an elite class and related only to an esoteric band of reality. That would ignore the structure which Kant laid out at length in his first "Introduction" to his third Critique12 which he conceived not as merely juxtaposed to the first two Critiques of pure and practical reason, but as integrating both in a richer whole. Developing the level of aesthetic sensitivity enables one to take into account ever greater dimensions of reality and creativity and to imagine responses which are more rich in purpose, more adapted to present circumstances and more creative in promise for the future. This is manifest in a good leader such as a Churchill or Roosevelt -- and, supereminently, in a Confucius or Christ. Their power to mobilize a people lies especially in their rare ability to assess the overall situation, to express it in a manner which rings true to the great variety of persons, and, thereby, to evoke appropriate and varied responses from each according to his or her capabilities. The danger is that the example of such genius will be reduced to formulae, and thereby become an ideology that excludes innovation. In reality, as personable, free and creative, and understood as the work of aesthetic judgment, their example was inclusive in content and application as well as in the new responses it continually evokes. When aesthetic experiences are passed on as part of a tradition, gradually they come to build a culture. Some thinkers, such as William James and Jürgen Habermas,13 fearing that attending to these free creations of a cultural tradition might distract from the concrete contemporary needs of the people, have urged a turn rather to the social sciences for social analysis and critique as a means to identify pragmatic responses. But these point back to the necessary laws of the first Critique; in many countries now engaging in reforms, such past "scientific" laws of history were found to have stifled creativity and paralyzed the populace. Kant’s third Critique points in another direction. Though it integrates scientifically universal and necessary social relations, it does not focus upon them, nor does it focus directly upon the beauty or ugliness of concrete relations, or even directly upon beauty or ugliness in themselves. Its focus is rather upon our contemplation of the integrating images of these which we imaginatively create, that is, our culture as manifesting the many facets of beauty and ugliness, actual and potential. In turn, we evaluate these in terms of the free and integrating response of pleasure or displeasure, the enjoyment or revulsion they generate most deeply within our whole person. Confucius probably would feel very comfortable with this if structured in terms of an appreciation or feeling of harmony. In this way, he could see freedom itself at the height of its sensibility, not merely as an instrument of a moral life, but as serving through the imagination as a lens or means for presenting the richness of reality in varied and intensified ways. Freedom, thus understood, is both spectroscope and kaleidoscope of being. As spectroscope it unfolds the full range of the possibilities of human freedom, so that all can be examined, evaluated and admired. As kaleidoscope, it continually works out the endless combinations and patterns of reality so that the beauty of each can be examined, reflected upon and chosen when desired. Freely, purposively and creatively, imagination weaves through reality, focusing now upon certain dimensions, now reversing its flow, now making new connections and interrelations. In the process the creative human freedom of a person or people manifests not only the scientific forms and

technological possibilities of the first critique and the potential forms of social and democratic interrelations of the second critique, but their interrelation in way that evoke our free response of love and admiration or rejection in hate and disgust. In this manner freedom becomes at once the creative source, the manifestation, the evaluation and the arbiter of all that imaginatively we can propose. It is goal, namely to realize life as rational and free in this world; it is creative source, for with the imagination it unfolds the endless possibilities for human expression; it is manifestation, because it presents these to our consciousness in ways appropriate to our capabilities for knowledge of limited realities and relates these to the circumstances of our life; it is criterion, because its response manifests a possible mode of action to be variously desirable or not in terms of a total personal response of pleasure or displeasure, enjoyment or revulsion; and it is arbiter, because it provides the basis upon which our freedom chooses to affirm or reject, realize or avoid this way of self-realization. In this way, freedom emerges as the dynamic center of our human existence. There is much in the above which evokes the deep Confucian sense of harmony and the role of the gentleman in unfolding its implications for daily life. This uncovers new significance in the thought of Confucius for the work of implementing, in a mutually fruitful manner, Mr. Science and Mr. Democracy in our times. Looking to the aesthetic sense of harmony as a context for uniting both ancient capabilities in agriculture with new technology and industrialization and for applying these to the work of building a democratic nation is a task, not only for an isolated individual, but for an entire people. Over time, a people develops its own specific sensibilities and through the ages forms a culture and a tradition which, in turn, constitute the human capital for such a project. In this sense, one can look to the Confucian cultural heritage for its aesthetic sense of harmony as a way to carry forward technological development for the authentic progress of the Chinese people in our day. The Confucian sense of harmony is not a rationalist law whose unfolding would suggest an attempt to read all in an a priori and necessitarian manner. Its sense of life and progress is not that of a scientific view of history after the dialectic of Hegel and Marx. Rather, Confucianism understands humans as bringing their lives together in relation to other persons and in the concrete circumstances of everyday life. In this sense, it is not massively programmatic in the sense of a rationalist scientific theory of history. This may be very much to the good, for it protects against efforts after the manner of an ideology to define and delimit all beforehand -- which indeed surpasses human capacities. Further, one must not underestimate the cumulative power which the Confucian sense of harmony and resonance can have when it brings together creatively the many persons with knowledge of their circumstances in an effort to provide for life in its many modes. This extends from those farmers who know and love their land intimately and are committed to its rich potentialities (and analogously for all phases of productive economic life), to family members and villagers who love their kin and neighbors, to citizens who are willing to work ardently for the welfare of their people and nation. If the exercise of freedom is a concrete and unique expression of the distinctive reality of its authors, then the task is not how to define these by abstractive and universal laws which stifle personal initiative, but how to enliven all persons actively to engage the new technology and scientific structures in the multiple dimensions of their lives. In this context, the philosophical importance of the Confucian attitude becomes more evident. For if harmony and resonance enable a more adapted and fruitful mode of realization for the human being, then the identity and truth, dynamism and goodness of being are thereby made manifest and proclaimed. In this light, the laws of nature and the technology they enable emerge, not as desiccated universals best read negatively as prohibitions or intrusive machines, but as rich and unfolding modes of being and actualization best read through an appreciation of the concrete harmony and beauty of their active development. This, rather than the

details of etiquette, is the deeper Confucian sense of the gentleman and sage; it can be grasped and exercised only with a corresponding aesthetic, rather than the merely scientific or pragmatic sensibilities. Nor is this beyond people’s experience. Few can carry out the precise process of conceptualization and definition required for the technical dialectics of Platonic and Aristotelian reasoning. But all share an overall sensibility to situations as pleasing and attractive or as generating unease or even revulsion. Inevitably, in earlier times, the aesthetic Confucian mode lacked the scientific precision which is now available regarding surface characteristics of physical phenomena or the technological prowess this makes available. But, in its sense of harmony, it possessed the deep human sensibility and ability to take into account and integrate all aspects of its object. This is essential for the contemporary humanization of our technical capabilities for the physical and social implementation of our world. This is foundational for integrating with this scientific and technological age the democratic practice and cultural traditions without which the creative life atrophies and progress ceases and dies. A strong indication of the importance of this, and of the fact that its principles are found in the Confucian tradition is that without physical resources Japan has become so great a world productive and economic power. If in China the problem is not with willingness to change and initiative, but with how to harness the needed technology so that progress can be not only rapid, but authentically Chinese, then the Confucian sense of aesthetic harmony endows it with the crucial means for integrating and implementing the needed technological means. It is with -- not without -- Confucius as host that Mr. Science and Mr. Democracy can enter and truly help. NOTES 1. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. N.K. Smith (London: Macmillan, 1929), A 112; cf. A 121. 2. Ibid., A 121. 3. Donald W. Crawford, Kant’s Aesthetic Theory (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1974), pp. 87-90. 4. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A 192-93. 5. Crawford, pp. 83-84. 6. Cf. Hans Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (New York: Crossroads, 1982), Part I, pp. 1-2, pp. 39-73; and W. Crawford, espec. Ch. 4. 7. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. J.H. Bernard (New York: Hafner, 1968), pp. 205-339. 8. Ibid., pp. 37-200. 9. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. N.K. Smith (London: Macmillan, 1929), A112, 121, 192-193. Crawford, pp. 83-84, 87-90. 10. See Kant’s development and solution to the autonomy of taste, Critique of Judgment, nn. 57-58, pp. 182-192, where he treats the need for a concept; Crawford, pp. 63-66. 11. See the paper of Wilhelm S. Wurzer "On the Art of Moral Imagination" in G. McLean, ed., Moral Imagination and Charac-ter Development (Washington: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 1998) for an elaboration of the essential notions of the beautiful, the sublime and taste in Kant’s aesthetic theory. 12. Immanuel Kant, First Introduction to the Critique of Judgment, trans. J. Haden (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965). 13. William James, Pragmatism (New York: Washington Square, 1963), Ch. I, pp. 340. For notes on the critical hermeneutics of J. Habermas see G. McLean, "Cultural Heritage, Social Critique and Future Construction" in Culture, Human Rights and Peace in Central America, R. Molina, T. Readdy and G. McLean, eds. (Washington: Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 1988), Ch. I. Critical distance is an essential element and requires analysis by the social sciences of the historical social structures as a basis for liberation from determination and dependence upon unjust interests. The concrete psycho- and socio-pathology deriving from such dependencies and the corresponding steps toward liberation are

the subject of the chapters by J. Loiacono and H. Ferrand de Piazza in The Social Context and Values: Perspectives of the Americas, G. McLean and O. Pegoraro, eds. (Washington: Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 1988), Chs. III and IV. ***** http://www.crvp.org/book/Series03/III-11/chapter_xviii.htm CHAPTER XVIII THE CONFLICT OF VALUES: The Contemporary Transformation of Values in China CHEN GENFA To a great extent, a change of mind is represented as a difference in ideas. But for the direction of human life, values act as paradigms in the spiritual and actual life of people, determine the goals of action, the end of life and the mode of behavior of people. For this reason, any reform of society is concerned with a reform of values. However, a reform of values requires a division and reorganization in which traditional values come into conflict with new ones. In China, the center of traditional values is Confucianism, which is characterized by an emphasis upon righteousness and a belittling of interests; in contrast, Western values emphasize individuals and interests. Since the reform and opening of China these two values have been in conflict. Conflicts now emerge in Chinese values: between righteousness and interests, between egoism and altruism, and between collectivism and individualism. All these conflicts are manifest in the orientation of the values of human life; in the end they influence moral ideas and modes of thought and behavior. When their influence becomes too great the social structure changes and the individual must readjust his or her place in society. THE CONFLICT BETWEEN RIGHTEOUSNESS AND INTERESTS The conflict between righteousness and interests emerged long ago. Even in times of extreme collectivism this conflict did not disappear completely, but continued in hidden forms. As early as before the Qing dynasty, Confucius said: "The gentleman understands what is right, the cad understands what will pay." In the Chinese moral dictionary, righteousness and interests constitute a pair of irreconcilable contradictions. Some Chinese who maintain the doctrine of the mean are at a loss as to what to do in confronting the choice between righteousness and interest, because many see only two such kinds of people: the gentleman who emphasizes righteousness and belittles interests and the cad who forgets righteousness when he or she perceives interests. Therefore, when anyone made a choice between righteousness and interests, one faced a dichotomous moral evaluation: either the good name of the gentleman or the bad name of the cad. Such judgements about righteousness and interests have been the subject of Chinese culture and the backbone of the Chinese moral system. It often asked why market economics has not developed in China for over two thousands years. A simple and immediate answer is that the Confucianist values, which held the central place in China and determined the Chinese national character, emphasized righteousness and belittled interests. To some extent this answer is reasonable, but it is unsatisfactory because as long as they did not become an extreme monasticism Confucianist values would not hinder the development of a Chinese market economy; on the contrary, they would promote standardization and order. Although many Chinese persons like to connect the merchant with treacherousness, whence appears the concept of the "treacherous merchant", there exist maxims useful for a market economy such as "Good-naturedness leads to wealth in business", "There still exists good will even when business is unsuccessful", "Buying and selling at reasonable prices", etc. All these maxims manifest the

Confucian spirit and the principle of placing righteousness above interests. In a broad sense, keeping one’s word, an important principle for the development of a market economy, is part of Confucianist righteousness. Just as any game is impossible without its rules, society would fall into disorder and disaster were there not the principle of righteousness ruling one’s behavior in searching for interests. In this sense, righteousness and interests can be unified. Because of this some scholars consider Japanese capitalism to be Confucian. But now, some younger Chinese experience the conflict between righteousness and interests much more than in the past. On the one hand, the Confucian principle in which their fathers believed has lost its authority. Some people are bent solely on profit and see all social relations in terms of profit-making so that one worries whether "China will become more capitalist than capitalism". At present, there are no healthy values appropriate for the market economy in China; often it is noted that some people are corrupt, steal and loot in self-interest. This phenomena is not much more serious than in Western countries, but it lies heavily upon the Chinese mind and society so that many feel distressed about these immoral phenomena. On the other hand, there still exists a moral mechanism which limits materialism in China. It is characteristic of Chinese society that relations among people are harmonized not by law, but by morality -- for which reason there were no police in China for over two thousand years. The Chinese crowd around the scene of an accident to judge between the right and wrong because they think of themselves as moral observers and judges. Hence, the Chinese pay special attention to the other’s evaluation of themselves. Although the force of moral evaluation is decreasing and the force of law is increasing in Chinese social life, the value of putting righteousness above interests still holds a central place in Chinese society. THE CONFLICT BETWEEN EGOISM AND ALTRUISM In May 1980, the magazine Chinese Youth published a letter from a young man named Pan Xiao: "The creative person is for oneself subjectively and for others objectively. . . . Perhaps this is the law of human beings and of the evolution of life." Pan Xiao’s letter evoked great repercussions among the young and led to a prolonged debate which centered on the problem of life values, especially the proposition "to be for oneself subjectively and to be for others objectively." This debate represents the conflict between two values faced by Chinese youth after the reform and opening of China, namely, the conflict between egoism and altruism. Although we may not be able to say whether such action is for ourselves or for others, we find that there are two types of tendencies in the actual life of the Chinese people. On the one hand, individuals in China were subordinated and attached to the collective. Almost everyone recognizes the social evils brought about by extreme collectivism and it’s harm to one’s sense of person. On the other hand, some people believe in the principle "everyone for oneself and the devil take the hindmost". They harm other’s interest when there is a conflict between their own and other’s interests. The whole society could descend to a state in which everyone is like a wolf to every other member of society and would harm the other for oneself. Certainly, as the relation between self and other is very complex, it is difficult to judge whether a kind of action is moral or not by the standard of "either for oneself or for others". Spencer remarked, if the maxim "to live for oneself" is wrong, the maxim "to live for others" also is wrong. So, a conciliatory attitude is the only possibility; for the evolution of human beings it is necessary to reconcile "for oneself" and "for others". However, we must consider some possible extreme case. For example, when a boat on which there are many women and children is sinking, the children in the boat cannot flee for their life. Thus, there have been heroic paeans for men who give up their chance for life to women and children. Altruism is an important means for maintaining affinity and the integrity of society. Heroism exists because there is

altruism to the extent of offering love and life. If everyone indulged his interests, heroism would be impossible and the spiritual force maintaining social justice would disappear. In China now one finds that when a boy falls into the water some are not willing to rescue him, while others do their best to rescue him even at risk to their lives. A student named Zhang Hua died a martyr in rescuing a farmer who had fallen into a manure pit. Some persons said Zhang Hua’s action was unwise because Zhang Hua was a highly educated young man who would be able to contribute a great deal to the society. Obviously, this is an utilitarian value according to which we must calculate the amount of the value of an action to the society or individual before we take a certain moral action. But if so, there would be such absurd phenomena as not rescuing an idiot or an old man because they are burdens to society. In the above-mentioned case, if Zhang Hua did not go to the rescue of the farmer, still we could not say that he was an egoist, for in Chinese to be an egoist means "to use public office for private gain" or "to injure the public interest to benefit one’s private interests." In law Zhang Hua was not obligated to rescue the farmer, but moral nobility consists in the spirit of devotion of a person precisely when he is not responsible. Zhang Hua’s death confirms the greatness of morality and the nobility of the devotion which strongly influences our society and inspires us all. If every member of society saw someone in mortal danger without lifting a finger to save him, what would happen to our society? Obviously, "to be for oneself subjectively and to be for others objectively" is not feasible for the simple reason that "to be for oneself subjectively" does not necessarily mean "to be for others objectively". On the contrary, there are conflicts between "for one-self" and "for others" in many cases. "For oneself" is impossible if there is no person willing to be for others subjectively. So, "to be for oneself subjectively and to be for others objectively" is not a useful solution to the conflicts between "for oneself" and "for others". THE CONFLICT BETWEEN COLLECTIVISM AND INDIVIDUALISM There are traditions by which collectivism is upheld in Eastern nations, but because of the different cultural traditions and the different levels of development the collectivism of these nations plays different parts in social life. With the fusion of the Eastern and Western cultures collectivism in the traditional sense practically disappeared. The Chinese people upheld an extreme collectivism with a taint of puritanism for the last several decades. The whole society was understood as a machine of which everyone was a part. "Everyone is a screw never getting rusty" was a vivid note in that extreme collectivism. During the period called "eating food in the collective", the collective spirit entered every aspect of the social life. The collective was seen as a mechanical accumulation of individuals so that the relation between the collective and the individual seemed to be a relation between a bag and potatoes. This extreme collectivism necessarily led to the extreme egalitarianism whose result was that individualism is a false egalitarianism because it does not recognize the difference in ability among individuals. For this reason, a movement of liberation in thought arose in China after the policy of reform and opening. Some outdated Western trends of thought were very welcome and were studied by Chinese youth with great eagerness. Philosophies which emphasized the liberation of individuality did away with the earlier blind faith in collectivism and propagated the idea of freedom. With the rapid development of Chinese market economics young Chinese longed for self-realization, selfdetermination and self-struggle. Too great an emphasis on individual value causes extreme individualism, so that some persons denied community concerns in general and not only extreme puritanical collectivism. Some who understood freedom as doing whatever one likes without limit of law, only asked for rights but would not perform obligations. Hedonism and a worship of money led young people to commit crimes. Now, when individual interests conflict with collective interests, some put their own interests above

community ones. To quote Sartre some even think that "the other is hell". Like the extreme collectivism, extreme individualism is not useful to the healthy development of our society. If extreme collectivism sacrificed individuality and strangled human creativity, then extreme individualism would break down social harmony and lead to a hostile state among people. In China there is an historical tradition which emphasizes community and underestimates individuals. This must be reformed gradually. But without community concern China would cease to be China, and the East would cease to be the East. As long as this does not sink into racism and extreme nationalism, as long as it can develop individual activity and creativity, concern for the community is helpful to individuals, society and human civilization. *** http://www.crvp.org/book/Series03/III-16/chapter_xvii.htm CHAPTER XVII CHANGES OF VALUES DURING THE RENOVATION PERIOD IN VIETNAM NGUYEN TRONG CHUAN PREFACE The world is changing and Vietnam also is changing very rapidly. From a subsidiary, bureaucratic and concentrated economy, Vietnam is shifting to a market economy, industrializing, modernizing and integrating into the world. From a philosophical point of view, this is not only a socio-economic change, but also a change in value standards. This entails a search for new value standards that are more general, more suitable and able to serve better the progress of the entire society as well as each human individual. It must be suitable for an era of development and the trend toward globalization and multi-faceted international relations. In the course of this change a number of issues emerge, such as how to define real, fundamental values; what are the counter-values; how to maintain good traditional values and keep them from sinking into oblivion; which values should be received, and more importantly how to orient values, especially in term of the younger generation. Through reviewing Vietnam’s recent situation this study would hope to contribute to the clarification of these issues. DEFINITIONS The concept, "value", is used widely in many different scientific branches such as: philosophy, psychology, ethics, sociology, aesthetics, etc., and with different content. As it is difficult to have a reasonable definition which can be accepted by everybody, it is necessary to determine firstly the inner content of the definition to be used here. When speaking of value it is necessary to attend to the concrete socio-historico-practical aspects, namely, to its applicability and capability for promoting human behavior by obtaining, maintaining and protecting it. At the same time, though it is not necessary to moralize all values, in speaking of value we want to reaffirm its positive character as attached to the right, the good, the interesting and the beautiful. On the other hand, values have objectivity because objects, processes and relations themselves include the ability to satisfy multi-faceted human demands, bringing multiple benefits to humans. At the same time, human groups express their attitude, point of view and evaluation of those abilities, as well as the level they can accept. However, human demands and benefits are extremely varied and diversified, — even extremely complicated. Hence, things that create value through their ability to satisfy the demands of most human beings have a definite stability. When people choose some value as essential or fundamental, or say that a value comprises material and spiritual dimensions, or is of high quality, they are talking about a system of values. In this way we see that some values are common for humankind, while others characterize a nation or a community (village, commune). Some values are long-standing and respected and inherited through generations; but the impact, scale and time of others may be shorter. Some values

will fade or even disappear completely when the historical situation changes, and newly formed values will replace them. The scale of values used by a nation, community, group or individual in the conduct of its behavior serves in effect as a measure for surveying values. The attitude, arrangement and selection of material or spiritual values to be pursued, believed in, and followed as a duty is the orientation of value. Such value orientation is a very important factor in forming and confirming personality, helping an individual to find meaningful things, to avoid what is meaningless for oneself and harmful to the community, to be firmly targeted on ideals, to stimulate personal demand and interest, to adjust behavior and to motivate action. Obviously, beside its moral and aesthetic character, value orientation also is closely allied to awareness, feelings, emotion, will and desire. In terms of nations as human communities traditional values have an extremely important role. Tradition includes the composition of the ideology, emotions, customs, habits, lifestyle, ways of behavior, and the will of the human community. Formed in history this becomes stabilized and is transferable from generation to generation. Hence traditional values concern what is considered the active, and typical of the national culture which should be maintained, protected, and promoted. The content of tradition is very diversified and varied, but can contain positive and negatives aspects simultaneously. Hence, from traditional values one must extract the positive, the good, the beneficial for the life of the entire nation today and tomorrow, as well as for the international community of which the nation is a member. CHANGES OF VALUES DURING THE RENOVATION PERIOD IN VIETNAM The Diversification of Vietnam’s Traditional Values Vietnam’s traditional values originate from traditions formed a thousand years ago under multiple influences: the natural environment and geographical conditions, labor production and socio-economic structures, historical circumstances and the international and regional cultural environment. That includes the traditions of a community with the spirit of solidarity and mutual help, whether in peace or in war or other difficult times; traditions of village demo-cracy whose clearest symbol is the right to select a representative to control the works of the village or commune; and the tradition of standing firm in difficulty, hard work, love of children and respect for the aged. Thanks to the contact with China and especially the reception of Confucianism with India and the reception of Buddhism, and with French culture Vietnam has traditions of love of learning, respect for titles like being a mandarin, altruism, leniency, as well as of freedom, equality and fraternity. However, Vietnam’s traditional values have been formed mainly on the basis of the Vietnamese nation. Being a small country and experiencing too many wars of national defense the features highlighted in Vietnam’s tradition are patriotism, nationalism independence and self-reliance. Although Confucianism has been studied and many things learned therefrom, its great moral system does not touch patriotism. On the contrary, for the Vietnamese people patriotism is a value, indeed a spiritual motive for which many generations have sacrificed, and thanks to which they have won. Through struggle against extremely severe natural conditions and foreign invasions the tradition of flexible behavior, quick adaptation and easy adaption to existing conditions has been formed. All those good traditions form values which have been preserved by the Vietnamese. Beside that positive, good side, the prolonged existence over many centuries and even until today of the small peasant economy also contributes to forming traditions which are not so good. These include being unfamiliar with economic accounting, carelessness, distraction, lack of tight discipline, sectionalism, localism, egalitarianism, low aspirations, and dislike of being surpassed by others. Those features have created negative aspects in the Vietnamese tradition. Great Changes in the Socio-economy and Their Impact on the System of Traditional Values

Vietnam’s renovation since 1986 has been in all fields: economic, political, social, cultural and external relations. In the economic field the shift from a concentrated, bureaucratic, subsidiary structure to a market economic structure has quickly changed the face of socio-economic life, created the existing economy, led to rapid growth, and patently improved peoples’ standard of life in almost every field of activity. Many traditional professions have been restored and many new jobs created. The way of earning money to become rich also has changed and been diversified. The expansion of external relations also has created big changes in many influencing the outlook, the way of thinking, the attitudes and behavior of people, especially the young. However, these changes have given birth to not a few com-plicated social issues and negative phenomena. The major concerns are the great difference between the poor and the rich which risks becoming conflictual, disrespect for tradition, and looking down on public opinion and law. Along with that, many social evils and crimes which had disappeared for many years or been greatly reduced now rise again. In fact, those changes have impact on the system of traditional values, though estimates of the level of that impact are not quite in agreement. A few people consider that under the big changes in the economy not a few traditional values have been inverted, fallen into crisis or even into oblivion. In contrast to the past, economic, material values now carry more weight than spiritual ones; personal benefit is a stronger motivation than collective benefit. However, as confirmed by many researchers, seen calmly and with vigilant precautions, this phenomenon is obviously a necessary adjustment. If in previous times spiritual collective values were highly considered, material values were forgotten; readjusting the balance is quite reasonable, and should not be a matter of concern. This adjustment itself has its positive side in that it promotes self-control and the ability for self-improvement; it stimulates independence and creativity. This overcomes passivity and reliance on the state and the collective in order to seek a better material and spiritual life for oneself on the basis of an assured material life. Instead of relying on the collective, society, and the state, people have recognized that they need to be active, to calculate economic results, and to improve their knowledge so as not to fail in the severe competition of the market economy. However, extremism is also a reality in present day Vietnamese society. This trend threatens the traditional values mentioned above. It rates highly a comfortable material life, looking down upon altruism and not paying attention to other people. It honors technique while disregarding human beings. It blindly follows Western and foreign values. It looks only to oneself, forgetting the collective and the community which long have been precious traditions of the nation. Although these trends are not dominant it is necessary to recognize them in order to take measures of prevention and to avoid the extreme turns which cause harm to the society. Trends in Value Changes: the Statistics Many sociological surveys have been conducted regarding changes in the value outlook caused by changing historical circum-stances. Among 20 values commonly popular, the Vietnamese polled indicated the following ten as leading values: 1. Peace: 86.0% 2. Freedom: 76.8% 3. Health: 72.6% 4. Employment: 64.9% 5. Justice: 64.4% 6. Education: 62.0% 7. Family: 57.3% 8. Belief: 57.3% 9. Security: 56.0% 10. Profession: 52.9%

From this the following conclusions can be drawn: - The high percentage of people who chose peace reflects the sincere aspiration of a nation that has lost too much to war. The high rank of this value probably corresponds to other nations all over the world. That value has power to gather and unify all nations, North and South, East or West, whether developing or developed. It is a common value of humankind without which such other aspirations as wealth, strength, happiness and development cannot be realized. Peace is a key to independence, freedom and employment. - Other values such as health, education, justice, belief, family and security remain traditional values which are highly appreciated. - Survey results show that the values of one’s profession are in the greatest need of change. Above we have commented that in the Vietnamese tradition the weak point is economic accounting for fear that one’s neighbors will consider one to be rich. However, this tradition of egalitarianism is rapidly weakening. People turn to a number of values which motivate people to enrich both them selves and the country according to the motto: "A rich people, in a strong country, with an equal and civil society." It has been more than ten years of renewal, and the way of getting rich and choosing an occupation have changed greatly. Seventeen percent of the people chose an occupation with high income despite difficulty, while only a few people chose an easy job with low income. Interestingly people preferred a practical occupation with high income, but one that did not harm the community and family responsibilities. Concretely, 64.2 percent chose occupations which enabled them to take care of their family and 57.8 percent chose jobs that could help others. People seem not to pay great attention to the economic sector or office where they will work: working for the state or for private or foreign companies all are acceptable, provided the job is suitable and renders high income. This is a remarkable change in the Vietnamese psychology and value-orientation. However, the point is that when people become accustomed to change they do not lose their traditional values, but still stay close to family and community. This is easy to understand because to the Vietnamese people’s mind, if the family is happy and stable the community (village, commune and the entire society) will be stable and peaceful, and people will be able to face the great waves of difficulties in life. Maintaining family values is a firm guarantee in the struggle against the merciless, cold-blooded competition of the market structure. This has the following implications: - As becoming rich is a popular value, the older mandarin values of respect for titles and positions now lessen remarkably. - Traditional values continue strong while at the same time bearing new content. For example, if in the past the value of "freedom" meant mainly freedom for the entire nation or national independence, nowadays it means also freedom in business, work, learning, improving knowledge and selecting one’s private activities in fields not prohibited by the laws. Such freedom is close to the individual and his or her improvement. - Some values which in the past were quite ordinary now have become urgent, for example, employment. This value can be found in all nations, but now in Vietnam it is urgent because of the shift in the economic structure. It is certain that not only in the present, but also in the future employment and profession will remain leading values, especially for young people and particularly in countries with high populations. - Further, the survey results identify some spiritual values which people honor, praise and consider highly such as: creativity, love, justice, beauty. Many Vietnamese now value these only to a middle level, some grade them below other values. This is obviously the "negative" side of present value orientations. Probably it reflects also that in a life full of difficulties the Vietnamese must first solve their urgent problems, rather than dealing with other values. CONCLUSION Life is changing very fast and human awareness too does not stop at any one point.

The above survey results are only preliminary and can serve only as points of reference. Other changes surely will take place in the future. But today’s life allows researchers to confirm that the fundamental orientation of the scale of values measuring what Vietnamese believe and seek, in other words, things that create the present pattern of Vietnamese values, are still the traditional human values. However, these shift from patriotism in battle to patriotism in the construction of peace, in industrialization and modernization; these are the present sense of the national culture and national pride. Together with respect for other good traditional values, the newly formed values and those common to all humankind provide a foundation creating the shape of current life for the Vietnamese and their society. That is the base also for ensuring the dialogue and integration for peace and development in this region and in the world. Knowing how to respect and preserve the good values of this and other nations, while maintaining one’s own identity is the key to improving the quality and meaning of life in an era full of change and tension. **** http://www.crvp.org/book/Series03/III-20/epilogue.htm EPILOGUE CULTURAL ISSUES IN THE CONTEXT OF ECONOMIC GLOBALIZATION YU XINTIAN Economic globalization has formed two parallel and contrary cultural trends. It has not only created the current industrial and popular cultures in the world and brought about the acceptance to a certain extent of some Western values. But also it has promoted cultural nationalization and localization and reaffirmed and protected the unique meaning of each culture. Cultural intercourse cannot be obstructed, like mercury rushing down. World culture is also constantly spreading outward and extending its influence. Only by opening to the outside world, can the objective of China’s cultural development be achieved. This is no longer the colonial era. Whether the thinking and policy of cultural hegemony can work depends to a great extent on the response of developing countries. To achieve “cultural security” by closing doors is not only impossible technologically, but also will run counter to people’s desire. Only by facing the world with an open mentality and strengthening the national culture through extensive cultural exchanges can one resist foreign invasion. Western capitalist countries have taken the lead in realizing modernization and have used some of the methods of their opposition, the socialist countries. On the contrary, for socialist countries it is far from enough to learn from capitalist countries and draw lessons from them. China’s modernization will not take the path of capitalism, but this does not mean casting away the cream of Western culture. Only by pursuing a policy of opening-up, can we resist and criticize the reactionary propaganda of hostile domestic and foreign forces and various decadent, superstitious and pornographic ideologies and views. “ECONOMIC GLOBALIZATION” DOES NOT MEAN “CULTURAL GLOBALIZATION” Economic transnational development and internationalization can be traced back one century or more, while economic globalization began after WWII. Trade contacts and mutual investment between developed countries increased tremendously, various international economic mechanisms began to take shape and transnational corporations became the engines of world economic growth. Meanwhile, large numbers of developing countries entered the international economic system and all the countries interpenetrated and depended upon each other and tended towards economic integration. By the 1980s, economic globalization appeared in an embryonic form. Since the 1990s the international economy and politics have undergone historical changes and economic globalization has proceeded with accelerated momentum. Transnational distribution of essential factors of production reinforced the interdependent global system of division of labor, and information technology has promoted global capital flow and technology transfer, causing in turn new changes

according to the laws of economic cycles. Today, economic globalization has become an irresistible tide. Observing the current and future trends of the times, economic globalization cannot but be its basic characteristic and broad context; it must be the starting point for analyzing any important issue. Therefore, in recent years, not a few articles have put forward the concepts of “cultural globalization” and “political globalization”, or more concisely, “globalization”. In the author’s opinion, they are improper. The suffix: “-ization” means from beginning to end and from inside to outside. But there is no such “globalized” culture. Of course, economic globalization is only in its initial stage. The extent of globalization depends on the difference in the participation of countries and regions. The economy of many countries has not even entered within the scope of economic globalization. But the foundation of globalization has been laid and a global market and network have begun to take shape. The state of culture is different from this. Another meaning of the suffix: “-ization” is process. Just as modernity is a state, modernization is a process. The reasons why economic globalization can be realized are: Firstly, only by establishing a worldwide market economic system and integrating the world market can economic internationalization and integration be expanded across the world. Secondly, the information technology revolution has promoted the formation of a global economic network. Therefore, the process of economic globalization has been expanding and deepening. The situation of culture is different. Though in the past half century, the frequency of cultural exchanges between various countries in the world has exceeded any previous period in the history and cultural absorption and integration has been unprecedented, cultural difference has not been gradually eliminated. Wars for nation and religion (culture in a broad sense) occur also after economic development. In some parts of the world, people drive cars to herd sheep and cattle and conduct Internet transactions, but they still conform to the caste system and polygamy. Though cultural development is influenced by economic globalization, it is not in direct interrelation with the latter. It has a more complicated inherent developmental logic. Economic globalization has profound impact on culture, however, and current research on this is quite insufficient. The impacts can only be summed up as follows: economic globalization has formed two parallel and contrary cultural trends. The first trend is that it has created current industrial culture and popular culture in the world and has caused some Western values to be accepted to a certain extent. In previous times, the elite culture always dominated one country’s cultural process and a specific tension was maintained between the elite and the popular culture. But industrialization and modernization have enabled large-scale mass consumption, including cultural consumption. The original tension between elite and popular cultures has been completely destroyed. Popular culture has surged on an unprecedented scale and simply submerged the elite culture in quantity. In the past, only phoenixes seemed qualified to flutter, while today sparrows and crows blot out the sky and the sun. The popular culture has such characteristics as superficiality, commercial and mechanical nature, focused on the stimulation of the senses. It has ridden the wind of economic globalization and spread quickly across the world. In the past, the popular cultures in various countries also had strong national and local distinctive features. But now the sparrows and crows throughout the world all sing karaoke and dance to music machines. No matter how the U.S. and the Soviet Union confronted each other in the Cold War era, or no matter how tense the US relations with countries such as Iran, the young people in the U.S., the Soviet Union, Iran and even other countries follow similar fashions in jeans, disco and hair-dying. No matter how the intellectual elite turn up their noses at the popular culture, they cannot but face up to its positive aspects in breaking the monopoly of the elite on culture and opening up vast spaces for the masses to create culture. The challenge is to absorb the strong points of the popular culture, overcome its weak points and enable the attractive forces behind the elite culture to join in guiding popular culture.

It is deeply significant that economic globalization has promoted the dissemination of Western values. Western countries have set forth a series of values such as democracy, freedom, human rights, market competition, legal contracts and individualism. Though elements of these values exist also in other cultures, the modernized abstraction of these values has been completed in the West. The enhancement of these values corresponds with the Western modernization process, and they have gradually been improved in the process. When developing countries began their efforts to catch up with and surpass Western countries in modernization they had to recognize that they must learn and absorb some cultural values of the West, while introducing its science, technology and management experience. However, modernization does not mean Westernization. It is on the basis of their native cultures that various countries must learn Western culture and use it for reference. Western values are of universal significance to a certain extent, otherwise they cannot be accepted by other countries. Economic globalization has promoted more developing countries to accelerate their modernization, and newly industrialized countries (regions) have set an example of catching up with, and surpassing, Western countries and have provided experience in this respect. After choosing the path of modernization, developing countries have more consciously accepted some Western cultural values. Because of the global currency of the popular culture and the dissemination of Western values, some people have asserted that economic globalization must bring about cultural globalization. However this assertion is one-sided. The reasons are: firstly, there is another tendency in the impact of economic globalization on culture, that is, promotion of cultural nationalization and localization and reaffirmation and protection of the unique meaning of each culture. The inundation of popular culture and the acceptance of Western values have evoked heated debates in almost all non-Western countries. In this all trends of thought have appeared from the “school of Westernization” to the “school of nativism”. Given that many cultures in the colonial era were suppressed under Western gunboat and missionary policies, developing countries are now able to protect their own interests, including their cultures with state power while being aware that closing door can only protect backwardness and that only opening-up can help cultural rejuvenation and development. What is more hopeful is that some developing countries (regions) have not only succeeded in catching up in economy, but have found a way to answer the difficult problems of absorbing external cultures while keeping native cultures or nativizing external cultures and modernizing native cultures. These are two aspects of the one process. Weaving together the two concur and complement one another.1 In this way, the native culture is rejuvenated while being retained, and its dissemination and inheritance are promoted. It will neither be extinct nor assimilated and contained, but greater stress will be put on the characteristics of national development. Modernization as a general concept will be expressed in a specific form through the unique infiltration of the national culture. In fact, it is a good example that although Western countries have reached a very high level of modernization, they still retain their respective national cultural features. Asian, African and Latin American countries are so numerous and diverse in culture that it is still less possible for them to reach unanimity. Secondly, the formulation and expression of humankind’s common cultural values require that various cultures, especially non-Western cultures, contribute their excellent values. In some sense Western values have many strong points, but they have shortcomings as do any cultural values. For instance, the unchecked spread of individual freedom has caused social problems; over-competition has triggered contradictions in interpersonal relations; attending only to conquering nature has resulted in its retaliation; and strong religious mentalities have obstructed intercultural absorption and tolerance. These shortcomings can not be remedied by the Western culture itself. In their own processes of modernization, developing countries are learning from and absorbing some Western values, but they are also

developing what is useful and discarding what is not in their native cultural values in order to counteract the inadequacy of Western values and enhance their own. This is of universal significance to countries all over the world. Lastly, only cultural diversification can ensure that humankind not be destroyed should a unitary “cultural gene” face future challenges. At the turn of the century, humankind made unprecedented progress, but also met unprecedented problems, for example, the population explosion, ecological deterioration, environmental pollution, frequent wars, ignorance and backwardness, the wide gap between the rich and the poor, severe crimes, violation of moral norms and the break-up of the family. The new scientific and technological revolution brought more expectation and hope to humankind, but also concealed huge crises: e.g., the information network has narrowed the distance of time and space, but also bred online crime and speculation. What the Southeast Asian financial storm showed may be only the tip of the iceberg. The breakthrough in biological technology will bring about unexpected glad tidings to the life of humankind, but will also cause confusion and perplexity in law and ethics. A greater threat lies in unforeseen changes. Various national cultures are extremely rich and varied and are a vast storehouse of experience and wisdom with which humankind can handle crises; only by drawing on this experience from the historical cultures can humankind forge ahead. If culture is “globalized” or “Westernized,” as some people have said, it will be a very sad future for humankind. The impossibility of “cultural globalization” has been considered above. Now, greater stress will be laid on what can be done, because the attitude of people is also very important. When all cherish more the garden of national cultures under the condition of economic globalization and make more efforts to explore, develop, transform and enhance these cultures, then cultural diversification will develop in a healthy manner. STRONG AND WEAK CULTURES “Economic globalization” does not mean “cultural globalization”. Entering the world market is also not equal to “falling fully in line with Western culture”. However, in the ideological circles of developing countries views about this are very confused because there are huge differences among the cultures of the world. Western culture as a strong culture is aggressive while the newly emerging national cultures are in a weak state. How to understand this phenomenon has attracted more and more attention. When Western powers moved across the world with the power of thunder, they destroyed the original social economy through trade and dumping, besides conquest by force; they negated and changed local values and moral concepts with Christianity, education and law. Westerners capitalized on the superiority of European cultures and its ability effectively to set new standards throughout the world. They assumed themselves to be the teachers of other nations in spirit and morals. Colonists arbitrarily determined the destiny of other nations on the premise of egoism based on their own standards. Power politics was swollen with cultural arrogance: the “European heartland theory” or “Western heartland theory” are of long standing. Though an undisguised preaching of Western superiority is criticized also in the West, its influence is deeply rooted. At present, Western research and its publicity on universal values are powerful and dynamic. By referring to Western cultural values as “universal” and “common in the world” they obscure the particularity of Western culture. According to Roland Robertson, a British scholar, globalization can be regarded as a dual process including universalization of particularity and particularization of universality in the most general sense.2 With economic globalization, some Western scholars desire urgently to universalize Western culture. This author holds that some Western values, such as democracy, human rights and freedom, have a certain universality; otherwise they could not be accepted. But, it is completely wrong to regard the path of the West as a model and impose it on others. During the Cold War, fierce struggles between political systems and ideologies covered equally fierce cultural struggles. As socialism was at a low ebb after the

Cold War, Western cultural hegemony caused a great clamor. Especially the U.S., the sole superpower in the world, aspired again and again to change the world with its values. President George W. Bush took the expansion of U.S. political values as the main component of security. Former President Clinton listed the spread of U.S.-style democracy as one of the three pillars of U.S. diplomacy. Strategic Review 1998 of the U.S. University of National Defense pointed out in analyzing the Asia-Pacific situation that almost all the countries in the region had accepted the economic values of core countries such as the U.S., and that this was very favorable for the promotion of economic relations in this region. However, some countries continued to resist and even refused to accept values of democratic politics, so doubts and concerns existed in the relations between core countries and other countries. Thus the spread by the U.S. of its cultural values is aimed at maximizing its national interests and realizing its hegemonic strategy of “leading the world”. Socialism being at a low ebb further enabled Western cultural values to exercise strong influence in the political system. Some declared “the end of history,” while others predicted the extinction of socialism. The U.S. Government’s definition of the era is “market and democracy” and “security and order”. In fact, it holds that the capitalist system will last forever. The strong force of Western culture is also embodied in the richness of its material base and its absolute superiority in the cultural industry, products and market. In the late 1990s, the world film box-office value was about US$15.5 billion, in which the U.S. accounted for over two thirds, US$10.5 billion. The telecommunications industry is the U.S. largest exporting industry, while the film industry ranks fourth. This shows the strength of the cultural industry. What Coca Cola and McDonald market is not only food and beverage, but also the meaning of culture and the lifestyle added to them. Hollywood’s swift and fierce attack has been moving forward successfully and their products are enjoyed by millions across the world. Japan’s Fuji Sankei Communication Group ranks first among the world’s five largest mass media groups; its annual income reaches US$10 billion. After 1998, it has been forging ahead towards “complete digitalization” and has established international digitalization media jointly with such media groups as Australia’s Murdoch Media. In the emerging networks, over 80 percent of information come from Western countries and only 5 percent originate from Chinese. Western countries provide over 90 percent of online service, while the Chinese mainland provides only 1 percent. The weakness of developing countries is not only because they lack strong economic strength and capital input, but also reveals that their greatest shortcoming scientific and technological backwardness and dearth of human resources. The strong cultural force of Western countries dominates the world because of the support of the international political and economic systems they led. To introduce cultural concepts, ideas, principles and values all over the world, the guarantee of the system is of the utmost importance. The system uses organizational force and legal recognition to create the situation. They compel others to submit without firing a shot and, even if using force, they “have just cause”. After the victory in WWII, Roosevelt and Churchill designed the United Nations, putting the spirit of the “Atlantic Charter” into effect. To prevent the economic crisis in 1930 from resurfacing, various countries set up a series of organizations at the Bretton Woods Conference. Later, there were arranged such systems as GATT, WTO and APEC. Though theoretically, in organizations such as the UN, all the countries are equal, in reality, strength always determines the weight of speech. Western countries are superior in the system, because they have initiated most of the fundamental principles of the international law and the world system and they dominate the current world order. System innovation and its original culture can be traced to the same origin, and are well reasoned. To pursue their own systems and cultures in international relations, developing countries must take into account the existing international law and the world system, and not come into conflicts with them. Only by so doing can their systems and cultures be accepted. As the cultures of developing countries and Western culture do not derive from the

same system, the integration of the two requires a great deal of work. At the turn of the century, people pay close attention to the reform of international political and economic organizations to adapt them to the changes in era. The key lies in putting forward their own new ideas and principles and seeking a path for their collective recognition, as well as exploring the feasibility of systematic arrangements. This is a severe test for the cultures of developing countries. The fact that the cultures of developing countries are weak is undisputed; this will not change for a considerable period. Under these circumstances, “wholesale Westernization” is not desirable and extreme cultural nationalism is also very harmful to developing countries. Some intellectuals advanced the concept of “cultural colonialism”, “cultural imperialism” or “neo-colonialism” in a broader sense. This deserves careful analysis. No doubt, there really exist cultural hegemonic trends of thought in Western countries which sometimes are reflected in the policies of some countries. But, today is no longer a colonial era. Whether cultural hegemonic thinking and policies can work depends, to a great extent, on the reaction of developing countries. “Cultural security” through closing doors is not only impossible technologically, but also will run counter to people’s desire. Only by facing the world with an open mentality and reinforcing the building of national cultures through extensive cultural exchanges can we resist foreign invasion. Furthermore, although the concepts of “colonialism” and “imperialism” are borrowed, cultural issues and economic and political systems differ in characteristic manners. Political and economic systems can be clearly divided into capitalist and socialist systems, planned and market economy. However, it is not easy to judge whether a country is reduced to the status of a colony by means of quantitative and qualitative analysis, and, given the basic termination of the colonial system, whether the culture of a developing country is reduced to the status of a “colony”. Spoken and written language is really an important mark of culture, but many developing countries have had to inherit the legacy of the colonial period and use English, French and Spanish. Meanwhile, their governments have been protecting the national spoken and written languages. In some developing countries, the multi-ethnic, multi-national and multi-linguistic state has sometimes made the official designation of one official national language harmful, so they cannot but adopt Western languages. Perhaps more important is ideological identification, cultural values and the moral system. Through education reflecting national liberation and independence, the national identity and pride of newly emerging nations have been greatly enhanced. This is basic. Of course, there exists the trend of urban youth pursuing Western culture and imitating Western lifestyle, but their proportion in the population is worth research. It is also an universal phenomenon that young people return to their mainstream culture after a “traitorous period”. Developing countries have different national conditions. Only by analyzing the specific situations of various countries can one gain a correct view. Without this, this author can only report that of the developing countries she has visited no country can be called in general a cultural “colony”. India was one of the colonies with the longest history in Asia and English is also the official language, but the national pride and patriotic feeling of the Indians are very strong; national culture goes back to ancient times and is well preserved. South Korean leaders from Kim Young-Sam to Kim Dae-jung have stressed the learning of Western values, but the South Korean Government and people have been rather successful in developing what is useful and discarding what is not in the traditional culture. Therefore, national cultural pride has struck root in the hearts of the people. Vietnamese characters have been Latinized. Though undergoing long-standing colonial rule, war destruction and system alternation, continuity in the inheritance and renovation of its culture is very clear. There are not only influences of Chinese and Buddhist cultures, but also vestiges of Western, especially French, culture, while retaining characteristics of Vietnamese culture. In sum, national independence is a strong guarantee against cultural

“colonization”. Speaking of strong culture, we generally refer to Western culture, because the cultural values of Western countries are relatively almost identical and they are quite different from developing countries on issues such as freedom, human rights and democracy. But, if carefully observed, we may find that Western countries are not monolithic; they differ greatly in culture and their foreign cultural policies are widely divergent. The French Government has stipulated that French language must be used during at least 40% of time in French television and broadcasting programmes, and Hollywood’s films can account at most for one fourth of the films shown in 4500 cinemas. The Canadian Government advocates a “mosaic culture” at home, that is, each ethnic culture is a part of Canadian culture and the government will not compel it to be assimilated. After driving US “country music radio stations” out of Canada in 1995, the Canadian Government began to put into effect C-55 bill in 1999, which stipulates that Canadian enterprises are not allowed to advertise in foreign periodicals distributed in Canada, lest a high fine be imposed on them. The protection of national culture has been attained through cutting off the financial resources of US periodicals in Canada. Therefore, if the leader of cultural hegemony is the U.S., other Western countries may also share common concerns with developing countries in opposing US cultural hegemony. For this reason, specific research should be done on the cultural policy of each Western country, industry, market and relations with developing countries. We will firmly oppose what is really cultural hegemony, but deal differently with what is not. Besides, there are normal contacts between countries and also various nongovernmental cultural exchanges. The U.S., the sole superpower, is no exception. To fulfil their historical task of modernization, developing countries must open to the outside world and absorb all the achievements of human civilization. They cannot forget this in resisting cultural hegemony. If they stand still on the path of modernization, this will fundamentally endanger their national destiny and prospects; it will be impossible for their national cultures to be prosperous and vigorous. Culture is related to all the activities of humankind: artistic, social, political, educational, religious, spiritual and economic. It has a broad tolerance. If opposition to “cultural colonialism” is pursued, it may impact all the foreign contacts and will certainly impair a country’s opening-up and development. Hollywood films are an example. In the perspective of film producers, film production is an economic activity aimed at gaining box-office values. When exporting to other countries, films involve trade contacts and cultural exchanges between countries. The artistic works reflect US culture and values, but if there is no severe political prejudice or propagation of sex and violence, cultural exchanges are more advantageous than disadvantageous. We should educate the people to absorb nutrition and reject dross in cultural comparison and trust people to have such ability. If a bad work uses advanced scientific and technological means as well as strong technique of artistic expression, we should allow professionals to learn the technique so as to enhance their ability to disseminate our national culture. In the final analysis, a cultural closed-door policy is impossible and unacceptable. We must let the people enhance their cultural discrimination so as to absorb the true, the good and the beautiful and discard the false, the bad and the ugly. Only when the national cultural promotion achieves remarkable success and blends the feelings of the people with a culture geared to modernization, the world and the future, can the people have the cultural backbone to enhance their discrimination and absorbency in the cultural mix. While recognizing the fact of strong and weak cultures, weak cultures are not fully passive. Cultural intercourse can not be obstructed, like mercury rushing down. Weak culture is also constantly spreading outward and sending out its own influence. Swiftness of information and communication has made it possible for any event occurring in any corner of the world to become the focus of worldwide

attention. The past hundreds of years have witnessed Western attempts to conquer the world and migrate outward, but now a trend of immigration from developing countries into Western countries appears. Among the immigrants there are not only laborers, but increasingly excellent talents in various fields. European scholars speak of the new change from “world Europeanization” to “European universalization”. The past one-way export of Western thinking has changed into a two-way dissemination of Eastern and Western, as well as Southern and Northern, thinking. Cultural interaction has produced some results in international exchanges. For instance, on the highly controversial issue of human rights developing countries have begun to attach importance to them, while developed countries have had to recognize the rights to subsistence and development as their basis, which has been written into UN conventions on human rights. Not a few Western scholars used to look down upon East Asian culture, but the very rapid development of this region has aroused the interest of the world in East Asian culture and the blend of Eastern and Western cultures. If developing countries devote themselves to modernization and culture building, weak cultures can be changed into strong. Therefore, this author hold that the concepts of strong culture and weak culture and the formulation of opposition to cultural hegemony are more accurate than “cultural colonialism” and “cultural imperialism”. CHINA’S CULTURAL CHOICE The aim of China’s cultural construction is very clear; it is to build national, popular and scientific socialist culture in the process of modernization. President Jiang Zemin pointed out that as long as the Communist Party of China continues to represent the requirements of the development of China’s advanced productive forces, the orientation of China’s advanced culture, and the fundamental interests of the overwhelming majority of the Chinese people, it can establish itself in a lasting unassailable position. The “three represents” constitute an integral whole. They are not only the fundamental guiding principle for Party building, but also the strategic policy for developing a prosperous socialist culture. China’s socialist cultural building will be a very long historical process. Its background is the new scientific and technological revolution and economic globalization which add fuel to the flames in the mix between various cultures where strong culture and cultural hegemony are overbearing. Faced with severe challenges, China’s cultural choice can be only a cultural opening in a wider and deeper way. Economic globalization has made cultural closure almost impossible and technically unrealizable. When satellite television covers the whole world and the computer network links innumerable households, the mutual cultural mix will become very specific. The Chinese Government’s decision to join the WTO brings the Chinese market completely into line with the international market. The developed countries’ commodities, including cultural products, will enter into the Chinese market in quantity. Besides commodities, cultural meanings, value trends and even ideological coloring will be manifested. This is an unavoidable problem which lies ahead for the Chinese people. Why must China answer it with a wider and deeper opening policy? Firstly, only by opening, can China make use of the opportunities created by economic globalization, overcome the challenges brought about by economic globalization and fulfil the dual process of catching-up in its modernization drive. In the past twenty years, China has made considerable progress in catchingup in its industrialization; people now enjoy a higher standard of living; they have progressed from simply having enough to eat and wear. But before China had finished catching-up in industrialization, it began to face the threat of being left farther behind in knowledge-based economic competition. The new scientific and technological revolution has offered the opportunity to leap-frog in development, for in a sense it can be said that all the countries stand at the same starting line. On the other hand, developing countries lack sufficient economic strength to support the knowledge industry, are backward in science and technology, are weak in education and are not good in the marketization and

industrialization of scientific and technological achievements. Only by opening up in a wider and deeper way, can they gain the qualifications to begin running. In fact, not only developing countries, but also developed countries recognize that to win in the future, they can not depend only on their own potentials but must possess the ability to fuse and absorb external innovative thinking. In recent years, Western countries have intensified the recruitment of senior talents in developing countries, and large enterprises have sought out promising inventions all over the world. The investment of transnational corporations in the Chinese mainland has expanded from processing and manufacturing to knowledge-type service fields such as training, retail, and research and development. The setting up of institutions of research and development has become a new investment trend. Corporations such as Intel, P&G, DuPont, Nokia, Ericsson and Matsushita have set up research centers, technological development centers and laboratories in Beijing and Shanghai. Their purposes are to seize China’s huge market and to make use of its talents. This will greatly advance the development of China’s new high-tech industries, and the reform of its modes of management of scientific research institutions. It will also nurture excellent young talent. For instance, the opening of the information network in attracting people’s attention may enable us to get a lift on the development express, but also subject us to the surprise attack of cultural garbage and even run a certain risk. No opening-up can be protected from negatives for a short period, but in the long-term to block the path towards world expressways causes the greatest insecurity. Secondly, the goal of Chinese cultural building can be achieved only by a cultural opening. The socialist culture representing the progressive course of China’s advanced culture and with Chinese characteristics certainly will be geared to modernization, the world and the future; certainly it will be open. China’s cultural modernization has been accelerated under the attack of external cultures and through opening will be pushed forward in handling relations with external cultures. The concepts and ideas such as rule of law, science, democracy and innovation all are introduced from the West, extremely enriching China’s thinking and culture and promoting the establishment of the socialist culture. Moving from a society with a relatively comfortable life to the level of a moderately developed country, it becomes more urgent for China to absorb all of human civilization. In the long ideological progress of the achievements, feudalistic remnants still exert their effects and ignorance and backwardness still opposes science and civilization, so cultural modernization shoulders a heavy responsibility. Western capitalist countries have taken the lead in modernization and have used some practices of opposition socialist countries in promoting their own development. On the contrary, learning and drawing lessons from capitalist countries by socialist countries is far inferior. In learning and drawing lessons from the latter, we must sort out the achievements of human civilizations from the capitalist system and understand fully what they are and how to fuse and absorb them. Though Chinese modernization will not take the road of capitalism, this does not mean rejection of the cream of Western culture. If we are unable to sort out in Western culture what is of the essence and what is dross, we shall make the wrong choice in the process of opening and delay China’s modernization. Of course, our cultural opening is omnidirectional. We shall incorporate cultures of diverse nature and adopt the strong points from all cultures, whether Western developed countries or Asian, African and Latin American developing countries or transitional countries. Thirdly, China should make more contributions, including cultural ones, to humankind; only by implementing an opening policy can this objective be reached. The Chinese nation has a long history; its culture goes back to ancient times and has been splendid. It made tremendous contributions to the history of human civilization, but its backwardness in modern times made it look like a bright pearl covered with dust. We have implemented an opening policy and learned and

absorbed the cream of external cultures with the aim of distinguishing the differences and developing through interaction. We have modernized the transformation of Chinese culture to enable it to reach the level of the times. For example, in the feudal society “loyalty” meant “to be loyal to the sovereign and devoted to the country”. We should inherit the tradition of patriotism and remove the feudal flavor. “Filial piety” was the basis of the feudal social ethics. We must assimilate it with discrimination, transforming it into the principle of relations between generations in the family. Only on the basis of a modernized transformation can we spread it to the rest of the world. The new scientific and technological revolution and economic globalization have promoted various unprecedented cultural exchanges and provided a golden opportunity and a marvelously fast means for spreading Chinese culture. China needs to enhance its awareness in this regard and explore a huge space. To spread the excellent Chinese culture to the outside world, the way, method, means and mechanism should be brand-new, convincing, compelling and penetrating. This requires an opening policy, in-depth understanding of the state of cultures in different countries of the world and of the people’s psychology of acceptance and popularization. Cultural dissemination, of course, cannot do without the material support, but it is mechanical and one-sided simply to equate cultural ability with economic or military strength. Wisdom can resolve difficult problems. Lastly, only by implementing the opening policy can the reactionary propaganda of hostile domestic and foreign forces and various decadent, superstitious and pornographic ideologies and views be resisted and criticized. That Marxism is the guiding ideology of our socialism is unshakable. The truth of Marxism has been established and developed through its struggles against various falsehoods. Today, the Chinese people accept rich, numerous and jumbled information rapidly and have active minds. Great changes have taken place in their cultural level, psychological state, cognitive ability and appreciation, so it will not work to educate them by means of closed doors. Only by implementing the opening policy to allow people to make comparisons in practices, can socialism become their conscious choice and can their beliefs be unshakable. After the ten-year great calamity, some Chinese lost their self-confidence when the country was opened to the outside world and stayed abroad by every possible means. But after a 20-year opening, China’s comprehensive national strength has been enhanced, the Divine Land has taken on a new look, the people’s standard of living has been raised, the confidence in socialist modernization has been strengthened and students studying abroad have begun to return. All these are good contrasts. The development of information technology, especially the internet technology, has provided new means of opening. There is much progressive, healthy and beneficial information, but there is not a little reactionary, superstitious and pornographic content. Domestic and foreign hostile forces want to make use of them to attract the masses and confuse people’s hearts. This should arouse our vigilance, but we can rely only on opening in two ways in this struggle. One is to strengthen Marxist and socialist education in enabling the masses to have their own judgment. The other is to take the initiative to launch attacks and make use of the Internet to defeat the false, the bad and the ugly with the true, the good and the beautiful. In sum, only by a cultural opening to intensify cultural construction can the success of economic, political and social opening-up be guaranteed and can a foundation be laid for China’s national rejuvenation. NOTES 1. See the author’s article entitled “The Destiny of Culture -- Pondering over Relations between External Culture and Native Culture in Modernization Process”, Cross-century Development Strategy and Cultural and Ethical Progress (Shanghai: Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences Publishing House, 1997 edition), p. 669. 2. Roland Robertson, “Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture” (London: Sage, 1992), p. 102. ****