Religion and Abstraction Part Two

We shall now, move to two thinkers that have no faith in humans capacity to bring about God's rule on Earth. Both have a much more pessimistic view of human nature and society Maximus the Confessor and Soren Kierkegaard lean more toward the Manichean view of the cosmos. As Hegel and Green represent the view in Christianity that a perfect society can overcome the alienation of the individual, so Maximus and Kierkegaard represent the view that only the individual and his or her relationship with God can overcome alienation. To be fair to Hegel and Green neither was Utopian, instead it was more the pursuit of a perfect society that leads to overcoming alienation. Both Maximus and Kierkegaard voluntarily, withdrew from society. Maximus after a brief career as a civil servant in the Eastern Roman Empire, became a monk. Kierkegaard after hes student days withdrew into a literary retirement. Neither had any hope for a collective redemption, it was to the individual not to society that they thought redemption could be found. All quotes shall be taken from the "Selected Writings" of Maximus the Confessor in the "Classics of Western Spirituality" series. To begin with both Kierkegaard and Maximus reject the idea that there is an objective view. Kierkegaard states that only God has a God's eye view of creation, that because humans are part of creation that they cannot rise to a God's eye view, this can even be observed in the title of his main word on this question: "Concluding Unscientific Postscript." The reason Kierkegaard uses the term "unscientific" is because scientific knowledge is always posited as objective knowledge. Kierkegaard's hostility to objective knowledge is not only metaphysical but moral. For Kierkegaard certainty kills faith, that if we know , we do not have to take a leap of faith. The reason Kierkegaard takes this stand is that he wants a total convection from the believer. He believes this can only be had if he makes becoming a Christian difficult. This shall become more clear as we proceed. Maximus also rejects any God's eye view of creation to humankind. This is expressed in his preference for apophatic theology. There is cataphatic and apophatic theology. Cataphatic theology is trying to understand God through positive assertions. Apophatic theology is trying to understand God through negative terms. Cataphatic theology is what Hegel and Green were doing in their philosophies; that God can be understood through the use of reason and logic. Apophatic theology my be hard to define and describe, but is easy to recognize. Let us turn to Maximus's own words. "Chapters on Knowledge":" God is one without beginning incomprehensible possessing in his totality the full power of being, fully excluding the notion of time and quality in that He is inaccessible to all and not discernible by any being on the basis of any natural representation." This is of course, the position of exemplarism. That our knowledge of the divine can only be analogical. That we cannot understand the divine as humans. I offer an example of analogical knowledge: to understand electricity we often use water as an analogy, of how electricity works. Yet, no matter how much or how little water one has, it is not electricity. In other words, the quality of the divine is inaccessible to human reason. Both Kierkegaard and Maximus also believe in building the homunculus: the self. Both also agree the building of the homunculus starts in fear, again let us go to Maximus. "The Four Hundred Chapters on Love": "The one who believes the Lord fears punishment; the one who fears punishment becomes master of his passions; the one who becomes master of his passions patiently endures tribulations; the one who patiently endures tribulations will hope in God: hope in God separates from every earthly attachment: and when the mind is separated from this it will have love for God." Of course, this is how the homunculus is constructed in childhood. Children are taught to deny their impulses and emotional reactions out of fear of punishment. F.H. Bradley calls character systematized habit. These are the good habits we are taught in childhood; habits that must be reinforced throughout one's life. The irony is the homunculus is the source of most of our alienation. It is the feeling of being other than ones impulses and emotions, having to deny natural reactions to the environment. This denying of intuitive emotions and activities in favor of a learned abstraction, that is counter-intuitive is the cause of alienation. In the homunculus we embody the counter-intuitive abstractions; this is what we call conscience. Maximus and Kierkegaard both view Jesus Christ as a symbol for the self. This is because they believe the life of Jesus is the paradigmatic life for humans. So the blueprint for building the homunculus (self) is the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. Let us look at two more quotes from Maximus. "The Four Hundred Chapters on Love": " He speaks of the reality of the Word of God in a manner which corresponds to each one's strength. Thus he is crucified for those whoare still beginners in the practice of virtue and who crucify their passionate drives with reverential fear" Again from "The Four Hundred Chapters on Love":"The one who has renounced things such as a woman, wealth, and so forth, has made a monk of the outer man but not yet the inner. The one who renounces the passionate representations of these things makes a monk of the inner man, that is of the mind. Anyone can easily make a monk of the outer man if he really wishes to, but it is no small struggle to make a monk of the inner man" The inner man is the self or homunculus: the little man in the head. The function of the inner man is to deny acting on impulse; to try to evaluate activities, to judge what activities should be approved and which should be denied. The inner man is also supposed to deny negative emotions, and delay the gratification of desires. These are the advantages of the homunculus, that an agent's long range plans are not destroyed by impulses, instant gratification or negative emotions. Of course, no emotion is negative in itself; only when judged against the long term interest of the agent. In the terminology of Christian spirituality this is called "discernment." And again from" Four Hundred Chapters on Love":" The reward of self-mastery is detachment and that of faith is knowledge. And detachment gives rise to discernment which knowledge gives rise to love for God" It is of course, detachment that gives rise to alienation. The homunculus is not a participant, so has to alienate or objectify the actions going on around, and judge which are in the long term interest of the agent. The same goes for emotions within the person. This is how we get the subject-object split. The advantage to detachment is power and knowledge, because the agent does not get involved in situations that do not advance the agent's goals. The downside is alienation, an agent becomes an alien in the world and to her emotions. The idea of changing the inner man into an inner monk; leads us to the palliative that Kierkegaard and Maximus recommend to overcome alienation. That the inner man or homunculus must be rebuilt and changed; not to conform with society or nature, but to God. This is the distinction between Hegel and Green versus Maximus and Kierkegaard. Hegel and Green want society and the homunculus to be two parts of one whole: two sides of the same coin. Both visions agree that the paradigm for the homunculus is the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. Hegel and Green believed that the rule of God on Earth can be achieved by the pursuit of a perfect society. Kierkegaard and Maximus do not believe the state or humans can achieve anything on their own. Human nature is evil and fallen. Instead the only way to relieve alienation for Kierkegaard and Maximus is to into a relationship with God. This is the constant theme of Kierkegaard; that one's relationship to God is the only important thing in an individual's life. In his book "Philosophical Fragments" Kierkegaard insists there is no evolution in human nature or human societies, that no matter when one is born, the relationship with God is the same. That no matter at what point in history an individual finds herself in that it is just as easy or difficult to have a relationship with God as at any other time in history. So the question becomes : how is this transformation of the inner man to be brought about? The answer is Love. As the alert reader has already realized from the quotes of Maximus; fear must make way for love. We must now examine what Kierkegaard and Maximus mean love. They do not mean intellectual love; instead they are talking about erotic love. To perform the transformation one must become God's lover. This is why Kierkegaard is always using young unmarried women as examples of the type of love he is talking about. This is also the reason for asceticism. Let us go back to Maximus. "Four Hundred Chapters on Love":"The one who truly, loves God also prays completely undistracted and the one who prays undistracted also truly loves God. But the one who has his mind fixed on any earthly thing does not pray undestracted; therefore the one who has his mind tied to any earthly thing does not love God." In our present culture we usually do not associate asceticism and love, but this is a mistake. For when a young man wants to get married, he commonly gives up friends, possessions, and frivolous things of all sort. Of course, women give up much more for a relationship than men. Even after the pain of childbirth the children usually take the father's name. The point is that both men and women give up these things gladly, for the relationship. Giving up things for the relationship is not viewed as a sacrifice. This is why we do not make the connection between love and asceticism. So the monk is supposed to give up everything for God. This is the exchange formula in both Kierkegaard and Maximus. That humans give everything to God as if it was theirs to give, and God accepts the gift as if he had not first given humans everything they possess. So do young lovers give everything for the relationship of marriage. This is why so much mystic Christian theology is written in erotic language. An example of this would be nuns that go through a wedding ceremony to become brides of Christ. Love becomes the emotion that is meant to carry all the information, all other emotions are supposed to serve the relationship with God. Let us illustrate from Maximus. "Four Hundred Chapters on Love":" The mind of the one who loves God does not engage in battle against things nor against their representations. Thus it does not war against the woman nor against the one who offend him, nor against their images, but against the passions that are joined to these images." Emotions and desires are to be used for gaining a greater relationship with God. Anger is to used to stay away from distractions from God. In other words the agent is unified by her relationship with God. Maximus views separation as evil. The soul (homunculus) is united by its love for God. This is Kierkegaard an Maximus's prescription for alienation. Hegel and Green did not want to get rid of God because they wanted there to be an objective reality. Maximus and Kierkegaard did not want to get rid of God because they wanted love to be the absolute reality. END OF PART TWO

Religion and Abstraction: Part One

Abstraction has been double edged sword for humankind. Abstraction has brought great power over the environment; yet it has also caused great alienation. The greater the abstraction, the greater the alienation. We must examine why this is so. The question becomes: why are image-triggers non-alienating while image-triggers that have been sublated into abstractions are alienating? As we have seen in previous essays ("Intellect and Abstraction" and "Ethics and Abstraction") emotions carry the information. Although we have observed that it goes both ways: feeling the emotion can bring up the information, and the information can also cause the emotion. Before the sublation of image-triggers an agent feels the appropriate emotion when the image-trigger is tripped. When the emotion and trigger are not sublated there is no split between subject and object, only a seamless interaction. When the image-trigger has been sublated into an abstraction the agent views the abstraction as an object; a thing outside of herself. This is because abstractions belong to everyone, so they belong to no one. We have already observed that Plato divinized abstractions as the Forms. This divininization becomes deification in the Christian tradition. Plato's realm of the Forms becomes the Son, the second Person of the Trinity in Christian theology. When almost everything a person does is based on learned abstractions; the agent feels as if she is explained away; that she is just a brndoe of abstractions, that belong to no one in particular. F.H. Bradley touches on this situation in"My Station and its Duties." Bradley does not examine the resulting alienation. Western Civilization has been the most sophisticated user of abstractions of all civilizations. The palliative for alienation is religion. So we shall turn our focus on to the western religion of Christianity. Christianity inhabits a middle-ground between the two great heresies of Late Antiquity: Pelaginism and Manicheanism. Pelagius was the opponent of St. Augustine. The source of antagonism between the two was the doctrine of grace. Pelagius believed humans could be saved and reach the mind of God on their own effort without divine help. Augustine taught that humans could not accomplish any thing on their own, except evil. That humans needed the grace of God to be saved, or to reach the mind of God. In other words, it is the fight between ontologism and exemplarism. Whither the soul is descended or undescended. In ontologism a human can enter the mind of God and experience the realm of the Forms: the divine Nous. In exemplarism unless God decides to grant us grace and illumination, there is no way to be saved or experience the Mind (nous) of God. We move to the Manichean heresy; Augustine converted to Christianity from Manicheanism. Manecheanism is a radical dualism; there is good and evil. The spiritual realms are good and matter is evil. Humans are a spark of the divine that has fallen and become trapped in the evil realm of matter. There is one more heresy from late antiquity that we must examine before proceeding with our topic. That is the Monophysite heresy. To modern readers the Monophysite heresy sounds technical and bizarre. It concerns the nature of Jesus Christ, whether he has a human nature, a divine nature, or both.The orthodox position is that Jesus Christ has a dual nature, both human and divine. The reason the orthodox spent so much time and effort combating the heresy and its variations is because they believed it would lead to pantheism; if Jesus Christ only had a divine nature. In this assumption the orthodox were correct. One of the thinkers we shall examine in this essay was one of the strongest opponent of the Monothelite heresy; a variation of the Monophysite heresy. His name was Maximus the Confessor. Maximus gained the title "Confessor" because of his opposition to heresy. Maximus has his tongue ripped out at the root, and had his right hand cut off. This was a standard punishment for writing or speaking against the Emperor of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire. We shall now examine four thinkers and how they proposed to deal with the alienation brought on by abstraction. Two lean towards the Pelagian and Monophysite view: G.W.F. Hegel and T.H. Green, and two that lean towards the Manichean view: Maximus the Confessor and s Soren Kierkegaard.We shall start with Hegel and Green. Both considered there philosophies as being in the Christian tradition, even though many modern fail to recognize this aspect of Hegel's philosophy. Most of the ideas in this section come from Hegel, but Green developed them. All quotes shall come from Green's book:"Prolegomena to Ethics" (4th. Ed. Oxford 1899). We must now dive back into the subject-object distinction. Both Hegel and Green's philosophy depend on there being an objective view, and objective knowledge. To accomplish this they assert an odd variation of the Monophysite heresy: monopsychism. That there is only one mind; that each individual mind is but a part of one universal mind.This one mind is of course God. Hegel call God, Absolute Spirit and Green calls God the eternal consciousness. This position leads to many problems; some Hegel and Green deal with, some they do not deal with. Let us turn to Green in his own words:"Nature withall that belongs to it, but change still. All the relations under which we know it are relations in the way of change or by which change is determined. But neither can any process of change yield a consciousness of itself, which in order to be a consciousness of the change must be equally present to all stages of the change; nor can any consciousness of change, since the whole of it must be present at once, be itself a process of change" And again from Green:"From the above consideration thus much at any rate would seem to follow: that form of consciousness, which we cannot explain as of natural origin, is necessary, to our conceiving an order of nature, an objective world of fact from which illusion may be distinguished." What Green is saying in the above quote is that there is an eternal consciousness expressed in the relations that govern the process of change in the cosmos, and that the eternal consciousness cannot have a natural origin. Green wrote after Darwin, so he understood that if Darwin is right and consciousness evolve it could not evolve into an objective view, because it would always be part of the object. Consciousness could never become a subject that is separate from the object of the cosmos; there is no God's eye view in evolution. There is no view from outside if consciousness evolved. In this Green is close to the modern thinker Thomas Nagel, who argues against the neo-Darwinist conception of the evolution of consciousness for the same reason as Green. That there would be no objective knowledge. Hopefully, Mr. Nagel shall publish another book to tell us if he has anothe alternative besides the idealistic pantheism of Hegel and Green to support objective knowledge. Let us again turn to Green:"On the contrary its very basis is the consciousness of objectivity, Its whole aim is to articulate coherently the conviction of there being a world of abiding realities other than, and determining the endless flow of our feelings." The eternal consciousness is of course God. The next problem for is how do humans rise to the leves of a God's eye view? The answer is monopsychism. That we are all part of the eternal consciousness. Let us turn to Green:"This being so, it would seem that the attainment of the knowledge is only explicable as a reproduction of itself in the human soul, by the consciousness for which the cosmos of related facts exist-a reproduction of itself, in which it uses the sentient life of the soul as its organ" Another quote from Green on the same subject:"There can never be that actual wholeness of the, world for us, which there must be for the mind that renders the world one" Green rejects exemplarism; there is not a double consciousness in humans. Back to Green: No we reply, not that there is a double consciousness, but one indivisible reality of our consciousness cannot be comprehended in a single conception." For Green human consciousness and the eternal consciousness are like two sides of the same coin; there are not two identical coins, but one coin. From this we can see that Green has a Monophysite conception of human nature and God's nature. This is also Hegel's view. In the famous and often misunderstood parable of the master-slave dialectic, Hegel's conclusion is the two realize that they share one and the same consciousness. Thus, they decide to work together. Both master and slave share the same eternal consciousness. Hegel's whole philosophy depends on there being a God's eye view or objective knowledge; that must be accessible to human consciousness. Fredrich Engels and Karl Marx both left Hegelians, also understood that there must be an objective point of view or consciousness. This is why Marx and Engels brought in the material dialectic that moves through history, and is manifest in the human community. I remember Christopher Hitchens saying in hes intial enthusiasm with Marxism that he felt:"chained to the engine of history" Both Hegel and Green believed nurturing and promoting the growth of the homunculus; which they identified with the eternal consciousness. Both were educational reformers, that promoted character building. Character is another name for the self: homunculus. For Hegel and Green no natural instinctive drives or desires can be considered morally good; only conscious actions can be considered morally good So let us review the material we have covered, and show its connection with Christianity. Both Hegel and Green have deified abstractions, as the eternal consciousness. Green speaks of universals as relations. These relations (abstractions) can be embodied in individual human agents, giving them a guide for action. Although this seems to be a reproduction, it is not a duplication, but two sides of the same coin: monopsychism. There is nothing unusal in this position it can be traced back to Plato and Aristotle. We must still connect this position with Christianity. Even though it is a heresy there is a long Monophysite tradition in Christianity. What Hegel and Green are up to in their monopsychism, is to show that humans can embody at least partially the mind of God. Of course, the mind(Nous) of God is the Son in the Trinity. So what Hegel and Green are asserting is that humans can bring about the rule of the Son (Jesus) on Earth. Humans do this by embodying the mind of God in the homunculus. We must note Hegel considered his philosophy as Christianity stripped of supernatural and mythic elements. So the question becomes how does this position help us deal with the alienation caused by abstraction. The answer of course, has already been stated. By embodying the mind (Nous) of God we bring about the rule of God on Earth. For both Hegel and Green the metaphysical should lead to social reform, and the betterment of society. This is done by realizing ourselves in the institutions of society. The institutions of society should realize the aims of the members of society. Here we must correct a grave injustice that has been done to T.H. Green by some modern academics. Amatrya Sen and Martha Nussbaum have claimed they are the developers of the capabilities approach in ethics. The capability approach to ethics is the brainchild of Green. What Sen and Nussbaum have done is offered us a corruption of the capabilities approach. Before preceding let us return to Green's own words:"Hence has resulted a change in the ideal of what its full realization would be, and consequently a change in the conception of what is required from the individual as a contribution to that realization. In particular the idea has been formed of the possible inclusion of all men in one society of equls, and much has been actually done towards its realization. For those citizens of Christendom on whom the ideas of Christendom has taken hold, such a society does actually exist. For them-according to their conscientious conviction, if not according to their practice-mankind is a society of which the mimbers owe reciprocal services to each other, simply as man to man " The above quote shows where Sen and Nussbaum have corrupted the vision of Green. Instead of following Green they followed Engels and Marx, by substituting equality for reciprocity. Thus Sen and Nussbaum promote a society without justice. Justice is reciprocity. Although this seems a small change it has large consequences. Of course Sen and Nussbaum constantly talk about justice, but this is just to cover the lack of justice tn their vision of society. The best example of the prison-state ;a society without justice, is the old Soviet Union. It is more accurate to call a society without justice a prison-state than a police state. The Soviet Empire is the only major empire in history that had to build walls, not to protect itself from outside enemies, but to keep its own people in. A society that is besieged from the inside is a sick society Marxist communism and any other society that promotes equality over justice is a terminally ill society. We shall come back to this topic in the final summation of this essay. Before leaving Hegel and Green, let us examine what Green views as the ultimate good. This passage is also aimed at Green's friend and rival Henry Sidgwick. Sidgwick must be exempted from our previous criticism of utilitarianism. There is no denying his genius. So let us go to Green's own words on the conception of the good: "We should accept the view , then that of the ultimate good is to think of an intrinsically desirable form of conscious life; but we should seek further to define it. We should take it in the sense that to think of such good is to think of a state of self-conscious life as intrinsically desirable for oneself, and for that reason is to think of it as something else than pleasure-the thought of it as intrinsically desirable for oneself, being thoughts which exclude each other. The pleasure anticipate in the life is not that which renders it desirable; but so far as desire is excited by the thought of it as desirable, and so far as that desire is reflected on, pleasure cone to be anticipated in satisfaction of that desire. The thought of the intrinsically desirable life, then is the thought of something else than pleasure, but the thought of what? The thought we answer of the full realization of the capacities of the human soul, of the fulfillment of man's vocation, as of that in which alone he can satisfy himself- a thought of which the content is never final or complete, which is always by its creative energy further determining its own content, but which for practical purposes, as the move and guide of the highest moral effort,may be thought of such a social life as described in the previous paragraph." Hegel and Green both thought that an improved society can alleviate our alienation. This is obviously a Pelagian and Monophysite view; that humans by their own effort can bring about the rule of God on Earth. That this can be done by the use of reason. END OF PART 1