Jottings from December, 2023. Consume with caution. I am not a specialist in Asian philosophy.
1) I am always already my True Self. I do not need to become my True Self. I need only to realize (come to have insight into) this timeless fact. Not make it real, but become aware of its antecedent reality. There is no theosis if this means to become God-like. The mundus sensibilis is not a vale of soul-making. I am ‘already’ God, or rather, the eternal Atman. I may need time to achieve the realization but not to become who I ‘already’ am. To achieve the realization is to become enlightened. To become enlightened is to achieve salvation. Salvation is thus noetic and achievable in the here and now in the midst of the samsaric crapstorm, or mayic world-dream. You don’t have to wait for salvation or release. It is not in the future at the end of history. Salvation is noetic or gnostic, not eschatological.
2) Time is merely phenomenal and thus metaphysically illusory as belonging to maya. It seems to follow that the realization (the coming to have insight into the timeless fact of one’s identity with the eternal Atman) is itself illusory. Is this a problem? A bug or a feature?
3) Advaitins don’t explain the world; they explain it away. They say about the physical world what some (Daniel Dennett, for example) say about consciousness, namely, that it is an illusion. It would not be inaccurate to say of Dennett & Co. that they do not explain consciousness (despite the title of his eponymous book); they explain it away. Makes no sense to me, but that is what they maintain.
Christian metaphysics, by contrast, explains the world. You cannot explain what does not exist or is not the case. (Think about it: would it make sense to demand an evolutionary, or any, explanation of why unicorns have only one horn?) The physical world (cosmos) exists. Given this fact, and given that it exists contingently, it is natural in Christian and not just Christian metaphtsics to ask why it exists.
4) Advaita Vedantists will try to assimilate Christianity to their view, but the latter in all of its mainstream versions (Orthodox, Roman, and Protestant) remains unassimilably distinct from Vedantism. On the former, there is no plurality of real individual egos. Such a plurality is metaphysically illusory, as are the members of the plurality. There is only one Self, the eternal Atman, which is numerically the same in all of us. At metaphysical bottom, I am the eternal Atman and so are you. At bottom, then, you and I are one. Not so on the Christian view according to which individual egos or selves, although created by God, and thus ontologically dependent on God, are nonetheless real and remain separate from each other and from God after their creation.
Roughly, then, for the Advaitin there is only one Self whereas for the Christian there are many selves with God being a supereminent self among the many selves.
5) There is a tension, however, in the Christian position. It leads to what I call the ultimate paradox of divine creation:
The difficulty can be framed as an aporetic dyad. We have two propositions each of which makes a very strong claim on our acceptance, but which seem to be such that they cannot both be true. They are individually plausible to a very high degree, but collectively inconsistent. The dyad displayed:
a) Everything other than God is created and sustained by God and is nothing at all in itself apart from this ongoing creation and sustenance. Everything other than God is an object of the divine mind the Being of which is exhausted by its objecthood.
b) Among creatures are free, autonomous agents that have been released into ontological independence and so exist in themselves as subjects in their own right and not as mere objects of the divine mind.
This aporia is what I am calling the ultimate paradox of divine creation. To solve it one would have to show either that one of the limbs of the dyad is false, or that the limbs are logically consistent.
I have no idea how to solve it. And apparently Ratzinger did not know how to solve it either: after stating it, he went on to something else. I conjecture, although I cannot strictly prove, that the problem is absolutely insoluble by minds of our discursive/dianoetic constitution. If so, is divine creation a mystery or an impossibility?
If an impossibility, then God as classically understood cannot exist. (Some will opt for deism as a solution, but it has its own problems.) But for all we know we might be in the presence of a mystery: the solution to the aporetic dyad might exist but lie beyond our ken. Perhaps our cognitive architecture such as it is here below bars access to the solution. That is an epistemic possibility.
Perhaps we should say that the sui generis, absolutely unique status of God and his relation to the world is good reason to withhold both appellations, ‘realism’ and ‘idealism.’ Perhaps classical theism cannot be fit neatly into that oppositional schema. Still and all, classical theism is closer to idealism than anything that could be called realism.
6) The tension between the noetic/gnostic versus the eschatological, mentioned above, Thomas Merton sees as a tension between contemplation and eschatology. He says he will always be “committed to the latter.” (Journals, vol. 5, p. 181, entry of 22 December 1964.) An on p. 182: “what this means is that my faith is an eschatological faith, not merely a means of penetrating the mystery of the divine presence resting in Him now.”
7) A related problem is that “I cannot suffer the loss of my immortal soul” if I am ‘already’ the eternal Atman. Is the world a vale of soul-making or of Self-realization? Does it matter how I live here below? Is there something really at stake? How could there be if there is no individual soul either to save or to lose?
I found this itemization really useful. I was put onto Tettemer’s memoir by your earlier post and found that fascinating on any number of levels. His ‘deconversion’ in the last part of the book is clearly motivated by a switch to Vedantic monism but I would love to know more on how (or indeed if) he tried to reconcile that ‘oneness’ intuition with his traditional Catholic faith. Perhaps he didn’t try that hard seeing the apparent chasm you suggest is felt by Ratzinger et al.
David Bentley Hart (leaving his politics aside for the moment!) is in the process of seeking some sort of reconciliation between these two poles; but I confess I don’t understand his ‘The Light of Tabor.’
Phil,
I am happy that I got you interested in Tettemer. I agree with you that in the end he turns to the East. I have sketched out a long post on the themes of the last part of Tettemer’s memoir, so stay tuned, although it may take me a while to finish the post. This will also tie in with Tom Carroll’s interests.
As for Hart, he strikes me as a bit of a blowhard.
https://maverickphilosopher.blog/index.php/2019/09/27/the-intellectual-chutzpah-of-david-bentley-hart/
https://maverickphilosopher.blog/index.php/2016/04/13/william-lane-craig-responds-to-david-bentley-hart-and-edward-feser/
Thanks – I look forward to that. On Hart – rhetorically a blowhard perhaps, but not sustantively.
Once again, Bill, I do appreciate this series you are writing. It’s interesting and enlightening.
On this installment, if I may once again take advantage of your good nature, I have have two questions.
First question.
In your previous post, “Meditation as Reduction to the Root of Ordinary Mind,” you laid out four senses of ‘prior.’ You said transcendental priority depends on ontological priority. Ontological priority is the onto-theological Source that ‘grounds’ (my word, not yours) transcendental priority and the associated transcendental consciousness. And, of course, I presume your use of ‘onto-theological Source’ is (or can reasonably be construed as) the God of classical theism.
So, in the previous post you showed how one could account for transcendental consciousness by grounding it in God, the onto-theological Source.
If I understand your present post correctly, Advaitins are also accounting for transcendental consciousness. But they do it through a relationship of *identity* (Atman = Brahman), rather than through a relationship of ‘grounding,’ as you did in “Meditation as Reduction.”
Is that a fair way of characterizing the difference? Surely there are complications, but am I in the ballpark? If I understand you correctly, both posts present an approach to explaining (accounting for) transcendental consciousness. “Meditation as Reduction…” does so through a relationship of *grounding*. Advaitins do it through a relationship of *identity*. But both aim to account for the same thing, i.e., the presence of transcendental consciousness.
Is that a plausible way of understanding what you wrote in these two posts?
Second question.
I do not think I am clear on your aporetic dyad, the ‘ultimate paradox of divinity creation.’
In subpara (a), you say, “[e]verything other than God is created and sustained by God and is nothing at all in itself apart from this ongoing creation and sustenance.”
I’m pretty sure I understand what you mean. God, pure existence, imparts an act of existence on each creature, moment-by-moment. He conjoins a nature with an act of existence. You are drawing on the essence/existence distinction here, it appears to me.
You go on in subpara (a) to say, “Everything other than God is an object of the divine mind…,” and I follow that.
But then you say, “…the Being of which is exhausted by its objecthood.” I do not understand this final phrase. Do you mean that being an object of the divine mind is *identical to* God’s conjoining an essence with an act of existence for that particular object? I suspect my lack of understanding here may be part of what prevents me from seeing the paradox.
But now for the other limb of your dyad, subpara (b).
In subpara (b), you say, “Among creatures are free, autonomous agents that have been released into ontological independence and so exist in themselves as subjects in their own right and not as mere objects of the divine mind.”
Why say “creatures [that] are free, autonomous agents … have been released into ontological independence”? By “ontological independence,” do you mean creatures that are no longer depend on God’s holding them in existence, moment-by-moment? But why does the nature of a free, autonomous agent entail ontological independence, so construed?
Why not just hold that being a free, autonomous agent is simply part of the nature of a person? And God continuously conjoins that nature (including the freedom and autonomy) to an act of existence, so long as the person exists? Why would God’s actualization of a free, autonomous nature be any different from His actualization of any other nature? Why would it involve ontological independence? (Perhaps I am misinterpreting what you mean by “ontological independence.”)
Finally, you end subpara (b) with, “…and so exist in themselves as subjects in their own right and not as mere objects of the divine mind.” This again seems (to me) to imply that somehow the conjoining of a free, rational essence to an act of existence is *identical* to that essence’s being an object of the divine mind. I can see how they must occur simultaneously, but I do not see why they need be *identical*.
IOW, why must a free, rational essence have ontological independence? Why can’t it be just as dependent on God’s creative act, moment-by-moment, as any other instantiated essence?
Again, perhaps this involves my confusion over “…the Being of which is exhausted by its objecthood.”
Tom,
Your second comment is very good and deserves a separate post in response. I’ll re-think what I said and see if I can continue to maintain it. Stay tuned. You said you are 69, and I take it you were brought up Catholic and remain a Catholic. Did you attend any Catholic schools? Since you are a relatively young whippersnapper, what you received if you went to Catholic schools was diluted stuff, not the real deal.
I’m not a cradle Catholic. I converted while living in Istanbul in the mid-1980s. Life in Turkey tends to make real the ancient world, ancient ideas, and ancient options, as I believe you know. I could easily have gone the Eastern route, but chose Rome. I’ve been happy with the choice ever since. And instead of Catholic schools, I snagged a BA in Philosophy at USC in 1980. Philosophy has been my amateur pursuit ever since.
Tom,
A couple of quick responses to to your second question. >>But then you say, “…the Being of which is exhausted by its objecthood.” I do not understand this final phrase. <>Why would God’s actualization of a free, autonomous nature be any different from His actualization of any other nature? << You seem to think that a person with free will lacks a core of interiority that cannot be objectified. But then what would distinguish such a person from the fictional character 'created' by a novelist? If we are not all just fictional characters in a divine novel, then our Being cannot be wholly dependent on God.
As you continue this series – and I obviously hope you will – this will be a point to which I hope you can return.
The thing is, I don’t understand why “a person with free will” would need to “lack a core of interiority that cannot be objectified.” In fact, it seems to me freedom and genuine subjectivity (‘subjecthood’) go hand-in-hand.
Along those lines, I do not see why my existence cannot be wholly dependent on God – i.e., depend moment-to-moment on God’s conjoining my essence with an act of existence – and yet have me nonetheless be far more than a mere fictional character.
IOW, I don’t see why a full-blown human nature, including freedom, true subjectivity, etc., cannot be dependent on God for its ongoing existence. The essence (nature) of you and the essence of me, whatever else they may be, surely do not include existence as an integral part of that essence.
I mean, I *know* you agree with me on this. That means I am misunderstanding you somewhere along the way.
Thanks, Tom. I should write a new post that clarifies the term ‘transcendental’ by distinguishing its Ancient and Medieval sense from its Modern and Post-modern sense. I count Descartes (1596-1650) as the first modern philosopher. And of course each of these two main senses ramifies, so that, for example, what Kant means by ‘transcendental’ is close to bu not the same as what Husserl means by the term.
As for ‘priority,’ it is the relation between the prior and the posterior. So I don’t use ‘priority’ to refer to that which is prior. ‘Prius’ is a good Latin word for that which is prior in some order of priority, whether temporal, logical, transcendental, ontological, whatever.
As for ‘ground,’ it is one my favorite words. For example, some truth-bearers need truth-makers. The truth-maker of a truth-bearer is the ontological ground of its being true. What makes it true that Tom is tall? The fact of Tom’s being tall. This concrete fact is the ontological ground of the truth of the proposition. The fact is not the empirical cause of the truth-bearer’s being true. So we have to distinguish ontological grounds from empirical causes. It is also worth mentioning that logical grounds should not be confused with empirical causes. Suppose you have a valid syllogism both premises of which are true. Those premises, taken together, are not the empirical cause of the truth of the conclusion.
I’d say you are in the ball park.
The main issue here which divides Christian from Vedantist is whether the transcendental consciousness in each of us is one and the same, numerically, or not. When I see a tree and you see a tree (the same tree or a different tree) is one and the same self the subject of the two visual experiences? Put generally, who or what is aware when BV and TC are aware of things?
You said, “I should write a new post that clarifies the term ‘transcendental’ by distinguishing its Ancient and Medieval sense from its Modern and Post-modern sense.”
You then said, “…what Kant means by ‘transcendental’ is close to, but not the same as, what Husserl means by the term.”
I would *love* to see you go into these. I don’t know how much democracy you allow on Mav Phil, but those two potential posts totally get my vote.
Also, I understand your use of ‘priority’ and ‘ground.’ Thank you. And I think I appreciate the significance of “who or what is aware when BV and TC are aware of things,” as well as its connection with the Christian vs Vedantist perspectives. Again, thank you for laying this out.
Tom,
I’ll post something on ‘transcendental’ shortly. I appreciate your interest!
You lived in Turkey? That’s something else we have in common. Wife and I were there, based in Ankara, 1995-1996.
Efendim! For my wife and me, it was back in the 1980s, about a decade before you two.