If one of the things that makes a religion a "real" religion is schism, then I guess pantheism is a "real" religion. There are three types of pantheism--at least three, but these are the three major denominations (?) that I'm familiar with.
***
The first I'll call ecological pantheism. I don't know if it has an "official" name or not, but this name suits. Most people these days calling themselves pantheists are probably ecological pantheists. (There are also a lot of scientific pantheists; more on that below.) Ecological pantheism is based on feelings of awe and reverence before the beauty and splendor of nature, coupled with the desire to preserve and protect that which inspires those feelings. It's easy to agree with people who revere nature, as these feelings seem to have been an intrinsic part of human spirituality since the era of cave paintings.
Ecological pantheism is a close cousin of animism, in which everything, living and inanimate, is seen as having a soul. When my daughter was (for a time) an animist, she explained an important part of her beliefs: Everything natural has a soul, from sun and moon to rock and tree. A fallen tree retains its soul--but when humans use a tree to make a table, or transform iron ore into steel cookware, the soul of the original object is destroyed. In changing a natural object into a "man-made" one, we destroy something intrinsically sacred about it.
Again, easy to understand the idea, certainly at least on an aesthetic level.
The same sentiment is at work in ecological pantheism. In some sense, humans are intruders upon the landscape and in the natural ecosystem. Perhaps we were once part of nature, but somewhere during our cultural development, something went awry. We fell from grace. Often the biblical passage about man's dominion over nature is cited as evidence of our un-Natural perversion.
This idea is hard at work in the recent James Cameron film Avatar.
[Spoilers!]
In the final scene of the movie, the protagonist Jake Sully has his consciousness permanently transferred into his Na'Vi avatar. On the one hand, it's a triumph over his disability, and it allows him to truly find a new home with the woman he's fallen in love with and the tribe who adopted him. But there's a subtle message here: Sully cannot gain salvation without fully giving up his humanity. His injured legs are a symbol of humanity's ecological original sin, with the only way to natural salvation being to refute that humanity. (Of course, it was that very humanity that led him to fall in love with Neytiri and her tribe.)
[End spoilers.]
Though many ecological pantheists may be refugees from Christianity, the same anti-human idea about our inherent spiritual depravity is a shared concept. And in extreme ecological pantheism (just like extreme Christianity) the only way to overcome our original sin is to turn away from our own humanity, becoming Christlike or returning to some idealized noble savage state.
I believe this sort of extreme ecological pantheism carries a dangerous and nihilistic message about the future of humanity. Religion, if it and we are to survive and improve, must take into account--even rely on--our humanity, including all our flaws. Our salvation lies in our own humanity; paradoxically, of course, so does the possibility of our self-extermination.
Of course, there's a lot to be said for revering the divinity of nature. If care for the natural world around us was as strong as care for our families and our society, a lot of our resource- and pollution-based problems wouldn't be anywhere near so pressing. The popular message of ecological pantheism is an important (maybe even vital) one. And it's one that can make itself at home in most, if not all, major religions. For example, Christianity has slowly but steadily been building up ideas about stewardship of the earth as a religious duty. Ecological pantheism will continue to be an important movement in Western society, provided it doesn't fall into the trap of extremism.
***
The second form of pantheism I want to talk about is called (officially) scientific pantheism. You can find it espoused by the World Pantheist Movement and the Universal Pantheist Society. (How do they know the rest of the universe belongs to their society...?)
When people talk about science becoming a new religion, this is often what they're talking about. The scientific method has nothing religious about it, of course: it's nothing more (and nothing less) than the best way we have to improve our understanding of physical reality, relying on research, experimentation and peer review.
Scientific pantheism is sometimes called "atheism with a handlebar mustache." It's a combination of poetic atheism and soft theism. You can find literature expressing the pantheist need to form a "personal relationship" with the Universe--in short, replacing a personal God with the awe-inspiring, beautiful aspects of nature. (Does a scientific pantheist really wish to form a personal relationship with ebola, though?)
Scientific pantheism has the problem of encouraging people to view science as its own religion. Although science and religion often talk about the same subjects--not least the origin and possible destinies of our species--and although they both produce similar feelings of awe and wonder, they should not be confused. Science is a source of information; often this is information that can be used to help us create a better world. But it says nothing about how we should behave towards one another. Even the young science of evolutionary psychology can only tell us why our morals have developed the way they have; it can't tell us whether our morals are good.
It does, however, share the same advantages of ecological pantheism. The universe is a holy place, and we're part of it. Learning about it can be seen as a sacred duty, both to ourselves and to the divinity we participate in. It also avoids the problem area of ecological pantheism, as it sees humanity as part of nature. Being part of nature is, for the scientific pantheist, the very reason we must take care of it.
***
Finally, I want to talk about my type of pantheism. I've decided a good name for it (because I don't know if it's already been named) is philosophical pantheism. This is sort of an "original" pantheism, in that it existed well before either modern science or the Transcendentalist movement that helped spawn Western ecological awareness. Like both ecological and scientific pantheism, philosophical pantheism begins with reverence for nature, the idea that nature is in some way divine.
Philosophical pantheism is less overtly theistic than ecological pantheism (which often views "Mother Nature" quite literally), but more theistic than scientific pantheism, with its handlebar mustache.
To understand philosophical pantheism, you have to begin with Lao Tzu and Marcus Aurelius. Of course pantheism was a part of religion before them, but the Tao te Ching and the Meditations are both seminal works. They are startlingly similar in tone and content--almost like finding the Dead Sea Scrolls in Japan!
Philosophical pantheism--while it does rely on emotional nature reverence--is a thinking religion. Spinoza's Ethics (which I still haven't finished, after over two years of reading) requires a lot of brain power (which is why I still haven't finished, after over two years of reading). It lays out its ideas in a geometrical procession--axioms, postulates, propositions, corollaries, and a whole lot of Q.E.D.'s. But being a thinking religion is apt, because Mind is one of its essential concepts.
Where philosophical pantheism differs the most with its ecological and scientific siblings is the idea that the universe is a thinking Being. This is not some quasi-mystical New Age panpsychism, though. The universe is an orderly place because Mind creates its order. Human consciousness is the way it is because the universe is the way it is. God orders itself from Being, to Mind (or Spirit), to the material universe--which is again ordered in our minds to create the experiential world we live in. Nature is fractal, recursive, and holographic: divine Logos creates the human mind.
This version of pantheism (unfortunately?) lacks the urgent ecological message. Determinism (but not fatalism) is a big factor. Although I'm responsible for my own behavior, I can't change anyone--or anything--else. Things happen because they must, because it's turtles all the way down. No matter what we do or do not do ecologically, the state of the planet is ultimately out of our hands. Our responsibility is not to "save the planet"--the Earth will take care of itself--our responsibility is to adapt ourselves to our changing environment, and support our neighbors in doing the same.
There's nothing inherently good or evil in the universe. Nature--God--is amoral, at least as far as human morality is concerned. We can't rely on divine revelations; all we have is the morality that our evolution has provided us with. Fortunately, we're still working out our social morality, and physical and cultural evolution will keep the best systems going, as long as our species lasts. Our humanity is essential to our salvation.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
The Creator of persons must be a Person...
One of the ideas supporting the theology of a personal God is that the Creator of person must be a Person. It's an argument from essence that, philosophically speaking, is pretty easy to agree with. After all, a person--or people as a whole--must have come from something which is is the essence of personhood.
--Except that it's awfully limited.
If the creator of people must be a person, then the creator of trees must be a tree; the creator of ants must be an ant: tree-ness and ant-ness have their own essences, which must come from somewhere. (Is the creator of hydrogen a hydrogen atom?)
Here's an alternative: The creator of persons is a person. The creator of trees is a tree. The creator of ants is an ant. A jillion separate creators, all working together to make this wildly varying world. Of course, that flies in the face of the monotheism that produced the idea in the first place.
Here's another alternative: The creator of persons also created trees and ants and everything else. Therefore the creator of persons contains the essence of all of those things, in equal measure. God is person, and tree, and ant, and hydrogen, and snow, and sand, and parrotfish, and blue jay, and most definitely puppy dog.
Behind all these essences, or substances, there must be a single essence/substance. It would have to be something inseparable from everything else, something that everything shares in.
Pantheists call it God.
--Except that it's awfully limited.
If the creator of people must be a person, then the creator of trees must be a tree; the creator of ants must be an ant: tree-ness and ant-ness have their own essences, which must come from somewhere. (Is the creator of hydrogen a hydrogen atom?)
Here's an alternative: The creator of persons is a person. The creator of trees is a tree. The creator of ants is an ant. A jillion separate creators, all working together to make this wildly varying world. Of course, that flies in the face of the monotheism that produced the idea in the first place.
Here's another alternative: The creator of persons also created trees and ants and everything else. Therefore the creator of persons contains the essence of all of those things, in equal measure. God is person, and tree, and ant, and hydrogen, and snow, and sand, and parrotfish, and blue jay, and most definitely puppy dog.
Behind all these essences, or substances, there must be a single essence/substance. It would have to be something inseparable from everything else, something that everything shares in.
Pantheists call it God.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Intellect, Soul, and Emergent Consciousness
The stages of emanation in Plotinus' thought go like this:
- The One. This is what Paul Tillich calls the "ground of being," or Substance if you ask Spinoza. The One (or the Good) precedes everything else, and (in a way) contains everything else. From it, all of reality and matter are formed in various stages of emanation, starting with:
- Intellect. Intellect contemplates--that's what it does, what the nature of Intellect is. It contemplates the One, and from this contemplation are produced the Forms. These Forms can be thought of as the ideas behind everything we see. Plato thought of the Forms as being the Ideal Man, Ideal Horse, etc. (because men and horses belong to their own classes--so the Ideal is what each class follows). In Spinoza, the Forms had evolved into modes and attributes, which included not only Ideals, but also what he called the laws of motion and rest.
- Soul. Soul follows Intellect. Just as the nature of Intellect is contemplation, the nature of Soul is desire; and just as Intellect contemplates the One, Soul desires the Intellect (and thereby the Forms). By this desire, experiential reality is created. In a way, the universe is created both from the outside in and from the inside out, at the same time. Intellect and Spirit are two sides of the One; contemplation and desire are two methods of creation; the objective and the subjective are two sides of the same reality.
***
A couple thousand years later, we get Paola Zizzi's "Emergent Consciousness" theory (also called the "Big Wow" theory). In it, she talks about the idea that the early universe may have attained consciousness of a sort similar to what we humans experience.
The math behind the theory is beyond me, but the basic idea is this:
The early universe was composed of (or had in it) a certain amount of "quantum gravity registers." As far as I can tell, these quantum gravity registers are bits of self-replicating information packets (like zeroes and ones). They also function under the holographic principle, where every bit contains all of the information all the bits together contain.
The magic number of quantum gravity registers in this early universe (10^9) is the same number of tubulins in the human brain. Like quantum gravity registers, tubulins (which make up the cell walls of our neurons) also function both holographically and binarily.
Based on some other theories of consciousness, Zizzi implies that this magic number (n = 10^9) is what is needed for collapse from a quantum state into classical consciousness. She also implies that this early consciousness is the source of the laws of nature, and the reason consciousness as we experience it was able to arise.
The conscious universe self-organized, producing the logical structure we know in physics, chemistry, biology, etc. Through the appearance of this early consciousness, consciousness as a necessary occurrence was "programmed" in a way into the nature of reality: because of the "conscious event" in the early universe, it became inevitable that a similar type of consciousness would eventually evolve.
***
This is where I start playing:
It's easy to see how Intellect and emergent consciousness could be thought of as the same thing. If something like the One produced the Big Bang (or perhaps was the Big Bang), then Intellect/emergent consciousness followed, producing the Forms (the laws of nature). The collapse of the quantum universe into classical matter/energy could be thought of as Soul at work, eventually producing the universe that we know.
In her paper, Zizzi mentions Democritus, Spinoza, Liebniz, and Whitehead, all of whom were affected in one way or another by neoplatonic thought (which Plotinus founded). It's fascinating and exciting and, well, just plain wonderful that a two-thousand-year-old idea could make its way into today's scientific frontier.
- The One. This is what Paul Tillich calls the "ground of being," or Substance if you ask Spinoza. The One (or the Good) precedes everything else, and (in a way) contains everything else. From it, all of reality and matter are formed in various stages of emanation, starting with:
- Intellect. Intellect contemplates--that's what it does, what the nature of Intellect is. It contemplates the One, and from this contemplation are produced the Forms. These Forms can be thought of as the ideas behind everything we see. Plato thought of the Forms as being the Ideal Man, Ideal Horse, etc. (because men and horses belong to their own classes--so the Ideal is what each class follows). In Spinoza, the Forms had evolved into modes and attributes, which included not only Ideals, but also what he called the laws of motion and rest.
- Soul. Soul follows Intellect. Just as the nature of Intellect is contemplation, the nature of Soul is desire; and just as Intellect contemplates the One, Soul desires the Intellect (and thereby the Forms). By this desire, experiential reality is created. In a way, the universe is created both from the outside in and from the inside out, at the same time. Intellect and Spirit are two sides of the One; contemplation and desire are two methods of creation; the objective and the subjective are two sides of the same reality.
***
A couple thousand years later, we get Paola Zizzi's "Emergent Consciousness" theory (also called the "Big Wow" theory). In it, she talks about the idea that the early universe may have attained consciousness of a sort similar to what we humans experience.
The math behind the theory is beyond me, but the basic idea is this:
The early universe was composed of (or had in it) a certain amount of "quantum gravity registers." As far as I can tell, these quantum gravity registers are bits of self-replicating information packets (like zeroes and ones). They also function under the holographic principle, where every bit contains all of the information all the bits together contain.
The magic number of quantum gravity registers in this early universe (10^9) is the same number of tubulins in the human brain. Like quantum gravity registers, tubulins (which make up the cell walls of our neurons) also function both holographically and binarily.
Based on some other theories of consciousness, Zizzi implies that this magic number (n = 10^9) is what is needed for collapse from a quantum state into classical consciousness. She also implies that this early consciousness is the source of the laws of nature, and the reason consciousness as we experience it was able to arise.
The conscious universe self-organized, producing the logical structure we know in physics, chemistry, biology, etc. Through the appearance of this early consciousness, consciousness as a necessary occurrence was "programmed" in a way into the nature of reality: because of the "conscious event" in the early universe, it became inevitable that a similar type of consciousness would eventually evolve.
***
This is where I start playing:
It's easy to see how Intellect and emergent consciousness could be thought of as the same thing. If something like the One produced the Big Bang (or perhaps was the Big Bang), then Intellect/emergent consciousness followed, producing the Forms (the laws of nature). The collapse of the quantum universe into classical matter/energy could be thought of as Soul at work, eventually producing the universe that we know.
In her paper, Zizzi mentions Democritus, Spinoza, Liebniz, and Whitehead, all of whom were affected in one way or another by neoplatonic thought (which Plotinus founded). It's fascinating and exciting and, well, just plain wonderful that a two-thousand-year-old idea could make its way into today's scientific frontier.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Stoic vs. Spinozan Pantheism
Stoicism is a religious philosophy that concentrates more on how to live your life than on a metaphysical system. However, it does have a metaphysical system, just not one as deeply developed as, say, Plato's.
In the Stoic view, the Greek concept of Logos (divine Reason) is identical with what we think of as the laws of nature. We can puzzle out these laws through the use of our own reason; therefore Reason must be the creator of (or, in the Stoic view, identical with) natural laws.
Because God was identified with the course of nature, the "good life" was one lived in accordance with nature. You didn't try to accumulate more than you needed for a healthy life, nor did you try to prolong your life beyond its natural limits. In fact, good and evil could never happen to you, as all externals were considered valueless. The only good or evil thing was how the Stoic behaved, and how s/he accepted life.
What that means is that, if someone injures or insults me, that's neither good nor evil, because it's external to me. What would be evil is if I fought back through injury or insult in turn--but not necessarily because it would be wrong to injure or insult another person. I would be doing wrong by letting my emotions override my reason; that's the true evil in the human world.
Reason was the driving force behind the Stoic understanding of right and wrong. The Stoic determined right and wrong based on reality (i.e., nature), but also had to filter ideas about nature through reason, rather than emotion. Thus the Stoic would find that, since death is natural, death is not bad--but being overcome with sorrow or fear is. The passions (strong emotions that could cloud judgment, such as anger or lust) were not to be trusted; there were appropriate emotions, such as joy, doubt, or hope. The difference between the two (passions vs. appropriate feelings) is that the passions are not reasonable, whereas appropriate emotion comes out of reasoned thought.
Spinoza similarly identified the laws of nature with divine necessity. Coming out of a Jewish background, he saw the Biblical accounts of God's relationship with Israel as the natural actions of a divine will in connection with a people who understood God in a specific way.
Spinoza, like the Stoics, was a determinist. He may have been an even harder determinist than the original Stoics, since they believed that you were free in your own actions (but you could not affect the actions of others). Spinoza believed that happiness only came to the person who understood that his/her actions were determined by other factors. The greatest good was in understanding God/nature, understanding that events did not happen in a vacuum or by pure chance, and that even your own feelings/thoughts were affected (limited) by things out of human control.
So Spinoza's concept of the "good life" was very similar to the Stoic one, though with some differences.
First, the Stoics allowed for a limited free will--but only those who were truly wise (in the Stoic sense of the morality of reason) had free will. Freedom only came with the mastery of the passions and the proper use of reason. Even then, the only thing you had control of was your own physical and emotional actions and reactions in the world.
Spinoza, on the other hand, declared that only God had free will. Only God was unlimited by externals; everything a human does is limited by the things and events around him/her, so the human can never have true free will. Because God is the only thing which exists, God cannot be affected by something external; therefore, God's actions are truly free.
Both the Stoics and Spinoza did have very similar concepts of the path to happiness. They both believed that the acceptance of life and the realization of the value-neutrality of externals led to inner peace. For both, this acceptance depended on true knowledge of nature, natural law, and the place we have in it.
All of this is quite similar to the Buddhist doctrine of nonattachment. Unlike Buddhism, though, neither Spinoza nor the Stoics acknowledged much in the way of after-death consequences (such as transmigration of souls) of behavior in this life.
In the Stoic view, the Greek concept of Logos (divine Reason) is identical with what we think of as the laws of nature. We can puzzle out these laws through the use of our own reason; therefore Reason must be the creator of (or, in the Stoic view, identical with) natural laws.
Because God was identified with the course of nature, the "good life" was one lived in accordance with nature. You didn't try to accumulate more than you needed for a healthy life, nor did you try to prolong your life beyond its natural limits. In fact, good and evil could never happen to you, as all externals were considered valueless. The only good or evil thing was how the Stoic behaved, and how s/he accepted life.
What that means is that, if someone injures or insults me, that's neither good nor evil, because it's external to me. What would be evil is if I fought back through injury or insult in turn--but not necessarily because it would be wrong to injure or insult another person. I would be doing wrong by letting my emotions override my reason; that's the true evil in the human world.
Reason was the driving force behind the Stoic understanding of right and wrong. The Stoic determined right and wrong based on reality (i.e., nature), but also had to filter ideas about nature through reason, rather than emotion. Thus the Stoic would find that, since death is natural, death is not bad--but being overcome with sorrow or fear is. The passions (strong emotions that could cloud judgment, such as anger or lust) were not to be trusted; there were appropriate emotions, such as joy, doubt, or hope. The difference between the two (passions vs. appropriate feelings) is that the passions are not reasonable, whereas appropriate emotion comes out of reasoned thought.
Spinoza similarly identified the laws of nature with divine necessity. Coming out of a Jewish background, he saw the Biblical accounts of God's relationship with Israel as the natural actions of a divine will in connection with a people who understood God in a specific way.
Spinoza, like the Stoics, was a determinist. He may have been an even harder determinist than the original Stoics, since they believed that you were free in your own actions (but you could not affect the actions of others). Spinoza believed that happiness only came to the person who understood that his/her actions were determined by other factors. The greatest good was in understanding God/nature, understanding that events did not happen in a vacuum or by pure chance, and that even your own feelings/thoughts were affected (limited) by things out of human control.
So Spinoza's concept of the "good life" was very similar to the Stoic one, though with some differences.
First, the Stoics allowed for a limited free will--but only those who were truly wise (in the Stoic sense of the morality of reason) had free will. Freedom only came with the mastery of the passions and the proper use of reason. Even then, the only thing you had control of was your own physical and emotional actions and reactions in the world.
Spinoza, on the other hand, declared that only God had free will. Only God was unlimited by externals; everything a human does is limited by the things and events around him/her, so the human can never have true free will. Because God is the only thing which exists, God cannot be affected by something external; therefore, God's actions are truly free.
Both the Stoics and Spinoza did have very similar concepts of the path to happiness. They both believed that the acceptance of life and the realization of the value-neutrality of externals led to inner peace. For both, this acceptance depended on true knowledge of nature, natural law, and the place we have in it.
All of this is quite similar to the Buddhist doctrine of nonattachment. Unlike Buddhism, though, neither Spinoza nor the Stoics acknowledged much in the way of after-death consequences (such as transmigration of souls) of behavior in this life.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Plotinus and Spinoza
Plotinus lived about a century before St. Augustine. He was one of the first of what are known as Neo-Platonists.
A (ridiculously short) summary of Plato:
Plato was a hard dualist: He believed that there existed two aspects of reality, the physical (what we perceive with our senses) and the ideal (what we perceive with our minds). The Ideal realm existed in the mind of God, and consisted of the Forms—the Ideal man, the Ideal horse, the Ideal circle, and so on. These Ideals existed before individual people, horses, or circles could ever come into existence.
Matter and Form were united by a Prime Mover, but only Form subsists on its own. Because matter is ontologically separate from God, it’s subject to change, death, and evil; life and the ultimate good emanate from the divine to inhabit and give order to chaotic matter.
(If all this sounds familiar, it’s because Thomas Aquinas converted Plato to Christianity, in a way! Aquinas was also a precursor of Renaissance Humanism.)
***
Plotinus renewed and expanded Platonic thought and in a way made it his own. He may have actually edged out of dualism into a complex, many-shaded monism.
In Plotinus’ view, the ultimate source of existence was the One, or the Good, loosely corresponding to an impersonal theism. The world came to be through a series of emanations—not in time, but in levels of reality.
One stage “below” the One is the Intellect. This is pure mind, pure reason, unconnected with physical reality. The job, so to speak, of the Intellect is to contemplate the One; through this contemplation, Plato’s Forms are created.
Below Intellect is Soul. This is a tricky concept, because modern Westerners think of Soul as an animating principle of sorts. Another way to describe it might be something like the Will of German Idealism. Plotinus’ Soul is nothing more than the nature of desire. Soul desires the Intellect, just as the Intellect contemplates the One. When we find beauty in things, that’s Soul at work. (It’s also Soul at work when we’re hungry, horny, or acquisitive!)
Each principle that “emanates” from the One has an internal and external activity. The One’s internal activity is the Intellect, while its external activity is emanation itself. The Intellect both contemplates, and therefore produces, the Forms. Soul both desires, and produces, the sensible world. In this way everything that exists, whether physically, mentally, or spiritually, exists in a chain of reality constantly moving in and out from the One to the world and back again.
Plotinus can be thought of as a moral dualist--it's matter's separation from the One that leads to change, death, and evil. But he's also a sort of monist, in that everything springs from, and ultimately returns to, the One.
***
Compare all this to Spinoza’s thought:
Spinoza thought that nature and God were synonymous. The term “pantheism” was actually coined specifically to describe his theology.
He was also a monist (monism, the idea that everything shares the same substance or existence, stands in opposition to dualism, the idea that the world has two separate natures)—specifically a substance monist.
In the Ethics, Spinoza begins by explaining the substance at the base of all existence. This way of conceiving of things goes all the way back to the early Greeks, much of whose natural philosophy and metaphysics was occupied with the question of what, exactly, was the “substance” (literally, “standing under”) that made up the universe. The Greek conception of substance included the traditional elements: earth (solidity), air (rarity), fire (warmth), and water (moisture); the argument among many natural philosophers was which of these primordial elements was the first.
Spinoza skipped that argument and simply said that the primordial substance was, well, Substance. Because Substance was the only thing that existed—in fact, it was the very definition of existence—Substance was God.
He then proceeded to explain the properties of Substance. Substance must have the attribute of infinity—after all, if more than one substance existed, then they would cancel each other out. So there’s only one Substance. Because there’s only one Substance, its attributes include everything—matter and mind being the most important for his theories (they were, to him, two sides of the same coin).
So out of Substance, attributes are formed, similarly to Plotinus’ Intelligence emanating from the One.
From these attributes, modes are then created. These modes are like the Forms—each mode being the Ideal of every physical thing. The end point of Substance, attributes, and modes is the world around us, but everything consists of the same Substance: everything was made up of God.
The most important attribute of God, in Spinoza’s theory, is Mind (which loosely corresponds both to Plotinus' Intelligence and the Stoic divine Reason). Because God has both the attribute of infinity and the attribute of mind, God can be thought of as Infinite Mind, or Infinite Reason.
This in turn goes back to the Stoic tradition of Greek and Roman philosophers; Spinoza shares much of their ethical theory of acceptance (which itself bears a striking resemblance to Buddhist nonattachment). More on Stoicism later.
Because Mind or Reason is the same thing as Will, God could also be thought of as Infinite Will. This idea of Will being active as a part of universal existence pops up again in the thought of German Idealists like Arthur Schopenhauer and Johann Fichte. Fichte’s essays were one of the inspirations of German National Socialism.
The history of pantheistic thought is not all roses. I’ll talk about Fichte’s ideas of the self/Self and how it led into some very dark history in a different post.
A (ridiculously short) summary of Plato:
Plato was a hard dualist: He believed that there existed two aspects of reality, the physical (what we perceive with our senses) and the ideal (what we perceive with our minds). The Ideal realm existed in the mind of God, and consisted of the Forms—the Ideal man, the Ideal horse, the Ideal circle, and so on. These Ideals existed before individual people, horses, or circles could ever come into existence.
Matter and Form were united by a Prime Mover, but only Form subsists on its own. Because matter is ontologically separate from God, it’s subject to change, death, and evil; life and the ultimate good emanate from the divine to inhabit and give order to chaotic matter.
(If all this sounds familiar, it’s because Thomas Aquinas converted Plato to Christianity, in a way! Aquinas was also a precursor of Renaissance Humanism.)
***
Plotinus renewed and expanded Platonic thought and in a way made it his own. He may have actually edged out of dualism into a complex, many-shaded monism.
In Plotinus’ view, the ultimate source of existence was the One, or the Good, loosely corresponding to an impersonal theism. The world came to be through a series of emanations—not in time, but in levels of reality.
One stage “below” the One is the Intellect. This is pure mind, pure reason, unconnected with physical reality. The job, so to speak, of the Intellect is to contemplate the One; through this contemplation, Plato’s Forms are created.
Below Intellect is Soul. This is a tricky concept, because modern Westerners think of Soul as an animating principle of sorts. Another way to describe it might be something like the Will of German Idealism. Plotinus’ Soul is nothing more than the nature of desire. Soul desires the Intellect, just as the Intellect contemplates the One. When we find beauty in things, that’s Soul at work. (It’s also Soul at work when we’re hungry, horny, or acquisitive!)
Each principle that “emanates” from the One has an internal and external activity. The One’s internal activity is the Intellect, while its external activity is emanation itself. The Intellect both contemplates, and therefore produces, the Forms. Soul both desires, and produces, the sensible world. In this way everything that exists, whether physically, mentally, or spiritually, exists in a chain of reality constantly moving in and out from the One to the world and back again.
Plotinus can be thought of as a moral dualist--it's matter's separation from the One that leads to change, death, and evil. But he's also a sort of monist, in that everything springs from, and ultimately returns to, the One.
***
Compare all this to Spinoza’s thought:
Spinoza thought that nature and God were synonymous. The term “pantheism” was actually coined specifically to describe his theology.
He was also a monist (monism, the idea that everything shares the same substance or existence, stands in opposition to dualism, the idea that the world has two separate natures)—specifically a substance monist.
In the Ethics, Spinoza begins by explaining the substance at the base of all existence. This way of conceiving of things goes all the way back to the early Greeks, much of whose natural philosophy and metaphysics was occupied with the question of what, exactly, was the “substance” (literally, “standing under”) that made up the universe. The Greek conception of substance included the traditional elements: earth (solidity), air (rarity), fire (warmth), and water (moisture); the argument among many natural philosophers was which of these primordial elements was the first.
Spinoza skipped that argument and simply said that the primordial substance was, well, Substance. Because Substance was the only thing that existed—in fact, it was the very definition of existence—Substance was God.
He then proceeded to explain the properties of Substance. Substance must have the attribute of infinity—after all, if more than one substance existed, then they would cancel each other out. So there’s only one Substance. Because there’s only one Substance, its attributes include everything—matter and mind being the most important for his theories (they were, to him, two sides of the same coin).
So out of Substance, attributes are formed, similarly to Plotinus’ Intelligence emanating from the One.
From these attributes, modes are then created. These modes are like the Forms—each mode being the Ideal of every physical thing. The end point of Substance, attributes, and modes is the world around us, but everything consists of the same Substance: everything was made up of God.
The most important attribute of God, in Spinoza’s theory, is Mind (which loosely corresponds both to Plotinus' Intelligence and the Stoic divine Reason). Because God has both the attribute of infinity and the attribute of mind, God can be thought of as Infinite Mind, or Infinite Reason.
This in turn goes back to the Stoic tradition of Greek and Roman philosophers; Spinoza shares much of their ethical theory of acceptance (which itself bears a striking resemblance to Buddhist nonattachment). More on Stoicism later.
Because Mind or Reason is the same thing as Will, God could also be thought of as Infinite Will. This idea of Will being active as a part of universal existence pops up again in the thought of German Idealists like Arthur Schopenhauer and Johann Fichte. Fichte’s essays were one of the inspirations of German National Socialism.
The history of pantheistic thought is not all roses. I’ll talk about Fichte’s ideas of the self/Self and how it led into some very dark history in a different post.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
What is this pantheism stuff, anyway?
Pantheism is a religious view which states that the universe and everything in it--from galaxies to guinea pigs--is part of what philosopher and author Michael P. Levine calls an "all-inclusive divine Unity." I prefer to think of it as the universal Being, or God. The God of pantheism has some major differences with the traditional theistic deity, though.
In classical theism the God or gods are divine Persons. They exhibit traits commonly associated with humans: anger, jealousy, compassion, love, and forgiveness, among others. The common Western view of God is that of a benevolent father figure who watches over the faithful, actively intervenes in human affairs, and promises everlasting life to believers.
The God of pantheism, however, is first and foremost not a Person. Anthropocentrism is as much a sin for a pantheist as idolatry is for a Christian--and for similar reasons. To view God as a Person is to invite the worship of one's own opinions and tastes; to imagine that the Universe operates at the orders of something like a human (only made grandiose and powerful) not only supports a destructive anthropocentric pride, it ignores the basic truth of a universal Being--that no one person, idea, or opinion could ever encompass the enormity and mystery of the Divine. To make God a Person is to make God too small.
If the pantheist's God is not a Person, though, wouldn't that pantheist simply be a glorified atheist? Atheists also feel reverence for the natural world, are filled with awe at life and existence, and often sense something sacred in everyday life.
But again, there is a difference.
The quick and easy answer to the question, "What does a pantheist believe?" is also a shallow one. Pantheism is not simply the view that "nature is divine." If reverence for nature were all it took to be a pantheist, then most Americans would define themselves so. After all, it's easy to look at a sunset, or a quiet grove of trees, or a mountain view and be filled with religious awe. It's quite another to see poverty, disease, natural disaster, and extinction as also belonging to a divine pattern. Where the atheist sees order brought to a random universe through the laws of physics, a pantheist sees these "laws" themselves as something that could be described as the mind of God. (I use the term "mind" reluctantly; but human reason and divine Logos have a long causal relationship together in pantheistic thought.)
Most of us are familiar with the classical pagan and Christian views of divine Persons. Throughout Western theistic philosophy, though, pantheism remains a quiet shelter from angry, warring gods and fallen, sinful men. The world was not made for us, but we for it; we are part of something greater than ourselves, and connected to each other and to the natural world we have reshaped for ourselves. This ontological connection is deeper and more complex than most could ever have thought possible, but it is there at the heart of pantheism.
Scientific evidence points to the Universe being a cold, meaningless place. But we are a part of it. Despite what science describes as a random cosmos, we owe our deepest moral and spiritual impulses to our own evolutionary beginnings, which in turn are intimately tied to the laws of nature which exist within a universal Being of which we are a tiny, but hopeful, part.
In classical theism the God or gods are divine Persons. They exhibit traits commonly associated with humans: anger, jealousy, compassion, love, and forgiveness, among others. The common Western view of God is that of a benevolent father figure who watches over the faithful, actively intervenes in human affairs, and promises everlasting life to believers.
The God of pantheism, however, is first and foremost not a Person. Anthropocentrism is as much a sin for a pantheist as idolatry is for a Christian--and for similar reasons. To view God as a Person is to invite the worship of one's own opinions and tastes; to imagine that the Universe operates at the orders of something like a human (only made grandiose and powerful) not only supports a destructive anthropocentric pride, it ignores the basic truth of a universal Being--that no one person, idea, or opinion could ever encompass the enormity and mystery of the Divine. To make God a Person is to make God too small.
If the pantheist's God is not a Person, though, wouldn't that pantheist simply be a glorified atheist? Atheists also feel reverence for the natural world, are filled with awe at life and existence, and often sense something sacred in everyday life.
But again, there is a difference.
The quick and easy answer to the question, "What does a pantheist believe?" is also a shallow one. Pantheism is not simply the view that "nature is divine." If reverence for nature were all it took to be a pantheist, then most Americans would define themselves so. After all, it's easy to look at a sunset, or a quiet grove of trees, or a mountain view and be filled with religious awe. It's quite another to see poverty, disease, natural disaster, and extinction as also belonging to a divine pattern. Where the atheist sees order brought to a random universe through the laws of physics, a pantheist sees these "laws" themselves as something that could be described as the mind of God. (I use the term "mind" reluctantly; but human reason and divine Logos have a long causal relationship together in pantheistic thought.)
Most of us are familiar with the classical pagan and Christian views of divine Persons. Throughout Western theistic philosophy, though, pantheism remains a quiet shelter from angry, warring gods and fallen, sinful men. The world was not made for us, but we for it; we are part of something greater than ourselves, and connected to each other and to the natural world we have reshaped for ourselves. This ontological connection is deeper and more complex than most could ever have thought possible, but it is there at the heart of pantheism.
Scientific evidence points to the Universe being a cold, meaningless place. But we are a part of it. Despite what science describes as a random cosmos, we owe our deepest moral and spiritual impulses to our own evolutionary beginnings, which in turn are intimately tied to the laws of nature which exist within a universal Being of which we are a tiny, but hopeful, part.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
A soul by any other name...
According to Plato, the soul is split into three parts.
1. Animal: This is your basic survival guide. Not only does this bit of soul drive you to find enough to eat and drink, find shelter, and find a mate, but is also responsible for the appreciation of wealth and (physical) beauty. When the soul is weighted toward this part, the person is likely to be someone who loves (perhaps a bit too much) food, drink, sex, money, and other sorts of fun stuff. The animal part of the soul was the least developed, the farthest away from perfection. In Plato's Republic, merchants were considered to be the lowest ranking class of his imaginary utopia. They were also the only ones allowed private property, as their greed served the city's economy.
2. Courage: The Greeks had a thing for courage. It went so far that Homer himself, the ultimate Greek, penned a heroic epic that, in between the gore-fest, quietly asked listeners/readers if this hero stuff wasn't maybe more trouble than it was worth. For modern Americans, courage is seen as the ability to operate despite fear; we love our soldiers and our heroes, but we'd probably be shocked at the Greek version. Our heroes tend to be outwardly humble; not so characters like Achilles. Heroism was intimately tied up with the driving need to be famous for one's deeds. In Plato's imaginary city, soldiers were the second class of citizens. Their need to be recognized for their valor served the city's need for protection.
3. Wisdom: Naturally, a philosopher thinks other philosophers are the cream of the crop. No doubt if potters wrote dissertations on government, they would want the pottery guild running things. Wisdom, of course, is the need for knowledge. True happiness--and true virtue--are tied up in knowing the reality of the world. (Just look at physicists' unending search for the unified field theory!) Wisdom is the "ruling principle" of the soul; in a well-balanced soul, it keeps the other two parts under control. If you are wise, your appetites can't control you; likewise, a wise person understands the better part of valor. In Plato's dream world, philosophers were the top dogs. (He had very strict ideas about what the ruling class could or could not do, however. Philosopher kings would be forbidden to marry or own property!)
In Plato's view, this tripartite soul was the explanation for the many different sorts of people in the world. Most of us, with our consumer society and obsession with fame, he would probably consider terribly out of balance. And the idea of a government run only by those specially selected for their personality type, who by their very natures would not enjoy rulership, is briefly tempting. But even Plato acknowledged that his utopia was not completely realistic.
***
Another picture of the soul is brought to us by the Stoics--among them Marcus Aurelius (yes, the old emperor from Gladiator), an actual philosopher king.
The Stoics specifically stated that the soul is a unified whole. There is no difference between appetite, courage, and reason. (There was not even a substantive difference between the individual soul and the "pneuma" or cosmic soul.) In fact, the choice to, say, binge on a pack of Oreos is itself an act of reason. The difference between a wise person and a "slave" (i.e., someone who never gives things a second thought) is the ability to understand this. When we mindlessly (so to speak) munch on cookies, we are "assenting" to a choice or impression (that eating cookies is a good thing). This assent is what makes each choice we make--consciously or unconsciously--an act of reason.
There would probably be no Stoics doing Nutri System.
The trick here is that even opinions and feelings can be assented to. Marcus "the Golden" reminded himself frequently in his Meditations that the idea that other people drank too much is an opinion that he assented to far too often. He repeatedly chastised himself that he could not change other people, only his opinions about them--and that he himself was no better than they.
This idea of being able to change only the self, and nothing else, is a very important part of Stoic theory. They were determinists, but not fatalists. It's a hair-thin difference, but it's there.
Fatalism is the idea that everything that happens has been "fated" to happen since the beginning of time. If I trip on my shoelace tomorrow, I was always going to trip on my shoelace, even if shoelaces weren't invented yet. Think predestination.
Determinism is a sort of materialism that says that everything that happens, happens because events from the beginning of time played out that way. Sort of a cosmic domino effect. If the Big Bang had resulted in one less hydrogen atom, the universe as we know it might have been very different. Action and reaction, motion and rest. But we are conscious things: we can't change what the gods will do, but we can change how we react to it.
***
Oddly enough, Plato the ultimate theist maybe winds up being the one with a lower opinion of humanity. Your destiny and choices in life depend on what kind of soul you were born with. (We might say that our DNA determines our personality.)
But the deterministic Stoics, who denied a substantive difference between nature and the divine, had more faith in the human spirit. They demanded much more out of their own character, but had high hopes that they could achieve a sort of existential freedom.
Both these theories wound up influencing Spinoza in some way. Plato's theories were recast in Neoplatonism as put together by Plotinus. More on him in another post, as he'll take quite a bit of explaining.
The Stoics were, of course, pantheists similar to Spinoza, and he agreed with their system of limited determinism and the personal ethics that went along with it.
Other philosophical relations to the Stoics include Jean-Paul Sartre (who took the Stoic idea of assenting to a whole new level), and Lao Tzu (whose Tao te Ching eerily mirrors the Meditations in its philosophy and subject matter).
1. Animal: This is your basic survival guide. Not only does this bit of soul drive you to find enough to eat and drink, find shelter, and find a mate, but is also responsible for the appreciation of wealth and (physical) beauty. When the soul is weighted toward this part, the person is likely to be someone who loves (perhaps a bit too much) food, drink, sex, money, and other sorts of fun stuff. The animal part of the soul was the least developed, the farthest away from perfection. In Plato's Republic, merchants were considered to be the lowest ranking class of his imaginary utopia. They were also the only ones allowed private property, as their greed served the city's economy.
2. Courage: The Greeks had a thing for courage. It went so far that Homer himself, the ultimate Greek, penned a heroic epic that, in between the gore-fest, quietly asked listeners/readers if this hero stuff wasn't maybe more trouble than it was worth. For modern Americans, courage is seen as the ability to operate despite fear; we love our soldiers and our heroes, but we'd probably be shocked at the Greek version. Our heroes tend to be outwardly humble; not so characters like Achilles. Heroism was intimately tied up with the driving need to be famous for one's deeds. In Plato's imaginary city, soldiers were the second class of citizens. Their need to be recognized for their valor served the city's need for protection.
3. Wisdom: Naturally, a philosopher thinks other philosophers are the cream of the crop. No doubt if potters wrote dissertations on government, they would want the pottery guild running things. Wisdom, of course, is the need for knowledge. True happiness--and true virtue--are tied up in knowing the reality of the world. (Just look at physicists' unending search for the unified field theory!) Wisdom is the "ruling principle" of the soul; in a well-balanced soul, it keeps the other two parts under control. If you are wise, your appetites can't control you; likewise, a wise person understands the better part of valor. In Plato's dream world, philosophers were the top dogs. (He had very strict ideas about what the ruling class could or could not do, however. Philosopher kings would be forbidden to marry or own property!)
In Plato's view, this tripartite soul was the explanation for the many different sorts of people in the world. Most of us, with our consumer society and obsession with fame, he would probably consider terribly out of balance. And the idea of a government run only by those specially selected for their personality type, who by their very natures would not enjoy rulership, is briefly tempting. But even Plato acknowledged that his utopia was not completely realistic.
***
Another picture of the soul is brought to us by the Stoics--among them Marcus Aurelius (yes, the old emperor from Gladiator), an actual philosopher king.
The Stoics specifically stated that the soul is a unified whole. There is no difference between appetite, courage, and reason. (There was not even a substantive difference between the individual soul and the "pneuma" or cosmic soul.) In fact, the choice to, say, binge on a pack of Oreos is itself an act of reason. The difference between a wise person and a "slave" (i.e., someone who never gives things a second thought) is the ability to understand this. When we mindlessly (so to speak) munch on cookies, we are "assenting" to a choice or impression (that eating cookies is a good thing). This assent is what makes each choice we make--consciously or unconsciously--an act of reason.
There would probably be no Stoics doing Nutri System.
The trick here is that even opinions and feelings can be assented to. Marcus "the Golden" reminded himself frequently in his Meditations that the idea that other people drank too much is an opinion that he assented to far too often. He repeatedly chastised himself that he could not change other people, only his opinions about them--and that he himself was no better than they.
This idea of being able to change only the self, and nothing else, is a very important part of Stoic theory. They were determinists, but not fatalists. It's a hair-thin difference, but it's there.
Fatalism is the idea that everything that happens has been "fated" to happen since the beginning of time. If I trip on my shoelace tomorrow, I was always going to trip on my shoelace, even if shoelaces weren't invented yet. Think predestination.
Determinism is a sort of materialism that says that everything that happens, happens because events from the beginning of time played out that way. Sort of a cosmic domino effect. If the Big Bang had resulted in one less hydrogen atom, the universe as we know it might have been very different. Action and reaction, motion and rest. But we are conscious things: we can't change what the gods will do, but we can change how we react to it.
***
Oddly enough, Plato the ultimate theist maybe winds up being the one with a lower opinion of humanity. Your destiny and choices in life depend on what kind of soul you were born with. (We might say that our DNA determines our personality.)
But the deterministic Stoics, who denied a substantive difference between nature and the divine, had more faith in the human spirit. They demanded much more out of their own character, but had high hopes that they could achieve a sort of existential freedom.
Both these theories wound up influencing Spinoza in some way. Plato's theories were recast in Neoplatonism as put together by Plotinus. More on him in another post, as he'll take quite a bit of explaining.
The Stoics were, of course, pantheists similar to Spinoza, and he agreed with their system of limited determinism and the personal ethics that went along with it.
Other philosophical relations to the Stoics include Jean-Paul Sartre (who took the Stoic idea of assenting to a whole new level), and Lao Tzu (whose Tao te Ching eerily mirrors the Meditations in its philosophy and subject matter).
For my first trick...
This is the part where I tell anyone who's reading about myself.
- Star Wars fan
- Philosophy geek
- Pantheist
- No formal college education. No plan of study or research. This is specifically for fun, and to satisfy my own crazy desire to understand the history of ideas, on my own terms.
When I was eight years old, sitting in a restaurant with my grandmother, I said, "I think God is nature." After I cleared the brimstone smoke out of my ears, I shut up about it for a very long time.
I never forgot that day, and that simple belief stuck with me. After I eventually left the church, I rediscovered my inner pantheist, and have been exploring the history of pantheism ever since.
Step one: Discover a guy named Benedict Spinoza.
Step two: Acquire Spinoza's Ethics from Half-Price Books.
Step three: Realize what deep shit I've gotten myself into.
So lately I've been living on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, reading Early Greek Philosophy, and falling in love with people like Empedocles and Plotinus. I'm starting to see links between the thought of the Greeks and Spinoza's theories, and my mind is spinning away.
This blog will be a record of my explorations, discoveries, and random ramblings. There will probably be no particular order to my thoughts, except as they relate to my central interest in Spinoza.
- Star Wars fan
- Philosophy geek
- Pantheist
- No formal college education. No plan of study or research. This is specifically for fun, and to satisfy my own crazy desire to understand the history of ideas, on my own terms.
When I was eight years old, sitting in a restaurant with my grandmother, I said, "I think God is nature." After I cleared the brimstone smoke out of my ears, I shut up about it for a very long time.
I never forgot that day, and that simple belief stuck with me. After I eventually left the church, I rediscovered my inner pantheist, and have been exploring the history of pantheism ever since.
Step one: Discover a guy named Benedict Spinoza.
Step two: Acquire Spinoza's Ethics from Half-Price Books.
Step three: Realize what deep shit I've gotten myself into.
So lately I've been living on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, reading Early Greek Philosophy, and falling in love with people like Empedocles and Plotinus. I'm starting to see links between the thought of the Greeks and Spinoza's theories, and my mind is spinning away.
This blog will be a record of my explorations, discoveries, and random ramblings. There will probably be no particular order to my thoughts, except as they relate to my central interest in Spinoza.
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