Existence

Philosophical Theology, Volume Two

Robert Cummings Neville

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781438453323, 9781438453316
• eBook ISBN: 9781438453330
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Theology

Religion, writes Robert Cummings Neville, articulates existential predicaments and provides venues for ecstatic fulfillment. Like its companion volumes treating ultimacy and religion, Existence advances a systematic philosophical theology to address first-order questions found in the array of Axial Age religions. Issues arising in the major religious traditions are explored through a complex array of philosophical approaches. This second volume shows religion to be the engagement of ultimate realities common to all human beings. Neville finds five problematics relative to ultimate boundary conditions of the human world: the contingency of existence, living under obligation, the quest for wholeness, engagement with others, and the meaning or value in life. Common to all human beings and hence "religion, " the engagement with realities is also historically and culturally bound, becoming simultaneously socially constructed "religions." Readers will find Neville's philosophical theology both bold and enlightening, running counter to dominant intellectual trends while richly informed by a long and fruitful engagement with theology, philosophy, and religion, East and West.

PART I

Ultimate Boundary Conditions

PART I

Preliminary Remarks

The philosophical hypothesis concerning human predicaments and ecstatic fulfillments builds on the already complex hypothesis concerning ultimate realities elaborated in Philosophical Theology One, Part III, namely, that one ontological ultimate reality and four cosmological ultimate realities constitute the ultimate or boundary conditions for human life (II, preface, intro.). The thesis is summarized at length in respect of theological symbols in Philosophical Theology Three, Chapter 4, Section II, and we recall it briefly here for the purposes of the present volume.

The ontological ultimate reality is the act of creation, the end product of which is the world in all its diversity and connectedness, its changes, its patterns, and its chaos. The ontological act of creation is not itself determinate apart from the nature it gives itself in creating. The world’s temporality and spatial extensiveness are among the determinate things created, and the ontological act of creation is not itself in time or space. The created world is not separate in any sense from the ontological creative act; rather, it is the end product of that act. The contents of the created world are anything that philosophy, the sciences, other traditions of inquiry, and the breadth of civilized experience, might find them to be. Neither the ontology of the creative act nor the metaphysics of determinateness specifies anything about what the world is besides being determinately whatever it is.

Anything that is created is determinate in the sense that each thing is something rather than nothing and itself rather than everything else with respect to which it is determinate. Therefore, the conditions of determinateness as such are transcendental conditions of the world. In fact, they would be the transcendental conditions of any world to the extent it is determinate. The four cosmological ultimate realities are transcendental traits of anything and everything that is determinate. According to the hypothesis, they are form, components formed, existential location relative to other things, and the achievement of some value-identity (I, 10). Expressed a bit more complexly, to be determinate is to be a harmony that has a (1) form or pattern; (2) components of which there must be two sorts, conditional components by virtue of which the harmony is conditioned by and conditions the other determinate things with respect to which it is determinate and essential components by virtue of which it integrates the conditional components so as to have its own being relative to others; (3) location in an existential field constituted by the ways the determinate things condition one another; and (4) the value-identity achieved by having these components together with this form in this existential location relative to other things. The cosmological ultimate realities are ultimate conditions for any determinate thing.

These five ultimate realities constitute the ultimate boundary conditions for human life in a religiously interesting way only insofar as they relate to the semiotically meaningful structure of that life (I, 2–3; II, intro.). The ontological contingency of the world takes the existential form of the radical contingency of human existence and the meaningful human world, often expressed as matters of life and death. The cosmological ultimate reality of form becomes the human boundary condition of having to deal with alternate possibilities of different values, and hence of being under obligation. Having components means, for human life, having to comport oneself to the components so as to defer to them properly and achieve integration and wholeness. Being existentially located determines the ultimate boundary condition of having to engage appropriately with others. Achieving some value-identity and coming to terms with this constitutes the ultimate boundary condition of finding meaning or value in life.

Together these five ultimate boundary conditions of human life are normative for human life. To be human in some ultimate sense is to face the question whether to affirm existence as such on the ontological level and on the cosmological level to be obligated to deal righteously with value-laden possibilities, to need to find wholeness, to engage others and the rest of the world appropriately, and to find meaning in the value resulting from one’s life. To express these points in such telegraphic fashion is to oversimplify them to the point of potential distortion. At this stage in the argument they are mere formulas for organizing the discussion. Moreover, this philosophic language is abstract in ways that the various religions’ expressions of parallel points are not. Nevertheless, the purpose of this volume is to flesh out these systematic points with such abundant detail as to make the hypothesis plausible, persuasive, and orienting. The hypothesis of the theological anthropology of Philosophical Theology is that to be human is to be normatively bound to face the question of the affirmation of existence, to be under obligation, to need wholeness, to engage rightly with other things, and to achieve a meaningful identity with value.

The language of norms comes principally from the first cosmological boundary condition, form as providing possibilities, because how people relate to existence, wholeness, existential location, and meaning in significant part is a matter of choice among possibilities. Perhaps the great majority of life’s conditions are simply given. But what is interestingly human, from a religious perspective, is what people do with the conditions given them. Among the possibilities with regard to which people are under obligation to choose well are those having to do with how people comport themselves toward the components of their lives, how they relate to others, how they build a life with value and meaning, and how they address the question of the affirmation and enjoyment of existence on the ontological level. Because of the need for choice, these conditions are all normative in senses that will be explored.

The five ultimate boundary conditions are different from one another, however.¹ The temptation to think that there can be only one ultimate condition needs to be resisted. The causal relation between the ontological ultimate and the four cosmological ones shows how these five fit together consistently and coherently. The ontological act of creation is not “more ultimate” than the four cosmological traits of determinateness, because its very nature as ultimate requires the determinate world as the end product of its creating. Any ontological creation would have to be of a world that is determinate, and hence implies the four cosmological ultimates. The unity of human life, such as it is, involves addressing all five boundary conditions throughout one’s life and they are obviously related; many of the non-obvious ways they are related are discussed in this volume.

How do these ultimate boundary conditions constitute anything that might be called a human predicament, or the human predicament, or ultimate human predicaments? The human predicament in general is that the normative boundary conditions bind us, and yet we fail them, and then we have to cope with that failure. Each boundary condition has its own genre of predicaments of failure, as discussed primarily in Part II of this volume. In respect of each boundary condition, there are ways of rightly coping with failure according to the various religions.

The human predicaments of ultimate significance are situated within the wider human world. The ultimate realities relevant to those predicaments are therefore those that show up in the human world. The notion of “human world” is ambiguous. Peter Berger and other experts in sociology of knowledge would use the term to refer to the ways by which people symbolize reality so as to construct a public symbolic image that gives meaning to human life.² Philosophical Theology One, Chapter 1, employs Berger’s theory to begin a discussion of sacred canopies. A sacred canopy is an intellectually and socially constructed set of symbols depicting the humanly relevant boundaries of reality. But on the other hand, “human world” means whatever in reality is relevant to human life so as to constitute its boundary conditions, the putative referents of the symbols in a sacred canopy. Sacred canopies can prove false, not only by internal inconsistency, but by failing to articulate some ultimately significant aspects of reality experienced in other ways and hence becoming implausible. They become inoperative to engage these realities of life because they are mistaken in part about them.

The “human world” in this discussion means primarily the ultimate realities that bear upon human life, and only secondarily the symbols through which people engage them. Therefore, the argument of this part is that the cosmological ultimates of form, components, existential location in a field with others, value-identity, and radical contingency upon an ontological creative act are relevant to human life as the boundary conditions of obligated possibilities, wholeness, appropriate engagement, meaningfulness, and the consent to and enjoyment of created being in general. The human world’s boundary conditions, in this analysis, are the normative claims of obligated possibilities, wholeness, appropriate engagement, the achievement of meaning, and coming to terms with existence as such.

Over and above this sense of the human world are the symbol systems in sacred canopies that various religious traditions have developed to articulate the human world. At this level of analysis, the issues are those of comparative theology, to find where there is real similarity and real difference beneath the surface of symbols that might appear to be cognate. That all the large, literate religious traditions have symbols to deal with these issues is one strand in the defense of the hypothesis that obligation, wholeness, appropriate engagement, the achievement of meaning, and coming to terms with existence are indeed ultimate realities for human beings, constituting the boundary conditions for the human world, and hence religiosity in general.

On the other hand, that they all have symbols to articulate these humanly relevant realities does not mean that they say the same things about them. Philosophical Theology One claimed in fact that there are at least three great metaphoric systems that have been developed for articulating ontological ultimacy: the elaborations of metaphors of emergence, consciousness, and personhood. Each of these spawns its own varieties of ways of dealing with obligation, wholeness, engagement, meaning, and existence, and the traditions are not consistent within themselves, let alone among each other. That the philosophical categories serve to exhibit some of these important differences is another advantage of the hypothesis about the ultimate realities in the boundary conditions of the human world.

The purpose of this part is to examine in detail how the cosmological ultimates give rise to the ultimate boundary conditions of the human world: obligation, wholeness, engagement, and meaningfulness. This is done with a chapter for each. In every case the point is made that, in reference to the normativeness of each of the cosmological ultimates in human life, human beings inevitably or almost inevitably are failures, although the analysis of this failure takes place in Part II. Moreover, the cosmological ultimate realities in the human world are connected. What people do relative to one relates to what they do relative to the others. Part of the wholeness question is how these connect.

Within human life, the ontological question of existence, deriving from the radical contingency of the world on the ontological act of creation, is pervasive. But it arises in different ways with respect to obligation, wholeness, engagement, and the achievement of meaning. Each one can raise the question of whether life is worth living. The ontological predicament is examined in these particular ways in each chapter.

Chapter 1 examines the ultimate boundary condition that comes from form, namely, obligation. Chapter 2 studies the ultimate boundary condition that comes from having components, namely, groundedness and its integration into wholeness. Chapter 3 addresses the boundary condition that comes from existential location, namely, engagement. Chapter 4 takes on the ultimate boundary condition that comes from value-identity and meaning, namely, ultimate meaningfulness in value. Each of these traits presents an approach to the ultimacy of radical contingency.

CHAPTER ONE

Form as the Condition of Obligation

The first step in this theological anthropology is to reflect on the fact that human beings face possibilities about which they make decisions. This reflection covers important philosophical ground: the nature of obligation, moral worth, value, and the character of form itself. The ultimate boundary condition of form as it puts human life under obligation functions in all the other boundary conditions: people make decisions about their own integration, about engaging others, and about achieving a value-identity that gives life meaning. All the other boundary conditions have form. Within the temporal processes of human life, form determines the possibilities that might be actualized; it determines the value and structure of the things that are in fact actualized; and it is the structured value of the past. So, in all these ways the study of form and its role as a boundary condition for human life is primary and a good first step in this inquiry.

It need not be the first step, however. We could begin with a study of nature as the originating environment for human life, or with a study of human biology, social conditions, and psychology. All of these are important components of human life, and in fact return for consideration in Chapter 2, where we reflect on components as such. But in this theological anthropology, we begin with reflection on human choice because that is at the heart of the existential reality of religion.

The first section develops at some length the connection between the ultimate transcendental trait of having form and the way this is implicated in the human world.¹ The second section focuses on the sense in which form bears value, such that anything that has form has value; this topic is treated at several places in Philosophical Theology (I, 10; III, 9). The result of this discussion is a general theory of human life as being under obligation, the topic of Section III. The fourth section spells out a classification of obligations.

I. FORM AND HUMAN POSSIBILITY

Philosophical Theology One, Chapter 10, noted that to be a determinate thing at all is to be a harmony with form. For temporal things such as human beings, so complex and discursive through time and space in their harmonies and interactions, the future is form under the aspect of possibility; the present is the deciding among alternate possibilities as to which ones to actualize; the past is, with respect to form, those possibilities that have been actualized and the exclusion of those that have not. Although human possibilities are contextual in many senses, and eventually are to be understood in terms of those concrete contexts, to begin with a consideration of some of the metaphysical structures of form relative to human life is the most practical beginning. Pervasive traits often are more practical and determinative in the long run than local contextual ones.²

Form is the metaphysical basis of the structure of the future in temporal things. Some remarks are necessary about the metaphysics in this, dealing first with form and then with value as a function of form. According to the analysis in Philosophical Theology One, Chapter 12, the future is a harmony with essential and conditional components. The essential component of the future is pure unity, which, when conjoined in contrasts with the future’s conditional components coming in different ways from the past and present, constitutes formal patterns as future possibilities. These patterns might unify the plurality of things given to the future as its conditional components by actualized things of the past, relative to present moments that might decide among alternatives. This analysis of future possibility strongly reflects the Neo-Confucian theme of li, which usually is translated “Principle” but which Stephen Angle better translates as “coherence.”³ The Neo-Confucian slogan “li is one, its manifestations are many” can be interpreted in Philosophical Theology to mean that, as one, coherence per se or “essentially” is that which would make any plurality cohere and that, as many, coherence is the pattern of any given particular plurality of things (the conditional components of form) that do cohere. Because form needs both essential and conditional components, there is no way in which form or coherence as pure unity can exist by itself, nor any way by which a plurality can exist by itself without some bare coherence.

The form of the future is thus a structured possibility for actualization, most likely with a structure that is vague with respect to alternative possibilities for actualization. Because of the plurality of actualized things at any moment, many decision points are involved in deciding on a given, vague future possibility. Thus the future possibility has the structure of a field of alternatives that can be decided by many decision points. In a specious present, a human agent is surrounded by many other “contemporary” agents whose decisions also affect which future possibilities are actualized. A football player, for instance, needs to be aware of what all the other players are doing and pondering as he structures how he will address the field of possibilities in a given play. And the field of possibilities is not open only to other human deciders: social institutions, movements, wars, climatic changes, changes in underlying natural conditions—all these are among the larger array of decision points that affect a person’s possibilities. Between a given person in the present and the possibilities being faced, an array of intermediate decision points also exists. The person will have to keep on making decisions to carry out a present intent for a future outcome. Most if not all human choices involve conjoint actions with others, including other nonhuman factors. Sometimes conjoint actions are cooperative, sometimes antagonistic, and sometimes oblivious. Moreover, because every decision, by the person or by the other deciding processes, changes the field of possibilities, the structure of possibilities itself is constantly changing, a kaleidoscope of shifting alternatives. Given this structure of form and possibility, an ultimate condition of human existence is to face value-laden possibilities. The remainder of this section elaborates this thesis.

The sense of “human nature” correlative to the facing of alternative possibilities for decision is that of the decision-maker, the agent. In many important circumstances, decisive agency is a matter of spontaneous action, of freedom. Human freedom has many dimensions in addition to creative choice, but the point to stress here is that the facing of possibilities is a m...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Cross References
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part I: Ultimate Boundary Conditions
• Part II: Predicaments and Deliverances
• Part III: Ecstatic Fulfillments
• Part IV: Engagement and Participation
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Back Cover