(I am quite happy with the core point of this entry, which proves with Biblical quotations that God possesses both passion and irrationality, but not at the expense of rationality and logic, as much as in addition to them. Denying any such quality to God limits His absolute and infinite powers and attributes.)
...Which is the part of our thinking capacity complementary (it would be wrong to use the term opposite) to reason? We are tempted, following Nietzsche, to call it instinct, or intuition, and, if we do, this should lead us along a certain path, conditioned by our choice of the term that we have decided to employ.
Such choices of terms being crucial to the development of our basic argument, it is therefore intellectually stimulating and generally exciting to test the theorem we are proposing, and to see how this theorem works in different situations determined by the term we have chosen, and all the baggage it brings along with it.
I hope that there is a future for such testing, either by myself later, or by some intellectually curious reader, who might pick up this challenge. But in this entry, rather than develop my theorem much further, and with various illustrations, I am picking just one instance of an unusual term usage, considering its employment as a complement to reason, taken from the Introductory Letter of Hobbes’s Elements, presented here with my original in-text annotations (borrowed from another project of mine, which I call Sources & Comments).
“From the two principal parts of our nature, Reason and Passion, [I like Hobbes’s choice, using these two particular words to express the all too familiar concepts in contraposition, and thus bringing in an unusual nuance into this discussion!] proceed two kinds of learning: mathematical and dogmatic. [He counters the exactness of mathematics against the imprecision of opinion, with a predictable result, quite convincing at that, provided that we agree, of course, with the basic premise. We know, however, that by the same token as mathematics can (theoretically) axiomatize any kind of unsound premise, and then elaborate it, with an impeccable precision, so can a dedicated dogmatist defend a sorry pretense of a fact (which would be false all through) with the most sound logic and reason. In such case, the otherwise striking difference between purest mathematics and a spurious dogma can be reduced to a meaningless trifle!] The former is free from controversies and dispute, because it consists in comparing figures and motion only, in which things truth and the interest of men do not oppose each other. [‘Truth’ and the interest of men are indeed in perpetual conflict with each other. How does the truth come out, against the interest of men? Does it ever? And then what comes out under the name of Truth: is it the Truth, or men’s interest, masquerading as Truth? Which leads us back to the profound Biblical question: What is Truth? No, dear Hobbes, do not seek an ally in the sciences. If you are looking for an Absolute Truth, the answer is more theological than scientific. Science hardly qualifies as a revelation of Truth. At best, it is an application of some practically useful hypothesis, and nothing better than that. Now, with regard to Hobbes’s assertion that mathematics is free from dispute, because it consists in comparing figures and motion only, this is true in the way mathematics develops its thesis, but, as we have many times observed by now, it does not necessarily involve the thesis itself, and in sciences this is even more obvious.]
But in the latter nothing is indisputable, because it compares men, meddling with their right and profit; in which as often as reason is against a man, so often will a man be against reason. And therefore, they who have written of justice and policy in general, do all invade each other, and themselves, with contradiction. [The only reason why I would not dispute Hobbes’s distinction of mathematical and dogmatic, as a matter of “disputability,” is that I am ready to accept his distinction as a matter of term definition. It will be much simpler however to disengage from the shaky argument regarding the difference between mathematics and dogma, and concentrate on the more demonstrable difference between reason and passion. But first, let us bring this excellent Hobbesian passage to its end.] To reduce this doctrine to the rules and infallibility of reason, there is no way, but first to put such principles down for a foundation, as passion may not seek to displace, afterwards building on it the truth of cases in the law of nature (which, hitherto, have been built in the air) by degrees, till the whole be inexpugnable. [This wonderful admission of impossibility to make the doctrine perfectly reasonable, with which I of course concur, indirectly explains why all great thinkers have failed to elaborate a definitive positive philosophical theory! What Hobbes actually suggests next is a development of the apparatus which would allow us to elaborate our basic premise, regardless of whether the premise itself is valid or not. (Say, what does Hobbes’ law of nature mean?)] Now the principles fit for such a foundation, are here put into method. To examine cases thereby, between sovereign and sovereign or between sovereign and subject, I leave to them who shall find leisure and encouragement for it. For my part, I present this as the true and only foundation of such science. For the style, it is worse, because as I was writing, I consulted more with logic than with rhetoric. But the doctrine is proved and its conclusions are of such nature that without them government and peace are nothing, but mutual fear. And it would be a great benefit to the commonwealth that everyone held the opinions on law and policy here delivered.”
There are a few more interesting points to make here. Hobbes’s argumentation brings to mind Nietzsche’s distinction between reason and instinct, or knowledge and faith, or the rational and the irrational. By the way, Nietzsche’s disdain for Hobbes notwithstanding, Hobbes comes close, in 1640, to Nietzsche’s insight of a quarter of a millennium later: that philosophy (dogmatic learning, in Hobbes’s passage) derives from the irrational, rather than from reason. His mistake is that he believes that this is wrong, and tries to introduce reason only as the must-be driving force of philosophy… So here is another one of my apte dictums: Not by reason alone!
Hobbes makes the mistake of trying to solve the problems of justice and policy by reason alone, which puts him in contradiction with himself. The foundation of the “irrational” faith in developing political and legal concepts is essential, because rationality may easily produce monstrous results. Justice must be humanized, not rationalized, risking a slide to anthill ethics. The rational man obeys the law, good or bad, but without the irrational belief in the supernatural there is no higher ethical standard than the law of the land. This is why Hobbes, a good and moral man, judging by his intentions, creates an amoral conception of justice as a blind obedience to law.
And finally, regarding reason and passion, how do these two parts of our human nature translate into the nature of the Divine? Is God completely rational, or does His nature contain both these elements, rational and irrational? Conventional wisdom stigmatizes irrationality as some kind of pathology, whereas it is by no means something so negative that it could not be an attribute of God. It can be argued that, as God is in possession of Absolute Knowledge, there is no room in His soul for faith, which is, of course, a by-product of insufficient knowledge. However, if we expand our understanding of irrationality to include instinct, or intuition, or, even better, perhaps, the most irrational thing in the world, passion, it is impossible to deny these benign qualities to the Almighty, both from general considerations, and from the specific depictions of God in the Bible. Here are just a few of the many examples of God’s irrational passion in the Bible, as I see them.
In the first chapter of Genesis, in the process of Creation, God looks at its separate parts and sees that they are good (Verses 10, 12, 18, 21, 25), but at the end of the sixth day of Creation (in Verse 31) "God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good." I see the use of the word good each time as rational, in the sense of a dispassionate moral evaluation, but the use of the word very in Verse 31, as an expression of God’s passion, an irrational quality in the best sense of the word.
Chapter 6 of Genesis provides an indisputable evidence of God’s irrational passion: "And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved (!) him at his heart. And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; (this could be seen as execution of God’s justice, except that the overkill that now follows clearly makes it an expression of God’s irrational passion---) both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them." (Genesis 6: 5-7.)
I am deliberately avoiding God’s conversations with men (where His passion may be interpreted as a lesson He is teaching them), to make my last point unassailable. The Reason and the Passion, the Rational and the Irrational, are necessarily complementary positive qualities, and, as such, are Divine Attributes as well.
...Which is the part of our thinking capacity complementary (it would be wrong to use the term opposite) to reason? We are tempted, following Nietzsche, to call it instinct, or intuition, and, if we do, this should lead us along a certain path, conditioned by our choice of the term that we have decided to employ.
Such choices of terms being crucial to the development of our basic argument, it is therefore intellectually stimulating and generally exciting to test the theorem we are proposing, and to see how this theorem works in different situations determined by the term we have chosen, and all the baggage it brings along with it.
I hope that there is a future for such testing, either by myself later, or by some intellectually curious reader, who might pick up this challenge. But in this entry, rather than develop my theorem much further, and with various illustrations, I am picking just one instance of an unusual term usage, considering its employment as a complement to reason, taken from the Introductory Letter of Hobbes’s Elements, presented here with my original in-text annotations (borrowed from another project of mine, which I call Sources & Comments).
“From the two principal parts of our nature, Reason and Passion, [I like Hobbes’s choice, using these two particular words to express the all too familiar concepts in contraposition, and thus bringing in an unusual nuance into this discussion!] proceed two kinds of learning: mathematical and dogmatic. [He counters the exactness of mathematics against the imprecision of opinion, with a predictable result, quite convincing at that, provided that we agree, of course, with the basic premise. We know, however, that by the same token as mathematics can (theoretically) axiomatize any kind of unsound premise, and then elaborate it, with an impeccable precision, so can a dedicated dogmatist defend a sorry pretense of a fact (which would be false all through) with the most sound logic and reason. In such case, the otherwise striking difference between purest mathematics and a spurious dogma can be reduced to a meaningless trifle!] The former is free from controversies and dispute, because it consists in comparing figures and motion only, in which things truth and the interest of men do not oppose each other. [‘Truth’ and the interest of men are indeed in perpetual conflict with each other. How does the truth come out, against the interest of men? Does it ever? And then what comes out under the name of Truth: is it the Truth, or men’s interest, masquerading as Truth? Which leads us back to the profound Biblical question: What is Truth? No, dear Hobbes, do not seek an ally in the sciences. If you are looking for an Absolute Truth, the answer is more theological than scientific. Science hardly qualifies as a revelation of Truth. At best, it is an application of some practically useful hypothesis, and nothing better than that. Now, with regard to Hobbes’s assertion that mathematics is free from dispute, because it consists in comparing figures and motion only, this is true in the way mathematics develops its thesis, but, as we have many times observed by now, it does not necessarily involve the thesis itself, and in sciences this is even more obvious.]
But in the latter nothing is indisputable, because it compares men, meddling with their right and profit; in which as often as reason is against a man, so often will a man be against reason. And therefore, they who have written of justice and policy in general, do all invade each other, and themselves, with contradiction. [The only reason why I would not dispute Hobbes’s distinction of mathematical and dogmatic, as a matter of “disputability,” is that I am ready to accept his distinction as a matter of term definition. It will be much simpler however to disengage from the shaky argument regarding the difference between mathematics and dogma, and concentrate on the more demonstrable difference between reason and passion. But first, let us bring this excellent Hobbesian passage to its end.] To reduce this doctrine to the rules and infallibility of reason, there is no way, but first to put such principles down for a foundation, as passion may not seek to displace, afterwards building on it the truth of cases in the law of nature (which, hitherto, have been built in the air) by degrees, till the whole be inexpugnable. [This wonderful admission of impossibility to make the doctrine perfectly reasonable, with which I of course concur, indirectly explains why all great thinkers have failed to elaborate a definitive positive philosophical theory! What Hobbes actually suggests next is a development of the apparatus which would allow us to elaborate our basic premise, regardless of whether the premise itself is valid or not. (Say, what does Hobbes’ law of nature mean?)] Now the principles fit for such a foundation, are here put into method. To examine cases thereby, between sovereign and sovereign or between sovereign and subject, I leave to them who shall find leisure and encouragement for it. For my part, I present this as the true and only foundation of such science. For the style, it is worse, because as I was writing, I consulted more with logic than with rhetoric. But the doctrine is proved and its conclusions are of such nature that without them government and peace are nothing, but mutual fear. And it would be a great benefit to the commonwealth that everyone held the opinions on law and policy here delivered.”
There are a few more interesting points to make here. Hobbes’s argumentation brings to mind Nietzsche’s distinction between reason and instinct, or knowledge and faith, or the rational and the irrational. By the way, Nietzsche’s disdain for Hobbes notwithstanding, Hobbes comes close, in 1640, to Nietzsche’s insight of a quarter of a millennium later: that philosophy (dogmatic learning, in Hobbes’s passage) derives from the irrational, rather than from reason. His mistake is that he believes that this is wrong, and tries to introduce reason only as the must-be driving force of philosophy… So here is another one of my apte dictums: Not by reason alone!
Hobbes makes the mistake of trying to solve the problems of justice and policy by reason alone, which puts him in contradiction with himself. The foundation of the “irrational” faith in developing political and legal concepts is essential, because rationality may easily produce monstrous results. Justice must be humanized, not rationalized, risking a slide to anthill ethics. The rational man obeys the law, good or bad, but without the irrational belief in the supernatural there is no higher ethical standard than the law of the land. This is why Hobbes, a good and moral man, judging by his intentions, creates an amoral conception of justice as a blind obedience to law.
And finally, regarding reason and passion, how do these two parts of our human nature translate into the nature of the Divine? Is God completely rational, or does His nature contain both these elements, rational and irrational? Conventional wisdom stigmatizes irrationality as some kind of pathology, whereas it is by no means something so negative that it could not be an attribute of God. It can be argued that, as God is in possession of Absolute Knowledge, there is no room in His soul for faith, which is, of course, a by-product of insufficient knowledge. However, if we expand our understanding of irrationality to include instinct, or intuition, or, even better, perhaps, the most irrational thing in the world, passion, it is impossible to deny these benign qualities to the Almighty, both from general considerations, and from the specific depictions of God in the Bible. Here are just a few of the many examples of God’s irrational passion in the Bible, as I see them.
In the first chapter of Genesis, in the process of Creation, God looks at its separate parts and sees that they are good (Verses 10, 12, 18, 21, 25), but at the end of the sixth day of Creation (in Verse 31) "God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good." I see the use of the word good each time as rational, in the sense of a dispassionate moral evaluation, but the use of the word very in Verse 31, as an expression of God’s passion, an irrational quality in the best sense of the word.
Chapter 6 of Genesis provides an indisputable evidence of God’s irrational passion: "And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved (!) him at his heart. And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; (this could be seen as execution of God’s justice, except that the overkill that now follows clearly makes it an expression of God’s irrational passion---) both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them." (Genesis 6: 5-7.)
I am deliberately avoiding God’s conversations with men (where His passion may be interpreted as a lesson He is teaching them), to make my last point unassailable. The Reason and the Passion, the Rational and the Irrational, are necessarily complementary positive qualities, and, as such, are Divine Attributes as well.
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