PYTHAGORAS, KABALLAH, AND THE WISDOM OF CHINA

Different nations seek God in different ways, but some of these ways are remarkably similar, using numbers and letters and imbuing them both with a supernatural, Divine significance.
I can liken the Pythagorean preoccupation with numbers, as a path to God and into the mystery of Nature, to a similar preoccupation of the Chinese thinkers and mystics with the secrets of the hieroglyph. There are ten thousand Chinese hieroglyphs in existence (according to my family’s erstwhile Chinese friend, Professor Chi-Yao Li, or Li Chi-Yao, as the Westerners were calling him), and an overwhelming majority of these are completely unknown not only to the foreigners, but to more than ninety-nine per cent of the Chinese people themselves. Only specially-trained Chinese sages and scholars, predominantly in monasteries still scattered around China (Mao’s Cultural Revolution notwithstanding!), have access to this secret ancient wisdom, and the best of them devote their whole lives to their study, which, they believe, brings them closer to God and His infinite wisdom. (This fact was corroborated by Soviet Ambassador to China Pavel Fedorovich Yudin, a prominent Soviet philosopher and a scholar in Chinese studies.)

It is clear to me that a very close similarity of these two pursuits does exist, and one can surmise that in their pursuit of numbers the Pythagoreans exhibited a more scientifically-minded approach, whereas the Chinese scholars have emphasized a more aesthetically-minded approach. But surely, the numbers too have a certain aesthetic value to the scientific mind, while the hieroglyphs may well possess a scientific quality, which eludes even the most diligent Westerner.

To go further still along the road of these comparisons, the Jewish scholars who have been studying Hebrew characters of the Torah for ages seeking certain secret meanings through mystical associations of letters and their corresponding numbers, known as “gematria,” (arguably derived from… geometry!) carry an uncanny resemblance to both the Pythagoreans and the sages of China, all three of them as a group deserving special attention, which subject I am certainly going to elaborate on, in the not too distant future through the unique prism of Russian mysticism and its special propensity for esoteric God-seeking.

REASON AND PASSION

(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.

THE MYSTERY OF THE IRRATIONAL NUMBER

The philosophy and the mysticism of Pythagoras may be argued to have an appeal for just a limited number of scholars and persons interested in these particular areas. His discovery of the role of numbers in music, on the other hand, is of greatest importance to the musicians, although most of them may not even remember his name. But his greatest “popular” achievement, in geometry, has made him a household name, as everyone who has ever attended middle school, must surely remember the so-called Pythagoras Theorem, which proposes that in a right-angled triangle the sum of the squares on the sides adjoining the right angle is equal to the square on the side facing it. (The Russians call this construction “Pythagoras’ Pants.”)


There has been a lot of sheer anguish, however, expressed on account of the fact that this theorem highlights the necessitated existence of “incommensurables,” that is, of irrational numbers. Alongside with the famous “golden triangle,” characterized by the well-behaved numbers three, four, and five, there is an even simpler triangle, with the legs one and one, which accounts for the hypotenuse that cannot be expressed as a fraction of any rational numbers. (As proved in Euclid’s Book X.)
This defeat of rationality at the hands of the Master himself has caused a lot of concern, originally among the Greeks themselves, who saw it as the defeat of the founding principle of Pythagoreanism that numbers are the first principles of everything. At the heart of the confusion was the presumption of rationality of God.

What, then, can we say in defense of irrationality? It is true that the quality of rationality cannot be denied to God, as such a denial would constitute a demonstrable deficiency, which is contrary to God’s nature. But, by the very same token, irrationality cannot be denied to Him either, on exactly the same grounds. Therefore the existence of irrational numbers should by no means constitute an inconsistency, as, in conformity with my assertion in the related entry Reason And Passion (to be posted next), God’s nature necessarily includes and embraces both rationality and irrationality. Consequently, Pythagoreanism gets an honorable pass here, with a special distinction for encouraging this very promising discussion, which will be most productively continued into the future.

...AND GOD WAS NUMBER

Those of us who are not totally deficient in humility, must all agree that God, an infinitely superior being to man, is, of necessity, totally incomprehensible to his creatures, to the point that even His very existence can in no way be ascertained through human reason, and can only be accepted irrationally, on faith, or formally, by postulate. This is why throughout history man has been making persistent efforts to find an indirect road leading to God through a variety of more or less comprehensible intermediaries. Christianity, in this sense, has advanced the farthest of all religions, in the tangible person of Jesus Christ: a humanly comprehensible flesh-and-blood individual, yet, at the same time, God Incarnate. Yet before we are carried away visualizing Jesus as “one of us,” let us not forget that there always has been a thick and virtually impenetrable cloud of mysticism surrounding Him, as testified to by the Evangelist John, in John 1:1-10. (“…And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not…”) Thus, we have to admit that, although we think that we “know” Jesus from the Scriptures and from numerous artistic representations of Him, the truth of the matter is that paradoxically we know less about Him than we know about God from all other non-Christian religions.

Long before Christianity would come into existence, an amazing effort was made to represent God through the mystical medium of numbers, and the man to do it was the legendary (literally so!) Pythagoras. And now the reason why I started to tell this story with a reference to Christianity will become clear, as I am about to do the following, seemingly irreverent, but philosophically justifiable paraphrase of John 1:1:
“In the beginning was the Number, and the Number was with God, and the Number was God.” Let the good reader not get emotional about this shocking substitution of the traditional Logos, but, rather, enjoy the feast on the abundant food for thought, resulting from this challenging, but intellectually exciting substitution…

Continuing with this entry on Pythagoras proper (there will be also a very large subsection on Pythagoras in my PreSocratica Sempervirens section that will be posted later), I find it most fitting to quote this short, but monumental tribute, opening the Pythagoras Chapter in Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy:

“Pythagoras… was intellectually one of the most important men who ever lived, both when he was wise and when he was unwise. Mathematics, in the sense of demonstrative deductive argument, begins with him and in him is intimately connected with a peculiar mysticism. The influence of mathematics on philosophy has ever since his time been both profound and unfortunate.”

(Here again we are facing the same problem of mathematics terribly overrated as an “exact science”, which we have encountered so explicitly in Hobbes and less explicitly in most other philosophies. I am particularly happy that Russell pinpoints this particular problem, but, alas, he does not go far enough in generalizing it!)
And later, in the same chapter:

“Pythagoras is one of the most interesting and puzzling men in history. Not only are the traditions concerning him an almost inextricable mixture of truth and falsehood, but even in their barest and least disputable form they present us with a curious psychology. He may be described as a combination of Albert Einstein and Mrs. Eddy. He founded a religion, of which the main tenets were the transmigration of souls and the sinfulness of eating beans. His religion was embodied in a religious order, which, here and there, acquired control of the State and established the rule of the saints… I do not know of any man who has been as influential as he was in the sphere of thought. I say it because what appears as Platonism is, when analyzed, found to be in essence Pythagoreanism.”

(Plato as a derivative of Pythagoras? Perhaps, Nietzsche may have been more correct calling Plato a “hybrid type,” which must include a number of pre-Socratic influences, not limited to Pythagoreanism alone! Curiously, all this goes very neatly together with Alfred North Whitehead’s shocking pronouncement that all Western philosophy is nothing but a series of footnotes to… Plato! Then vivant Pythagoras and the pre-Socratics!!!)

“The whole conception of ‘eternal world’, revealed to the intellect, but not to the senses, is derived from him. But for him, Christians would not have thought of Christ as the Word; but for him, theologians would not have sought logical proofs of God and immortality.”
[The first part of the last sentence is not altogether accurate, as the concept of Logos had long existed in Ancient Greek thought, not exclusively courtesy of Pythagoras’ influence, but otherwise the connection between Pythagoreanism and Christianity does exist, except that the same can be said of all religions, always trying to make God comprehensible to their adherents through a variety of more accessible mediums.]

Ironically, all that we know about this “most important, most interesting and puzzling man in history” has a seal of myth imprinted on it. Nothing of his original writings is extant, and much of what is attributed to him has been done so spuriously.
Much of what we know about Pythagoras, or rather about the ancient Pythagoreans, comes to us courtesy of Aristotle, who is by no means an objective observer here, but displays an occasionally strong bias against them, for which reason his testimony (particularly, in its negative portion) must be taken with a giant chunk of rock salt.
The following are short excerpts from Aristotle’s Metaphysics and Physics, dealing with the Pythagoreans. Much more of this will be found in my PreSocratica section, but my intention here is to concentrate on the particular subject of numbers as the substance of both Divinity and Nature.

“Those called Pythagoreans… thought that the first principles of these numbers were the first principles of all things. And since in sciences numbers are by nature the first, in numbers rather than in fire and earth and water they thought they saw likenesses to things that are, and that are coming to be, as, for instance, justice is such a property of numbers, and soul and mind are such a property, and another is opportunity, and of other things one may say the same of each one.”

There is a clear-cut connection here to the Kantian Ding an-Sich, which is in essence what Aristotle calls “the first principles.” I wonder whether Kant himself ever considered the Pythagorean solution for his quest, choosing numbers as the “itself “of things? As far as I remember, he never alludes to such a possibility.

“Discerning in numbers the conditions and reasons of harmonies also; since moreover other things seemed to be like numbers in their entire nature and numbers were the first of every nature, they assumed that the elements of numbers were the elements of all things and the whole heavens were harmony and number.”

Well, it does make some sense that inasmuch as musical harmony is actually counted in numbers, and God and His Creation contain harmony, numbers can be somehow related to God and nature, and serve at least as certain attributes of Divinity.

“(The Pythagoreans) both hold that the infinite is being, and divide it… As they say, all things are defined by threes; for end, and middle, and beginning constitute the number of the All, and also the number of the Triad.”

Dividing the infinite, in my view, downgrades the infinite, and raises the power of numbers to a status above Divinity, thus, in numbers, the Pythagoreans have found a substitute for God. As for the power of the triad, an immediate association with the mystery of the Trinity leaps to mind, but turning such association into a tempting conclusion would be very superficial. My invariable conception of the Trinity has been the three Manifestations of God, the unknowable Father, the knowable Son, and the immanent Holy Spirit, which, apparently, has nothing to do with most of what the Pythagoreans must have had in mind. But what strikes me as very clever is their unity of space and time, in the concept of the Triad, yet this Triad fails to reach beyond the Kantian Undinge, and therefore the infinite has to be free of these limitations and non-divisible by definition. The triad would make sense only as God who thus controls the universe by arranging it into “before, now, and after,” on the one hand, and “the beginning, the middle, and the end,” on the other. But this whole arrangement is riddled with holes, as Aristotle rightly observes in other passages.

Curiously, by placing the number in excelsis, the Pythagoreans did not quite solve the mystery of the Deity, but only came up with a superior concept of the number, turning it into a substitute for God. This, however, is not a failing, in my book, as what they have given us in abundance, with their challenging theory, is fresh and nourishing food for thought, compensating, more than generously, for the holes in their philosophical construction.

ANTI-MONISM AND MONOTHEISM

In the previous entry Monism And Monotheism we observed how the great Pre-Socratic thinkers of Greece, who, as we should not forget, lived in a patently polytheistic society, were philosophically inclined toward monotheism, subjecting the gods of their culture, Zeus included, to a superior authority, manifested in the idea of fate, or necessity. It was fairly easy for us to connect the monistic tendency of Thales and others to the logical propensity for oneness of the supreme Deity, on their part, to which primordial oneness all the multiplicity of gods and heroes had to bow. Among the great monists we have mentioned Thales, who saw water as the first substance. The second Milesian philosopher on record, Anaximander, also a monist par excellence, disagreed with Thales on the nature of the first substance, apparently considering water as too mundane to merit such honor. In his judgment, it had to be some unknown primal substance, out of which all known substances were eventually to spring up. Anaximenes, the third Milesian philosopher, chose to return to the known, from Anaximander’s unknown, but, to distinguish himself from Thales, he called air the first substance, out of which every other substance originated. Heraclitus is yet another monistic philosopher, who proposes fire as the primal substance. He also believes in constant change, and in the struggle of the opposites (presaging Hegel), but his God is invariably one, even though encompassing within Himself all imaginable opposites: "God is day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, surfeit and hunger; but he takes various shapes just as fire, when it is mingled with spices, is named according to the savor of each."

But the epitome of Pre-Socratic monism was Parmenides of Elea, who rejected the everyday perception of multiple reality, as mistaken, arguing that the true reality of the world was the One Being, an unchanging, ungenerated, indestructible whole.

So far, we have followed the logical effects of monism on the philosophical rationalization of monotheism, demonstrating its sufficiency, but by no means its necessity, in such rationalization. In fact, monotheism is in no way a license for monism, as numerous examples illustrate.

The first explicitly monotheistic Greek philosopher was Xenophanes of Colophon. Starting with a severe denunciation of the Olympians ("Homer and Hesiod have attributed to the gods all things that are a shame and blameworthy among men, stealing and committing adultery, and deceiving each other!"), he rightfully concludes that these are not the real Deity, but are essentially man-made impostors: "But men consider that the gods are born, and that they have clothes and speech and bodies, like their own… The Ethiopians say their gods are snub-nosed and black, the Thracians that theirs have blue eyes and red hair…" (etc.)
Xenophanes’ God now emerges as one totally unlike any man or thing: "one god, greatest among gods and men, in no way similar to mortals either in body or in thought. Always remains in the same place, moving not at all; nor is it fitting for him to go to different places at different times, but without toil he shakes all things by the thought of his mind. All of him sees, all thinks, all hears."
Thus firmly establishing his monotheistic credentials, he is, however, not a monist: "All things are earth and water that come into being and grow… For we all are born of earth and water..." Earth and water, not one, but two substances. And yet, his God is one!

The philosopher Anaxagoras, a friend of Pericles, deviated from monism to such an extent that in his idea of infinite divisibility of matter the tiniest particles always contain all existing elements, but things appear to be that of which they contain the most. I would call him, however, the first explicit dualist, as alongside matter and above it he places the eternal and infinite mind, nous, which is pure (mixed with nothing) but enters into the composition of things, bringing life into them:

"Nous is infinite and self-ruled, and is mixed with nothing, but is alone, itself by itself. Nous has power over all things, both great and small, that have life. And Nous had power over the whole revolution, so that it began to revolve in the beginning. And it began to revolve first from a small beginning; but the revolution now extends over a larger space, and it will extend over a larger still. And all the things which are mingled together, and separated off, and distinguished, are all known by Nous. And Nous set in order all things that were to be, and all things that were and are not now and that are, and this revolution in which now revolve the stars and the sun and the moon, and the air and the ether that are separated off."

Aristotle is gleefully mocking Anaxagoras for failing to see the difference between nous and psyche, while Plato, before him, makes Socrates (in Phaedo, 98B) point out that the Anaxagorian nous is nothing but a deus ex machina, sorely deficient in both epistemological and teleological departments. But it is still obvious that Anaxagoras’s Nous possesses attributes which are sufficient to identify it as his monotheistic Supreme Being, and this is where this matter stands.

The most explicitly and forcefully anti-monistic was the flamboyant eccentric Empedocles, the materialist physicist, magician, mystical theologian, healer, democratic politician, a living god, and a fraud, who was the inventor of the four-element theory of matter (earth, air, fire, and water), with two cosmic forces, Love and Strife, engaged in an eternal battle for supremacy. There is no way to declare him monotheistic, as his philosophical offering contained at least one extra god to reckon with, himself.
And yet, assuming that much of Empedocles’ theory is chaotic and erratic, one ought to look for elements of a monotheistic tendency in his extant fragments, and one should not be disappointed, uncovering pieces like this: "Then neither is the bright orb of the sun greeted, nor yet either the shaggy might of earth or sea; thus, then, in the firm vessel of harmony is fixed God, a sphere, round, rejoicing in complete solitude." (Fr. 135.) Here is the unmistakable figure of One God, represented by the perfect geometrical figure of the orb! And the power through which God rules the world, the law, to which everything and everywhere bows, be that the four elements or the two cosmic forces, is necessity:
"There is an oracle of Necessity, an ancient ordinance of the gods, eternal, and sealed fast by broad oaths." (Fragment 115.) And here is more from Diels’ Doxographi Graeci: "Empedocles: The essence of necessity is the effective cause of the first principles and of the elements." (Aet. Plac. i. 26 321.)

In summarizing this and the previous entry, regardless of whether philosophical monism leads our thinker to the Oneness of God (or vice versa the subconscious belief in the Oneness of God leads him to the monistic worldview), or else our thinker rebels against the monism of others and proposes a multiplicity of elements constituting the physical world and multiple forces at work within it, the philosophical mind is a genuinely monotheistic mind, and the great Pre-Socratic philosophers of Greece bear witness to this contention.

And now we turn to the most remarkable Pre-Socratic philosopher, who combines a scientific genius with a genius philosopher and a genius theologian, in one person, himself. I am talking about Pythagoras.
(See the next entry …And God Was Number.)

MONISM AND MONOTHEISM

[The reader will note that I am rejecting, as utterly misleading, all connotations of the term monism, which put it into opposition to the term dualism, that is, the philosophical dualism, implying separate and distinct coexistence of matter and spirit. Whether such monism is a redundant restatement of the term materialism, or an expression of the extreme form of subjective idealism (I deplore the unsound use of the term monism in reference to normal idealism, which is essentially dualistic, because in this case, spirit being timeless, it cannot be posited as either pre-existent to matter, or being the source of matter, both of which contentions impose temporal limitations on the timeless nature of spirit), the special term monism, basically indicating the single-substance origin of the world, is too unique and linguistically precious to waste it on a variety of meaningless variations. This rejection obviously has no bearing on the separate soundness and legitimacy of the term dualism, which, I repeat, is designed to indicate the separateness of mind and matter.]


The God subsection continues, with no end in sight. The reader may be surprised by my preoccupation with the God theme, and indeed, most of the entries in this philosophical section are either God-centered or God-related, and even the title of this section testifies to the importance of the God concept to my understanding of philosophy. But this should come as no surprise, considering that philosophy can not avoid this subject, and even the most atheistic philosophies smuggle in the God idea, disguised under a different name. On the other hand, all normal philosophies have God as their central subject, and none other than the great Spinoza (the purest philosopher, according to Nietzsche), has been known to us as ein Gottbetrunkener Mensch, and his philosophy is naturally all about God. For curious reference only, the key word God occupies sixty-four lines in the Index to Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy while the key word Philosophy takes up just thirty-seven lines there, and the key word Ethics, thirty-six lines!
Now, returning to the subject of the present entry, which is not counting lines in book indexes, I remember, with an unfailing amusement, how I had a theological discussion with a certain Baptist preacher, and I told him something to the effect of how the philosophical monism of the ancient Greeks was indicative of their dismissive attitude toward polytheism, and of their actual belief in One God, at which point this good man jumped to correct me, as I was obviously trying to say “monotheism,” but misspoke “monism” instead. Oh, dear! Needless to say, had he been right, I must have said something so terribly truistic and nonsensical (it would have amounted to saying that monotheism is indicative of the belief in one God), that it would have been an awfully stupid thing to say at all.
But what I actually said was much more interesting. The definition of monism is the belief, or doctrine, that a single substance, or principle, accounts for the origin of the world, or, to put it into a more stylized, poetic form, the belief in the “oneness of the all.” It is my natural conclusion, accordingly, that no self-respecting monist would be respectful of a plurality of gods, who must have been spawned out of that one substance, and are therefore posterior, and theologically inferior to it. In my treatment of Thales, the first philosopher and also a water-monist, I regard him as a clear monotheistic thinker, and his famous phrase “All things are full of gods,” to me, is by no means a polytheistic credo, which some minor philosophical commentators are so eager to suggest, but it should be understood as ‘Everything is penetrated by the sparks of Divinity,’ or as a pantheistic, yet also unmistakably monotheistic (definitely denying plurality to the Oneness of the world) statement that “One God” fills everything in existence, and thus everything in existence is filled with Divine manifestations. To interpret this phrase otherwise could only turn it into a joke, and I am absolutely sure that neither Thales, nor Aristotle, to whom we owe the knowledge of this phrase, meant it that way.

My argument that monism necessarily implies monotheism is so compelling, and my conclusion about the ancient Greek thinkers being monotheists is so natural, that I hardly require a reassurance in its correctness. Nevertheless, it is always nice to find corroborations of my theses in highly respectable sources, such as, in this case, in Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy, Chapter XIV:

"Before philosophy began," Bertrand Russell writes, "the Greeks had a theory, or feeling, about the Universe, which may be called religious, or ethical. According to this theory, every person and every thing has his or its appointed place, and appointed function. This does not depend on the fiat of Zeus, for Zeus himself is subject to the same kind of law, as governs others..." In other words, Zeus, even though generally regarded as the superior Deity among the Olympians, is inferior to a higher force, which does not dwell in a locus, nor inside time, as Zeus does, but governs the world transcendentally and eternally. "This theory is connected with the idea of fate or necessity." Which words can be substitutes for manifestations of a single Deity.
The connection between monism and monotheism is further illuminated by the following Russell passage on Spinoza’s logical monism, in the Spinoza chapter of the History of Western Philosophy:
"Spinoza’s metaphysic is the best example of what may be called “logical monism”--- the doctrine, namely, that the world as a whole is a single substance..." (here is a logical progression from a single substance being the source of the world to its continuing to be the nature of the world, or its essence), "none of whose parts are logically capable of existing alone."
(Within the teleological logic of Creation, the principle that God’s Design has not produced anything either superfluous or inherently deficient, easily leads to the conclusion that everything in our world is interconnected and interdependent, and thus, not intended to exist alone! It therefore provides a good, sound foundation to Spinoza’s “logical monism,” without for a moment making the terms monotheism and pantheism, the latter in a very general sense, mutually exclusive.)

This concludes the present entry, but the subject continues in the next one (Anti-Monism And Monotheism), to be posted tomorrow.

SCIENCE, PHILOSOPHY, AND RELIGION AS ONE

Science, religion, and philosophy,--- incompatible or symbiotic? An overwhelming majority of the Russian Orthodox believers will automatically and emphatically reply Symbiotic!, even if for a wrong reason. On the other hand, an overwhelming majority of the church-going American Evangelicals, as soon as they hear the words “science” and “philosophy” in the same sentence with “religion,” are immediately apprehensive, as if having received a most unpleasant electric shock. They are likely to suffer these two words with the greatest measure of hostility, as if some terrible offense had just been perpetrated against them. For, in their minds, science and philosophy are indeed incompatible with religion.
…What can I say? For me, a Russian, these three are not only symbiotic, but closely connected. Put science, religion, and philosophy in one incomplete sentence, and I shall finish it with the name of Pythagoras. Here was a great scientist, a philosopher par excellence, and a founder of religion all in one person, and there was nothing “incompatible” about him. (Perhaps, I ought to add most of the pre-Socratic philosophers to this list as well, all of them prodigious scientists and philosophers, although, perhaps, religiously not as original and prominent as Pythagoras.) If that were still not enough, I shall name Pascal, and if the reader has not been duly impressed by now already, there is no sense in keeping going on.
In my life, I used to know several great scientists, who were intensely religious, and amateur philosophers, to boot. The names of Nikolai Nikolayevich Semenov and Anatoly Ivanovich Zimin, who are particularly familiar to the readers of my book Stalin, and Other Family, are prominent among them.

Science, religion, and philosophy… There is not only a deep connectedness, but a close kinship between the three. Philosophy, being fiction, has a lot in common with science this way, for all science (not only science fiction!) is fiction, too. Needless to say, religion easily joins their ranks, as even the best and the “truest” of all great religions (which one of them, is always in the mind’s eye of the beholder) is the product of God’s creative fantasy, Divine Fiction, I might call it.
An interesting connection between these three points of the triangle is found in Nietzsche’s Menschliches-6, which is discussed more at length in the Nietzsche section, but cannot escape finding a rightful place in this Philosophy section, where it goes to the heart of my argument on the truth and lie of fiction, science included.----

“The scientific spirit is powerful in the part but not in the whole. The distinct, smallest fields of science are treated purely objectively. On the other hand, the general, great sciences as a whole, pose the question, a very unobjective question: what for, to what benefit? Because of this concern about benefit, men treat the sciences less impersonally as a whole, than in their parts.”

Right from the start, Nietzsche introduces the compelling suggestion (first subtly, and later explicitly) that the principal difference between philosophy and concrete sciences is in the level of their generalization. In philosophy that level is the greatest, thus in the next paragraph of this passage, he will place philosophy at “the top of the whole scientific pyramid.” Ironically, but by no means contrarily, I am putting philosophy at the bottom of the whole scientific structure, as its solid foundation!
Nietzsche’s observation is important to my treatment of great sciences as fiction, with a pure hypothesis at their foundation, like the hypothesis of parallel lines in Euclidian and Lobachevsky geometries, for instance. As in general literature, where the worth of fiction is determined by its readability, that is, by its publishing success (we are talking in practical terms here, leaving ethics and spiritual value aside), in all sciences the value of any hypothesis must be determined exactly by Nietzsche’s pragmatic question: “What for, to what benefit?” Paradoxically, at first sight, this question need not, and ought not to, be asked of philosophy (that is, if one expects an answer from it), which, as I said on many occasions before, owes its intrinsic value to the asking of questions, but not to the answering of them.

“Now, in philosophy, the top of the whole scientific pyramid,” (philosophy, to Nietzsche, is a science, bravo!) “the question of the benefit of knowledge is posed automatically, for, every philosophy has an unconscious intention of ascribing to knowledge the greatest benefit.”

In my opinion, the question of the benefit in philosophy may be more forcefully pursued only because it is much less obvious, whereas in science it is self-evident. Thus, in Euclidian geometry, where the flat-earth hypothesis, known by all to be untrue in the general sense, is universally accepted for practical reasons, like land measurements, where the general truth is literally larger than life, the question of benefit is not posed automatically only because it is answered automatically before the need to pose it ever arises. Curiously, I am not disagreeing with Nietzsche about anything here, because my whole approach to science, in fact, all my interest in science nowadays is exclusively through philosophy, and science without the philosophy of science, to me, turns into a silly clueless hammer, of no interest to the philosopher, until somebody picks it up and starts using it for a certain purpose, which alone justifies his interest. (See this subject discussed in my Lecture Summary on International Justice.)

“Therefore, all philosophies have so much high-flying metaphysics, and so much wariness of the seemingly insignificant explanations of physics.”

Again, this seemingly irresolvable problem is no longer a problem, as it is completely resolved by infusing philosophy into scientific research. I suspect that Nietzsche’s point here recognizes the actual existence of such a deficiency, whereas I am bluntly taking for granted the ideal case based on a general recognition of the necessity of its ultimate overcoming.

“For, the importance of knowledge for life must appear as great as possible. Here we have the antagonism between individual scientific fields and philosophy.” (See my comment on the divergence of scientific and religious thought reaching the point of incompatibility, in the already mentioned  Lecture Summary on International Justice.) “The latter, like art, wishes to render the greatest possible depth and meaning to life and activity.” (See my several entries on the art and science of chess, and on what this distinction means in actual applications.)
The philosopher, however, is not limited in his endeavor to the artistry alone, at least he is not supposed to be “limited” in anything, being a free soul. By the same token as I have already discovered a contradiction in my earlier pursuit of the so-called antihistoricity, which I have now resolved to correct on these grounds of free spirit’s inalienable right to do anything it wishes to do within the “fictional” (that is, hypothetical), foundation of his endeavor.

“In the sciences, one seeks knowledge and nothing more, whatever the consequences may be.” (It is clear by now that Nietzsche engages in the criticism of his day, and not in a condemnation on principle of all human science, which should then include, the science of the future.) “So far, there has not been a philosopher in whose hands philosophy has not become an apology for knowledge. In this way, every one is an optimist, by thinking that knowledge must be accorded the highest usefulness.” (Once again, what is knowledge? Yes---definitions, definitions, definitions!) “All philosophers are tyrannized by logic: and logic, by its nature, is optimism.” (How can we liberate ourselves from the tyranny of logic, then? This is why I am especially glad to have uncovered the limitations of logic, which, so-to-speak, puts her in her place and therefore ends her rule effectively. Not by logic alone! Let it remain for all time our tool, to be applied to the little ventures of ours only to develop and elaborate on the one and only immutable truth of a creator’s universe [of our own created universe, that is]: the hypothesis!)

---My next important Nietzschean passage closely corresponds to my thoughts on science and religion, with philosophy being the connecting bridge between them. (This passage is taken from Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals; 3rd Essay; 24.)---

“Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as science “without any presuppositions.” A philosophy, a faith, must always be there so that science can acquire from it a direction, a meaning, a limit, a method, a right to exist.” (See how the very first paragraph of this remarkable passage unites science, philosophy, and faith in one short sentence! And perhaps the most remarkable thing here is the equating of philosophy and faith which, come to think of it, makes its own sense. Inasmuch as science requires a direction, it is in need of a morality, the ethical component, and ethics is the common ground of philosophy and religion.)
“It is still a metaphysical faith that underlies our faith in science. We, godless men of knowledge of today, still derive our flame from the fire ignited by faith, the Christian faith, which was also Plato’s, that God is truth, and that truth is divine. But what if this belief is unbelievable, what if nothing turns out to be divine any longer, if God himself turns out to be our longest lie?”

This is all incredibly interesting, but the question of faith in science ought to be stripped of its theological attire altogether, and clothed in the more modest, but unobjectionable, wording of acceptance of our basic hypothesis, which justifies the particular science. Just as the philosophical acceptance of faith makes faith more palatable than when shoved down our throat, the acceptance of any hypothesis does not imply force, or any suppression of reason, and thus becomes itself acceptable to the latter!

“At this point science itself requires justification (which is not to say there is any such justification). Both the earliest and the most recent philosophers are all oblivious of how much the will to truth itself requires justification, here there is a lacuna in every philosophy. How did this come about? -- Because the ascetic ideal has hitherto dominated philosophy, because Truth was posited as Being, as God. From the moment when faith in the God of the Ascetic Ideal is denied, a new problem arises: that of the value of truth.”

As for the old question of truth, I have already pointed out the two different notions of truth, which make our comprehension and acceptance of this term, well, palatable. There is always One Truth, of course, God’s Truth, which is Absolute and Universal, but, being theologically incomprehensible, it is also impracticable. On the other hand, my new concept of the truth of fiction, which identifies comprehensible truth with the domain of its creator, and postulates that truth, rather than open its legitimacy up for discussion, ought to suppress the most objectionable arguments to its acceptance, and, by the same token, by removing any such objections to “smaller” truths, preclude the ricochet objectionability of the Absolute Truth, and, with it, our most objectionable and most unreasonable objection, to God!

…Here is a great philosophical puzzle where I believe to have an answer, which Nietzsche had despaired to find. My geometry find, my insistence on the liberation of God from religion, in order to be one, universally acceptable measure of the Absolute; my introduction of the concept God-by-definition, to discourage those feeble and fatally flawed efforts to prove His existence,--- all these well justify the value of truth, but not that fragile and vulnerable “truth” which loses the universality of One God when chained to a particular religion. All these problems should be solved, as soon as we validate the “truth of science,”--- not as some disputable fact, but as a completely indisputable fiction, and when the existence of Truth is also made indisputable by the categorical power of definition. Thus, my two principal philosophical-theological efforts in this area are: (1) “saving” God from particular religion; and (2) separating fact, the lie, from fiction, the truth.)