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CLASSICAL ESSAY |
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by Léon Brunschwicg
Modern science, from the time of Galileo and Copernicus to Einstein and the theorists of quantum mathematics, has progressively revealed the true reality of the world. This revelation reaffirms our concepts and the ideas of truth. It is characteristic for the philosopher to view this as a unified and indivisible idea. He cannot tolerate the mind in a changing situation, to add epithet or substantive, or in any way slacken the rigorous method of verification. Inflexibility is the exigency of the method. Religious truth must, therefore, be absolute truth; one need not look for the foundation or content of the religion. From the viewpoint of speculation or rationalism, it must not be said that the basic idea of religion is yet to be discovered. It is the Word which Greece received from Egypt; which formed the center of Judaic-Christian theology; the inner light that shines for all mankind and whose comforting universality and unlimited productivity is felt by all those who are able to extend and coordinate ideas. Therefore, religion is the Word of God; it confirms the innermost, unparalleled certainty that there is a presence in each of us, which makes our intelligence different from the mere passive accumulation of images; makes our love different from the egoistic urge of instinct; keeps us from severing us from ourselves, and unites us with the community of minds. The very manner of attaining this proposition involves the immediate consideration of its negative. For the philosopher, there should not be any other God than the Word, comprehended in the immanence which secures His perfect spirituality, with no relation to external forms which would make Him dependent upon the conditions of space and time, and would, in this way, cause the relapse of the religious idea from sphere of spirit to the inferior regions of matter or life. This new proposition broaches the problem from a negative or somewhat more restrictive aspect. Compared with the essential instincts that determine the origin of religions, the ascetic rationalism of the Word seems somewhat deficient and incomplete. In reality, from the viewpoint of pure philosophy, it represents the progress attained by the gradual development from the spontaneous, primitive type of religion to that of a higher type. For the sake of precision, we may call it progress from the religion of sublimated nature to the religion of surmounted nature. The first type is derived from constant experience: the inability of the will to realize its aims with certainty; those impervious obstacles which often frustrate the most carefully prepared enterprises: sudden catastrophes, inevitable death. This leads man to form active dreams of superior striving which are at times contradictory to and at other times in accordance with his personal desires. This earthly diffuse striving becomes embodied in the psychology of a transcendent almighty being; a god who inspires fear; who for the same reason becomes the source of hope. We do anything to soften his ire and receive his grace. The supernatural powers at his disposal, secure success for us, or at least we are confident that he will compensate us for our failures and sufferings in immortal time, which according to the common creed succeeds the duration of life. The renunciation involved in Pascal's mortification and Kant's rigorous is only an ephemeral attitude, accepted and transformed by the expectation of posthumous eternity, where the fruits of peace, denied to us on earth, will be enjoyed. With this concept, God is defined according to his relations with mankind. He is the providential agent, prepared to guard the fate of our planet and the interests of its inhabitants. He is the vital source of precious comfort. Such a God is perfectly adapted to the vicissitudes and ends of human conditions. It is needless to emphasize the difficulties secular reason, aided by logic, encounters in the analysis of those spontaneous creeds, whose echoes are transmitted to us from remote epochs, and which ethnographers again discover in contemporary primitive societies. The proof of causality in the world does not prove that there is a causality of the world. Quite the contrary. The conditions of thought which establish the relationships that shape the texture of the universe, as it is known to us, exclude extrapolation, which by pronouncing an abstract principle make the Absolute emerge as a being that transcends the knowable reality. The more the mind becomes conscious of the proper order of its constituents, whether they belong to the realm of matter or life, the more difficult does it become to regard God as the reason that explains the animate and inanimate universe. The optimism of metaphysics was not only unsuccessful, in divining and justifying the design of creation, but in order to conceive the very idea of such a design, one had to assume first that the earth and mankind were the central interest of the Almighty. Science has considerably enlarged our speculative horizon in terms of space and time. Therefore, the former supposition must be considered a poor one, it contradicts the concept of divinity. Theology, founded upon physics or biology, projecting a supernatural vision of the world, cannot, through conjecture or speculation, solve the problem of religion. It seems, therefore, reasonable and noble, if not easy, to understand that this speculative inability is the counterpart of moral weakness. If both are to be overcome, we must resolutely convert ourselves to the spirit of truth and change our concept of God, and remove the responsibility of our personal care from Him. God recovers all of His dignity when our concept of him is not charged with the intermediate, involuntary arrogance of terrestrial and human privilege. He does not assimilate Himself with our particular experiences or concepts that result from abstract reasoning. He is not an object of truth, detachable from itself in an unknown region of reality. He is not an object of love which enters into competition with other objects. Rather, he is the cause of our capabilities to comprehend and love without exhausting the resources of our intelligence, or limiting our affection, or reverting it solely to our personal interests. He is the reason we are able to live the life of the spirit.
Excerpted from Religion et Philosophie, by Léon Brunschwicg |
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