14. RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE & EXISTENTIALISM An over-emphasis on analytic logic in philosophy often gives rise, as we have seen, to a position that ignores all myth in the quest for a scientific system. The extent to which philosophers allow mythical ways of thinking to play a legitimate role in their philosophizing is likely to be directly proportional to the extent to which they recognize some form of synthetic logic as the legitimate complement of analytic logic. As I mentioned in the previous lecture, we will turn our attention today to existentialism, a school of philosophy whose proponents tend to emphasize synthetic logic more than analytic logic. This movement has exercised a dominant influence in European (non-English-speaking) philosophy, especially during the first half of this century. Actually, much of the fourth part of this course will deal with issues raised primarily by existentialist philosophers in their attempts to apply philosophical thinking to improve our understanding of concrete, human experiences. So today we can limit our attention to an issue related more directly to logic--namely, the problem of how religious language gets its meaning. (Of course, analytic philosophers have also devoted much attention to this issue; but we will focus here on only one of the ways in which existentialists often deal with it.) This topic serves as an appropriate contrast to linguistic analysis because religious language, far from excluding myth, is regarded by some as the "language of myth". Religious language at its best, like myth, often uses synthetic logic to help us cope with our ignorance of ultimate reality. In other words, it is essentially an attempt to speak about the unspeakable. In most religions, this "unspeakable reality" is referred to as "God". Many philosophers, however, prefer to use less presumptuous terms, the most common of which is "Being". Long before existentialism came into its own as a distinct philosophical movement, many philosophers and theologians adopted the convention of distinguishing between humans (and all other things that exist in our ordinary world), as "beings", and the ultimate reality that underlies all existence, as "Being". John Macquarrie, a contemporary existentialist theologian who was strongly influenced by Heidegger's existentialist philosophy, describes this distinction in his book, Principles of Christian Theology (p.126): .. there could be no beings without the Being that lets them be; but Being is present and manifest in the beings, and apart from the beings, Being would become indistinguishable from nothing. Hence Being and the beings, though neither can be assimilated to the other, cannot be separated from each other either. This distinction between Being and beings serves as the primary starting-point for many existentialists, though philosophers who are not so theologically- minded often prefer to start from the even more basic distinction between Being (and/or beings) and nothing. The primary existentialist distinction (in whichever version we take it) corresponds in its basic form to Kant's distinction between the realms of possible knowledge and necessary ignorance. Although the two distinctions are not identical, and so are often applied in vastly different ways, we can picture this existential distinction by using the same, circular map in the now familiar way (cf. Figures 7.2 and 14.1). One advantage of using the same root word to refer to both levels of reality is that this suggests that--as anyone who has ever had a religious experience will testify--Being reveals itself in beings. But this raises a problem: given the radical difference between beings and Being, how can we ever speak meaningfully about this Being which manifests itself in beings yet transcends them all? This is the central problem of religious language; and there have traditionally been two ways of solving it. [Figure 14.1: The Primary Existential Distinction] The first kind of solution can be called the "way of negation". Those who take this approach insist that any words used to describe Being must be literally true--i.e., true in the same way they would be if we applied the same words to beings. The result is that this way of approaching religious language gives rise either to extremely austere descriptions of ultimate reality, or to no description at all. We have already come across several typical representatives of this approach. The long passage quoted in Lecture 10 from Pseudo-Dionysius is one of the earliest and best examples. As we saw, his propositions are limiting to the point of being almost empty if we interpret them solely in terms of analytic logic, though they can also point to deeper meanings if we interpret them in terms of synthetic logic. Kant's theory of knowledge, which we examined in Lecture 7, is also frequently interpreted as implying a strict limitation of language to the realm of beings. And, of course, Wittgenstein's Tractatus ends with an explicit recommendation that we remain silent when it comes to the "mystical things" which "manifest themselves" to us, beyond the "world of facts". The second approach to explaining how words can be used to construct meaningful expressions concerning some ultimate "Being" has been called the "way of affirmation". Interestingly, each of the above-mentioned philosophers proposed, at some point, not only a negative "way", but also a complementary affirmative "way"--evidence, if ever there was, that they all deserve to be called "good" philosophers. Wittgenstein's Investigations can be regarded as his attempt to forge an affirmative way. Kant's moral philosophy, which we will look at in the third part of this course, was purposefully constructed as an affirmative complement to the negative restrictions established by his epistemology. And Dionysius the Areopagite himself was actually the philosopher who first named these two "ways"; his elaboration of an affirmative way is, in fact, surprisingly rich, given the extreme austerity of his negative theology. Philosophers and theologians who employ the way of affirmation often develop such an approach by utilizing what is called the "analogy of being". This analogy states, quite simply, that in certain cases "Being" is to "beings" as "being x" is to "being y". Or we can express the same idea in the form of a mathematical equation, as follows: This analogy does not imply that every relationship between two beings is somehow similar to the relationship between Being and all beings, but only that in certain instances such a similarity comes to our minds as an appropriate way of using words to explain our experience of Being. For example, Jesus experienced the relation of Being to beings in a way which reminded him of the relation between a father and a son, so he taught his followers to pray to their "heavenly father". The analogy here is that in certain respects, where "father" refers, of course, to the ideal of perfect fatherhood. An interesting paradox, which arises from the primary existential distinction between Being and beings, can be at least partially resolved by thinking in terms of the analogy of being. An existentialist theologian named Paul Tillich (1886-1971) has argued that, if we regard God as "being-itself", or the "ground of being"--i.e., if we think of God in terms of Being rather than as one among the "beings" existing around us--then it is really not appropriate to say God "exists" at all! One of my teachers once said such claims indicate that Tillich was really an atheist. Such an interpretation, however, completely misses the point of Tillich's position. In order to suggest a better interpretation we must recognize that existentialists of all types are fond of pointing out that the word "exist" originates from the Latin words ex ("out") and sistere ("to stand"); so this means, as theologically- minded existentialists are quick to add, that in order for a being to exist, it must stand out from the Being in which it is rooted. We will look more closely at some of Tillich's ideas in the fourth section of this course; but for now it will suffice merely to point out that, when Tillich insists we should not, strictly speaking, say God "exists", since God simply is the Being from which existing beings stand out, he is adopting the "negative way". If we look at the same problem from the more "affirmative" point of view of the analogy of being, then we can say that God's mode of existence (or perhaps we can say God's reality) is to our human mode of existence (or reality) as the mountain-tops are to the valleys below, or as the sun is to the moon, or as any other higher or primary power we know about is to its corresponding lower or derivative power. Such comparisons do not give us knowledge of God, but they do give us a way of using words to express our belief about how our experience of God can best be described. In other words, the distinction between Being and beings does not imply that God is not real, but that God's reality is of a fundamentally different kind than that of any other beings we know about. Whereas Tillich would say that, strictly speaking, it is not correct to say either "God exists" or "God does not exist", I would add that, from the more flexible point of view of synthetic logic, it would be better to say each of these propositions is true and meaningful in its own way. For God is not merely the greatest of all existing beings: we beings have existence; God is existence--or, as Macquarrie puts it, God "lets be" (p.129). This is surely the true point of Tillich's claim that God does not actually "exist". The analogy of being, like virtually any metaphorical use of language, derives its meaning from synthetic logic. For whenever we use a known relationship to describe an unknown relationship, we are drawing an equivalence between two opposites in a way which analytic logic can never justify. If we try to understand the proposition "God is my father" solely in terms of analytic logic, we will be forced to conclude that the proposition is nonsensical. For a "father" is a male individual who helps to produce a child by having sexual relations with a female individual. If God were merely a "great being", then this might be possible; and some religious people who view God in this way do not find it difficult to think of God as (for example) a wise old man who (in some supernatural way) had sex with the Virgin Mary to produce the baby Jesus. But if God transcends the limited realm of beings, then such a conception of God as a father, interpreted with analytic rigidity, is absurd. Nevertheless, if we accept synthetic logic as a legitimate way of using words, then we can recognize that the notion of the fatherhood of God is intended not as a literal description of God, but as a way of shocking us into gaining deeper insight with respect to our experience of God. We tend to forget what a shock it must have been for many of the Jews who first heard Jesus exclaim "God is our father!" Today some people are trying to shock traditional religious believers in the same way by exclaiming "God is our mother!" Those who regard analytic logic alone as the proper way of using words find such a suggestion offensive: for how could God be both our father and our mother? But synthetic logic suggests that both descriptions could be true in their own way, if they foster legitimate insights into the nature of Being. Macquarrie (who was, by the way, my supervisor at Oxford) has provided a helpful discussion of the meaningfulness of religious and theological language in his book, Principles of Christian Theology. He argues that religious language does not merely express some abstract analogy, but arises out of a person's existential response to some kind of concrete experience of being- itself (pp.126-127). For example, if a person has an experience of feeling humbled and struck down by reverent awe, as if in the presence of some greater or higher power which is infinitely beyond any other previously experienced power, then, Macquarrie assures us, that person is expressing a meaningful proposition whenever he or she refers to God (the name for the mysterious source of this experience) as "Most High", or as the "Highest Being". Even for people who no longer believe God lives in a place that is literally "way up high in the sky", this metaphor of "highness" can serve as an appropriate expression of the response they have had (namely, a sense of lowness) when in the presence of God. Religious language is often regarded not as referring merely to an individual's private experience of Being, but as doctrine, which ought to be affirmed by everyone. This dogmatic use of religious language can also have a legitimate meaning, provided the language reflects an existential response to a shared experience of the disclosure of Being in a given religious community. In a passage affirming Wittgenstein's later philosophy, Macquarrie reminds us that the meaning of a doctrine or dogma is ultimately determined by the use to which a religious community puts it (pp.112-113). If the words in which a dogma is expressed are no longer relevant to the kind of existential response to Being experienced by the members of a given religious community, then the dogma has lost its meaning, and ought to be discarded or expressed in a fresh form. In other words, religious believers should view their beliefs not as containing fixed, analytic meanings, which are equally meaningful in all times and all places, but as expressions of flexible, synthetic meaning, directly related to the ever-new and ever-changing realities of life. Macquarrie also notes that religious language has its historical roots in the language of myths (pp.118-122). He describes the view of some existentialists, that myth is a form of narrative which attempts to answer a basically subjective question, "Who am I?", in an objectified form. But he warns that myths also have a properly objective aspect (p.122): "The myth talks indeed of our human existence, but it talks of this existence in relation to Being, in so far as Being has disclosed itself." In other words, the experience is an experience of something objective, even though the knowledge it reveals is primarily about the situation of the person having the experience. Although today we "live in a post-mythical age" (p.120), understanding the nature of mythological language is important because of its close relationship to religious language: both types of language depend heavily on the use of symbols. In Part Four of this course, we will consider in some detail how certain symbols function in such a way as to enable us to cope with our ignorance of ultimate reality. So it will be helpful here to give a brief, preliminary account of how symbols function in religious language. A symbol, according to Macquarrie, is anything in the realm of beings which discloses and thereby points our attention towards the realm of Being. He calls attention to the synthetic character of symbols when he notes that they inevitably involve "paradox" (p.132): "Just because symbols are symbols, that is to say, they both stand for what they symbolize and yet fall short of it, they must be at once affirmed and denied." Macquarrie also alludes on several occasions (e.g., pp.123-124) to the definition of symbols suggested by Tillich, to which we will return in Part Four. As we shall see, Tillich defines a symbol as a sign that participates in the reality to which it points. In other words, the symbol is in once sense the reality itself (A), even though in another sense, as a mere sign, it is not the reality (-A). Accordingly, the law of contradiction itself can be stated as the law that "A participates in -A." The difference between mythological language and religious language is that a mythological understanding remains unaware of the symbolic nature of its words, whereas a truly religious understanding recognizes a symbol as a symbol. Macquarrie compares the former to the activity of dreaming and the latter to the activity of interpreting a dream (p.122). He then goes on to discuss a number of important characteristics of symbols. He observes, for instance, that symbols normally operate only "within a more or less restricted group of people" (p.124). As a result, there are probably "no private symbols", as well as no "universal symbols", since the same object often has different symbolic meanings in different cultures. Furthermore, Macquarrie claims that, "although Being is present and therefore potentially manifest in every particular being, some manifest it more fully than others" (p.131). In other words, there is a "range of participation in Being", from impersonal objects, which tend to participate less, to personal beings, which participate more. The reason personal symbols are so common in religious language, then, is because they have "the widest range of participation in Being and so [are] best able to symbolize it." We know this is true because personal beings "not only are, but let be" (p.132); for human beings in particular do not just exist, like the rocks, but they also create, which is of course one of the primary characteristics of the religious conception of the role of being-itself. Before concluding this last lecture on logic, I should point out that existentialism is sometimes presented in a form which is just as exclusive and one-sided as linguistic analysis. In reality, both of these schools of thought make use of both analytic and synthetic logic: just as linguistic analysis has its logical positivists and its ordinary language philosophers, so also existentialism has its proponents of the negative and the affirmative "ways". Nevertheless, while analytic philosophers tend to over-emphasize analytic logic, existentialists tend to over-emphasize synthetic logic. This sometimes results in an approach which says, as it were, "Only the subjective experience really matters; the philosophical tradition, to the extent that it ignores this experience, can be discarded." But of course, the tradition is the soil which feeds that very experience, and cannot be discarded without rendering the experience itself inexplicable. This concludes the second part of this course on the tree of philosophy, in which we have discovered how the trunk of the tree, logic, enables us to understand words. My hope is that you will now see how important it is to recognize the complementary relationship between analysis and synthesis. Recall the comparison made in Lecture 10 between this relationship and the relationship between sight and insight: whereas analytic logic often provides the best way to describe the surface of what we see and experience, synthetic logic takes us beneath the surface, into the depths of new ideas. But new ideas cannot stand on their own. If we have an insight and then just leave it alone, it will produce no fruit. The synthetic discovery of a new insight must therefore always be followed by an analytic criticism; and the latter can be done properly only by someone who is thoroughly immersed in the tradition. With a few slight alterations to Figure 10.2, we can picture this way of describing the complementary relationship between analysis and synthesis, sight and insight, criticism and discovery, as follows: [Figure 14.2: Analysis and Synthesis as Complementary Functions] If we keep this map in mind during the third part of this course, we may find that the image it presents to us will be quite helpful in guiding our reflections concerning the nature of wisdom. In preparation for our next session, in which we will discuss the question "What is wisdom?", I would like each of you to read the short story, Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach. Although the word "wisdom" never appears in that story, I want you to search as you read it for any clues it might hold as to the nature of wisdom. Bach is certainly not a professional philosopher, and his books would not ordinarily be regarded as relevant reading for a philosophy class; but he is a man who writes with insight, and whose writing can often fire the embers of insight in his readers. With this in mind, I hope we can use the insight we gain from discussing his popular story of a bird who searches for wisdom as an appropriate introduction to the third part of this course. QUESTIONS FOR FURTHER THOUGHT 1. Why is there something rather than nothing at all? 2. Is there a middle way between the "way of negation" and the "way of affirmation"? 3. How does the proposition "God is love" get its meaning? 4. Could we ever say anything about God that would be literally true? RECOMMENDED READINGS 1. John Macquarrie, Principles of Christian Theology (London: SCM Press, 1966), especially Chapter VI, "The Language of Theology", pp.111-133. 2. Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol.1 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1951), especially Part II, "Being and God", pp.163-289. 3. Arthur Koestler, The Act of Creation2 (London: Pan Books, 1975). 4. Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (New York: Bantam Books, 1974).