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Advaita Vedānta, al-Hallāj, Arianism, Aristotle, Docetism, Emmanuel Lévinas, Four Noble Truths, James Doull, Jesus, mystical experience, natural environment, Nicene Creed, Nicholas Gier, nondualism, Qur'an, Śaṅkara, Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindī, Stephen Prothero
I’ve been thinking some more about the idea of encounter, which I blogged about in these posts and which I take to be central to the philosophy of Emmanuel Lévinas: the idea that we can never encompass the wholeness of truth, it must remain irreducibly other to us. I’m wondering whether the basic idea animating encounter philosophies is the virtue of humility – a virtue, I think, in both epistemological and ethical contexts. Aristotle, on the other hand, saw pride as a virtue, modesty as its lack – and while I do think humility is a virtue myself, I would remain an Aristotelian in seeing humility, like justice, as a mean. It is far too easy to be too humble in action, to be servile and self-abnegating – an excess which, I’ve suggested before, hurts women’s struggle for equality. And with respect to knowledge, too little humility can lead us to an inappropriate feeling of certainty; but realizing that lack of certainty can spur us to too much humility, leading us into a self-contradictory denial of truth and knowledge.
The issue surrounding encounter, in that case, goes well beyond one’s relationship with God, even one’s relationship with other human beings. Like the question of internalism and externalism, it hits deep issues both theoretical and practical, though from a different angle. And I suspect this is why the question is so pervasive throughout the Western monotheisms.
An earlier post on the subject noted the debate within Indian Sufism, between ibn Arabi’s wahdat al-wujūd and Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindī’s wahdat ash-shuhūd. But what was new in India with Sirhindī was only that the debate happened within Sufism – Sirhindī was the first Sufi to articulate the idea of irreducible encounter, the opposition to pantheism. Opponents of the Sufis had been putting forth that idea for a long time before that. Perhaps most famously there was the case of al-Hallāj, the tenth-century Persian Sufi, who in in his state of mystical experience proclaimed anā’l ḥaqq, “I am the truth!” Al-ḥaqq, “the truth,” was one of the traditional 99 Muslim names of God; for saying that he was God, al-Hallāj was swiftly put to death.
Non-Sufi Islam, it seems to me, stresses the gulf between God and man as a way of maintaining human humility. Stephen Prothero’s popular new book on religious difference identifies pride as the central problem in Islam, comparable to sin in Christianity or suffering in Buddhism. I suspect this is why Muslims lay so much stress on tawhīd, God’s inviolable unity, and treat shirk – idolatry or “associating partners with God” – as a cardinal sin. To raise anything in the physical world to God’s level is to assume an arrogant knowledge of God. In the early days of Islam, the Mu’tazila school, relying on this idea of tawhīd, had argued that the Qur’an was a created object like anything else perceptible, and so one should read it with a rationalistic and allegorical eye. To read it as literal and inerrant would be arrogant, idolatrously taking the Qur’an as a partner with God. But one of the reasons the Mu’tazila became a minority position was that their view was used to license human arrogance: the caliph, the human ruler, had no limits on his power if he could take the Qur’an as meaning something different from what it literally said.
It has been my sense that, while there has been some suspicion of Christian mysticism through the ages, it was not persecuted within Christianity as strongly as the Sufis were within Islam. I think this is because official Christianity has drawn the line between God and man far less sharply than has official Islam (and I suspect official Judaism). What defined the Christianity accepted as orthodox in the Nicene Creed was that God had in fact become man. This idea of God-become-man is, as I understand it, what James Doull finds most significant about Christianity: in it, objective truth (God) and subjective humanity can be united. The idea of God as man has been accepted by all the major strains of Christianity since then – Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant – but in its time it had seemed absurd to many if not most. The Arians took a more traditionally Jewish view, that Jesus was merely a prophet, a teacher, an exemplary human being. To say that he was more than that would be impossible, for it would identify perfect God with imperfect humanity. Their foes the Docetists took the exact opposite view: that Jesus was purely God all the time and was never actually human. Despite being at opposite ends of the spectrum, the Arians and Docetists shared the view that no man could ever be perfect enough to be God.
Go to India, on the other hand, and the view is vastly different. There, to identify human and God is commonplace. It’s not just that God takes a physical form, in a way scandalous to Muslims. Many traditions – especially Jainism and Yoga – are all about becoming godlike, taking on superhuman powers and transcending the universe. And most prominently, in Śaṅkara’s Advaita Vedānta, we all already are God, we just don’t know it. For this reason, Nicholas Gier takes these mainstream Indian traditions as examples of what he calls spiritual Titanism: worrying attempts to make man into God. Gier clearly thinks that Titanism is a bad thing. He doesn’t explicitly argue the case against it, but he returns repeatedly to environmental crises: human beings have tried to become godlike in their attempts to master nature, and now we are paying the price. Here, the problem of human arrogance appears again with an ecological cast.
My own position on all this goes back to this post. I agree with the orthodox monotheists that humans are fallen creatures, not worthy of deification. In Buddhist terms, this is why I denied the Third Noble Truth: I have not met anyone I would consider awakened (“enlightened”) in this lifetime, and could not imagine becoming awakened in this life myself; and I also don’t believe in rebirth, so I don’t see our perfection as possible after this life. We are deeply flawed creatures and must always remain aware of those deep flaws; that’s why humility is important.
But. Unlike the monotheists, I don’t see any reason to prefer God to man. For in my view any capital-G God, any god that has created the world or is omnipotent, cannot be taken as a model of moral perfection. God’s track record as revealed in the world is no better than ours; his track record in scripture and tradition is often worse.
And all this, in the end, takes me back to the Aristotelian mean. We must be humble enough to recognize our deep flaws; but not so humble that we submit ourselves wholly to another entity with flaws as thoroughgoing as ours (or close to it). We cannot fully trust ourselves; but we have no choice but to trust ourselves to some extent. The line is difficult to walk, but no genuine virtue is ever easy.
EDIT (11 Jul 2010): The original version of this post claimed that James Doull was an Anglican preacher. A former student of his informed me that he wasn’t, although he was always a believing Christian and belonged to an Anglican community in his later life. A number of his students and grand-students became Anglican priests, however, and that’s probably where my confusion arose.
I’m sorry to repeat a point I raised already, but I still think that Kṛṣna (etc.) are not like Christ. For Kṛṣṇa, the human life is a līlā, a playful pastime. He does not suffer, unless he decides to, for the sake of the pleasure of relief from suffering (i.e.: he might decide to be thirsty, because he likes his mother to breastfeed him). He is, at every point of his human existence, a God (even when he might look human, it is because he decides so). Christ’s case is absolutely different, since Christ has really (for his believers) a double nature. He IS God and Man. The night before his betrayal he is overtly worried (so much that he cries intensively). He suffers and feels lost since his disciples cannot even stand at his side (and, instead, fall asleep). In this sense, Christ’s case seems to me much more paradoxical. And, at the same time, more challenging (this is not meant necessarily in a positive sense: it could be meant as stating that it is contradictory and ultimately impossible), since it involves the co-existence of two separate natures, whereas once become a Jina or Buddha, one is no longer a common being.
Pl.spare us all this virtual nonsense on “Jesus = God”. I wwould also say the same thing about “Krishna = God” if the asserter of that claim assumes that Krishna is a historical person.
I am baffled that after all these centuries of philosophy and logic, there are still people apparently familiar with philosophy and logic who assert about Jesus, or Krishna for that matter, that “He is God and Man.” with real or feigned lack of awareness that this is, in Harry Frankfurt’s coinage, sheer BS.
All of Christianity (and also those parts of Hinduism pertaining to divine incarnations or Avatars) wobbles on stilts of nonsense. For an example, try this cornerstone of the “Faith: Jesus is God. The Holy Ghost is God. But Jesus and the Holy Ghost are distinct!!!
There must be an explanation for why the human mind still clings to patent nonsense and falsehood in the guise of religious propositions.
Let me cut through some of the dark obscuring clouds generated by Amod’s interesting reflections:
1. “the idea that we can never encompass the wholeness of truth, it must remain irreducibly other to us.”
It depends on what you mean by “truth” here. There are plenty of everyday truths that we can totally encompass, although there are some we can’t. Humility makes sense only if it is rational, only if the context warrants it. To claim that one knows where one doesn’t or to claim certainty when there is none is irrational and foolish. One need not bring in humility or the lack of it into the picture.
2. Humility has a bad religious odor! The alleged virtue of humility has often been used by religions to crush independence and instill submission to authority and dogma. Rationality can do all that humility purports to do. In this context, it means that one’s degree or measure of confidence in oneself and one’s beliefs must be proportional to one’s demonstrated ability and the available evidence for one’s beliefs.
3. “I am God.” is simply an expression of the experience of oneness with the beloved, or the absence of self-consciousness, that intense, boundless love (regardless of the object of love) brings about. It must not be misunderstood, as it is likely to be, as a claim of literal identity with God. Such claims of literal identity, including the famous “Aham Brahasmi” (“I am Brahman.”) of Vedanta are sheer nonsense! All these claims and discussions on whether an obvious member of homo sapiens who is subject to the same processes of excretion as other animals is identical to God are sheer madness and abuse of the precious instrument of language.
4. “Unlike the monotheists, I don’t see any reason to prefer God to man. For in my view any capital-G God, any god that has created the world or is omnipotent, cannot be taken as a model of moral perfection. God’s track record as revealed in the world is no better than ours; his track record in scripture and tradition is often worse.”
I don’t understand the problem of choice in the first sentence. What does it mean to say that you prefer God to man or vice-versa?
The argument expressed in the second and concluding sentences assumes that moral perfection is the desideratum in resolving the issue of preference of God over man. Why is moral perfection the only criterion or even an important criterion here? Further, is the concept of moral perfection a coherent one? If some goods or virtues are logcially incompatible with others, then the very concept of moral perfection may be incoherent.
The last sentence seems to go way beyond what the evidence warrants. It curiously assumes that God exists and has a “track record” we can follow. Even if we grant those assumptions, how much of that track record do we know sitting on a “Pale Blue Dot” in the cosmos? The little we know gives no basis for claiming that it is no worse than the human track record. Even if we ignore the latent anthropomorphism in the argument, there is more than a whiff of anthropocentric arrogance here.
It is a dubious assumption that scripture and tradition show God’s track record (assuming that God exists and leaves a track record). What they most certainly show is the human track record.
Starting with the last points: there is a lot to be gained by thinking with the great traditions, granting their key presuppositions and running with them. I don’t myself assume that God exists; the point of that sentence is to think about what it means if God exists in something like the creator status assigned to him by the Abrahamic monotheisms. So that even if he does exist, it doesn’t necessarily warrant the kind of traditional faith the monotheists usually value.
“Rationality can do all that humility purports to do. In this context, it means that one’s degree or measure of confidence in oneself and one’s beliefs must be proportional to one’s demonstrated ability and the available evidence for one’s beliefs.” Yes, I think this is right – rationality in this sense is in some respect what is meant both by humility and Aristotle’s pride, as a virtuous mean. But what I think is missing from Aristotle’s point of view is an insight made first by Augustine and Xunzi and later by Freud: far, far too often, we are not nearly as rational as we think we are. It is too easy to presume that one is doing the best thing when one is merely coming up with justifications for following one’s desires; and smart people who are good at reasoning can often be the worst at this. (I do include myself.)
“Great traditions”? “Great” in what sense? Why are they great? The fact that these traditions have sanctioned hideous actions and asserted grotesque claims must lead us at least to wonder about their alleged greatness.
They are great in that they have inspired generations of human beings, to the greatest heights as well as the depths: they have inspired most of humanity’s most sublime aesthetic creations; they taught many people greater ethical goodness; and they have also taught us genuine truths. Even a die-hard New Atheist must concede that in the scholastic age, the monasteries were the places where intellectual inquiry took place – usually constrained by authority, but made possible by that same authority in the first place.
I will retract my point and state another in its place.
These traditions are just the outer forms or husks. The contents which give these traditions their significance comes from human consciousness. All the contradictions in these traditions simply reflect the contradictions in human consciousness. Even the meaningfulness and “soteriological power” of these traditions is a function of that consciousness and what it projects on these traditions and then draws or absorbs back from them.
To venerate these traditions for their own sake is like worshipping signposts.
For all that I suspect we disagree, I nonetheless quite like these formulations:
The contents which give these traditions their significance comes from human consciousness. All the contradictions in these traditions simply reflect the contradictions in human consciousness. Even the meaningfulness and “soteriological power” of these traditions is a function of that consciousness and what it projects on these traditions and then draws or absorbs back from them.
To venerate these traditions for their own sake is like worshipping signposts.
There’s something here that I find strongly appealing, though I am not sure it doesn’t claim a bit too much without arguing for it (which, in the space of a comment box, is perfectly legitimate). I mean by this the claim that arguing that every bit of validity in a tradition comes from projection. While I am sure that there is an irreducible element of projection in, say, human love, such that there is no love sans projection, I am not persuaded that love derives from or reduces to projection; nor that, if this were true and known to be true, there would remain any love.
As to the worshiping of signposts: no one said anything about venerating traditions ‘for their own sake’. It is a matter of getting pried out of the death-grip of one’s ego (for which of course a given tradition may or may not help, but even the most otiose offers something that I didn’t invent, which can sometimes be enough). Having said that, though, there is no question that plenty of fossilized museum-pieces get venerated for the wrong reasons, and some of them may no longer have any good reasons left. I just think that to belittle traditions for the sake of belittling is to tear down street signs… which after all do have a use.
“As to the worshiping of signposts: no one said anything about venerating traditions ‘for their own sake’. It is a matter of getting pried out of the death-grip of one’s ego (for which of course a given tradition may or may not help, but even the most otiose offers something that I didn’t invent, which can sometimes be enough).”
This strange notion and “goal” of “getting pried out of the death-grip of one’s ego”, whether intelligible or not, is itself an excresence of some or many religious traditions. The absurdity of it or of any effort in pursuit of that “goal” can only compared to that of trying to jump on one’s own shadow or outrun it. It is self-defeating. Who is it that seeks “getting pried out of the death-grip of one’s ego”? It is the ego itself, albeit under the influence of a religious intoxicant!
“I just think that to belittle traditions for the sake of belittling is to tear down street signs… which after all do have a use.”
I agree. However, one does need to call a spade a spade even if that punctures portentous dogmas or grandiose illusions.
“It is too easy to presume that one is doing the best thing when one is merely coming up with justifications for following one’s desires; and smart people who are good at reasoning can often be the worst at this. (I do include myself.)”
Well, then, we must say that rationality includes the capacity to distinguish between cases in which it is reasonable (rational) to do something and cases in which one merely has reasons (rationalizations) for doing something.
I know you want to distinguish between cases in which one is doing the best thing and cases in which one is merely following one’s desires. But then following one’s desires is not necessarily contrary to doing the best thing, not unless one is a “die hard” Buddhist!
Correct on both counts: we must distinguish between rationalization and genuine rationality, and following one’s desires is not necessarily bad. The trick comes when we follow our desires and don’t realize we are doing it – as when, in an argument with one’s partner, one convinces oneself that one is receiving a fair share even though one is getting too much.
“Divine” Identity Claims and Madness:
If I were to claim seriously that “George Bush is God” or that “Sarah Palin is the Virgin Mary”, I have no doubt that my sanity would be questioned.
But if I were to claim that an (alleged) historical person going by the name of “Jesus” or “Krishna” is identical to an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent being, why is my sanity not equally in question?
Thill, I do appreciate your posts here, but please try to restrain the tone a little bit. It is entirely appropriate to argue here that Christianity is false or wrong, but it brings down the level of civility to repeatedly call it nonsense and BS. This goes double when you’re replying to another commenter; I want to make sure that everyone feels welcome here.
I must clarify that I was using “Nonsense” in the sense of an unintelligible claim and “BS” in the sense in which Harry Frankfurt uses it in his well-known little book titled “Bullshit”. “BS” is not used here as a term of abuse but as a philsophical concept to refer to claims made with little regard for whether they are true or false.
Those are indeed standard usages of the terms, but they do still both have a strongly negative valence, and their combined use (especially without providing the definitions) can lend a strong sense of hostility to a comment even when the author intends no hostility. Please be careful about this. “Flame wars” are all too common on blogs, and I want to err on the side of caution in avoiding them.
I agree with your concern for civil exchanges. However, philosophical criticisms use standard adjectives such as “absurd”, “nonsensical”, “incoherent”, “vacuous” and so on. These terms indicate an attack, not on the person, but on the claims made. Offense can also be taken at the use of these terms. Is it part of your concept of civility that such terms be eschewed in criticizing claims?
No, and you’re right to ask the question. Context makes a big difference – especially online where no nonverbal cues are available (except for very overt tools like smileys). I would have no problem with a comment that explains the various reasons why Christianity involves unconcern for the truth, and concludes by saying “therefore it is, in Harry Frankfurt’s sense, bullshit.” Likewise, as much as I disdain logical positivism, if one wants to argue for it and conclude that metaphysical claims cannot be made sense of and are therefore literally nonsense, I have no problem with that.
But these aren’t what your comment does above. These terms become problematic there for a twofold reason: first, they appear multiple times in a short post, combined with other dismissive terms; second, there is very little argument justifying your use of them (though more appears in your later comments). They are phrased not as conclusions but as assertions. To a reader encountering this post on its own, it is too easy for this combination to come across as intellectual bullying, as an attempt to dismiss Christianity with insult and contempt.
The “please spare us” phrasing adds to the problem. It makes it sound as if the other participants in the forum do not want to hear any discussion of the view that Jesus is God, and I have no hesitation in saying that that claim is entirely false.
Separate from the issue of civility, I should also add that I find it pretty obvious that whatever else it is, the claim that “Jesus is God” is not bullshit in Frankfurt’s sense. Many of those who make it – I suspect the majority – are not only utterly convinced that it is true, but would not make the claim if they had more than a tiny doubt that it wasn’t true.
The claim may well be false. I myself believe that it is false (well, except perhaps in an Advaitic sense that all of us are ultimately God, but that’s not what’s usually meant by it). One might make the claim that it is nonsense, in that being God and being man are logically incompatible. I tend to disagree, but I think that’s the upshot of our position and I think it’s a reasonable one. But the claim that Jesus is God, even if false, and even if nonsense, is definitely not bullshit.
Frankfurt argues that BS constituted by indifference to truth. A claim is BS if it is asserted with no concern for its truth-value. I would go further and state that it is also a case of BS if an assertion is made with no concern for its menaingfulness.
Anyone asserting that “Jesus is God.” and not asking in the very next breath “What could this possibly mean?” and “How can a finite, embodied, spatio-temporally located and limited human being be at the same time also an infinite, omnipresent spirit?” is definitely making the claim without regard for whether it is meaningful and true. Hence, the claim is an example of BS or “BS-ing”.
I think it should be obvious to anyone familiar with the elementary logic of identity that “Jesus is God.”, “Jesus is God. The Holy Ghost is God. But Jesus and the Holy Ghost are different.” are absurdities.
Amod wrote: ” I find it pretty obvious that whatever else it is, the claim that “Jesus is God” is not bullshit in Frankfurt’s sense. Many of those who make it – I suspect the majority – are not only utterly convinced that it is true, but would not make the claim if they had more than a tiny doubt that it wasn’t true.”
Well, the issue of what constitutes BS along the lines of Frankfurt’s analysis turns out to have some complexity.
Frankfurt contrasts BS with a lie and argues that the former is constituted by indifference to whether the asserted claim is true whereas the latter is constituted by a concern for denial of truth or the propagation of the opposite of what one knows to be true. Thus the liar is bothered by the truth and wants to cover it up whereas the BS-er doesn’t really care whether the claim is true or false.
The key issue here is: How do we determine or discern whether the assertion of a claim belies indifference to the truth of the matter? I don’t think it will do, as you do, to take the proponent’s conviction regarding the truth of a claim as evidence that he or she really cares about the truth of the matter. Surely, someone who has taken the claim to be true on grounds of “faith”, or blind belief, or acceptance of religious authority has not really examined the truth of the matter!
In my view, anyone who makes a claim, especially an extraordinary claim such as “Jesus is God.”, without giving any explanation of its meaningfulness and/or veracity is guilty of BS-ing. If there is no hint of questioning in the making and acceptance of extraordinary claims, one can be quite sure that BS-ing is going on!
Amod: “The claim may well be false. I myself believe that it is false (well, except perhaps in an Advaitic sense that all of us are ultimately God, but that’s not what’s usually meant by it). One might make the claim that it is nonsense, in that being God and being man are logically incompatible. I tend to disagree, but I think that’s the upshot of our position and I think it’s a reasonable one. But the claim that Jesus is God, even if false, and even if nonsense, is definitely not bullshit.”
Oh, well, you might as well disagree that the attribute of being limited or restricted to a particular slice of space-time is incompatible with the attribute of omnipresence.
It is the elementary questions which the proponents of claims such as “Jesus is God.”, “Krishna is God.”, etc., fail to ask which tells us whether they are BS-ing in Frankfurt’s sense or in my augmented sense.
I don’t understand the qualifier “ultimately” in the assertion of the Advaitic nonsense that we are all Brahman. Either we are Brahman right here and now or we aren’t! The word “ultimately” doesn’t really add anything of significance to it.
And if I am Brahman right here and now, why am I ignorant of that fact? If I am Brahman, and I am ignorant of this fact, it follows that Brahman is ignorant of itself!!! This is a conclusive reductio ad absurdum of “Aham Brahmasmi”, a veritable piece of Hindu lunacy! LOL
Unpacking the additional nonsense inherent in “I am Brahman.” and “All this is Brahman.”, it turns out that if I am identical to Brahman and Napoleon is identical to Brahman, it follows, from elementary laws of identity, that I am identical to Napoleon!
If everything is Brahman, then it follows that all things are identical to each other.
These absurdities are immune to the concocted distinction between “relative truth” and “ultimate truth”. There is no sense in claiming that “X is identical to Y.” is true ultimately, but that the selfsame X and Y are different in the domain of “relative truth”. Identity does not have a schizoid or split personality like that. “X is identical to Y.” is either true or false. It cannot be true and false at the same time.
Is Wittgenstein right after all? Is philosophy a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by language? Language can and does bewitch our intelligence, but it is also indispensable in helping us to break the spells it casts on our intelligence when it dons the garbs of religion or metaphysics. Among other things, philosophy, then, ought to be a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence, or consciousness, by religious and metaphysical language!
What remains after the elimination of these spells cast on the individual consciousness by religion and metaphysics?
Peace, bliss (since the disquiet produced by religion and metaphysics has been eliminated),unclouded perception and intelligence in relation to what is present, and the effective performance of daily tasks!
“I am baffled that after all these centuries of philosophy and logic, there are still people apparently familiar with philosophy and logic who assert about Jesus, or Krishna for that matter, that “He is God and Man.” with real or feigned lack of awareness that this is, in Harry Frankfurt’s coinage, sheer BS”
You think you’re baffled! Try being one of the believers!
No thanks! I value my sanity and don’t wish to jeopardize it by trying to step into the shoes of religious believers.
I think you’re right that I elided the two a bit too quickly; the avatars can often take on a highly docetic character. Still, they are very often supposed to be in some sense physical, flesh-and-blood forms, even if they do not experience suffering and other fundamental aspects of human existence. This might not trouble a Catholic or Orthodox Christian, but it would be deeply problematic for a Muslim, Protestant or Jew. And I do think that this may be in some sense of a piece with the Jaina attempt at becoming godlike – the boundary between God and human in India, as in ancient Greece, is significantly more porous than it is in the Semitic world.
Michael’s point below about Krishna’s death is an interesting one in this regard as well. I realize I’m actually not familiar with that story.
It won’t surprise you to know I agree with Elisa on the question of Jesus and Krsna, but I don’t take you to be conflating these two types.
I think you are very close to the essential thing when you name humility as the central virtue for a “religion of encounter.” (No wonder Nietzsche had such an allergic reaction.) After all, the central tenet of Christianity is the kenosis of a God “who humbled Himself to share in our humanity.” One of the interesting things about humility, of course, is that it is almost impossible either to cultivate directly, or to see in oneself. It’s a side-effect of the cultivation of other virtues.
Incidentally, Sam Harris recently declaimed quite forcefully against the arrogance of believers: “Only the atheist recognizes the boundless narcissism and self-deceit of the saved. Only the atheist realizes how morally objectionable it is for survivors of a catastrophe to believe themselves spared by a loving God, while this same God drowned infants in their cribs. Because he refuses to cloak the reality of the world’s suffering in a cloying fantasy of eternal life, the atheist feels in his bones just how precious life is — and, indeed, how unfortunate it is that millions of human beings suffer the most harrowing abridgements of their happiness for no good reason at all.”
This would of course just be another Am-Not-Are-So scenario, except that the believers (and I speak as one of them) really are so often just as arrogant as he says.
My preferred stance on pride & humility comes from Lou Andreas-Salome, who spoke of hochmut and demut: there’s a tension between these: one does experience, she said, a sense of utter contingency and real dependence on fate or on grace; and yet (shades of Pascal’s “a reed, but a thinking reed”), one also experiences a legitimate sense of being, “as a human being, somehow above it all.” She is speaking of experience, not disposition, but I think she’s right. (unfortunately I’ve lost my reference on this, but I think it’s in Angela Livingstone’s biography of her).
The Salomé quote is intriguing: it reminds me of Kant on free will, with the simultaneous standpoints of sense (we are determined by contingency) and of understanding (we must regard ourselves as free). Not quite sure where I stand on all this.
You are quite right that humility is a difficult virtue; I think André Comte-Sponville calls it the most paradoxical of the virtues. Part of the question, I think, is what one humbles oneself before. In this post and the earlier one about trusting in God, I’ve been trying to raise the question of whether God deserves it, in a way that I think parallels many of Harris’s criticisms; but the great discussion on gurus in the previous post is a reminder of how human beings don’t necessarily deserve it either.
Very interesting point to say that humility is a side effect of cultivating other virtues. That sounded right when I first read your comment, but after thinking about it I’m not so sure. I’m worried that it might just be the opposite: if you cultivate other virtues without cultivating humility, it will lead you straight to arrogance, to pride in the vicious sense. If I have all the other virtues, my knowledge that I possess them may well lead me to think I am the awesomest dude alive. Here Aristotle seems to offer a cautionary example, since his megalopsychos, though probably genuinely virtuous in many respects, still sounds like exactly the kind of self-important being that the monotheists are likely right to fear.
I agree — it is an interesting point to view humility as the fruit of cultivating other virtues. Perhaps that is just another way of saying that humility has to be sincere. False humility is pride is disguise.
The Buddhist view is that “humility is the dwelling place of the forefathers” and that pride is an emotion that can be very much a problem on the path. But the antedote to all emotion is awareness and, in the case of pride, awareness with a sense of humor. Pride is essentially humorless and laughter is liberation.
“False humility is pride in disguise.”
Yes, absolutely. I think of Wilber as one of the very worst offenders on that score. Recently Wilber has been very enamoured of the “Spiral Dynamics” scheme, which colour-codes levels of spiritual development. It’s pretty obvious he sees himself at the very highest level of the scheme, which is not in itself a flaw; one would have to be at the top in order to know what the scheme is. But instead of admitting this, when someone asked him in an interview what level he thinks he’s at, he replied as a joke “I’m trying to get to beige” – the very lowest level. It was obviously false and obviously a joke, but the joke served as a way of refusing to acknowledge his pride, refusing to acknowledge the fact that he sees himself as far more spiritually evolved than the vast majority of humanity. I see that particular comment as the poster child for false humility.
A developmental approach makes sense when you have coherent, empirical, and applicable criteria for locating individuals at a given level or stage of development, e.g., stages of musical development or instrument performance, mathematical development, etc. However, Wilber’s (and Aurobindo’s) territory or domain, viz., “spiritual development”, is such that the aforementioned types of criteria are unavailable.
Hence, in my view, what is going on here is simply a variation of the game of ranking the alpha male or female on the dubious grounds of their alleged spiritual attainment.
If there is no basis for sustaining the distinction between higher and lower levels of spiritual development (since there are no grounds for supposing that anything like “spiritual development” is real), both humility and arrogance, in this context, go out of the window. No humility because there’s no sense in claiming or acknowledging that you are at a “lower level”. No arrogance because there cannot possibly be any intelligible presumption that one is at a “higher level”.
Geoffrey Falk has some interesting criticisms of Wilber’s work in his book “Norman Einstein” available at http://www.normaneinsteinbook.com/
Amod, you are right— too simple to say humility is a side effect and leave it at that. There’s also a spirit in which the other virtues must be cultivated, or else they do just lead to pride. But then, this would mean one can’t cultivate humility without being humble! I suppose I do think this is true in a sense, but “who then can be saved?!” As in so much, the only needle’s eye out of this conundrum has got to be: Grace. It isn’t the cosmological god– the god whose track record is so terrible– before whom the saint is humble; it’s the god Who saves. And destroys, of course; as St Teresa is supposed to have remarked to Him, “If this is how you treat your friends, Lord, it is hardly surprising you have so few.” (Or words to that effect.)
“It isn’t the cosmological god– the god whose track record is so terrible– before whom the saint is humble; it’s the god Who saves.”
Sounds awfully Gnostic of you, maybe even Marcionite… but I sympathize a lot with the point of view. I think I might be starting to feel tempted toward some strain of polytheism… the saints and angels and bodhisattvas could be omnibenevolent because not omnipotent, and so could Jesus if he was not actually the creator God.
Dear me. I shall have to go to confession! Leave it to the atheist semi-Buddhist to catch me in my own closet heresies. But i suppose marcionism is always lurking in the wings, eschew it though I do. (Especially as I extol Simone Weil, despite her admitted anti-Old Testament bias (just like Marcion).)
I’ve heard Weil characterized as a neo-Marcionite, and it seems to stick. Not a problem in my books, since I’m happy to give Christian heresies as sympathetic a reading as the orthodoxies, but it probably would raise eyebrows among any Christian community theologically to the right of the UCC (and maybe even them).
Interesting to hear myself characterized as an atheist, though no doubt that’s the impression I’ve been giving in recent posts. I’m still trying to work out my position on this, but I suspect that I do believe in some sort of First Explanation or Vedāntic brahman, an ontological root of all things that many might characterize as God. But yes, in my books such a being is clearly not omnibenevolent, nor is it the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. (If it’s the latter God that exists, then I think we’re in big trouble!)
Whatever I am, just please don’t call me an agnostic. If this is an agnosticism it is a temporary agnosticism; I am agnostic about God as I am agnostic about why the sky is blue. I think the answer is there to be found, I just haven’t thought it through enough yet.
I wasn’t really trying to draw you out here, but I see that I did draw you in starker terms than those in which I think of you. I am myself sometimes an agnostic, but only in the way I am about, say, my wife’s moods or my own motives.
forgot to add– thanks for drawing that parallel between Kant and Lou Salomé. I count myself as one who thinks that Kant’s moral philosophy & philosophy of freedom are in some manner the center of his thought. It’s always amusing, too, when Kantianism turns up anywhere within Nietzsche’s radius.
Amod, I chanced again upon this passage in one of Ivan Illich’s interviews. He’s referencing Sergio Quinzio, who I know only by reputation & stray quotations (I cannot read Italian & he’s not translated, but several thinkers I esteem refer to him almost with reverence). The passage (in case the link doesn’t work) is on pgs 205-6 of Illich’s Rivers north of the future, and he brings together both the matter of humility and pride, and the evaluation of God as morally wanting. I’d read this before, but in light of this discussion it takes on a different look.
It is an interesting passage. Why do you think Illich says Quinzio rejects the omnipotent God “for reasons of humility”? I mean I value humility and I reject the omnipotent God, but I see these two things as being in tension with each other, a tight line to walk. There is surely an element of pride in saying that I, as an everyday flawed human, am doing a better job at being good than is the God of the Hebrew scriptures; but a respect for truth does compel me to say exactly that.
It’s complicated. When you read Attar’s Muslim Saints and Mystics Al-Bestami and Al-Hallaj clearly knew that they were running foul of the heresy police. Al-Bestami deliberately alienated would be followers by spitting towards Mecca and eating bread during fast hours in Ramadan. His path, he knew, would only lead to confusion amongst the masses even though he was aware of the distinction between himself and Allah. So was Al-Hallaj. When he was in prison they came to question him but couldn’t find him. They came again and this time they could neither find the prison nor him. On the third night they found both him and the prison. When asked to account for this he replied:
So apart from his ecstatic utterances Hallaj was still some distance from being a Vedic type sage. Just another Sufi drunk.
I don’t think that the form of realisation is in conflict with humility. Can you be more humble than being unreal in the vedic manner? Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi was famous for it. He was accustomed to taking a nap during the siesta hour in the prayer hall but even at that time the devotees followed him and disturbed his rest. The ashram manager put a sign on the door of the hall saying : keep out from Noon to 3p.m. Next day Ramana was discovered waiting outside to the puzzlement of the manager.
– Why?
– That sign says no admittance.
Theodicy and the Faithful: They are generally not bothered much. Why? In your weather proof house you can look on with equanimity at the boisterous elements. Of course, it, the house of faith, is tested but context is all in these matters and it is a fact that religious folk are as likely as not the first to help the afflicted. Harris is a professional hostile witness.
Krishna: The death of Krishna and its aftermath were hardly sport. Slaughter, sutee, inundation of Dwarka. Definitely not sport.
Deliberate martyrdom like Hallaj’s is always interesting from the standpoint of humility. It is the combination of self-sacrifice and self-importance, of the highest humility and of its complete lack.