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Essay 5 East West Confrontation
Campbell juxtaposes two influential accounts of the telos of cultural evolution which can in a sense be seen to question Philosophical accounts such as that provided by Kant, where reference is made to a “hidden plan” which can be used to explain the major changes that occur irregularly in the World. The first account, that of Spengler’s, as contained in his work “The Decline of the West”, can be seen as a variation upon the Shakespearean “Seven Ages of man”. Spengler refers to three ages, namely youth, “culmination” and “decrepitude” which are based on a relatively abstract characterisation of a human life cycle which in turn is inserted into a cyclical view of Cultures emerging, thriving and then dying. This is more in line with the Oriental view of the Universe than the Ancient Greek oracular tragic vision of the role of fate in man’s attempts to civilise himself.
We are at present, Campbell argues, at the point in our cultural evolution when a loss of “cultural forms” is causing a regression from being a Culture to the previous stage of being a Civilisation: (a distinction Kant thought important). Campbell exemplifies his point by reference to The fall of Carthage and Rome.
Frobenius’s account of the “dawning of a golden age”, appears at first sight to be more similar to the Kantian invocation of a distant “Kingdom of Ends”, but for Frobenius, it is not Philosophical ideas and theories that are the driving force of Change in the world, but rather it is “Science and the machine” that is taking us into a positive but unforeseeable future. Campbell concludes this discussion with:
“What we all today surely recognise is that we are entering—one way or another—a new age requiring a new wisdom: such wisdom furthermore, as belongs rather to experienced old age than to poetically fantasising youth, and which every one of us, whether young or old, has now somehow to assimilate. Moreover, when we turn our thoughts to religion, the first and most obvious fact is that every one of the great traditions is today in profound disorder. What we have been taught as their basic truths seems no longer to hold.” (Page 86)
Campbell elaborates upon the above by pointing to the fact that “Chinese oracle books are outselling our own philosophers” (Page 87). He also claims that these so-called oracle books are not however outselling Psychology books, but it is not clear what his point is with this example or whether he is referring to popular of academic psychology books.
We are, it is claimed in an analogous position to the North American Indians at the end of the 19th century when the Buffalo they were hunting were disappearing, being exterminated in order to make way for the railroad or to deny the Indians their food supply. As a consequence of these changes their life on the reservation lost all its meaning. Their form of life radically changed from riding and hunting to praying and chanting and experiencing visions after eating peyote. In these transitional stages it appears as if all symbols lose affective value and we g in search of new forms and new symbols. Campbell describes this phase as one of disorientation and dissociation.
Campbelll turns to the science of psychiatry for a psychological characterisation of the symbols of mythology, and cites the view of J.W. Perry, that symbols are “affect images”. Campbell then claims that the symbols of the Bible do not “work” anymore, and that this state of affairs is not the consequences of a conflict between science and religion, but rather a conflict beteen the science of today and the science of 4000 BC . The science of today with its acknowledgement of the immense magnitude of the space-time of the universe, it is argued, is in fact closer to the view of some religions whose calendars span millions of years: This is in contrast to the document of the Bible, which spans thousands of years: a document which portrays the divine in terms of a wrathful partisan father. The ten commandments of the Bible, furthermore are not relevant to a modern world in which the laws are made by human beings and for human beings. Campbell notes that the role of the clergy has been taken over by scientific psychiatrists, and it is further claimed that todays clergy contact these psychiatrists to allay anxiety and seek´meaning.
It is noted that an Oriental God that transcends human thought language and feeling is a more abstract entity compared to our Biblical wrathful father who needs our love so much. In these Oriental religions we are dealing not with a separation of the entities of God , Nature, and Man, but rather with a metaphysical realm beyond names and forms. Campbell does not refer to this fact, but Kantian Metaphysics also postulates a realm beyond names and forms, claiming that we can know nothing about such a realm of the noumenal things-in-themselves. Kants account is therefore surprisingly receptive to both Christian and Oriental accounts, but demanding that both can only be embraced insofar as their judgements and proclamation’s are within the bounds of Reason. Kant would, for example object to the anthropomorphised account of God that we find in the Bible, and he would also have objected to the view of the human being demanded by Oriental religions.
Campbell discusses also the Buddhist view of Being and he focuses on consciousness and attempts to transcend the powers of the body. He points to the Sanskrit meaning of the term “budh” which it is claimed means :
“to fathom a depth, to penetrate to the bottom….to perceive, to know, to come to ones senses, to wake” (Page 95)
Campbell uses the analogy of a light bulb which is merely the vehicle of the light that fills the room when it is switched on. Similarly, it is argued, the body is the vehicle of consciousness and its vicissitudes. One lives for and in the light, Campbell claims and not for the light bulb.
Perhaps the source of the difference between the Oriental and the Occidental Religions lies in the conception of the human body. For the Orient it is merely the vehicle. For us, however, consciousness emerges from the powers of the body that together combine and integrate to form both consciousness and all its vicissitudes which include our higher mental powers. These vicissitudes constitute both our higher mental and moral powers.
The will, is located at the levels of instinct, consciousness and the higher mental powers, ranging as it does from an instinctive urge to act, to a striving to achieve higher cognitive and aesthetic aims, which include moral attitudes(acceptance and resignation) toward ones own death. The idea of the will Kant proposed was an idea of a free self-causing power that had sufficient awareness of its own powers to take responsibility for its own freely chosen actions. This is done against the background of occupying a position in the noumenal realm of Being where the relation to other human beings was conceptualised in terms of equality, and where the relation to oneself and others was conceived of in terms of respect. God also occupies this realm of Being or the sacred, not in the form of any concrete image but rather in the form of a being that has the power to guarantee that a life devoted to doing ones duty will be rewarded with a good-spirited flourishing life. Given, however, our phenomenal relationship to our own bodies, which, according to Aristotle is the ground of the actuality of the psychological idea of the soul, we do not encounter any idea of the afterlife of the kind we find in Ancient Mythologies. When a sufficient number of the key functions of the body cease their function, the light of the soul disappears and the body returns its matter to the domain of the material mineral world.
Religion does not disappear from either the Aristotelian or Kantian accounts and we find no trace of the idea of the afterlife or wrathful father figure. What we are instead provided with, is an activity that takes place within the bounds of reason, an activity referring to significant symbols such as that of the cross, Gregorian chants, incense etc., which Campbell claims all have significant “affect value”. Indeed he describes the affect value of these Christian symbols as “magical”. A more psychological characterisation of these symbols may describe this affect value as “hypnotic”, helping to create a form of consciousness in which the normal powers of the will are suspended. Such a state would not be considered in any way “transcendent”, but rather as a truncated form of consciousness similar to the states one encounters in the ecstatic ritual dances of primitive tribes.
Campbell claims that the most important text of the Hindu religion is the Bhagavad Gita, which incidentally was the source of the famous response by Rober Oppenheimer in the face of the “successful” atomic explosion of the first atomic bomb:
“I am death, the destroyer of worlds.”
We also find in the Bhagavad Gita an account of the 4 yogas. In one of these we find the following reference to the relation between myself and my body:
“I, therefore, am not my body” (Page 98)
A further elaboration upon this remark claims:
“I know my thoughts; Iam not my thoughts…I know my feelings, I am not my feelings.”
Further, in the yoga of action the text refers to karma, the importance of doing ones duty even when faced with the likely prospect of death:
“Cast away all desire and fear for the fruits and perform your duty.” (Page 100)
Campbell points out in this essay that doing ones duty is to be done without question and this is not our Western way in which the examined life is a priority:
“Duty here, therefore does not mean at all what it means throughout the Orient. It does not mean accepting like a child what has been authoritatively taught. It means thinking, evaluating and developing an ego: a faculty , that is to say, of independent observation and rational criticism, capable of interpreting its environment as well as of estimating its own power in relation to circumstances: and of initiating courses of action, then, that will be relevant not to the ideals of the past , but to the possibilities of the present. But exactly that in the East is the one forbidden thing.” (Page 101)
Cambell does not elaborate any further upon this point, but it ought to have been pointed out that it was exactly doing this one forbidden thing that caused Adam and Eve to be both expelled from Paradise and separated from the wrathful Yahweh. Eastern religions including Buddhism do not see any theological content in our Bible, seeing no need to put their faith into words. As one Japanese gentleman put the matter, “We dance”. Perhaps this dance occurs ritually around the ever burning fire referred to by Buddha. “All life is sorrowful”, Buddha maintains and we also find the following non Western sentiment expressed:
“All societies are evil, sorrowful, inequitable, and so they will always be.” (Page 104)
A sentiment also expressed by the Ancient Greek oracles and embraced with caution by the Ancient Greek Philosophers. Western Philosophers influenced by the Ancient Greeks can definitively say that a new age was unleashed by Western Humanism and this of course in its turn modified our Religious heritage into a Theology within the bounds of Reason.