Views: 114
Creation myths often speak of a first created Being that is androgynous , e.g. Adam, Eros, Hermophrodite, Awanawilona,(Pueblo divinity), Tiresias, Tai, Yuan, etc. The genders of male and female are construed as opposites and this in turn demands a dialectical form of description/argumentation because, when apprehended as opposites, it appears as if one opposition term is the negation of the other.
Campbell contrasts the Buddhist position related to Peace in the World with the World Redeemer of Christianity, namely Jesus, and he also notes that Christianity is associated with a partisanship in which the laws of De Civitate Dei appear to apply to a chosen group of people, and this has the military consequence that holy wars are permitted against all the non-chosen “barbarians”. He supports his argumentation by noting that Christian Nation States have a history of “colonial barbarity” and “internecine strife”(Page 134). Marching under the flag of the cross, Campbell argues, is not, however in accordance with the democratic symbol of the cross which is perhaps connected to the wider theme that “All Men are Brothers”. Campbell, proclaims in the context of thisdiscussion that it is to the Eastern Religions we must turn for an account of the experience of the “Transcendental Everlasting”:
“Those who know, not only that the Everlasting lives within them but that they, and all things, really are the Everlastng, dwell in the groves of the wish fulfilling trees, drink the brew of immortality, and listen everywhere to the unheard music of eternal concord. These are the immortals. The Taoist landscape paintngs of China and Japan depict supremely the heavenliness of this terrestrial state.” (Page 142)
Given that the transcendental quality of Being is in a sense beyond thought and beyond speech, it is difficult to contest the picture we have been provided with above. The Philosopher Spinoza is usually referred to as the Philosopher of the Infinite. Much of his work has a hylomorphic character, but he refers not to the infinity of forms but rather to the infinity of modes of God or Substance. God or Substance, for Spinoza, is only accessible by human forms of psuché via the modes of thought and extension, two modes of a possible infinite number of modes. The mode of thought, for Spinoza, is primarily composed of the idea of the object of the body which is also part of the mode of extension, which in its turn is part of the idea of psuché. On this theme, Spinoza claims in his work “Spinozas ethics” in a section entitled “Nature and Origin of the Mind”:
“The idea which constitutes the formal being of the human mind is the idea of the body, which is composed of many individuals, each composed of many parts……Therefore the idea of the human body is composed of the many ideas of the component parts.”(Translated Boyle, A.,London, Aldine Press, 1910. Page 53)
It is clear that the ideas of the mind are not enclosed within their own domain but rather reach out to the external world, and in this process perception is an important power of the body/mind:
“All modes in which any body is affected follow from the nature of the body affected, and at the same time from the nature of the affecting body. Wherefore the idea of them must involve necessarily the nature of each body. Therefore the idea of each mode in which the human body is affected by an external body involves the nature of the human body and that of the external body….Hence it follows in the first place that the human mind can perceive the nature of many bodies at the same time as the nature of its own body. It follows in the second place that the ideas which we have of external bodies indicate rather the disposition of our body than the nature of its own body.” (Page 53)
Kant would subscribe to much of the content in the above quotes and this may not be surprising given that both Philosophers espouse forms of rationalism similar to that of Aristotle. Spinoza believes his Work “Ethics” possesses a mathematical/geometrical structure of arguments which constitute “proofs”. This, of course, is in contrast to the methodologies of both Aristotle and Kant who both wrote in normal academic prose. Spinoza, in this work, also provides us with accounts of the powers of imagination and memory, which both Aristotle and Kant would largely ascribe to. Imagination, Spinoza argues:
“Again, to retain the usual phraseology, the modification of the human body, the ideas of which represent to us external bodies, as if they were present, we shall call the images of things, although they do not recall the figures of things, and when the mind regards bodies in this manner we say it imagines them…And here, so that I may begin to point out where lies error, I would have you note that the imaginations of the mind, regarded in themselves, contain no error, or that the mind does not err from that which it imagines, but only insofar as it is considered as wanting the idea, which cuts off the existence of those things which it imagines, as present to itself. For, if the mind while it imagined things not existing as present to itself, knew at the same time that these things did not in truth exist, it would attribute this power of imagination to an advantage of its nature, not a defect, more especally if this faculty of imagining depends on its own nature alone, that is,if the mind’s faculty of imagining be free.” (Page 55)
Spinoza characterises memory in the following terms:
“If the human body has once been affected at the same time by two or more bodies, when the mind remembers any one of them it will straightway remember the others…..For it is nothing else than a certain concatenation of ideas invoking the nature of things which are outside the human body, and this takes place in the mind according to the order and concatenation of the modifications of the human body.” Pages 55-56)
Spinoza then adds the following remark:
“the mind and the body, are one and the same individual.”
This is an important claim given the historical Cartesian penchant for opposing thought and extension as two different substances, a position modern science largely accepted and adopted in relation to giving an account of psuché. Cartesian dialectical reflection is also involved in the conflict of religions where the central idea appears to be that your God is not my God, not the real God. Indeed, for Spinozas understanding real oppositions such as male and female require adequate ideas for both forms of human psuché which we perceive clearly and distnctly in relation to their logos. Spinoza elaborates upon this theme in the following manner:
“I say expressly that the mind has no adequate, but only confused knowledge of itself, of its body, and of external bodies, when it perceives a thing in the common order of nature, that is, whenever it is determied externally, that is, by fortuitous circumstances, to contemplate this or that, and not when it is determined internally, that is by the fact that it regards many things at once, to understand their agreements, differences, and oppositions , one to another. For whenever it is disposed in this or any other way from within , then it regards things clearly and distinctly.” (Page 62)
The Philosophical conception of science embraced by both Aristotle and Kant includes that of theory which “regrds many things at once” in relation to their “agreements, differences and oppositions”. Philosophical science, in other words, provides us with adequate ideas of the genre and species of psuché, to take one example from one domain of science.
Insofar as psuché is concerned, Spinoza argues that that our idea of this is “very inadequate”:
“We have only a very inadequate kowledge of the duration of our body.The duration of our body does not depend on its essence, nor even on the absolute nature of God; but it is determined for existng and acting in a certain determined ratio by other causes, and these by others, and so on to infinity. Therefore the duration of our body depends on the common order of nature, and the disposition of things. But there is in God an adeqaute knowledge of the reason why things are disposed in any particular way, insofar as he has ideas of all things and not insofar as he has only knowledge of the human body. Wherefore the knowledge of the duration of our body is very inadequate in God insofar as he is considered as constituting only the nature of the human mind, that is, this knowledge is very inadequate in our mind.” (Pages 62-63)
This, of course, is an issue touched upon by the Kantian notion of noumenal reality which includes not only the inadequate idea we have of the external world but also the inadequate idea we have of our bodies as well. Kant, of course, beieves that we can have an adequate idea of the freedom of our mental powers to influence our wills and our actions. Spinoza, disagrees claiming that:
“men are mistaken in thinking themselves free.”(Page 64)
Spinoza believes this proposition, on the grounds that the primary idea of the mind is the inadequate idea of the body which is subject to a large number of causes stretching back to infinity. Spinoza goes on to claim that those that say that:
“human actions depend on the will” (Page 64)
do not understand exactly what they are saying. The question to raise in the context of this discussion is: given the fact that God constitutes our mind and our minds therefore possess a divine element or divine ideas, does this mean that freedom, if it exists, is god-given or not? Kant, we know, argues that freedom is causa sui—cause of itself– and this may imply that this is the divine element of ur constitution and the reason why we needed to be commanded in the Garden of Eden by God not to eat from the tree of the kowledge of good and evil and perhaps it is also why we need to be commanded to love our neighbours and God above all. If, however, this is the case, then our lack of knowledge of the causes that produced a constitution possessing the ideas of God and freedom is irrelevant
Some religions such as Buddhism claim that our life is a journey with a beginning and end on a noble pathway. Buddhism has been construed as an Enlightened religion because of its view of the importance of knowledge of the external world and the mind. The external physical world is conceived of in terms of what is described as the “sermon of the inanimate” which the Philosopher Thales expressed in his proclamation that “all things are full of Gods”. Campbell claimes to see this spirit in the Taoist Tea ceremonies. He also refers in this context to the myths of the Apaches and some African mythologies which proclaim that the rocks, fire, and water, are all alive like the plants. This may be a category mistake insofar as thought is concerned for both hylomorphic and critical Philosophy.
The issue of gods and goddesses, the divine opposites, is an important issue for Campbell who claims in this context that:
“For in the language of the divine pictures, the world of time is the great mother-womb. The life therein, begotten by the father, is compounded of her darkness and his light. We are conceived in her and dwell removed from the father, but when we pass from the womb of time at death (which is our birth to eternity) we are given into his hands. The wise realise, even within this womb, that they have come from and are returning to the father:while the very wise know that she and he are in substance one.”(Page 144)
Campbell continues:
“The union of the two is productive of the world, in which all things are at once temporal and eternal, created in the image of this self-knowing, male, female, God.”(Page 145)
We are created in the image of God and this theme of the opposites occupies Campbells attention at the level of the “opposites” of the male thunderbolt symbol and the female symbol of the bell which provides us with the melancholic sound of eternity. The bell summons us to take the noble path to the end, with the understanding that upon reaching the end we know it to be the beginning: opposites become one, including those most puzzling opposites of good and evil. It is at this point thatCampbell cites from the Upanishads whose claim is that when the hero takes the noble path to Brahman all opposites unite, including good and evil into one God, one Substance.