roangelo.net
Can a goat understand man's thoughts, or a man the ways of God?
"My ways are not your ways. My thoughts are as high above yours as the heavens are above the earth." (Isaiah 55.8-9)
Can a goat think a man's thoughts? and can man think the thoughts of God? What answer is logically possible to a rhetorical question? "Of course man cannot think the thoughts of God." Can the thoughts of God be put into the words of man, the language, the vocabulary, the concepts: If God has concepts, do they correspond to the concepts of man; do the concepts of a goat correspond to the concepts of a man: are they tools that can be used to pose philosophical questions? (Does God have thoughts?)
Ethics versus Life's Meaning
For the Socrates the question of how man should live his life is different from the question of life's meaning, because Socrates does not ask about the natural world's meaning from the point of view of ethics, unlike those who think of the natural world as Nature and of Nature as a person and want to ask that person questions, seeking justifications of the how and why of existence. (Nature as sentient)
Man asks Nature (the natural world personified) questions about its ethics, about what its aim and the purpose of existence is -- because that is the human point of view. Man makes nature in his own image, using man's own models of understanding. But there is no person Nature ("the world seen as a limited whole" [TLP 6.45]) to reply to these questions, for, unlike man, Nature (the natural world, i.e. the world apart from man) does not know good and evil [Genesis 3.5]. "Only of a human being and what is like one do we say ..." (PI § 360): the natural world does not personify in philosophy.
What is life's meaning, its aim, its purpose? We want a human answer, as if God were a human being, as if Nature were a human being. We ask why as if we were asking a human being "Why do I exist; why are things as they are?"
"That's not fair!" the man like the child cries out. But nature knows nothing of fairness. (Category mistake.) Nature does not play our game: it does not conform itself to our world-picture -- but we needn't play Nature's game either, i.e. conform to Nature's values; and to be ethical man must not.
Man's understanding is limited by/to his concepts. The moment we ask for thoughts (thought is the manipulation of concepts [cf. BB p. 6]), anthropomorphism is, manifestly, inescapable.
Nature's God is Nature. Nature is Nature's God.
Isaiah's words are an admission that we do not at all understand Nature's God. Is there a God of Nature? Words, concepts, are tools.
Not believing in Providence means not holding God responsible. (Or at least not directly responsible, if God is responsible for the laws of nature, because those laws are responsible.)
The paradoxes of man, nature, and God
Nature is amoral, like the animals. Unlike man, nature does not know good and evil. And this is the profoundest way in which man, who is part of nature, stands apart from nature, as does Christianity's God. And yet, man is part of nature, and Jesus' God is also Nature's God.
It seems that when we stop trying to identify Nature's God with the Ethical God of Jesus that the nature of our religious faith becomes clear to us. And yet "There is a relationship," we insist. But if the only necessity is logical necessity, and logical necessity is a function of concepts, then this is a conceptual muddle and nothing else: how to force a square peg through a round hole? Well, is that possible?
Words are tools, even the word 'God'
As all words, the word 'God' can be compared to a tool, and if 'the meaning of a word' is defined as 'the work in the language the word is used to do', then the question is: what work do we use -- or want to use -- the word 'God' to do? Language is our tool, its concepts our concepts ... or is the concept 'God' forced on man by nature (PI II, xii p. 230); is it like the concept 'object' (CV p. 86)? (But yet primitive man is reported to have no concept 'God'; belief in malevolent nature-spirits is not what we mean by the word 'God', although according to Etienne Gilson it may sometimes be what has been meant by the word 'gods'.)
"Can a goat understand man's thoughts?"
That was a question, a rhetorical question, Albert Schweitzer asked in a sermon on 20 April 1930, and many times I have thought about that question. Religious questions require religious, and not philosophical, answers, if the answer is to respond to the point of the question.
All that we can think, see, tell, and touch is nothing compared to what we cannot think, tell, see, or touch. ("The Sayings of Brother Giles", tr. Brown)
Mystery is fundamental to our life, but what is mystery, what self-mystification, is not easy to know. Frate Egidio's (rhetorical) question is here a religious remark. But it is not different from the philosophical question "Is reality confined to what is in principle perceptible to the senses?", because in either case all we can do is try to make clear what is being said or asked. For here there is no Yes or No answer that is true or false, because either answer is no more than simply whatever seems plausible to someone -- but what is only plausible is also only implausible: what one is inclined or disinclined to believe (In this particular case, how one is inclined or disinclined to look at things) is not a criterion of truth or falsity (PI § 258).
What part of "not know" don't you understand? "Let me tell you what is know. Know, know. Not know, not know. That is know." Confucius said that jokingly, but thinking you know what you don't know is very grave indeed (It is the vice most culpable in philosophy (Plato, Apology 29a-b)).
Outline of this page ...
- "Can a goat understand man's thoughts?"
- Setting aside the "mysteries of faith"
- Ethics that is the offspring of a principle that far from silencing thought requires thought
- "The climate of our world becomes colder"
- A mystery for which there is no model
- On the other hand ... ("God is the father")
- A metaphor that can be interpreted in a multitude of ways
- "The mark of belonging to the kingdom of God" (Schweitzer)
- The laws of nature as the Father's gift to his child
- "If a father who is not fatherly ..." (Language and truth)
- Objects of faith versus Objects of history
- Words may be contrary to reason, but not music (Music is not reasonable, nor yet unreasonable, although irrational)
- Analogy and Definition
- The concept 'God' and the Theory of Descriptions (Wittgenstein, Russell)
- Must a proposition's meaning be a picture? (Explanations of meaning)
- Is the meaning of a religious belief its consequences in deed?
- Is 'God' a proper name? (i.e. the name of a person?)
- Is religion, as some say, reasonable?
- "Conjectures about life's meaning"
- Apropos of The Greek gods are Rational
- Endnotes
These are reflections on Wittgenstein's remark that "For a blunder, that's too big". But their background is what in my jargon is called logic of language: How does philosophy distinguish between sense (i.e. language-with-meaning) and nonsense? it asks.
Query: do goats understand what we are saying?
As with human beings, understanding must be judged by what the goat does, how it behaves after hearing us speak: understanding is a public event (That is of course a remark about the grammar of the verb 'to understand'). But does man understand the ways of God (the query's "what God is saying")? Is the word 'understand' defined by behavior in this case (Man hears and then acts in such-and-such ways, thus showing that he understands; to reason about, to question the meaning of, is to act, and its outcome may show understanding or not understanding, or misunderstanding, if 'misunderstanding' is defined here)?
Setting aside the "mysteries of faith"
How would we feel if we had never heard of Christ?
Would we feel left alone in the dark?
Do we not feel like that only in the way a child doesn't when he knows there is someone in the room with him?Religion as madness is a madness springing from irreligiousness. (Wittgenstein, CV p. 13 [MS 153b 29r: 1931])
Religious faith ... is a trusting. (ibid. p. 72 [MS 137 48b: 4.6.1948])
What would I be if I had never heard of Jesus? Would I be a worse man? Not simply because of that, no. Because I would still be a follower of Socrates (And if I had never heard of Socrates? Then I would not be at all what I am now. Not at all) -- but among the excellences that are proper to man, love is not named by the Greeks however much they may have valued friendship (Are not domesticated dogs and cats capable of love -- i.e. don't we apply the word 'love' to their human-like (PI § 360) attachments to man, and therefore love, if it is an excellence, is not an excellence unique to man). Reason can tell man what the good man does (Republic 332a-335e), how the good man lives his life: that the good man does harm to no one, and, therefore, aims by his acts to make even those who do harm to him better (To do harm is to make others worse, which is what the bad man does).
Note that Augustine's second precept is brought together by Plato (using philosophical argument, Republic 335e: "For it has been made clear to us that in no case is it just to harm anyone"; cf. Crito 49b-d) and Jesus (reflecting on what love demands, Luke 6.27: "But I say to you that hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you ...": Your enemy is also your neighbor (Matthew 22.39), and so you must love your enemy as you love yourself, doing good rather than harm to him).
Ethics that is the offspring of a principle that far from silencing thought requires thought
When Jesus says to his hearers, "Do good to those who hate you" (Matthew 5.43-47), he makes comparison to the kindness of God whose sun nourishes and whose rain waters the crops of good and evil men alike, and contrasts that to the evil man who does good only to those who likewise do good to him. Jesus says that if they want God to forgive their own wrong-doing, then they must forgive those who have wronged them (ibid. 6.12). For in all things he calls on his hearers to be like the good Father he describes to them. And so Jesus is, at least here, as Schweitzer describes: Nowhere does he demand of his hearers that they silence reason: "Quite the contrary! He bids them to reflect upon religion" (Out of my Life and Thought, tr. Lemke (1990), vi, p. 60).
"Give ear and try to understand." (Matthew 15.10)
To compare Jesus' thinking with Plato's specifically tautological ethics (Republic 332a-335e), then. Plato derives "grammatical rules" from other grammatical rules, not from empirical propositions, and Jesus derives his ethics from axioms that are also not empirical (e.g. 'God is the Father'). Their ways of thinking contrast to Socrates' thinking about ethics in the context of "Know thyself", which uses both grammatical and empirical propositions.
"The climate of our world becomes colder"
A primrose by the river's brim,
A yellow primrose was to him,
And it was nothing more. (Wordsworth)
And all Socrates has to offer is reason, and reason is cold ("reason which never dried a tear" (Chateaubriand). "You've used those statistics to comfort others, father; now use them to comfort yourself" (Hard Times)), but love is not. And what difference does that make? What difference does the colors that can be seen sometimes at sunset, the striking reds and blue, or the many lilac shades that can be seen at dawn, or the wonderful cloud formations, the clouds that give the sky a face -- what difference after all does any of that make? It belongs to "the climate of our world" [Bruno Walter], of whether "the climate of our world becomes colder" or not. Contrast these two statements of Augustine's: (1) "He only errs who thinks he knows what he does not know" and (2) "Whatever is not done from love is not done as it should be done" (cf. Tolstoy's idea in Resurrection, that when people think that there is something more important than treating other people with love, then every cruelty becomes possible). Both of those concern wisdom, both of those concern how man should live his life -- but they are the difference between Socrates and Jesus. What difference does it make whether the world is cold or whether it is warm? I don't know (although the source of that warmth, I now realize, is faith). But that it makes a difference: It does.
Water cleans, but it takes away the flavor. (Silone, A Handful of Blackberries, but in my context of course "water" is a metaphor for reason, "flavor" a metaphor for love)
In what way are the ethics of Plato (Republic 335e) similar to the ethics of Jesus? Whether we say that the good man does the opposite of harm even to his enemies (for the good man does the opposite of the bad man), or that the good man loves even his enemies (for to love is surely to do the opposite of harm) makes no more difference than this, that one (sc. love) demands compassion, and the other does not. But whether this principle is arrived at by religious thinking ('God is the Father' is not an empirical proposition), or by philosophy (Plato's investigation of the grammatical interrelationships of our concepts), the principle is the same: the good man harms no one, but always and everywhere seeks to do the opposite of harm, i.e. to benefit both friends and enemies alike.
Who is my neighbor?
The indifference of primitive man towards persons he does not know is beyond anything we can conceive. ["That man is not my brother," he says. He has no notion of common humanity.]
At the grave of the poor woman for whom they [her neighbors] would not provide even a little firewood, Mons. Hermann spoke in touching words of how she was cast off by her own people, but met with tenderness among strangers, because through Jesus love had come into the world. (Albert Schweitzer, More from the Primeval Forest, tr. Campion (1931), p. 14, 23-24)
I don't know. But the answer to the question "Who is my neighbor?" (Luke 10.25-37) had certainly come into the world.
In the parable of the good Samaritan the Lord had defined the indefinite neighbor whom men should love as themselves. "Vade, et tu fac similiter," the Lord had said. (Marshall, To Every Man a Penny (1949), li, p. 266)
There are no borders to the Christian's "neighborhood". Indeed, rather than "Who is my neighbor?", the young man might have asked, "Where are the borders of my neighborhood?" because that is the question the story of the merciful Samaritan answers.
"A mystery of faith"
But is it satisfactory (i.e. satisfying to the understanding, because that is what a classification scheme aims to be) simply to call "God is the Father" a mystery of faith ("an ethical, not an explanatory religion")? It is in this sense, that, like with Schweitzer's analogy about the goat [or sheep], it puts an end to the discussion. By calling it a mystery of faith, you are setting it out of the reach of reason, of philosophy. It's important because Jesus said it, but what it means in the world of our experience -- that question is set aside. Then what can you do with Jesus' picture of the father? I don't know (but it does have implications, because if God is the father who loves us, then we are his children, and we human beings are therefore all brothers and sisters who must treat one another with love, not throwing stones but sharing the father's bread). But at least you stop talking foolishly about something you don't understand.
"And the starry sky above"
When St. John of the Cross tapped his forehead and said, "How can you expect to understand the ways of God with a bone three fingers high?", his question was rhetorical. It set the question aside, categorized its answer as a mystery to man, exhorting man to know thyself, the limits of thine own understanding. (Remark: The forms of expression 'the ways of God', 'the mind of God', 'the thoughts of God' -- have the same meaning, have they not, as well as 'the meaning of our life'?)
We can [it is only logically possible to] conceive God at our own level -- not only as individuals but even more so as the human species. Anthropomorphism is the only tool of understanding we have when we try to conceive -- i.e. make a "picture" for ourselves -- of God: comparisons, analogies to the qualities of man. If God thinks, his thoughts are human thoughts, because human thoughts are the only thoughts we know. If God is kind, cruel, and so forth, because those are the motives we know. If one person, namely our Lord, pictures God as a merciful father who loves his child and someone else pictures God as a sadist who torments man with pain and petty annoyances (because many a man would prefer to think that he is the victim of a malevolent spirit (demon) than that "the truth [namely indifferent laws of physics] is much graver than this fiction" [CV p. 71], which is the view of primitive man, who of a natural event does not ask what caused it, but who caused it), they are both likening God to man. We [the human species] can only make [conceive] God in our own image: we can only go that far. And thus Xenophanes words seem quite correct (although not his meaning). The quotations that follow may also be understood in this context.
"God measures His means to our stature"
... uses the symbols which they are most likely to understand just as Our Lord always spoke to the apostles in terms of fishing and agriculture. (Marshall, Marx the First (1975), xx)
God measures His means to our stature, and it's spiritual pride to despise them. (Marshall, The Fair Bride (1943), i)
The bishop in the second story is speaking of relics (the bones of saints, things like this), and, I think, this can be said as well about the lighting of candles in church, statues, incense, holy water, praying the rosary and other set prayers, many rituals. Here 'spiritual pride' does not contrast with 'silencing thought', but instead with 'humility' (meekness = self-knowledge).
"A people zealous for the Lord, my dear. Living on the accumulated traditions of the past. Shutting out the light and seeing the world through stained glass." (Marshall, The Stooping Venus [c. 1926], viii, 2)
Or it could be that stained glass is what allows you to see the light. "Then came the Enlightenment and everything became so clear that we bumped our noses against the first tree in the forest," a character in E.T.A. Hoffmann says.
Maybe the bishop is not speaking solely of relics and things like that, though. Because when Arthur Stanton of Holborn writes [in a letter to his sister who was ill, 7 October 1908] "I am sorry you couldn't get to the sea. The sea is always calling, calling ... which seems to symbolize the love of God" (Russell, Arthur Stanton (1917), vii, p. 271), what kind of metaphor is that, partly anthropomorphic (for it is man who feels the call) but partly it seems not (for it the sea, not man, God is compared to)?
"... by being silent about it"
And so am I coming to the position of Wittgenstein then, of what he said to Ficker? But I don't think thought about the meaning of Jesus' words must be silenced if their plain reading makes no sense, for compare Socrates' response to Apollo's oracle's words, the plain reading of which also makes no sense. Because maybe the plain reading is not the correct one. The only restraint is philosophy's demand that we "say no more than we know" (BB p. 45), which is the method we learn both from Socrates and from Wittgenstein. To say more is the foolishness, even if that means saying very little.
Wittgenstein's letter to Ludwig Ficker
The book's point is an ethical one. I once meant to include in the preface a sentence which is not in fact there now but which I will write out for you here, because it will perhaps be a key to the work for you. What I meant to write, then, was this: My work consists of two parts: the one presented here plus all that I have not written. And it is precisely this second part that is the important one. My books draws limits to the sphere of the ethical from the inside as it were, and I am convinced that this is the ONLY rigorous way of drawing those limits. In short, I believe that where many others today are just gassing, I have managed in my book to put everything firmly into place by being silent about it.
(Source: Letter to Ludwig Ficker, ca. September-October 1919, tr. McGuinness with Furtmüller, in McGuinness' Editor's Appendix to Paul Engelmann, Letters from Ludwig Wittgenstein, with a Memoir, p. 143, 144n1.)
"... by being silent about it". And yet, Wittgenstein said to Drury: "I won't refuse to talk to you about God or about religion", and then he quoted Augustine's words "And woe to those who say nothing concerning Thee, seeing that those who say most are dumb" (Recollections p. 89) -- meaning that "those who say most" are the "many others [who] are just gassing", i.e. talking a lot of nonsense (foolishness).
Even if language were nothing but a depiction of sensually perceptible reality ... and if accordingly it were impossible to speak in any language about the higher sphere (as science and philosophy conducted by scientific means are indeed unable to do) ...
Any application of 'There is' in fictitious propositions such as 'There is, indeed, a higher sphere' is inadequate, and yet it makes a valid point, though by means of a logically untenable statement. (Engelmann, Letters ... with a Memoir, v, 3, p. 110)
Now that is the view, the understanding, of language of the TLP. By calling 'There is a higher sphere' an example of a "fictitious" proposition, Engelmann means that the sentence 'There is a higher sphere' -- despite having the form of a statement of fact ("This is how things are" [or "stand" (4.5)]) -- is not a statement of fact (because it is in nowise a statement about sense-perceived reality). But how can a statement both "make a point" and be "logically untenable"? I.e. is there not a mistaken view of the logic of our language in the TLP, for after all, nonsense that can convey meaning is not nonsense (at least not in the "logic of language" of Wittgenstein's later writings).
A bit of sound or ink marks on paper cannot both convey meaning and be nonsense in the sense of 'nonsense' of Philosophical Investigations § 500, where the word 'nonsense' means not foolish talk, but instead "mere sound without sense", like the chirping of crickets to human ears.
If we follow Wittgenstein's later account of language, we will say that the sentence 'There is a higher sphere' does not have the grammar (function or use in the language) of a statement about sense-perceived reality, not that the sentence is nonsense. Mistaken for a statement of fact 'There is a higher sphere' may be nonsense (i.e. an undefined combination of words), but I would say that what a sentence of that kind does is to introduce a new category, a new way of looking at our life and looking at the world.
Concepts are an expression of our interests, and direct our interest. (PI § 570)
If "nonsense" can convey meaning -- and if, in the first instance, what should concern us is, not "what is sensible for a reasonable man" (Life-philosophy, Ethics), but the distinction between sense and nonsense (meaning and meaningless) in language (Logic) -- this tells us that we have misconceived how our language works. We should not found our wisdom (world-picture) on that misconception.
Logic must make a clear distinction between foolish talk which nonetheless conveys meaning and sounds or ink marks which convey no meaning. Why? Because our common use of the same word -- namely, 'nonsense' -- for both risks causing confusion. Wittgenstein did make that distinction clear in his later work, but not in the TLP (otherwise Ramsey would not have written: "the chief proposition of philosophy is that philosophy is nonsense [and] we must then take seriously that it is nonsense, and not pretend, as Wittgenstein does, that it is important nonsense!"). Philosophy needs to be founded on a sound logic (of language) because everything philosophy does makes use of language, and a logic of language that is not clear about the distinction between an undefined combination of words and foolish (but nonetheless meaningful) talk is not such a logic.
Enough then of that. To return to our discussion: Wittgenstein says that the TLP's point is an ethical one. But in the context of my remarks above I am talking about "the mystical" or "God and the soul" (In contrast, by my Socratic lights, ethics ("we are discussing no small matter, but how to live) is rational, a topic for reason -- not as it were a topic for silence -- to talk about, discuss).
And so, in the area of religion, maybe bit by bit I am coming to share Wittgenstein's view (Well, if we can't say anything about God, then we can't say anything about God; the category is there, a way of life is there, but foolish talk of the kind St. John of the Cross censures, (e.g.) "theodicy" -- talking as if you knew what you don't know certainly is not wisdom). But religion is very different from philosophy -- and it is not that I am rescinding the principle that "There is no place in my life where I would want to say: Here I do not use reason", but only that: This is what reason can say about religious belief. This and no more, maybe. In other words: take religion for what it is -- and don't instead react to a caricature [a scarecrow, a straw man] of it (as "many others today" do), a mere conceptual creation [picture] of your own foolishness. And just as important for thinking about religion is this principle: Don't assume that everything you don't understand is nonsense or foolishness.
A mystery for which there is no model
"Zeus ... whose state excels all language syllables" (Aeschylus, Agamemnon, tr. Cookson, c. lines 160-162), "Zeus ... The Unknown" (ibid. tr. Morshead). "An impossible metaphor" (R. Kunze's expression in The Wonderful Years). It certainly seems impossible that God is the father, that the comparison between God and a loving father will not stand. And yet there Jesus' words are.
God is a mystery beyond all mystery, for it is the imponderable mystery of our existence. Whatever we mean by the word 'God', the nature of God is not something that man can know (i.e. describe), because no model of our experience of the world is applicable to God ("eye hath not seen, nor ear heard") -- i.e. the concept 'God' simply does not work that way. And trying to force it to work that way results in the creation of a straw man, i.e. the creation of a false account based on false grammatical analogies. There is a fundamental mystery about our life, and sensing that mystery is part of what we mean by the word 'God', and, I think, anyone without that sense is in this case what Wittgenstein called "concept-blind" -- i.e. unable "to see how a reasonable man may use this word seriously", the word 'God', that is (cf. RPP i § 213).
From visible to invisible metaphors
Saint Paul said that the invisible must be understood by the visible. That was not a Hebrew idea, it was Greek. (Hamilton, Mythology (1942) "Introduction", p. 8)
Which is the Gospel according to John, Greek or Jewish, for its author does seem to think as our authority says that Paul does? Which does the pericope of "Christ and Nicodemus" show?
... for to gain light on things imperceptible we must use the evidence of sensible things (i.e. things that are perceptible to the senses, Aristotle says parenthetically in Nicomachean Ethics 1104a14-15, tr. Ross) ...
How far does the visible take us in Christianity? It doesn't appear very far. To say that the Creator is known by the beauty -- 'beauty' in the Greek sense of 'fineness', 'excellence' -- of the things He has made, as it says in the Book of Wisdom, is to say no more than that what the creation and God have in common is their "excellence". An idealized human being -- Apollo can be sculpted as beautiful in form, grace and nobility to offer a visual understanding of the god's nature, a nature free of all deformity either physical or moral (as if the god's perfect moral character might be illustrated by a perfect body) -- but can what Christianity means by the word 'God' be made clearer that way? When the Holy Spirit is depicted incarnated as a dove (Matthew 3.16), does that make the nature of the Holy Spirit clearer, if it is an allusion to the dove of Noah's Ark (Genesis 8.11)? (Cf. the depiction of demons in Medieval art.)
All things in heaven and earth were mysteriously linked with the divine powers, but beautiful things most of all. (Hamilton, i, 4, "Flower-Myths", p. 112)
Here 'beautiful' is meant in the sense of things 'handsome' or 'pleasing to the senses', in contrast to the dysfunctions of the world, its deformity by the "absence of God". Dostoyevsky's view of the Incarnation as "beauty coming into the world" ... but is there an essential interconnection between the beautiful and the good? Not at all. The crucifixion was not beautiful, nor is loving one's neighbor as oneself. Neither beautiful bodies nor objects show us either the Christian God's goodness or love; only acts of mercy and forgiveness do.
The pericope of "Christ and Nicodemus"
Query: the concepts of logic used in any language.
Are there any? Or does grammar blow as it listeth -- i.e. or is it that use determines meaning, and therefore there can be primitive language-games, featuring various parts of speech but excluding others. In other words, there does not seem to be an essence of grammar (unless there is an essence of rules).
And so, in brief, the Pharisee Nicodemus asks Jesus how it is that he teaches as he does about the kingdom of God, and Jesus answers that "unless a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God". "But," Nicodemus asks, "how can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb, and be born again?" And Jesus answers that "unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh, is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit, is spirit ... The Spirit breatheth where he will; and thou hearest his voice, but thou knowest not whence he cometh, and whither he goeth ... If I have spoken to you earthly things, and you believe not; how will you believe, if I shall speak to you heavenly things?" (John 3.1-12)
The word 'listeth' means 'as it likes', and so "The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth" [3.8]. And and if 'cometh' = 'concept-formation', then for the ancient city we know only "whither it goeth", i.e. that the concept exists, not "whence it cometh".
These verses appear to be their author's answer to the materialist (who understands only "earthly things", i.e. things of sense perception), that the Holy Ghost ("heavenly things") is like the wind, which he also cannot see. As Paul says, then, the supernatural can only be known through the natural, and here the wind is the best natural suggestion of the nature of the something supernatural, namely the Holy Ghost. Maybe it is this way.
On the other hand ... ("God is the father")
On the other hand, if by 'God is the Father', is meant that like a loving father God forgives his child's wrong-doing. And if by 'no father gives his child a stone when it asks for bread', is meant, as in the Lord's Prayer, that if I ask for my sins to be forgiven, they will be, if only I forgive others for any wrong-doing they may have done me. And that faith in God's kingdom of love is bread, whereas "this world" is very often stone.
Dearest Brother in Christ ... I earnestly beg you to comport yourself with your people as a good father does with naughty sons. Do not weary of them because of the many evils you see. God whom they offend so greatly does not destroy them, though He so easily could ... (Letter from Francis Xavier to Father Mansilhas, 23 February 1544, in Brodrick, Saint Francis Xavier (1957), viii, p. 105)
Which is easier to say, "Your sins are forgiven you", or to say, "Arise and walk"? (Luke 5.23)
And which is the more loving gift from the father, the saving of a man's life in this world (from natural or human disaster) -- or in the kingdom of God?
Jesus' gift of peace, of not being afraid
[Jesus] says to every poor man, "You can pray to God as if you are speaking to your father." It was the first time that a man said this. (Schweitzer, African Sermons (2003), tr. Melamed, 20 July 1930, "Our Father")
When Jesus taught us to call God the father who loves us, he taught us not to be afraid of God but to trust in the father's infinite mercy, Pope Francis has said ("Weekly general audience in St. Peter's Square", 7 June 2017). The pope called this a revolution in thought.
None of that would imply that evil things will no longer befall the one who amends his life in this world, only that his wrong-doing will be forgiven him and that his repentance will show that he belongs to the Kingdom of God and even somehow hastens its coming. Such forgiveness is the most a human father can do for his child (and any comparison of God to a father is of course anthropomorphic), i.e. he cannot prevent all evil from befalling his child. But of course a human father can neither grant forgiveness for the wrongs his child has done to others nor transform this world into the supernatural Kingdom of God of Jesus' eschatology.
Saying anthropological things about God is not necessarily the trouble. But giving a meaning to those things is.
Note that Apology 41c-d ("... know this of a truth -- that no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death" (tr. Jowett), because the only evil that can befall a man is for he himself to do evil, and that is what the good man does not do) also does not claim that the man who amends his life will not suffer from the wrong-doing of others or from acts of nature ... Plato's kingdom ruled by a philosopher-king and Plato's realm on "the other side of the sky" are not Jesus' Kingdom of God, although they have elements in common: the moral perfecting of mankind and knowledge of the truth.
A metaphor that can be interpreted in a multitude of ways
There are many possible ways of reading that 'God is the Father', not only that God is a capricious string-puller of marionettes, or rather, the string-puller of the world-as-a-marionette, being called all-good despite doing evil. But in a more human way is how Jesus' words may be understood.
"I can discover facts, Watson, but I cannot change them ..... Well, we shall see about explaining it. When once your point of view is changed, the very thing which was so damming becomes a clue to the truth." (The Problem of Thor Bridge)
And what I have just described is a shift -- a very real shift that can be compared to a Gestalt shift -- in the way one understands or can understand (This "can" is logical possibility: what can be described because it is described) Jesus' words. And that means a shift in how one sees God, that is, our concept 'God', what can be done with it, when seeking the true and serviceable, a shift in pictures away from "the God of the philosophers" to the God of religious faith.
That is, if we do not take Jesus' words as if they were an explanation, as if they had any connection whatever to theodicy, for example. They are faith, not explanation, an exhortation to see God Jesus' way (cf. CV p. 61). God's forgiveness of wrong-doing is a mystery. When we have done evil our own moral sense is that our wrong-doing cannot simply be forgiven as if it had never happened at all. But faith is that God can somehow do what man cannot (for man can only punish, and punishment cannot undo wrong-doing despite it sometimes being possible for amends to be made) -- "somehow" because not in a way that can be verified in this world.
"When once your point of view is changed ..."
Now, I wonder if the doesn't apply to God "all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good" and the laws of physics -- that is to say, I wonder if it isn't the case "... the very thing which was so damming becomes a clue to the truth". For I said that God had made man free by making the course of natural events more or less predictable, and this is "the laws of physics".
"But why is there such cruelty?" But the laws of physics have nothing to do with cruelty or gentleness. And in that sense, there are Isaiah's words (55.8-9), words which concern moral good (cruelty, whether human or natural, is evil only from the point of view of ethical judgment, not of course of physics).
Does man "have a moral choice"? Giving mouth honor to rules of right and wrong is not having a moral choice: one must believe that the rules of moral right and wrong are the rules (No one chooses to do what is wrong unless he believes that "the wrong" is really the right rather than the wrong).
Or does man have only wisdom or ignorance ("Virtue is knowledge")? And so nature-endowed ignorance now appears as "the very thing which [is] so damming" from the ethical point of view. And so we go on round, again and again, looking for a fissure, a doorway in the wall. [I awoke with the words "Go drown a fish". I have no idea what I had been thinking about (dreaming?) Maybe this is the "meaning" of those words.]
Thought experiment: can God wash evil away to make it as if it had never happened -- or, rather, to make it so that it had never happened at all, not merely that it be forgotten (illusions of time, and time travel as rearrangement)?
St. Peter Damian (1007-1072): God can undo an historical event, make it never to have happened. (Copleston, History of Philosophy, Volume II, xiv, 6. But it is not the undoing of the event from the physical but from the moral point of view that seems impossible, i.e. as itself a moral outrage. But maybe a saint would say that is just human hubris speaking, that for God all things are possible. (But I think it is the truth, for if God can cleanse the human conscience-memory, then our life loses all seriousness.)
Our anthropomorphism when we think of God is far too close to human: when we define our concept 'God', we create a Greek mythological type straw-god and then knock it down. But that is a primitive picture of God attributing man's limitations to a god made in man's image, a primitive notion of the concept 'God', not one that is deep enough to fill a whole life with faith.
"The mark of belonging to the kingdom of God"
It is a question of repentance unto the Kingdom, and the conquest of the righteousness which renders one fit for it, -- for only the righteous inherit the Kingdom.... The poor in spirit, the meek, those that endure suffering, those that hunger and thirst after righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, -- these all are blessed because by this mark they are destined for the Kingdom. (The Mystery of the Kingdom of God [1901], x, tr. Lowrie (1914). On repentance requiring, not only seeking forgiveness and forgiving, but also amending one's life, and the hastening the Kingdom's coming, See Schweitzer's discussions at iii, 1-2)
A man's saying that he believes or doesn't believe in God says very little. Not believing in God means far more than tearing up lifeless paper dolls. It is far deeper than that. As is believing in God.
Many seem to confuse religion with metaphysics, as if religion were a kind of metaphysical speculation. But faith isn't speculative. Others point to the existence of evil, as if that were a revelation, something which no one had ever noticed before. Many simply think they know what they do not know (e.g. the presumption of materialism is metaphysics not knowledge).
The philosophical danger when trying to understand religion is setting up a strawman and knocking it down, rather like throwing stones at a scarecrow of our one's making.
When trying to understand religion, tilting at scarecrow Gods is not the challenge. Indeed by such tilting we can only cheat ourselves, by substituting a shallow cleverness for understanding; cf. conceited ignorance, thinking yourself wise when you are not. (What Pascal called "the God of the philosophers and scholars" in his Memorial is a metaphysical scarecrow, and scarecrows are jejune readings of the Gospels too.)
The laws of nature as the Father's gift to his child
God is the Father (or God is our Father) may seem a mystery of faith that is in every way perplexing. But there are many logically possible ways to do something with that mystery in one's thinking, so that it need not simply be set aside as "a thought of God's (Isaiah 55.9) that man can no more than goat understand", incomprehensible. For example. What one could say is that a loving father gives his child freedom, and that is what the laws of nature give to man: freedom, because the laws make possible the prediction of events and their outcomes. The laws of nature are the Father's gift to his child.
When God made man free without making him wise, that was what is called a mixed blessing.
Man's freedom lies in the predictability of events and consequences of deeds .... but without wisdom that freedom is not a blessing, because it is the wise man who knows what the good is for man, whereas the unwise man does not but instead misperceives what is good for man and therefore uses his freedom to do what is evil. (Virtue is knowledge: its perceived good is what every living thing aims for.)
Christianity and theodicy: the Lord tells us how we must live our life, but he does not explain evil (wrong-doing, natural disasters, pain), or rather, he does not explain evil by the natural light of reason; his thinking is thoroughly religious, not reasonable; it is foreign to the philosopher. [A distinction between superstition and religion.]
"We are to the gods as flies to wanton boys ..." (cf. King Lear iv, 1) That is the picture of man's life in this world as the life of a marionette; it is primitive, like fear of malevolent nature spirits or of the dead. (Schweitzer contrasts that with the world-picture of "God is the father", even if the father's ways are hard [impossible] to understand.)
"If a father who is not fatherly ..."
On the other hand, there is a relation between language and truth. Confucius on the reform of language: "If a father who is not fatherly were not called 'father' ..." -- i.e. 'fatherly'. And of course, there is nothing to stop anyone from regarding Jesus as delusional, his ideology the dangerous creation of a fantasist, of one who thinks he knows what he does not know, and so is misled himself and misleads others. [What is faith faith in?]
Because even on my account: If the full consequences of the laws of nature are evil, then is not their creator also evil ... or non-existent, as an amoral God would in effect be, because we have no use for such a concept/picture.
It is really very difficult to know what to do with Jesus' words, for the difficultly is not (as Schweitzer has it) to believe that God is the father; the difficulty, rather, is to give some meaning to the words 'God is the father' that will be more than mouth honor, that will change our way of living.
"But if the Lord is risen, how come these things happen?" Pope Francis asked on Easter Sunday 2017. If he is risen, why is there still evil in the world? Where is the kingdom of God he promised his followers, a kingdom which some of them would live to see come? And if the Lord is risen despite the kingdom not coming, then what difference does it make whether he is risen or not risen? That Jesus lived and died that human beings might love God and one another makes a difference in how we see and live our lives; but what difference does his resurrection make if the kingdom of God did not come after it?
... one who thinks he knows what he does not know, and so is misled himself and misleads others (Xenophon, Memorabilia iv, 6, 1). It is differences in world-view like this -- faith versus Socratic dialectic (i.e. cross-questioning, not only of every thesis, but also of every axiom, where there is no place for faith, or, belief-in; I might speak of a return to rationality and Enlightenment empiricism) -- that made it impossible for Christianity and Stoicism to work together, despite their possible common ground on the question of common humanity or, in other words, the brotherhood of all mankind.
There is a difference between saying that everything that happens is God's will and saying that God wills everything to happen. What is this difference? ("The limit of religion -- is picture formation.") That the second proposition says that there is only one possibility, whereas the first proposition suggests that there may be more than one possibility that is consistent with God's will.
But also the word 'will' is used equivocally: God's will = God's moral commandments (which man is free to obey or not obey) versus God's will = laws of nature: choice (what may happen) versus compulsion (what must happen).
[The notion 'will' as an "unnecessary shuffle". What's "the will of God" when it's at home?]
Objects of faith versus Objects of history
I have never believed that it is possible to know the historical Jesus, that is, Jesus as an object of history (in contrast to an object of faith). For as I said elsewhere, the Gospel accounts of Jesus are already religion; they are already faith; their authors treat Jesus as an object of faith. About Jesus as an object of history, or, the historical Jesus, if that is to be based on the Synoptic Gospels, then Jesus can only be the object of an historian's hypothesis, something which has no value for religion (It is not religion; it is critical history or historiography) -- unless it is turned into dogma, in which case it ceases to be an hypothesis about history.
And what applies to Jesus also applies to "God the father" (i.e. to that particular concept 'God'). Jesus' picture of God as the father is not offered by him as a philosophical thesis.
The Jesus the Synoptics portray is Jesus as an object of faith rather than as an object of history. Nor is it clear that the authors of the Bible had any sense of historiography, or, the writing of critical history, of the "what really happened" of the Greek historians. There is no evidence in their writing that they had. They were men of faith, insight, imagination, dreams.
By the standard of that conceptual investigation, I must conclude that I am not a religious man, not a man of faith, and, further, pretending that I am can only end in disorientation and disillusionment -- because faith and reason are conceptually immiscible. Faith cannot be made reasonable without defining it away -- i.e. some rules cannot be rewritten if the word 'faith' is to retain any of its normal meaning (and why use that word if it does not).
Words may be contrary to reason, but not music
"Which is mystery, which self-mystification?" Faith has no place in my life, because there is no place in my life where I can to say, "Here I am willing not to use reason." And faith is reflective: it is not simple response, as the appreciation of music may be; but reflection is subject to the test of reason. The only one who has ever spoken to me in words I could accept about religious belief is Schweitzer with this remark about reason in Memoirs of Childhood and Youth: "Reason, I said to myself, is given us that we may bring everything within the range of its action, even the most exalted ideas of religion." There are no religious mysteries in the sense of mysteries of revealed religions; there are no Christian mysteries. Life itself, existence itself is a mystery, but revealed-religious mysteries are -- and can only be -- self-mystification, because they are the invention (creation) of the human mind.
[Of course one can break e.g. the rules of classical composition, but the rules of classical composition were made for music, not music for the rules of classical composition. The consequence of breaking music's "rules of grammar" is not the production of nonsense ("meaningless combinations of sounds").]
Analogy and Definition
When Jesus calls God the father, that is a simile: "our Father in heaven" in contrast to one's father in this world. God is like but also unlike an earthly father in such and such ways. So this is a genuine simile. Yet can an analogy only work in one direction: from an earthly father to our heavenly Father, but not the reverse? There can be an analogy from reality to a logical possibility e.g. to a picture that is not a picture of the facts -- as Jesus' simile here shows.
But what is the grammatical status of such a simile? An analogy that goes only one way is in fact a definition. Not that a picture cannot be defined by means of comparisons, but that what a comparison cannot do is to bring a picture into reality: God cannot be defined into existence (other than by making the word 'God' merely synonymous with some other word, but that is not what we are seeking to do), although the grammar of the word 'God' may be explained (i.e. described) using a variety of tools, comparison being one.
The concept 'God' and the Theory of Descriptions
Bertrand Russell's Theory of Descriptions: "We may say, following Russell: [that the word 'God'] can be defined by means of various descriptions" (cf. PI § 79; there is an earlier full account of wobbly concepts, in this instance 'God'). [Note]
On the other hand, try to talk about God without using the word 'God'. Just try. But if a collection of descriptions is the meaning of that word, then shouldn't that be possible? So which is 'God' -- a multifarious or a Protean concept?
The "indefiniteness of God" (Schweitzer and Kraus) belongs to grammar, not to ontology. (In the case of the concept 'God' unclarity seems not to be a blunder. The concept 'God' and Russell's Theory of Descriptions and the eternal questions.)
Must a proposition's meaning be a picture? (Explanations of meaning)
And Wittgenstein's remarks about 'an afterlife' belong to grammar rather than to ontology.
From that a picture can serve to explain the meaning of words (often better than words themselves do) (PI II, iv, p. 178) it does not follow that a picture must do that, or, in other words, a single proposition may have several meanings (Same sign, different grammars), some explainable by pictures, others not.
If you say: "I can imagine myself being a disembodied spirit. Wittgenstein, can you imagine yourself as a disembodied spirit?" -- I'd say: "I'm sorry. I connect nothing with these words." (LC p. 65; cf. RPP i § 265)
Of course Wittgenstein is aware of various pictures (PI II, iv, p. 178g), the Greek shades or shadows in Hades, souls being punished in Hell, things like this ("I connect all sorts of complicated things with these words. I think of what people have said ..."). But why shouldn't someone say, "I don't have a picture of it"? Would he be talking nonsense? Then you would have as well to say that Paul was talking nonsense when he said "eye hath not seen nor ear heard". Need I connect any picture with that proposition? ("If a man knows anything he can explain what he knows to others", but is there only one way to explain the meaning of a proposition?)
Is the meaning of a religious belief its consequences in deed?
And when you ask me "Don't you know, then, what I mean when I say that the stove is in pain?" -- I can reply: These words may lead me to have all sorts of images; but their usefulness goes no further. (PI § 351)
"... their usefulness goes no further." -- But that is not a criterion of sense and nonsense? Or is Wittgenstein asking about meaning in this sense of 'meaning': What does it mean -- i.e. what are the consequences for the way someone lives -- of believing such-and-such proposition?
But does every belief have consequences for the way the believer lives? (That is of course a grammatical question: to give/state a grammatical account of the use of language -- to describe a grammar is to describe a form/way of life.)
The truth is that I don't know what Wittgenstein is aiming at with those remarks.
Is the word 'God' a proper name?
I use the name 'N' without a fixed meaning. PI § 79; 'Mr. N' = 'Mr. N[ame]')
But the word 'God' is not a "proper name", i.e. the name of a person (Cf. "The way you use the word 'God' shows, not whom you mean, but what you mean ..." (CV p. 50, a remark from 1946;RPP i, § 475) -- and shows that often you are not clear about what you mean)? Strange then that we always use the word "as if it were". Nor are our "as if it were" statements metaphorical, it seems, "because we must be able to restate metaphors in prose"; otherwise what would it mean to call them metaphors.
There is also this, a remark which Schweitzer made in a very different, and unrelated, context:
It is ideal because it is unwritten and arises only in the idea of the reader by the aid of his own imagination, and because it is traced only in the most general outline. (The Quest of the Historical Jesus (English language edition of 2001), tr. Montgomery, Coates, Cupitt, Bowden, Chapter 18, p. 265)
Apropos of some of the tools of our language, as e.g. 'God', we might speak of "the Fallacy of Nebulosity [cloudiness]", even as we normally use those words.
Is religion, as some say, reasonable?
And what are we calling 'reasonable'? I am asking whether religious belief can stand up to the tests both of reason and experience, as philosophical beliefs -- if we use the standards of Socrates -- must do.
Whenever in any country, even if in the house or in the country, if there are two leaders that is recipe for ruin, so how could the universe last for billions of years in such beautiful harmony and have more than one God? If there was more than one God it would have been torn to pieces, so we do have the evidence. (Sayyid Nasrallah, English language transcript of interview broadcast on Tuesday, 17 April 2012, The World Tomorrow, Episode 1)
The Greek gods -- not the gods of the folk tales, but the gods as philosophers thought of them -- were fully rational, unlike man who is rational but none-the-less an animal. And so the gods, being fully rational, not only know what is good, and in this are all of one mind, but do only what is good. To imagine that if there were many gods then they would not be all of one mind is to imagine gods who are not fully rational but partly irrational, that is to say, part animal, made in the image of man. And so I do not think that, in this instance, Nasrallah does "have the evidence".
Sayyid Nasrallah also said -- if I understand him aright of course -- that all men, even if they have been taught nothing of God, nonetheless seek what is just (and so know e.g. that murder is not just and that to dispossess people of their home is not fair) and what is kind (i.e. to help the poor and disadvantaged) because this is the way God has created man to be (cf. Kant and "the moral law within"). And this shows that there is no discord between the religions that descend from Abraham and the evidence of human instinct.
But if many men, in the view of many other men, do not do what is just and fair and what is kind but instead act only for their own selfish advantage, dispossessing and murdering (Deuteronomy 7.1-6), then how can it be that they do this? They cannot, without being inconsistent with Nasrallah's account, be ignorant of their own natures -- i.e. be acting contrary to instinct. So then how can it be that men do what is unjust and unkind (i.e. evil)? Did the Creator build evil into the world, an evil that blinds man to man's own nature?
The evidence of experience cannot be set aside, and that evidence does not justify religious faith. That is why we have a concept 'religious faith'. Catholic Christianity also teaches that Christianity is reasonable -- indeed, that was Matteo Ricci's teaching method in China -- but Pope Francis has admitted that no one can explain the existence of evil (although he too believes in the moral law within: "God's mercy is infinite; the important thing is to obey one's conscience").
Our discussions of God always arrive in the end at: "My ways are not your ways, my thoughts not your thoughts" (Isaiah 55.8). The point is this: that religious faith is not reasonable; there is always "in despite of" in it -- and if it were reasonable, it would not be what we call religious faith. (In Acts these words are attributed to the Apostle Paul: "God made all men to seek Him so that perhaps by groping their way towards Him they may find Him", but it doesn't say that they necessarily will find Him. Wittgenstein wrote that "Life can educate one to belief in God". But it may not, for William James says many men resolve "the question of God" by becoming atheists, indeed ardent atheists.)
"Conjectures about our life's meaning"
We do not live in expectation of the kingdom of God. And if God had wanted the kingdom to come, if that had been His will for man, it seems it would have come long ago ("Two thousand years is nothing to God"? but then neither is two trillion, for "God is timeless" -- i.e. there is no grammatical intersection between 'measurement of time' and 'God'. But man isn't God, and if 'imminent' is to be used as we normally use that word ...) Which is to say that the purpose of our life is, not to live in that expectation, but instead to create within ourselves as much of the kingdom as we are able to, and that all the rest does not matter in the eyes of God, that is to say, from the point of view of eternity. Societies pass away, human individuals pass away, but basic ideals don't. If we are able to realize those within ourselves, then we really have fulfilled life's purpose, life's meaning. And what would it mean to say that 'if God willed the kingdom of God to come'? I don't know. Maybe I should say instead, that if the kingdom of God had been a possibility for man or rather for human society it would have come a long time ago. As I wrote about the perpetually returning weeds in Voltaire's garden, sc. the seven deadly sins (But aren't these simply facets of ignorance and/or bad habits acquired in a time of ignorance? In Socrates' way of looking at things, yes), I do not believe that a good society can be created although good men may exist within a society. When the Stoics envisioned "A society of good men (rather than men in a good society)," I think they understood the nature of man and of his life in this world.
But to all such conjectures, there is this reply: "And from beyond the grave I hear voices say, That's all very well for you -- you survived!" (The Gulag Archipelago) You cannot look at unrepentant evil-doing men and simply dismiss what you see with Jesus' words "They have their reward [i.e. in this world, but not by belonging to the kingdom of God]" nor merely forgive such men for their ignorance (as you pray you will be forgiven for yours) -- That is not enough here. If you want to fathom man's life, you must answer the question: What is themeaning of those poor souls' lives? And so again we arrive at: "Life presents us with nothing but riddles."
Those conjectures are pictures, but they are pictures based, not on faith, but on life experience. Are they therefore not religious pictures? And so you cannot say that faith is not found at the end of a line of reasoning -- or, rather, you cannot say that in every case where we talk about 'faith'. The concept does not have that limit as anything more than one [grammatical] possibility. A faith is a way of looking at things, but faith's origins may be many.
Apropos of The Greek gods are Rational
If someone were willing to accept the proposition, which Christians are not, that they worship three gods, the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit [Ghost], nonetheless those gods are of one mind and as such they are only one God and not three. And the same might be said about the Greek gods, that being of one mind they are only one God, not a multiplicity of gods.
Or someone might say, although Christians do not, that God had revealed Himself to man in three different ways, but that it was still only the one God who had revealed Himself to man in those ways. As different aspects of a single God, of a single mind, presented to man in a way that man could, at least in part ("in a looking-glass, darkly"), understand, because what God is in Himself man can no more understand than a goat can think a man's thoughts (see Isaiah 55.9: "My thoughts are as high above your thoughts as the heavens are above the earth").
"... in Himself" -- because what can man know through reason about God? We make for ourselves "pictures", "conceptions" -- we invent concepts, but such inventions are not knowledge.
"My thoughts are as high above your thoughts ..." (Isaiah 55.9) is a rule of grammar (cf. PI § 373), but it is also a picture of what is believed. And why shouldn't the same proposition, looked at from different angles, serve two purposes at the same time? Indeed, isn't it characteristic of religious thought for a proposition to just that?
All these remark simply point out some ways it is possible to interconnect concepts, to interconnect (grammatical) propositions. Nothing more than that.
The distance between man and God was expressed in following way in the seventh or eighth century before Christ by the Greeks. (It is anthropomorphic, certainly, but we have no other way to discuss God. Man is limited by man.)
... a brazen anvil falling down from heaven nine nights and days would reach the earth upon the tenth (Theogony c. lines 713-735, tr. Evelyn-White)
Naturalizing Myths
At the beginning of the Phaedrus Plato gives an example of the naturalizing of myth, and he calls this explanation of the myth a skeptic making the story plausible. The North Wind chose a maiden for his bride, but the Athenians would not accept this, but while the girl was playing with her sisters beside the river "a northern gust carried her over the neighboring rock [into the water]; and this being the manner of her death, she was said to have been carried away by Boreas [the North Wind]" (Phaedrus 229c-d, tr. Jowett). This is like later Biblical scholars naturalizing the miracles in the Gospels, as e.g. the disciples were simple fishermen and when they saw the Lord walking through the mist on dry land they imagined he was walking on the water, but it was only an illusion created by the thick fog beside the lake.
Of course these plausible explanations are the "naturalizing of religion" -- of mistaking all tales for historiography, as if religious stories (myths) had no deeper significance, as if e.g. they did not express much deeper feelings in mankind. Wittgenstein told Drury, "After all, children have been killed by bears" (Recollections p. 170) -- and by strong gusts of wind blowing them onto the rocks as well. (Do I myself "understand" this -- in the sense 'understand' = 'share this experience'?)
Wittgenstein said to Drury (ibid. p. 107) about the naturalizers of myths that they are like the elder Karamazov saying "he could not believe in those hooks" the monks said the devil dragged the souls of the dead into Hell with, that they had the least understanding of religious symbolism of all.
Giving natural explanations for their events in order to explain (or explain away) the supernatural in myths is with imagination possible. But maybe it shows an absence of understanding of what we mean by the expression 'in a deeper sense', just as metaphysics can be explained [away] as grammatical-conceptual confusion if we don't recognize that there is "but in a deeper sense" (and not only with respect to the eternal questions but also e.g. to the essence of man). Maybe in both cases it is important (even vital to someone) to see how these tales and questions might naturally arise (although were the tellers of the myths naive and credulous?), but, philosophically (three "no small matters"), that cannot be the end of it. And for example, the notion that Wittgenstein somehow solved (even W.K.C. Guthrie floated this notion in his Socrates (1971), p. 120, although second-hand) -- or, rather, dissolved -- Plato's question about common names, as if Socrates had been blind to "family resemblances", is nonsense -- in both senses of 'nonsense', i.e. 'undefined language' and 'foolishness'.
Endnotes
Note: Russell used the word 'description' in his "Theory of Descriptions" in two /different/ ways.
"A 'description'", says Russell, "may be of two sorts, definite and indefinite (or ambiguous). An indefinite description is a phrase of form 'a so-and-so', and a definite description is a phrase of the form 'the so-and-so' (in the singular)." ("Russell's "Theory of Descriptions"" (an essay by Moore from 1944), in G.E. Moore, Philosophical Papers (1959) [PP] viii, p. 151)
For us, e.g. when Wittgenstein talks about the name 'Moses' in the Bible or when I talk about /the grammar of/ the word 'God', then we mean an "indefinite (or ambiguous)" description, for there are many possibilities /i.e. possible descriptions that may be used to define those words/, rather than a "definite" description (an example of which would be an arbitrary /i.e. one that does not report actual usage/ definition, such as by 'concept' I shall mean 'rules for using a word') ... except that I completely misunderstood what Moore (and Russell) meant by 'definite description'! But by 'the so-and-so', they meant e.g. "the King of France" or "the author of Waverley", and Moore does not give an example of an "indefinite description". Nevertheless, the distinction I make using the expression 'indefinite (or ambiguous) description' -- never mind Moore or Russell -- is a useful one in our context.
About 'God' his main point seemed to be that this word was used in many grammatically different senses. He said, for instance, that many controversies about God could be settled by saying 'I am not using the word in such a sense that you can say ...', and that different religions "treat things as making sense which others treat as nonsense, and don't merely deny some proposition which another religion affirms";
and he illustrated this by saying that if people use 'god' to mean something like a human being, then 'God has four arms' and 'God has two arms' will both have sense, but that others so use 'God' that 'God has arms' is nonsense -- would say 'God can't have arms'. (PP iii, p. 312)
Why would 'God has arms' be nonsense rather than a deniable proposition? Because it is a rule of grammar (It is certainly not an empirical proposition), and the negation/contradiction of a grammatical rule is simply another grammatical rule (although that's not the end of it: any new rule would need to have its meaning explained, i.e. how it is to be followed shown). And so too is 'God can't have arms' a rule of grammar, the denial of which is a statement of nonsense in the context of the "language-game" (ibid. ii, p. 273) based on the rule 'God can have arms'.
The Greek gods of the myths have bodies; and so they can (This "can" states grammatical possibility -- i.e. what is defined language, i.e. what it means to say 'Athena's eyebrows are brown' e.g.) have eyebrows (LC p. 71). Whereas the gods of the Sophists and philosophers (Socrates, Plato e.g.) have no bodies and hence cannot have eyebrows; to say that they have eyebrows is to utter nonsense. (And it is only, I think, because in this particular case, we are already well-familiar with both "pictures" of God -- i.e. with both grammars for the word 'God' -- that we imagine that whether or not God has eyebrows can be denied or affirmed by a factual rather than by a conceptual investigation, as if "can" here indicated "real rather than logical possibility". Cf. the case of 'finite but unbounded' -- i.e. "How can space be both limited and unlimited at the same time?") [BACK]
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