10.31.06
Eleatics, being, and Stace’s Hegel
Hucklebird sends me a post from the Hegel@yahoogroups.com.
In all the debates over theism and evolution, with Dawkins promoting his challenges to the God Delusion, it is forgotten that shallow concepts of divinity, mostly parroted words based on the semantic confusions of the term ‘god’, invite and endless dialectic of skepticism and re-affirmation, while behind this stands a far larger tradition that predates monotheism as we know it.
This post makes a useful reference to the Eleatics and their intuitions of Being (as greater than existence), a ‘distinction between reality and existence’. In some formulations ‘god’ couldn’t ‘exist’ and still be ‘god’. These confusions make the ‘god’ debate endless and intractable as the terms of discussion confuse ‘being’ and ‘existence’.
This post makes a reference to the philosopher and commentator on Hegel, Stace, whose book on Hegel’s philosophy opens with a useful history of the Eleatics leading up to Hegel (who is generally taken as a theologian, but who has actually been accused also of being an ‘atheist’).
So the Dawkins gang is doomed to the ‘boomerang’ effect, and might consider the typical confusions of their atheism (a statement that is not theistic promotion on my part).
Stace’s ancient book (an out of print Dover paperback) from the twenties is online, scroll through the first few pages to the first chapter.
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fyi
Forwarded Message:
Subj: [hegel] Fw: Re: [intro_hegel] An essay on delusions
Date: 10/30/2006 7:49:57 PM Central Standard Time
From: robertfanelli@[]
Reply-to: hegel@yahoogroups.com
To: hegel@yahoogroups.com
Sent from the Internet (Details)———- Forwarded Message ———-
Dear Hegel Group,
My attachment did not work, apparently.
Below is the same response to Mike:
Darwin, “Origin of Species,”concluding chapter:
“It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many
plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various
insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp
earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so
different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so
complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us.
These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with
Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction;
Variability from the indirect and direct action of the conditions of
life and from use and disuse: a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead
to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection,
entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved
forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most
exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the
production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur
in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally
breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that,
whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of
gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and
most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.”R. Dawkins, “The God Delusion,” First Chapter:
“The boy lay prone in the grass, his chin resting on his hands. He
suddenly found himself overwhelmed by a heightened awareness of the
tangled stems and roots, a forest in microcosm, a transfigured world
of ants and beetles and even - though he wouldn’t have known the
details at the time - of soil bacteria by the billions, silently and
invisibly shoring up the economy of the micro-world. Suddenly the
micro-forest of the turf seemed to swell and become one with the
universe, and with the rapt mind of the boy contemplating it. He
interpreted the experience in religious terms and it led him
eventually to the priesthood. He was ordained an Anglican priest and
became a chaplain at my school, a teacher of whom I was fond. It is
thanks to decent liberal clergymen like him that nobody could ever
claim that I had religion forced down my throat.”Mike said:
“R. Dawkins’ “God Delusion” itself arises from the delusion mentioned
here. Vedic India gives us a description of an important concept
called “Maya” meaning “illusion” or “delusion,” which is especially
invoked in relation to the material conception of life. It is
described as having two distinct potencies, viz. a throwing and
covering energy. The “throwing” power, in modern psychological
terminology, may be likened to what is called projection, and
the “covering” potency refers to “delusion” or the acceptance of the
projection as something real, beyond and outside of oneself, while in
fact it is only the creation of one’s own imagination. Thus Dawkins,
while living within a self-created delusion, imagines what is
genuinely real to be delusional. In this way he multiplies delusions.Any rational philosophy or genuine philosophy of reality must be
idealistic, i.e. based on our actual experience of the necessary
priority of consciousness. In this way, materialism, or so-called
realism when defined in terms of materialism or atomism, is anything
but realistic.”And from W.T. Stace, “Hegel”:
“But if the Eleatic philosophy does not mean that the external world
does not exist, it does mean that the external world is not the true
being, is not real. Clearly, therefore, there is implied in this
philosophy a distinction between reality and existence. Whatever
exists, elephants, comets, multiplicity, motion, is mere appearance.
Only Being is real. But Being does not exist. For it is nowhere and
nowhen. And whatever exists must at least exist at some time, in not
at some place. And we may sum up these results in two propositions.
Firstly, existence is not real. Secondly, what is real does not
exist…”
I offer:For Parmenides and company and for Hegel, existence is actualized
only in so far as appearances are presented. Reality (the reality of
being) goes far beyond the ‘mere’ existential elements or properties
of things.The above quotes from Darwin and Dawkins describe the dynamics of
existence and deal obviously with appearances in the Hegelian sense,
but Mike’s reference to the ‘Maya’, ‘illusion’ and ‘delusion’ as
something ‘while in fact it is only the creation of one’s
imagination,’ is well beyond the truth of what is real and what
exists, in the sense of the Stace quote. I have only read the first
chapter of Dawkins’ book, and I shall assume that Mike has read it
all. I was not going to read the whole book, but now I must.
Mike and Hegel are talking about ‘what is real’ and Dawkins and
Darwin are talking about ‘what exists’ Evolution deals with living
things that exist or have existed. God or the ‘self contained
absolute,’ as the ‘knowing reality,’ in the Hegelian sense, deals
with what is real. ‘What is real’ and ‘what exists’; where shall the
twain meet?Regards,
Bob Fanelli