Transcendence

I've finally finished my B.Ph. Hooray!

This is a journey I started over five years ago - before I'd entered the Society, before I'd even considered entering the Society - when I started my Ph.B. at the Maryvale Institute, Birmingham. But now it's over. At this morning's oral comprehensive examination, I was asked to speak for four minutes on 'Transcendence', followed by a five-minute viva voce by each of the two examining professors. This, more or less, is what I said:

Arguing from a phenomenological perspective, Jewish philosopher Hans Jonas showed that all living beings demonstrate the propensity to transcend themselves. In plants and animals, this is manifested in the search for food, water, shelter, mates etc. In human beings, this is manifested in the search for an Ultimate Sacred Reality or God.

The notion of the Ultimate or God is a universal human concept, manifested in all cultures in all times. It can be seen as an archetype of the collective unconscious in the Jungian sense. To borrow a term from hermeneutics, this can be called the phase of our pre-understanding of God. Atheistic materialism is easily the exception in human society and history.

Continuing the hermeneutics analogy, pre-understanding becomes understanding in our reflection on God's existence and essence; i.e. natural theology. Normally called 'proofs' of God's existence, they nevertheless serve to consolidate existing belief in God's existence and serve to further our understanding of the nature of God. So, for instance, we have Thomas Aquinas's Third Way (Argument from Contingent Beings) which helps us understand God as the Necessary Being; the Nyayayika-s' Causal Proof helps us understand God as Creator (in the Indian sense). Reflection on the essence and existence of the Ultimate Being (which Aquinas considered identical) usually requires preliminary reflection on Being itself; hence metaphysics develops.

A quantum leap in understanding God occurs in the third phase of revelation: here I include both revelation in the traditional sense in the Abrahamic religions as well as special revelation in the form of mystical or yogic experiences. Natural theology becomes positive theology.

Since humans are social animals, this search for the Transcendent assumes a social dimension – religion. Religion is a complex of code, cult and creed. According to Max Weber, religion usually starts with a charismatic individual who is able to gather a following before evolving into a traditional patriarchal and finally a legal-rational institution. Religion unifies our deepest yearning for God with our desire to be with each other while simultaneously providing the community an identity and sense of purpose or mission.

Religious communities enable individuals to perform great acts of charity, produce great works of art and even philosophical treatises. Nevertheless, it is also true that religious communities also enable some individuals to commit acts of violence and terrorism. Institutional religious leadership can become corrupt and self-serving. Much opposition to God and religion have their direct or indirect roots in such corruption. Karl Marx, for instance, sees religion as a mechanism used by the bourgeoisie to perpetuate the oppression of the working classes (the working classes themselves use religion as an escape route from suffering).

It's not exactly Plato, but I think it did the trick.