Filippo Liverziani
EXPERIENCE OF THE SACRED AND PHILOSOPHY
SUMMARY
PART I
The objections of yesterday and today's empiricism to the experience of the sacred
INTRODUCTION - In order to philosophically justify the objective validity of the experience of the sacred, one has to consider the classical objections that empiricism of all time has formulated against the objective validity of the experience of God. We will schematically reduce these objections to three in number and to two fundamental assumptions from which they originate, to then move onto the critical examination of the following five points.
CHAPTER I - The first fundamental assumption of all empiricism is that “real beings' only true knowledge is experience”. This assumption appears to be fully acceptable, provided, however, that the concept of experience is wide enough to include spiritual experiences.
CHAPTER II - Second assumption: “The only possible experience, which empiricism however considers separately, is that of 'phenomena' that are radically abstract from any other ultra-phenomenal reality”. The groundlessness of this assumption will be clarified during the chapter, where an attempt will be made to try and reconstruct the origin of this prejudice that has been so common in philosophy since the XVI century.
CHAPTER III - A critical examination of the first objection: “No 'experience of God' is possible, since such a being, granted that it exists, is beyond any phenomenon and any experience”.
CHAPTER IV - A critical examination of the second objection: “Any concept about God, that cannot be verified in principle, is meaningless (both empirically and factually): it affirms no fact, it says nothing about reality, and is therefore neither true nor false”.
CHAPTER V - A critical examination of the third objection: “Any 'experience' that wishes to be referred to 'God', in reality is strictly subjective, private and psychological: it is the subject's mere experience that he/she may have of his/her own idea, feeling or mood”.
PART II
Intellectualism and oblivion of the Being
INTRODUCTION - The metaphysical knowledge of the absolute is, originally, the religious experience: it is a form of live experience, of knowledge-contact. Philosophy has been induced to giving itself a conceptual structure from the need to verify its own results, it has transformed itself into knowledge-notion. The loss of all live contact with reality derives from the abuse of conceptualisation: what derives is the “oblivion of the Being” which is so characteristic of modern philosophy. In various trends of contemporary philosophy one can nevertheless notice a pronounced tendency to re-discover the Being, to re-establish a participative knowledge of the Being. The idea of participation is essential in order that thought may recover its original metaphysical-religious dimension.
CHAPTER I - Let us historically distinguish two fundamental types of knowledge, which can be, at best, thus defined:
1) a knowledge-contact of real beings: synthetic, sensitive, participative, existential, vital, emotional, concrete, dynamic, immediate, uncritical, subjective knowledge; which is always in some way imperfect and incorrect, only relatively adequate, in one word “analogical”; expressible in terms of a semantic discourse;
2) a knowledge-notion which, being considered apart from concrete reality, becomes, at best, knowledge of ideal beings: analytical, purely intellectual and coldly detached, abstract, static, mediate, objective, critically reflected; always perfectly adequate and correct; only expressible in terms of a rigorous apophantic discourse.
CHAPTER II - In the primitives and the ancient Orientals knowledge-contact prevails; which nevertheless, separately pursued, ends up by proving to be a form of uncritical knowledge, without any real objective value. The irremediable subjectivity of every knowledge-contact left alone to itself - and especially of every merely sensorial knowledge - has clearly been emphasised right from the beginnings of Greek philosophy.
CHAPTER III - The Greek philosophers were the first to feel the need for a rational and scientific knowledge, one which proves what it declares: this is how analysis originated, the knowledge-notion. Plato conceives the true knowledge, the one that can be had of ideas, essentially like knowledge-contact; but then, stimulated by the demand for a more demonstrative and scientific knowledge, he ends up by attributing increasingly greater value to analysis. Aristotle, the systematizer of logic, decisively contributes to the forming of philosophy as knowledge that aspires to being objective, rigorous, scientific. The principle of non contradiction, which Aristotle places at the foundation of logic, is however based in its turn on the assumption that not only the logical-mathematical entities, but the real beings themselves are definable with absolute accuracy, unchangeable, completely distinct from one another like A from Non A and without any relationship of reciprocal participation. This assumption, however convenient it may prove to be with the practical effect of allowing us to have rigorous reasoning and calculations, nevertheless risks giving us an abstract, arbitrary and deformed vision of the reality; it risks inhibiting us any penetrating intuition of the reality, any vital communion with the Being.
CHAPTER IV – Once it has been reduced from Cartesian rationalism to “a clear and distinct idea”, the consciousness - the only absolutely certain reality - is no longer conceived as a live, concrete, becoming consciousness in continual exchange with the external reality, but, on the contrary it appears to be something static, something absolutely distinct and different from the objective reality; it no longer appears a real consciousness, but rather a concept of the consciousness. Compared to a consciousness that has been conceived in this way which absolutises itself and makes itself different in an absolute manner from everything that it is not (like A from Non A), the objective reality cannot be anything other than radically extraneous, unobtainable, unknowable. As far as the phenomena are concerned, Descartes considers them as pure and simple phenomena of the consciousness. Later on, the English empiricists considered them as phenomena in themselves, like atoms of experience which are in a certain way substantialised, provided with an autonomous existence. In no case are the phenomena any longer considered as phenomena of being. What derives from the excessive conceptualisation of the consciousness and its phenomena is that “oblivion of the being”, which is so characteristic of modern philosophy.
CHAPTER V – If the “oblivion of the Being” is imputable to a prevalence of the knowledge-notion over the knowledge-contact, the big problem that one is faced with today is to go back to a renewed contact with the things themselves, to an unprejudiced vision of the phenomena which appear to the consciousness prior to any attempt of conceptualising them. A road in this direction was opened up by Husserl and Heidegger as was also done, in a different context, by Bergson. What resulted was the following: the repudiation of the idea of knowledge reduced to an abstract and static concept, one that is perfectly determined and concluded in itself; moving towards the idea of a live, concrete, becoming consciousness open to the Being; the resurfacing of the idea of a phenomenon as revelation of the Being, and, on the contrary, by deepening, as revelation of the absolute Being.
PART III
Ontology of the experience of the sacred
INTRODUCTION - Starting from the indisputable data of the existence of consciousness (Cartesian-Husserlian thought) we will try to philosophically justify:
1) the opening of the consciousness to a being that to some extent transcends it, and at the same time reveals itself to it (the following are involved: the concept of participation, the overcoming of phenomenalistic subjectivism, a return to the original concept of fainòmenon as the being itself's manifestation);
2) the experience of the sacred as not merely subjective but objective and real knowledge (even if filtered through the imperfection of a human subject and therefore only expressible in an inadequate and analogical manner).
CHAPTER I - Philosophy aspires to appointing itself as rigorous science: this of “founding” its own thought, this of verifying it on the basis of the evidence is an extremely ancient and at the same time increasingly new ideal; in a particular manner this ideal belongs to Husserl, and, even before him, to Descartes.
CHAPTER II - What exactly does this evidence, from which the demonstrative process for the foundation of a philosophy has to start, consist of? By making a deeper analysis of Cartesian thought, Husserl concludes that what is absolutely evident is only the consciousness with its pure phenomena (cogitata or Erlebnisse).
CHAPTER III - That the consciousness exists with its pure phenomena as such, is an irrefutable reality, it is an apodictic affirmation, one that is absolutely certain.
CHAPTER IV - Subjected to a phenomenological analysis, the consciousness does not appear to be shut up in itself, but open to a being, which partly transcends it and which is, at least partly, the cause and principle of explanation, as it enriches it with something at any moment. This judgement about matters of fact, which phenomenology puts us in the position of formulating, will only become a real and proper necessary judgement in a second moment: when philosophy manages to demonstrate the impossibility of the contrary.
CHAPTER V - If the consciousness is open to a being that in some way transcends it, there is a participation relationship between consciousness and being: the being participates in the consciousness, and the consciousness, although inadequately, is the being’s consciousness; furthermore, the knowledge it could have of it is participative knowledge. In this participative concept of knowledge any phenomenalism is overcome: the phenomenon is no longer a mere subjective appearance, it is the being’s revealing of itself to the man's consciousness.
CHAPTER VI - This participation of a being to the consciousness is testified by the conscious subject itself through its whole way of acting: in each one of its vital attitudes it essentially affirms what we could call a “semantic ontology of the action”.
CHAPTER VII - This participation of the being in the consciousness, which is testified by the subject in every form of its action, receives a particular testimony in its speculative activity: it is in the attitude itself of research that it essentially expresses what we could call a “semantic ontology of research”.
CHAPTER VIII - Analogous ontologies are essentially expressed in each one of the single moments through which the research is divided: affirmation, denial, objection, doubt, position of the problem, and so on; this could entitle us to speak about a semantic ontology of the affirmation”, or “of doubt”, and so on.
CHAPTER IX - The knowledge of a real being is always “sensitive” knowledge in the fullest meaning of the word. Furthermore, in every sensitive knowledge there is always an objective element of truth and a subjective element of appearance, of deformation, of error. Compared to the objective truth of the being, every sensitive knowledge is never either completely adequate or completely inadequate, it is never either absolutely “true” or absolutely “false”: it is always, in various measures, analogous: since it is always a synthesis, a common creature of the subject and the object.
CHAPTER X - All knowledge of real beings consists of “data” informed by a “meaning”: therefore, the progress of knowledge will not only consist of the acquisition of new data, but also the formulation of new meanings, ones that are better suited to interpreting, organising, joining the acquired data in a more satisfactory manner.
CHAPTER XI - Even before through an apophantic language of judgements, the subject defines the being in a semantic, vital, existential language, which consists of the attitude itself that he assumes when faced with the being. This semantic language can be translated into an apophantic language; that is to say, into a complex organisation of judgements, into a philosophical doctrine, which in order to really be as such, will have to be freed of any internal contradiction.
CHAPTER XII - The imposition of a meaning to a reality always happens, in a certain sense, a priori: it is only "by looking" at the reality in a certain way that we manage to "see it" in that way, to discover it in certain of its characteristics, which would otherwise escape our notice. This a priori synthesis which is the imposition of a meaning to the being, can also be defined, in the fullest sense of the word, as an act of faith.
CHAPTER XIII - In order that a philosophical doctrine proves to be "true", not only should it be formulated in a coherent way but it should also be verified: it is necessary to express those phenomena, which are the revealing itself of the being to the consciousness, through a complex organisation of statements of fact; in order to demonstrate that there is a close relationship of implication between those statements of fact of sciences and the value judgments of philosophy.
CHAPTER XIV - In order to express the phenomena as a whole in an organic complex of statements of fact, of scientific judgements, it is necessary to verify what the true judgements of experience are. At this point, one should notice that not all experiences are verifiable in an objective manner like those of physical and natural sciences: there are experiences of reality that are less material and tangible, and more spiritual and interior, which can only be subjectively verified, insofar as each one manages to relive them in one's own intimate soul: they are the experiences which distinctively form the object of human and historical sciences, of literary, artistic and music criticism, of the history of religions, and so on. These sciences can only be learned through inner experiences; and they can only be taught by he who, with a maieutic skill, knows how to promote certain inner experiences that are the same as his own, in his own interlocutor or pupil.