From: Scott Roberts (jse885@earthlink.net)
Date: Sun Nov 14 2004 - 01:23:52 GMT
DMB,
> THOU ART THAT, p47-8
> "...there are two ways of interpreting the word 'transcendent'. One
> signifies something that is out there and so transcends this place here.
In
> that sense, Yahweh is transcendent. Yahweh is, it might be said, a
> supernatual fact, up there. The other way of reading the word
'transcendent'
> is that of Kant in the CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON, as the ultimate mystery of
> being that transcends all conceptualization, beyond thought, beyond
> categories. That is the notion that is found in the Upanishads.
[Scott:] Not that it bears on the rest of what you say, but he's got Kant
wrong. For Kant, "a piece of knowledge is transcendental if it is a priori
and if by it we understand 'that and why certain presentations (perceptions
or concepts) are only a priori applied or possible.'" [S. Korner, "Kant",
p. 35]. For Kant, then, transcendental knowledge exists, and provides the
structure (the categories, e.g., space, time, causation) by which we know
the empirical. Hence it is non-empirical knowledge.
>
> dmb continues:
> In theology, the difference between the two meanings was debated in terms
of
> man's relationship with God. Should it be thought of in terms of
> RELATIONSHIP or in terms of INDENTITY? Eckhart, for exmaple, had a unitive
> mystical experience that compelled him to conclude that INDENTITY was the
> correct term, but, Pope John XXII censured it as false. This sort of thing
> happens over and over again in the West. Those who dare to identify
> themselves with God are generally considered heretics and some, like Jesus
> himself, were killed for saying so. The dominant view in the West is one
of
> RELATIONSHIP, its all about "I and Thou" rather than "Thou Art That". The
> position that God is to be found within has always existed as an
underground
> current in the West and the idea that man and nature are seperate from God
> has been the dominant view.
[Scott:] If it was underground, how could Athanasius, who practically
defined orthodoxy, say that "God became man so that man could become God".
If God was just "other", how could Augustine, one of the two most respected
theologians in Latin Christianity, say "God is closer to you than you are
to yourself"?
[DMB:] The religions of the West are religions of
> exile, of trying to get back to the garden, of trying to earn a place in
> paradise through a proper relationship with God, usually mediated through
a
> social institution and its functionaries.
[Scott:] As opposed to requiring a guru? As opposed to the Shin Buddhist
chanting "namu amida butsu" in order to be reincarnated in the Pure Land?
As opposed to the belief that if one is greedy in this life one will spend
time in the hereafter as a hungry ghost? There is good and bad, wisdom and
superstition, in all religions.
[DMB:] Its also no co-incidence that mysticism is rejected by BOTH
> traditional christianity AND scientific materialism.
[Scott:] This is simply false. Protestantism, to be sure, until recently,
was down on mysticism, but that was in conscious contrast to the approval
of mysticism among Catholics. Negative theology (in Orthodox Christianity
called mystical theology) had been accepted from the beginning. Look into
Bernard McGinn's four-volume (I'm not sure if the last has been published)
work called "The Presence of God", which is all about the history of
mysticism in Christianity. And, of course, in the other theistic religions
there was and is Sufism and Kabbalism. The latter's highest "concept" of
God is "Ayn Sof" -- identical to the completely undefinable "concept" one
finds in the East.
Mystics among theists may not always measure up to your and Pirsig's
standards of philosophical mysticism, but that just means that those
standards are too static.
- Scott
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