From: Scott Roberts (jse885@cox.net)
Date: Fri Jul 15 2005 - 23:10:31 BST
Ham,
Ham quotes:
"[But] the indefinableness of God in a mystical sense comes in fact to be
indefiniteness; that is, it rules out any definite proposition about the
Divine essence. Any such proposition means a sort of limitation imposed on
the Divine, while the latter is incompatible with any limit. The
ontological *unlimitedness* of God entails for a mystic an epistemological
indefiniteness: any assertion about God would then be only metaphorical and
would not serve as an established basis of knowledge."
--Andrey Smirnov, Oriental Philosophy Dept,, Russia Academy of
Sciences
What Smirnov is saying is that we cannot assign any kind of attribute to
what is already Absolute, except its Unity or "Oneness". The metaphysical
paradox, then, becomes a logical challenge. What can we say about God in
order to incorporate it into a workable metaphysics?
Scott:
I would say that we also cannot attribute to it Unity or "Oneness". It is
not One, not Many, not One and Many, not neither One nor Many.
Ham said:
Cusa's solution was to construct a logical theory of "otherness".
"The first principle cannot be other either than an other or than nothing
and likewise is not opposed to anything"... "The world is not God but is not
anything other than God." God is "not other", he says, because God is not
other than any other, even though "not-other" and "other" seem opposed. But
an "other" is not opposed to God from whom it is derived. Thus, for any
given non-divine X, X is not other than X, and X is other than not X. What
is unique about the "divine not-other" is precisely that it is not other
than either X or not X.
Now that, gentlemen, is what I regard as a metaphysical breakthrough -- not
because it "proves the existence" of God or reveals some new aspect of the
Creator, but because it enables us to deal with a Primary Source in the same
(logical) way that we deal with existential (created) entities. The
definition "Not-other" confers on God the "self-sameness" required to
encompass all finite things into the undifferentiated Absolute One. I
submit that this is the ontological basis of Theism, Buddhism -- in fact,
all of the world's religions. IMO, it should also be the basis of any
valuistic philosophy.
Scott:
This is very close to the logic of contradictory identity, which I have been
tootling on about for a long time, but you have said you don't understand.
There are two changes I would make. One is to to replace the word "seem"
with "are": "not-other" and "other" *are* opposed, yet identical. The other
is to apply this logic to everyday consciousness, value, and intellect, and
not just to God. One might say that Cusa (and you) are giving a theist
version of the logic of contradictory identity, which is unnecessarily
restrictive. The way out is to see this not as a description of a Primary
Source, but as the source itself, that is, by contradictory identity are all
things made. The idea is not to "confer on God the "self-sameness" required
to encompass all finite things into the undifferentiated Absolute One", but
to treat the finite and differentiated on the one hand, and the infinite and
undifferentiated on the other, as together being the source by opposing each
other, while being identical to each other. Otherwise one privileges one
over the other.
- Scott
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