An Ethic of Trust: Mutual Autonomy and the Common Will to Live 197870870X, 9781978708709

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An Ethic of Trust

An Ethic of Trust Mutual Autonomy and the Common Will to Live

W. Royce Clark

LEXINGTON BOOKS/FORTRESS ACADEMIC

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books/Fortress Academic Lexington Books is an imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www​.rowman​.com 6 Tinworth Street, London SE11 5AL, United Kingdom Copyright © 2021 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Clark, W. Royce, author. Title: An ethic of trust : mutual autonomy and the common will to live / W. Royce Clark. Description: Lanham : Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “In An Ethic of Trust: Mutual Autonomy and the Common Will to Live, W. Royce Clark uses the work of theologians and philosophers Albert Schweitzer, Friedrich Nietzsche, and John Rawls to create an inclusive ethic in which both the religious and nonreligious will have equal freedom and stability”—Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2021021680 (print) | LCCN 2021021681 (ebook) | ISBN 9781978708709 (cloth) | ISBN 9781978708716 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Trust. | Ethics. | Schweitzer, Albert, 1875–1965. | Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844–1900. | Rawls, John, 1921–2002. Classification: LCC BJ1500.T78 C53 2021 (print) | LCC BJ1500.T78 (ebook) | DDC 170—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021021680 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021021681 ∞ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

For those with whom I learned firsthand the significance of mutual trust: my parents, my brother and sister, my wife and children

Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments

ix

Introduction1 1 For What Will You Vote?

17

2 Adjusting to the New Millennium in Search of a Common Ethic

61

3 The Relief of Recognizing Different Ethical Grounds or Sets

87

4 Ethics of the “End”: Myth/Mysticism, “Will-to-Live,” or Total Presence?

139

5 The Instinctual End or Purpose as Life-Process

199

6 The “Best (or ‘Worst’) of All Possible Worlds”? Perspectives or Attitude?

273

7 Theoretical Trust in Unity Despite Differences

317

8 Concluding Challenge: To Become Responsible in the Present

363

Bibliography and Table of Cases

395

Index405 About the Author

417

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I recall, when I first read Richard Rorty’s Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity,1 insisting that we do not “discover” truth that is “out there.” Rather, “truth” is within language. It serves as a tool whereby we can better understand what to expect of each other or how to respond to what we experience and describe. Language, as part of the world in which we live, is as relative and therefore utterly contingent as the rest of the world, including ourselves. So there is no point at which we finally “arrive” at the “final vocabulary” or having the “last word,” not in a continually changing world in which those speaking all have their own unique perspectives from obvious causes or factors but also from unrecognized sources or powers in their lives and ancestries. If pluralism, relativism, and contingency somewhat describe the human situation, then how do we talk meaningfully of our relations with others, whether as individuals or as members of institutions, groups, or even nations? And whose words do we find—though they may never have been intended to do so—as the most presently effective forms of tools for assisting us in describing our own perspective in relation to others’ perspectives? Each of us, after all, is only a small part of many larger parts, which are themselves only more comprehensive parts, or larger and larger “wholes” in which everything is continually in process. How do we know how to describe anything, or how to value things that we feel a need to speak about? Is it possible to try to redescribe oneself as the very one using the words, like Nietzsche did in his Ecce Homo, rather than simply looking for an object mentioned? If our world seems to be plagued with divisions, antagonisms, boundary disputes, power struggles, divorce, dissolution of treaties, lying, cheating, killing, incompetence, gross inequality, enslavement, abuse, ignorance, and indifference to others’ needs, is there any way it can be addressed from a neutral or nondivisive approach? If we know that we ourselves are within a ix

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process, and have no outside or “eternal” perspective of all possible contingent perspectives of it, is there any way we can discuss human relationships or “ethics” by which we could evaluate elements either as beneficial or detrimental to what we see as the common “will-to-live,” and therefore, in looking at our own situation or that of present history, be able to judge whether we are making any “progress” in our relationships? This is the kind of questioning that Rorty evoked as I read and re-read him, and at the last of that particular book, he expressed some optimism of being able to judge whether we are making any “moral” progress, which I understand as our own measurements of whether we are becoming more socially sensitive, that is, sensitive to the cry of the others in their “suffering.” Even if we become reticent about “judging” actions, in a social world that function cannot be abandoned, but circumscribed carefully when we turn the ethics into law with sanctions attached. But it does seem necessary, and we refer to that as “justice.” Since John Rawls, who supplies a formerly missing key to the “will-tolive” analysis, was concerned in his first two books with a constitutional democratic society, if we limit our view even to the United States as an example, we see “suffering” writ large on everyday news. It is not written in normal characters but an enlarged and italicized font. It is not mere normal deaths, normal chronic illnesses, normal inequities, normal homelessness, normal racial antagonism, or normal distrust. Crises change the meaning of “normal.” It is a very exacerbated suffering, spawned by accumulated homelessness among locals as well as refugees of war, gross economic inequities, rancid-divisive attitudes and overt racism, irrational domestic violence and hate crimes, thoughtless alienation of the nation’s allies by our administration, selfishly devised destruction of the structures and procedures of justice from within, and with a ruthless and out-of-control pandemic, all of which creates almost a total lack of trust if not suicidal depression mentally. The unresolved Covid-19 problem is simply the lethal capstone of the “suffering” within the nation, much of which was caused by human decisions or indecision, indifference, and incompetence, and a good portion of this traces back to attitudes our immigrant European ancestors brought with them four centuries ago. If “suffering” is as common as the “will-to-live,” the connection between the theoretical and real is established, as is the bridge from instinct and reasonable thought, as we will explain. But unnecessary suffering and cruelty should have no place in a civilization. Unfortunately, it continues because most of us do not give enough thought to the suffering of others, and it only becomes a real issue when it “hits home” or involves “us.” Rorty proposed that we learn to “re-describe” things and relationships in more workable and fitting terms, even to re-describe ourselves to a degree, as we also, in our expanding sensitivity to others, make our sense of “we” more inclusive, pulling many people we formerly included in our word “they” or

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“them” into our enlarging “we” or “us.” That social solidarity he posits as a worthy goal if not the most important goal we all have, even if it goes unarticulated most of the time. It is our recognition or identification of ourselves in the others, that is, our attitudes, words, and responses—whether in actual life or in novels or theater or other—that moves the ethical conversation out of the realm of philosophical or theological ethical theory into real life, connecting the private and public spheres by the common “suffering.” In the process of his argument, he provides many definitions, and one of these is that he defines the “ironist” as one who realizes the utter contingency of everything, and the “liberal” as one who is essentially against cruelty. Then, on one occasion, as he discusses various forms of cruelty, he notes that one of the most heinous forms of cruelty is making another person doubt themselves in the sense of doubting their own judgment and ability to make decisions. This involves an undermining of the “autonomy” of which I am so concerned, but it also involves a form of “gaslighting” in making people doubt their judgment of reality as they perceive it. I raise the latter in this Preface only because most authors who write believe they have something to say that needs to be said. So it is not talking just to hear oneself talk, or writing just to see one’s words in print. Does this mean the author always wants to change the reader? Hopefully not! One can write simply to entertain. Or one can write strictly to “objectively” inform. Or one can write with an awareness that one never really escapes one’s own limited subjectivity, which means to write without a well-defined or systematic structure of what one realistically hopes to do for the readers other than to get them to think about certain topics or issues. This last view seems to fit Nietzsche, who occupies a whole chapter in this book. It is crucial to see that Nietzsche used hyperbole, irony, sarcasm, and many other devices to jog people, to unsettle them from their usual thinking, to disturb them by painting very graphically many things that he considered negative in human thinking and behavior at the time. He belittles their ideals, their “sacred cows,” as he thrusts his sharp daggers of hyperbolic condemnation. Yet in his favorite book that he authored, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, he had Zarathustra telling his following that they had to find themselves, that he had his own way, and they must find their own way, because there is no “the way.” If that be true, even Nietzsche’s purpose in writing appears to be only “his way,” but not especially anyone else’s way, so he subtitled the book “For All and Nobody.” That may be a good approach. All of this is to say that I feel in authoring this and other books that this is my present assessment in my limited exposure to life. It is not the same way I saw life when I began as a college professor in 1961, nor even exactly as I saw it when I began this extensive writing project in the Winter of 2000 in London. And I still might very well change many of my views prior to my death, but the way old age often treats us is that we forget what we were thinking about

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or attempting to do or even who we are, so that option of change could be more real than we like, but simultaneously moot. In any case, I do not write this as a “final word” nor a comprehensive picture, nor as “the way” or objective or incontrovertible truth, but only some insights of others that have blended together because they have become meaningful to me in helping to make more sense of the world around me and my various relationships. I have finally realized that it is relationships, and specifically, relationships of trust, which provide meaning in my life, which is likely an insight most of my readers realized long ago. In so writing, I am not intending to dislodge any reader from his or her self-confidence in his or her judgments, not that form of cruelty Rorty delineated, since that not only would be presumptuous and cruel, but we are all where we are and what we are by many powers and influences that have been or are beyond our grasp. We are all here and now and our past cannot be changed, and most of it will never even be known by us. But if we are thrust together, we have to learn to trust each other. Therefore, I am only sharing, piecing together some selected theoretical views that on the surface may have seemed contradictory to some readers. They have assisted me in trying to ascertain whether there is any possibility of having an ethic that can accommodate a diversity or plurality of perspectives within actual life but still form enough sense of unity to perhaps assist in addressing some of the most obvious problems in human relations. That’s it. It may be that everything I write is only a description of what the reader already has done and presently how he or she views things, and I suspect that will be true for many readers. If all I can do is give a few more possible reasons that might help justify the possible ethical approach I am suggesting, by which many already live, it will still be time I consider well spent. I do not want my statements to be taken as any judgments against any persons, but more as questions which I hope the reader will ask eventually, easily surpassing where I leave off here. As I approach the themes of honesty or trust and trustworthiness, equality, mutual autonomy, the social contract, and basic principles which can be discovered as an “overlapping consensus” if citizens spend enough time addressing them in public and private, I acknowledge my own imperfections, lack of sufficient understandings, and utter failure in living an exemplary ethical life. But I have been fortunate to have a family, and many friends and colleagues, who have even unknowingly influenced and corrected my views and orientation, and these wonderful influences have enriched my life terrifically, and are so numerous that I cannot begin to list them. My thanks to all with whom I have conversed about such matters, all of the seminars and professional groups over the years, and the many brilliant graduate students I have enjoyed, who raised many questions to probe, even when I was not quite sure what direction it might be leading. I am totally

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indebted to the great thinkers of those I utilize in this, especially Albert Schweitzer, Friedrich Nietzsche, and John Rawls, but also to the many others I mention in the text or notes. I must express my positive impression of a very recent book by ethicist and patristic scholar Professor David K. Goodin, on Schweitzer,2 which I have enjoyed reading, but became aware of a bit too late for incorporating into my material. I do not think our views differ much nor actually overlap much, in our mutual appreciation of Schweitzer’s life and work, including Schweitzer’s intellectual brilliance through his entire life, his consistency in his love for life, his genius in music, his appreciation of those who are different which he experienced even early in his life—all combined with an inner sense of helping others, whatever he had to sacrifice to do so, a dedication for which he will long be remembered. Once again, my primary supporters, the loves of my life‒‒my wife, Dessie, daughter, Elaine, and son, Michael, and his wife, Joy‒‒have provided me with continual encouragement, as have my three grandsons, Jesse Frank, Mason, and Zac, our many friends, former colleagues, and even unknown readers. A special thanks especially to all the encouragement from my editor and Pauline scholar, Dr. Neil Elliott, and his assistant editor, Gayla Freeman, and then when the pandemic hit, Holly Buchanan, who, in addition to her own editorial work, temporarily filled in for Neil and Gayla. Also, my repeated thanks to Nicole Carty, production editor, to Julie E. Kirsch, vice president of publishing at Lexington Books, to Monica Sukumar, project manager at Deanta, and for the fine artists work on the covers of the books by Lexington’s staff. Finally, I express my sincere appreciation to patient and understanding anonymous reviewers of my manuscripts which, I have nearly always discovered, are still full of mistakes. I appreciate their suggestions to clarify, delete, and thereby improve the book. I wish to express gratitude to the following authors’ publishers for giving permission to reprint short quotations from these works: Friedrich Nietzsche, “Beyond Good and Evil,” and “Ecce Homo” from Basic Writings of Nietzsche, translated by Walter Kaufmann, translation copyright © 1967 by Walter Kaufmann. Copyright renewed 1994 by Mrs. Hazel Kaufmann. Used by permission of Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. Friedrich Nietzsche, “Thus Spoke Zarathustra,” and “Twilight of the Idols” from Nietzsche, edited and translated by Walter Kaufmann, translation copyright 1954, © 1968, renewed © 1982 by Penguin Random House LLC. Used by permission of Viking Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. Albert Schweitzer, Philosophy of Civilization, Copyright © 1987; used by permission of Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group. All rights reserved.

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NOTES 1. Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Univ. of Cambridge, 1989). 2. David, K. Goodin, An Agnostic in the Fellowship of Christ: The Ethical Mysticism of Albert Schweitzer (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2019).

Introduction

THE PROBLEM Rorty’s insights which I mentioned in the Preface serve as a point of orientation for this project. He moved philosophically as well as between disciplines during his lifetime, but conceived himself as an “ironist” or one who realizes the contingency of everything. He lived to witness the dawn of the twentyfirst century,1 as a “new millennium.” That moment for many was a milestone, accompanied by both positive and negative anticipations. If its first decades have initiated what we so commonly now call “terrorism,” it also witnessed the rise of authoritarian leaders around the world, including in the world’s oldest and largest democracies, the United States and India, respectively. Citizens of the world became more familiar with extremes in economics, weather, and religions on a worldwide scale, but also of the vulnerability of individuals no matter where they live. Added to this was the proliferation of radically nonobjective accounts of events and portrayals of people by those seeking attention or power, new incentives to conspiratorial activity, and violations of protocols, norms, and even common courtesy and decency. Oligarchies became the ruling classes in many countries, and distrust between even nations’ own citizens grew to record heights. While some still spoke of norms, of the customary ethics underlying the political and economic structures, the very words were often only a façade by which people in positions of power could exercise that power over others, violating social contracts and their trust, and punishing scapegoats—as these victimizers pretended to be the ones who were victimized by what they called the “mob.” The falseness of appearance and equivocity of political terms, when “law and order” means the rule of law of only one or two men in their lawlessness, has become so opaque, almost 1

2

Introduction

so ubiquitous in many countries as to be quaint, that it has stimulated an even deeper cynicism, almost a recapturing of the mentality of Germany in the late 1930s, a general distrust that eats away at people in various nations throughout our world. The era of removing walls between people was short-lived and is definitely over. Now many leaders thrive off speaking of unity or equality or “helping” the “middle class,” while creating division and reinforcing what have become virtually unascendable economic, racial, sexual, and even physical barricades, rebuilding these on outdated ethics and the power of privilege. Partisan politics has turned into extreme partisan divisions in which little or no political business get passed, and some legislators take comfort in that stasis since they think that is the best way to avoid being criticized. Have we become a people of thin-skinned neurotics who cannot be challenged by anyone else’s thinking? Autonomy as the Enlightenment defined it was not that kind of close-mindedness in which one had to be certain that he or she was always right about everything and beyond challenge. When the Founders formulated in the First Amendment the freedoms of speech, press, assembly, and religion, they were neither naïve nor hypocrites, but people who felt that diversity is healthy and must be maintained as a part of a democratic society or constitutional republic. One minor disagreement, or even a dozen, should not be able to overpower a unity of a marriage, or dissolve a business, or stagnate a legislature, not if there was ever a sense of real unity there, such as E Pluribus Unum. We know that all human relations depend on trust. We also know that if a certain trust can be thought of as instinctual in the newborn, it is also a capacity that all conscious animals further develop by their experience of causation, which they simply learn from repetition without explanation. Distrust can also be experienced in one’s consciousness on many different levels, from the simple fact of not getting fed when one expects, or getting punished by one’s parents without knowing why, or getting arrested or even killed by police for no real cause except the color of one’s skin, to more complex events of political leaders being evasive, distracting, or blatantly untruthful. Nothing dissolves trust faster than lies for those able to use language, or reneging on the contract to which one had agreed, or hiding one’s unlawful practices while expecting others to be completely transparent. No one would agree to such a government. So where do we analyze trust in detail? Probably the same place we analyze ethics in detail. Not in political institutions, not in schools, and very little in either religious institutions or in the home. Trust is often almost the hidden ingredient that all of us operate from, just as our relation with the other actual person seems to be the hidden or at least an unrecognized primary stimulus and criteria of ethics. Yet all of us know how disappointing it can be to have

Introduction

3

our trust broken or shattered by another person’s willfulness or even carelessness. So why is trust not at the center of all ethical discussion? Could it be because the predominant ethic of Western cultures has been some form of utilitarianism since the late eighteenth century, and the apparent simplicity of its categories of “pleasure” and “pain” and “majority” was easily adapted to both the egalitarian spirit of the Enlightenment as well as the new developments in capitalistic economic structures? Of course, if it made the “good” easier to calculate mathematically, it also was easily distorted, especially if one could simply change or omit a few figures, as various groups have done in reporting their Covid-19 infections and deaths. Who is to determine the precise size of the group that satisfies the criteria to be utilitarianism’s “greatest number” which could qualify an action or policy as “good” while those not within the group would not be so benefited? Who would draw up such a point when there was a good chance that he or she would thereby belong to the group not benefitting? Tax legislation that favors only a small select minority of people or corporations could be presented as being for the “middle class” or the “greatest number” even if it was not. It might be that to offer help to those in need would be considered a “disincentive” and therefore actually a “pain,” so should not be allowed. The possible distortions of the ethic seem infinite, and a nation can measure its success by the GDP or the status of the stock market, as if economic pain were the only pain that counts. With manipulation of the utilitarian criteria, trust dilutes and often dissolves completely, leaving behind only resentment. Despite the different elements of intensity, longevity, and so on in weighing the pains and pleasures in a utilitarian ethic, how was it really possible to ignore the difference in subjectivities, as if all humans are exactly alike? Uniqueness and real difference was ignored as a hypothetical single voice determined the specifics of the criteria. That was the basic criticism of utilitarianism by Friedrich Nietzsche, Albert Schweitzer, and John Rawls, among many others. Their voices have become more relevant than ever. They can provide a map for improving things. There seems to be a growing awareness of the inability we as humans seem to show to honor the uniqueness of every person, to get beyond treating others as enemies or just unimportant entities—things or them—as if being homeless is one’s choice, and he or she deserves no longer to be viewed as an equal human with equal rights, and perhaps only an object or thing. We have had great ethicists during the past two centuries who have provided us with new thoughts about how to reconcile the oppositions within the human community. One such ethicist was Reinhold Niebuhr, who wrote Moral Man and Immoral Society.2 He drew our attention to the fact that belonging to groups can cause people to become less moral, sometimes consciously but often subconsciously by peer pressure. In a capitalist society, the utilitarian ethic was an obvious fit with its calculating of tangible

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Introduction

“goods,” allowing exploitation, as we have already noted. For this reason, Niebuhr stated that if we have to choose between peace and justice, then the choice should be for continual revolution since an unjust peace is worth nothing. That offended many even if it was obviously true. Perhaps it was only the word “revolution” that offended, not the realization that we must continually reform, revise, overhaul, and re-examine our values underlying our laws? The ethics of equality could thereby be transformed into a measurement of the GDP or the bottom line of the corporation, with equality eclipsed by “efficiency.”3 The ethics of trust could be mutated into justification for continual arms buildup as we experienced in the “Cold War.”4 The individual’s ethic that would prevent a person from killing another human could experience a metamorphosis into a racist killing with a badge. These latter were not specific examples given by Niebuhr, but in addition to his examples of the first half of the twentieth century, he also documented the many “subterfuges” used by people to justify their utilization of their advantages to manipulate and exploit others. The others were allegedly not industrious enough, or not moral enough, or not intelligent enough—to be entrusted with the fortunes these “leaders” have. Those subterfuges remain a terrible problem around the world today,5 as political leaders often warn the general populace today of the danger of “disincentives” such as providing “unemployment” compensation, which was exactly the British response to the Great Irish famine.6 Does government exist to tax the people but not use any of it for the people? Innumerable destructive, exclusive nationalisms, corporate greed, and individual selfishness if not indifference toward others stand as enemies to any genuine concern to possibly finding an ethic that would form a human unity or grand community. What we are finally realizing is that privilege often disables people from willing anything other than the status quo. Could it be that individuals allow themselves to be changed by the associations to which they belong, as Niebuhr described, and end up buying into a system of justifying the group’s feeling of superiority and its unethical treatment of others by the callous subterfuges and expected discriminating application of laws which are supposed to be applied equally? Of course. But individuals also shape the various associations to which they belong, and the most powerful or privileged naturally have the most influence on those associations or groups, which includes even influencing legislatures to retain their privilege, as Rawls noted. He asserted the wealthy are more apt to be able to set the political agenda, the specific issues for public discussion, and so forth, which gives them power to basically eclipse the “one person, one vote” ideal.7 He predicted this would continue until private contributions to political campaigns are entirely replaced by only government’s funds, equalizing things, and giving the voices back to the general populace.8

Introduction

5

Some recent unethical actions in the world would have been unthinkable ten years ago. For example, how could any people bomb hospitals or schools, even in a country torn by division, when they knew there were children at the site? How could a federal administration be so inhumane to children of refugees, fleeing for their lives, as to separate them from their parents at the U.S. border in 2017–2019 (and continuing into the present despite the practice’s alleged discontinuance) with the administration having no explicit, detailed plan to reunite them? How could a white police officer intentionally suffocate a black man in a public street, with the man begging for his life, and the people crying out to quit suffocating him? Yet even in the most extreme conservative religious sects, racism is allegedly approved by their peculiar interpretation of their sacred scriptures, whether in the United States or in India (in the name of caste system).9 Professing Christians were on both sides of the slavery issue that provoked the terrible Civil War, which was a racial problem, not simply a question of how one obtains cheap labor to work one’s cotton farm. Our present world is racked with refugee problems across the globe, which is again another form of racism or ethnic superiority which many justify by their religious heritage. The responses to build walls or create laws prohibiting entry to the country by any one of a certain ethnic group or certain religious group transform what used to be U.S. “golden door” to a solid wall of dung. Fortunately there have been some exceptions such as Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, who kept her nation’s borders open, taking in more than a million refugees in 2015, yet she was belittled by some for her compassion and generosity. THESIS, SOURCES, AND SCOPE FOR AN ETHIC OF TRUST My thesis in this study is that what is required to be ethical in a private relationship such as a marriage is not substantially different from what is required for the relation of citizens to a state or nation, namely, that it must be based upon an honest mutual trust and mutual autonomy of equals, grounded upon their common will-to-live, providing unity incorporating diversity but stability, freedom, and agreed limitations. Rawls’s “veil of ignorance” requires it. He needs to be read. If the Parliament of the World’s Religions’ attempt to help us find a “global ethic” with its “global responsibilities” was correct that ethics itself does not simply flow out of any particular “rule of law,” it also does not come down from some other world. I cannot contribute some distilled consensus of the varied positions represented in the Parliament of the World’s Religions, but only of a few basic issues where they generally agree. But these were specialists. Could their product actually, even in such

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Introduction

a truncated form, be acceptable to all religious lay people so they would no longer view different religions as in error, hopeless, or enemies? It is that residue, often unrecognized, of absoluteness or incommensurability of an “answer” to human problems, which is so pervasive and divisive in religions. As the Dalai Lama said, the world needs ethical people, good people, but the ethics that will unite people cannot come from any religion, because then the argument over “which” religion would be unending.10 One only needs to view the hostilities of various religious people in different countries today toward even the suggestion of any other religion trying to change laws by their different ethics, or different ethics based on their own different claims of metaphysics or myths, to realize the Dalai Lama is right. I do hope to add to the discussion of what that Parliament of religions recognized as the “need for criteria,” even if we recognize the pervasive contingency of everything we know. What must be questioned, however, is the explicit presuppositions the Parliament stated that although religions cannot be expected to provide a consensus either on an underlying anthropology or an underlying metaphysics, they can nevertheless shed the best light on the discussion of criteria or “human” rights, or that “human” rights are somehow separated from “political” rights and are more within the domain of the nonpolitical religions, and that provides and justifies the necessity of any declaration of human rights having an explicitly stated “religious foundation.”11 Such are mere presuppositions that do not attain the status of being a criterion or justification of the base from which the group appeared to work just by appealing to some power above or beyond or far in the past. Most of those traditional, ancient religions have no room within them either for “equality” or “autonomy.” There is no encouragement even to “think outside the box.” On the other hand, Albert Schweitzer and Friedrich Nietzsche, although raised as Christians, each with a pastor for a father, became aware of the religion’s restricting and exclusive and therefore unjustified absolutism. They were also very cognizant of the problems of utilitarianism. Each, in his own unique situation, proposed a quite different answer to the ethical or moral need, but both answers were built on the conviction that the specific element or capacity of valuing or morality was universal or instinctual, which meant it could transcend many of the problems of utilitarianism. But it did not thereby become the Absolute Ground to ethics, nor did any formulation presuppose that it was not contingent. Nor was it impossible to detect or invisible as most religion’s Absolute, but rather quite empirically obvious to any observant person. To Nietzsche, the key was the “will-to-power” which means one’s will to express oneself, to “discharge one’s strength.” Nietzsche saw this as not only a way to move beyond utilitarianism but especially the ethics of ressentiment, which he associated especially with the ethics of the Christian religion after

Introduction

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it was made redemptive and other-worldly by the Apostle Paul. He analyzed the ethics of ressentiment as having their origins only in human weakness, degeneracy, inability, lack of self-respect, even hatred of others. Whether his analysis was factual, his recommendation of engaging in a “revaluation of values” was and remains relevant in any age. For Schweitzer, the answer was the universal “will-to-live” which is within every living creature, not just humans. As a Christian, he discovered that the ethics of the historical Jesus were steeped in eschatology, making him an enigma to our time if one tried to take his ethics literally. On the other hand, if one saw the eschatology detaching oneself from the cares of the world, one could find a more positive approach to life and even ethics. This he found reinforced by St. Paul’s mystical union with Christ which was supposed to be the common Christian experience. But its residue of the eschatological elements, even if mysticized to a degree, still was limited to Christians. Only in his later reflections on life as a result of his work in Africa, did he find a more inclusive mysticism, open to all, through the recognition of the common “will-to-live.” Within humans, it involves an ecstatic experience or basically non-reflective awareness, an instinctual awareness, of a more basic and elementary consciousness of one’s own “will-to-live” as well as perception of others’ “will-to-live,” so is not dependent upon reflection, calculation, or certain knowledge, nor even of any religion. Of course, one could still be a Christian, but to become involved in the more inclusive mystical or instinctual awareness gave one a broader perspective on all humans and their lives. This was a move not simply beyond the literalness of an imminent eschatology but beyond all limited perspectives, which could therefore serve as a universal ethic, for both personal as well as government structures. We will explain each of these in detail in the following chapters. In both Schweitzer and Nietzsche, the instinctual or nonconceptual willto-power or will-to-live needed to be formed and explored reasonably, and extended to all of life. They both were aware that morality is often identified with empathy or compassion, a willing self-sacrifice or voluntary relinquishing of one’s standard of living and assumed “rights” in order to assist others. But neither agreed to this self-sacrifice as being instinctual since it seemed to undermine or contradict their theory of this specific instinct of the “will-tolive” or “will-to-power” being the primary if not the only significant power of the human. Walter Kaufmann called Nietzsche’s problem one of a possible monism. Yet for Nietzsche, as Kaufmann admitted, such instinctual drive could be more a dialectical monism, satisfied with “sublimation” without contradicting that the drive was instinctual. There may be a further way of answering this, however, if we understand that the motivation of ethics comes from an actual relation, a real presence of a real “other,” which from either one’s “survival-instinct” or from some form of identification with the

8

Introduction

needs of the other also possessing the “will-to-live,” one realizes a necessity of a mutual agreement which will make peaceful co-existence possible and beneficial. Neither one, however, spoke in such explicit terms of a mutual agreement among people. But John Rawls’s more recent system of “a theory of justice” does build on a voluntary social contract or agreement, and this easily combines with the grounding of the “will-to-power” and “will-to-live” of Nietzsche and Schweitzer by Rawls working out a fair process that would work even if everyone still had only a “disinterest” in others, that is, no empathy that overrides one’s will-to-live. He too opposed utilitarianism, and he also came from a Christian background but eventually, as both Nietzsche and Schweitzer, saw a more inclusive ethic necessary for all social life or at least its structures of justice. He adapted Kant’s emphasis of mutual autonomy which ends up requiring a liberal democracy which can form a unity while still allowing uniqueness and real diversity. Basically, Rawls’s system requires agreement between humans, and the agreement itself becomes the criteria by which to judge further agreements or conflicts, an agreement that will not allow one to exercise one’s accidental advantages over others, and an agreement about basic principles that neither expects some unreasonable uniformity nor some feeling that it must find something supranatural, eternal, or Absolute to give it authority. Can the agreement Rawls posited as necessary and natural to a liberal democracy really work to avoid providing advantages irrationally? We must devote a chapter to each of these brilliant approaches to the problem. In the analyses I engage in, I am not attempting to persuade people to be either religious or non-religious, nor does Rawls. The chapters in which I analyze the recent evolution of theism (chapter 3) and the problems with the “lack” which is presupposed by religions (chapter 6) are provided simply to show that even within the Christian religion, the most basic elements are not settled, and one could easily embrace a process of arriving at a “political” concept of the ethical and justice by articulating “freestanding” ethical principles, without having to settle all the continuing complex theological or metaphysical problems one’s religion raises, and without religions having to compete with each other to dictate to the government its absolute ethics and thereby become divisive, endangering the unity of the nation. Is that too much to hope for? As I mentioned, Nietzsche, Schweitzer, and Rawls were all raised in Christian homes, but over time realized that its ethic was too temporally spatially constricted, too exclusive, just as it was built upon the religion’s metaphysics which were not accepted by anyone outside the religious communion. That same realization must be widespread among people of all religions in a pluralistic culture, since as long as the ethic underlying the nation’s laws is

Introduction

9

left vague or, worse yet, assumed to be the ethic of any religion, we would be whistling in the dark to suggest that a pluralistic legislature per se will simply resolve everything without even discussing ethical underlying issues. If the U.S. Constitution professed to establish a theocracy, requiring all people to belong to the Christian religion, parallel to a nation such as Iran and its Islamic base, then it might be that such an ethic would be seen as universal within that domain. But it is unlikely that all the non-religious or people affiliated with many non-Christian religions would be willing participants in such a structure. And to coerce a theocracy on a diverse or pluralistic population or citizenry is dehumanizing. Iran is a good example of a nation that professes a theocracy but, because there actually is more diversity than it is willing to admit, it ends up being only an authoritarian government, forcing religious conformity on its citizens. Such an aspirational theocracy is even more dehumanizing than the extreme authoritarianism that is present in most religious institutions or hierarchies even in different political environments such as within a democracy. But even the latter is dehumanizing and must not be minimized. That is, even in a democracy, the religious institutions’ heteronomy or general discouragement for lay people to question their faith tends to stifle autonomy, and in so doing not only dehumanizes by telling people not to think on their own, but it also performs a sort of lobotomy when the people relinquish their autonomy,12 creating an impossibility of their actually being moral people since to be such means doing something because one has elected to do so by one’s own choice. A government needs all citizens to be moral but also valued equally so it can have laws that all will voluntarily choose to honor, not from resentment but willingly, not blindly but because they can understand the universal ethical principles by which all citizens have agreed to live—as a stable basis for a nation’s civil contract and universal peaceful co-existence. Fortunately, the “Founding Fathers” such as James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, Baptist preacher Isaac Backus, and many others saw the problems and separated religion from the U.S. government from the very start of the new nation. That did not mean the structure of government was unethical, but simply that it did not depend upon being linked to any particular religion, yet would allow people to be free to believe what they wanted and worship as they saw fit, provided they complied with the basic general and neutral laws of the nation. So the different ethics were not totally different nor were they identical, very much as a set of tools for one’s kitchen and another set for working on one’s car or lawnmower are not the same, but not totally different either. They simply are tailored to different situations and scope, and therefore to different comportments their user has to assume. This does not make him or her a hypocrite but simply reasonable since the tools are specifically appropriate to their specific fields. But one does not expect to hear a person

10

Introduction

saying that all the tools for the kitchen should simply be the tools kept in the garage for working on the car. This will become clearer as we note how Rawls distinguishes between “public reason” which is required to govern a nation and “non-public reason” which is unique only to certain associations. (Again, here it is two or more sets or types of reason, with different purposes and even some very different people.) This duality can be useful not simply of tools but of many things, including sets of clothes or even language, since language itself serves largely as a tool for enabling others to be able to expect how we might act. And that takes us to the element, once again, of trust in human relations. Finally, because of limitations of sheer space, combined with the concern not to confuse the issues, I have limited the references or analyses to religion primarily to Christianity, assuming that at least there would be some parallels in other religions and the relation of their metaphysics to their ethics. But even though the World Parliament of Religions and the Dalai Lama, as well as Nietzsche and Schweitzer all are concerned with ethics in the broadest possible sense, which should work on a global scale, because Rawls’s “theory of justice” and “political liberalism” (and especially the latter) are geared to a society which has exactly the ethical elements we are proposing—trust, equality, mutual autonomy, freedom, or liberty—which are not found in certain kinds of authoritarian governments, he therefore limited his analysis in his first two books to a well-ordered democratic society. Even though he later published a separate work which was an application of his principles globally, in A Law of Peoples, I have also restricted my scope finally in this study to the United States as such a democratic society. Further, because I am of the conviction that the principles of mutual trust and equality, mutual autonomy, and the maximum equal freedom for all are required actually in all humans relations from the most intimate such as a marriage, to the largest nation conceivable, I simply consider the autocracies, fascism, and other forms of authoritarianism to be dehumanizing by their elimination of an equal voice and autonomy for all, which defeats the whole concept of ethics. In the following analyses, we will explore (1) how religious professionals have recently tried to develop a “global” ethic; (2) how, if one is a Christian, one could view a possible “freestanding” ethic as freeing one from feeling that he or she must first resolve all the metaphysical complexities of a dissolving theism in Christian theology; (3) the basic moral insights of both Schweitzer and Nietzsche as built on a basic affirmation of life-instinct; (4) the central presupposition of human “lack” vs. potentiality as it affects the conception of both a religion and its ethics, with the element of “trust” in the reality of being human coming to the fore; and (5) the necessity of human agreements with each other as the common relational and motivational element of ethics as well as social structures including institutions of justice,

Introduction

11

which again points to mutual trust in the real others rather than a metaphysical conception of either ethics or justice. I believe this approach does not give preference to religious authorities or specific metaphysics or to grand “comprehensive” ethical schemas nor to nonreligious comprehensive schemas nor to societal or political chaos. But it also does not show a preference for those ethics and subsequent laws that are spawned to protect the “happenstance” values or vested interests of just a certain small segment of humanity such as the billionaires or large corporations, or even the narrow interests of any particular majority. The danger of “majoritarianism” was, in fact, one of James Madison’s primary concerns, and why he emphasized the preservation of representation of real diversity from all over the nation.13 Similarly, we will see how Rawls agreed, pointing out that although the Constitution is built upon the conception of the majority, that minimum requirement can easily become destructive of minority rights so must itself be limited in various ways such as the requirement of a supermajority or other devices. My purpose here is to utilize familiar sources, not esoteric ones, to pay attention to dominant trends and shapes, and to represent theories that are pertinent in the narrow way we are forming the question rather than covering everything they wrote or all the different interpretations people have given to such famous authors as Schweitzer, Nietzsche, Feuerbach, Freud, Rawls, Rorty, and others. I continue to be astounded at the depth and breadth of many of these scholars, some of whom worked under the most severe personal circumstances imaginable to give us their insights. Hopefully, my representation of them will be balanced and fair, and relevant to the pursuit of a possible ground for a (more) universal ethic than we have been able heretofore to attain. There are likely many other ways of approaching the problem, many other quite scholarly works that could be included or even different primary discussion points. I have selected these because of the fruitfulness that I saw in them to get to the heart of the issues. To make the analysis possible, I cannot examine every religion nor every ethical system which is non-religious, nor every type of government or nation. So I am using these scholars, most of whom were not American, to address ethics especially in a democratic society, so will be referring to the United States, and to Christianity as the most common religion in the world and in the United States—from which those belonging to other religions or none at all as well as those living in other countries and/or non-democratic societies might be able to make some comparison or find something useful in assessing their own situations in a very diverse world. I firmly believe the ethics of an honest trusting mutual autonomy based on the common will to live and basic freestanding principles applies to all human relationships, even in societies whose sovereignty is not

12

Introduction

based on democratic principles, but in this study will limit it to a democratic society. I suffer from no grand visions of solving some worldwide problem, or of having the final word, but only adding a slightly different approach within a continuous process, which may be offering some alternative considerations or perhaps only bringing to consciousness how most people already seem to think and act with each other. Whatever the magnitude of certain human problems, they all come down to individual relations and individual decisions to be responsible to others in both private and political forms. Most of us have had our moments in which we were quite responsible, but also occasions when we shirked that responsibility or became indifferent, selfish or unethical. I remain of the persuasion that if we do not live in the “best of all possible worlds,” it is still remarkably fantastic, and any improvement of it will come primarily in the area of human relations to other humans, other forms of life, or to the Earth and universe—which means it will naturally have to come from humans themselves. SOME BASIC DEFINITIONS To help delimit and delineate the analyses, let me define a few words that will be used throughout. By “religion,” I refer to the absolutizing of anything— whether events, persons, historical-mythical events, forces, laws, or other that are considered off-limits to question. In its most formal sense, a religious group’s identity derives from its claims about that which is Absolute, which elicits from the group a form of worship or veneration which includes rituals, symbols, and the like, and articulates an ethic binding on the community of believers which is based upon the absolutized scriptures, and shapes norms or codes of behavior. “Religion” can often be seen as an “ideology,” and is positive if “ideology” means only a point or method of orientation. But like “ideology,” “religion” can often connote a negative as easily as it can a positive, can be as destructive as well as constructive, so as Whitehead said, “religion” is ambiguous, even though its point of building character was judged as central by Whitehead. On the other hand, William James saw people being “religious” to seek “more life,” even though he felt what they seek could be satisfied with powers less than deity. Whether “religion” is an instinctual “feeling” of absolute dependence or unity with the Whole, as Schleiermacher thought, or is simply learned from one’s culture, probably cannot be resolved, but notably even Schleiermacher was still describing only human capacities, not some objective divine being. When I use the term “ethics,” I point to any system of judgments or group of rules or norms of morality, articulated or merely presupposed,

Introduction

13

with “morality” being any voluntarily intended form of relating to another in its subjectivity, whether another person, animal, or other living specimen. There can be moral codes just as there can be ethical codes, since the words in common usage seem almost synonymous, though usually the system of ethics is considered to be more abstract in its attempt to give integrity, cohesion, and relevance to the moral ideas and specific moral actions. Although we know that much of the content of “ethics” is learned from our culture, Kant was convinced that one cannot actually pinpoint the cause of this categorical imperative or sense of duty that is universal, though he later insisted that one therefore had to postulate “God” as the summum bonum of the ethical Ideal. While a sense of responsibility seems essential for any social contract or any civilized organization, I think this does not by itself necessitate the named specific source of moral concern when it could come just by encountering another human and realizing that in order to live, we need to arrive at some agreement of how we will relate to each other. I also disagree with Kant’s assumption that a moral example must incorporate the Ideal; rather, I believe “examples” have to be connected to reality, so can be “imperfect,” whereas the “Ideal” is always imaginatively ahead of culture and present reflection, always beyond our present grasp of reality. I also assume “civil and criminal law” to involve judgments of moral behavior, distinguishing behaviors as under the jurisdiction of law when the behavior is serious enough to need a formal approval or disapproval, actual incentives or punishments, to enforce it.14 “Autonomy” is literally being one’s own law, or deciding on one’s own, “self’s law.” It is neither capriciousness nor selfishness but conveys a sense of responsibility in the best sense. “Mutual autonomy” is the only way “autonomy” is experienced without coercing one side, an agreement for each to make their own decisions as much as possible. But the mutuality within a social context necessarily implies limits to the freedom of decision in order for it to be “mutual.” “Trust” must also be mutual, as “trust” indicates that one can count on something or someone being or doing what is expected. It may first be experienced only as an instinct, not as a reflective calculation, as the baby trusts its mother to feed it, or the pet cat trusts also to be fed. Very soon, children begin to learn who they can trust and who they cannot, or they learn what kinds of indications, expectations, or promises from the other can be trusted. They learn from experience who is trustworthy, and that becomes a vital valuing tool in life. Most animals do the same, even if their calculations are less sophisticated rationally. With humans, “trust” often carries the same meaning as “faith” or “faithfulness” except (1) trust is not usually associated with some non-empirical world, and (2) is usually not blind. In some religions, “faith” is simply in the invisible which is admitted

14

Introduction

or even posited as the test for real “faith,” or is even opposed to reason or calculation, as Tertullian thought, which makes it “blind,” very unlike normal “trust.”15 By “freestanding ethical principles” I indicate a principle’s validity not by its being stated in previous history by some outstanding thinker or as coming from “God” but as receiving its validity for the group only by present voluntary agreement of these equal people who will be affected by its observance or violation. When I refer to a “political” conception of justice, I am using Rawls’s distinction, which has nothing to do with formal political parties but only with the input from citizens, based on their reasonable evaluation of principles in a fair and cooperating dialog, which means it operates with “freestanding principles” of “public reason” rather than metaphysical ideas or absolutes from association which operated with “non-public reason.” Finally, by “common will-to-live” I am not denying that there can be more important things one may value for which one might, in certain circumstances, be willing to sacrifice one’s life. But even Nietzsche’s protest that his “will to power” was more important than “will to live” was an oversimplification of his own meaning of “will to power,” since he felt it had to include a prolife position rather than an anti-life stance which he saw in so much phony religious morality. I do not confine “will-to-live” as being nothing more than physical existence, for example, one’s being kept alive on life-support systems, nor even in full-blown Alzheimer’s disease, in which one no longer has any reasoning power, memory, or independence, so is totally helpless. That is not “life” as anyone would will it. “Life” has both quantity but also certain qualities for it to be something desired. Contrary to Kant, I would say that one’s will to live is not one’s willing merely to discharge one’s “duty” to self or others but one’s actual instinct, inclination and desire for, in Nietzsche’s words, a “will to power” in the sense of a “discharge of one’s strength” in the interest of self-preservation and a certain quality of life that is meaningful and pleasurable—but must be mutual with others, since without others, it could be neither meaningful nor pleasurable nor even self-preservation. All of these terms will become clearer as we analyze these great thinkers in the chapters to follow.

NOTES 1. He died in 2007 after a very distinguished scholarly career, as a genuine “humanist” even if he would not be comfortable with one defining “human” since everything is contingent. He was a prolific writer, and I have utilized primarily his insights in what I consider his most brilliant work that supplies both question and answer to my present inquiry, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989).

Introduction

15

2. Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1960). 3. Arthur M. Okun, Equality and Efficiency: The Big Tradeoff (Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1975). 4. The slogan of “Trust but Verify!” is really basically distrust with only a suspicious agreement. 5. On Great Britain’s attitude toward the Irish in a famine, not to help them since that would kill their incentive, see John Kelly, The Graves are Walking: The Great Famine and the Saga of the Irish People (New York: Henry Holt, 2012). 6. See note 5 above. 7. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1971), p. 225. 8. He insisted that the private contributions financing parties and elections mean that “the political forum is so constrained by the wishes of the dominant interests that the basic measures needed to establish just constitutional rule are seldom properly presented.” Ibid., p. 226. 9. Despite the single reference of unity or equality in Galatians 3:28, which is only a spiritual equality, not physical or economic, some white Christians thought that either Ham or Canaan was the beginning of the “black” race, punished by God, promised to be slaves for one of Noah’s other sons, Shem. That is all a later Christian fictionalizing of a later Jewish legend edited in the sixth century BCE of an alleged incident of the ancient past, to provide validation of Israel’s conquest of the land and inhabitants of Canaan long before, in the thirteenth century BCE. 10. His Holiness The Dalai Lama, Ethics for the New Millennium (New York: Riverhead Books, 1999), p. 26. 11. Hans Küng and Helmut Schmidt, A Global Ethic and Global Responsibilities: Two Declarations (London: SCM Press, 1998), pp. 148–52; 55–58. 12. That was the point of Ivan Karamazov’s sketch of the situation of the church and the believers in “The Grand Inquisitor” section of The Brothers Karamazov. The church relieved them of their moral decisions, thereby relieving their guilt by relieving them from any responsibility other than their obligation to follow the instructions of the church. The Grand Inquisitor indicted Jesus for not realizing that people cannot really handle “freedom.” Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (New York: Penguin books, 1991), pp. 283–304. 13. James Madison, The Federalist, X and LI, in James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay, The Federalist Papers, ed. Isaac Krammnick (New York: Penguin Books, 1987), pp. 122–28 and 318–22. 14. Not all ethical issues find their way into formal civil law, but all civil law is based on ethical grounds even when they are not articulated. This has been one of the many profound themes of the late Prof. of Jurisprudence at New York University Ronald Dworkin, for example, illustrated with specific cases in his Freedom’s Law: The Moral Reading of the American Constitution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996). His 2011 lectures at the University of Bern were published in very brief form, which he had planned to amplify, but death cut it short, and these are relevant to Rawls’s separation of the “political” conception of justice from a

16

Introduction

“metaphysical” conception of justice, as he distinguished a place in society for a “religion without God.” See Dworkin, Religion without God (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013). I am suggesting this connection of ethics to law exists whether we speak of criminal law’s prohibition of double jeopardy, exemption from having to testify against oneself, the “exclusionary rule,” or all the typical crimes of theft, kidnapping, and so forth. Both criminal and civil law protect humans in their relationships with each other, whether it is protecting their bodies, minds, reputations, personal or real property, conditions of one’s work environment, as well as one’s living environment such as one’s air and water supplies, and so forth. Esoteric sorts of laws such as “adverse possession” or the “Rule Against Perpetuities” try to prevent people from possessing more than they can use or from keeping it in the family for an indefinite future. Even apparent areas of law such as Labor Law include regulations of work conditions and safety under OSHA, the right to form unions, and on and on. Since the U.S. Constitution did not form a theocracy, many of the principles behind its laws have never been articulated much. The danger comes only when people want their religion and its ethics to trump or dictate to the law even when they know that many people do not accept their religion. Some of the “suspect” categories our system hypothetically provides special protection to, such as sex and race, remain unresolved because of earlier discrimination which even had a religious base. But a religion may be used by twisted interpretations to support almost anything a group wants, whether it is capitalism, communism, tolerance of enemies or the command to kill the “infidels,” male superiority or equality of the sexes, and so forth. 15. Unfortunately, St. Paul divided Judaism and Christianity over the very word in Habakkuk 2:4, where it was not speaking about that which is incredible, but simply meant that the person who is “faithful” to the Torah will be “righteous” and therefore “live.”

Chapter 1

For What Will You Vote?

ONE VOICE AND ONE’S VOTE The slogan on some U.S. currency reads E Pluribus Unum. The real question is how diverse people can all have equal rights to their own unique perspectives and voices yet somehow arrive at unity as a nation with one voice. Imagine for a moment that you are a U.S. citizen (or a citizen in any democratic society) and on the ballot for the next national election, the first question was the following: Please circle the letter designating the ethical foundation on which you desire for the laws and governance of this country to be built: A. The religion of Islam B. The religion of Buddhism C. The religion of Judaism D. The religion of Christianity E. Other religion (specify) ____________________________ F. No religion at all G. Other ethical foundation (spec​ify) ​_____​_____​_____​_____​_____​__​___ H. No ethical foundation at all. Suppose that after this initial question, then the ballot had the names of the candidates for President of the United States, all Senators, all Representatives of the House as well as all the particular candidates for your state and local governmental offices. Beside each name, all of these candidates were identified by their race or ethnic identities, gender or sexual preference, and religion if any. The radical diversity of the population of the nation was thereby noticeable in the many different responses to each of these categories. 17

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Chapter 1

Would it bother you if running for the office of President or Senator or Representative required such declarations of one’s personal identity in order to qualify to run for the office? Fortunately, it does not. The Constitution even forbids any religious tests when running for “any Office or public Trust under the United States” (Constitution, Article VI [3]). Yes, that was just a prohibition of a religious test, not of a racial or sexual identity test. It is important for one to wrestle with that prohibition in the Constitution, and even more crucial to understand the several reasons why that was put in the Constitution. If it prohibited the religious test, why did it not also prohibit racial and sexual identity tests? Could one reason be because slightly more than two centuries ago, only white male landowners could vote, so if no one else could vote, why should those others have been thought to be possible “office holders” in the government? Not only could women not vote, but in the determination of the number of “representatives” each state would receive in the House, the total number of Persons in the state was crucial, but people “imported” counted only as “three fifths” of a “Person,” and Indians not taxed were simply excluded from the count. Amendment XV (1870) finally allowed all men to vote, that is, they could not be denied on account of their “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” But a Civil War had to be fought at the cost of up to 750,000 deaths to attain those three Civil War Amendments.1 Even then, the men still had to be landowners. And no women could vote, not for another fifty years! Finally, Amendment XIX (1920) gave women that right, requiring nearly a century of activism by women leaders and groups both state-wide and nationally, involving demonstrations, hunger strikes, and even forced feedings for some who were jailed. In that sense, the introduction to the nation’s Declaration of Independence would have to be taken quite literally, “All men are created equal . . .” but even that was not accurate since it was originally only white men who were landowners. In recent decades, these categories’ subject areas have become protected legally, as “suspect” categories, logically to protect people from that former widespread, insidious legal discrimination. But in nearly two and a half centuries since the Constitution was ratified, although things have hypothetically changed, practically, the changes have been insignificant, as if some citizens would still prefer that old discrimination of the eighteenth century. Does this imply that when voting was limited only to white men, the nation achieved a greater sense of unity since the voters were more uniform? Not at all. Yet much partisan politics today seems to express the philosophy that diversity itself is bad, that the nation would do much better if it could delete so many different opinions or judgments. Some national business leaders as far back as the 1960s even expressed doubts that “one vote, one person” is really of any value, expressing their

For What Will You Vote?

19

belief that too many citizens simply do not realize that “businesses” are the primary guarantor of our democracy.2 Not our sense of unity, our basic ethical principles, and our diversity we preserve by this, but our businesses? Those who feel that way have attempted to delete some of the diverse voices by even anti-democratic tactics, creating even more forms of a voter “suppression” by the blatant gerrymandering,3 by deleting voter’s names from the rolls, by rejecting signatures because of slight differences in handwriting, by changing polling places even at the last minute and making it less convenient for certain people to vote, by slowing down the U.S. Mail service to increase uncertainty in mail-in-ballots, by encouraging self-appointed “militia” men to stand outside polling places, or by trying to impugn the reliability of voting by mail, thus attempting to coerce people to join long eight to ten hour lines of voters, possibly exposing themselves not only to exhaustion but to the deadly Covid-19. In contrast, John Rawls insisted that the most vital political right all citizens in our democracy have is that of voting.4 So what is the ethic that underlies such laws and even the inhumane treatment of trying to eliminate the diverse voices of all citizens? What is the ethic behind even the unequal application of many “neutral” or non-discriminating laws? Do all citizens fear diversity, or do nearly all citizens actually view diversity in a positive way and welcome it? Our fundamental question in this study is whether it is possible for all citizens to have their own uniqueness and voice, yet out of the diversity of perspectives, a nation is able to be created and sustained in stability with a sense of unity which can accommodate this diversity? It required gargantuan effort from determined Founding Fathers in the latter part of the eighteenth century to put together such a Constitution which could foster a sense of national unity which could allow freedom of diversity. Even those leaders had to continually remind themselves that they had to fight a terrible war to obtain such a freedom themselves, a freedom which was quite precarious, a totally new experiment in the history of the West, a starting from scratch, a breaking with Christendom which their ancestors had fled, by which many had been persecuted and marginalized religiously and economically for their different perspectives. THE DIVISIVE DESIRE FOR AN IMPOSSIBLE THEOCRACY Aside from the basic question of the equality of all citizens, that question of the ethics that ground all the nation’s laws remains almost ignored. The primary times we hear anything about the ethics of law is when a single issue or question of one specific law has been raised. Seldom if ever do we discuss the relation of ethics to the whole law in general. Does this mean every citizen

20

Chapter 1

assumes that this is a Christian nation, a restoration of “Christendom” after all, a theocracy—from which their forefathers went to so much trouble to escape, just different mainly by certain church doctrines? Do most citizens assume that the ethic undergirding our civil and criminal laws is based on Christianity and it alone, that the Christian “God” establishes and enforces those civil laws of the country which are all His?5 That was expressed even by two recent Justices of the Supreme Court less than two decades ago, that Christianity is the universal, generic religion with a “unitary” but generic “God,” which everyone basically knows, the only true “God” that founds true government, in contrast to other religions and countries which worship many gods.6 But that flies in the face of the First Amendment and even of reality itself. Approached from another direction, is there a possibility that the entire population of the United States will soon embrace some form of the religion of Islam so use it for the ethical ground of the legal system? Or some type of Buddhism? Or some order of Judaism? Or a specific configuration of Jainism? Or some species of Hinduism? Would most citizens be open to the suggestions to any of these as the ground for U.S. law and legal structures? If one opposes even the possibility of such a prospect, what specifically is wrong with those ethics of those other religions that would disqualify them from being the ethical base for U.S. law? Or, is there a probability that the entire world population will soon abandon all religious connections and embrace simply a common agreement on ethics and civil law? If that is unlikely, if we all agreed to basic “freestanding” principles which would serve as the ground for the law, could the unity of our agreement then allow us to differ on other things we believe or value, including even religion, so long as we live in accordance with those basic agreed principles? We shall return to this later, since this is the unique system of Rawls’s “theory of justice” which creates a strong sense of unity while preserving basic freedoms including religious freedom. But it requires a “political” conception of justice rather than some more narrow and divisive “metaphysical” conception of justice. It will not work otherwise, as the Framers of the Constitution knew. People do recognize a need to get along with others in families, neighborhoods, cities, counties, states, nations, and even internationally. But the problem is that the further one proceeds along that list, the more remote are the relationships as well as the chances of any extensive ethical grounding for an agreement over law. In fact, the more remote the human relationships, the greater the likelihood that power, money, and armaments will be used to buttress the uniquely specific aspects of each culture’s religion and ethics which underlie their laws. But these are no substitutes for genuine mutual trust and an “overlapping consensus” of ethical principles, and never have been, certainly not conflict and war.

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Of course, most religions can add the claims of longevity and absoluteness if not divine authority to one’s position on any issue, making it quite invincible but also terribly divisive by nulling the voices of others. Many families have problems, but because of their sense of unity, their responses are usually more restrained, respectful, and less violent than national and international conflicts. This suggests that the more remote the contacts, the greater the presumed differences, the more difficult any agreement will be, especially if, as I just suggested, the ground of the ethics is thought of as being one nation’s most prominent religion versus the others. Any semblance of even a vague “theocracy” presents insurmountable problems for any other religious faith. Potential violence waits in the wings, especially where actual religious pluralism exists but a very large segment of the population thinks it has a theocracy or equivalent. The twenty-first century, faced with massive refugee immigration as well as instant communication worldwide, is experiencing a moving and swelling cultural and religious pluralism that is becoming a much more prominent element within larger general cultures or nations. But some nations or national leaders are quite opposed to the refugees, especially to the degree that they might be ethnically and religiously different from the citizens of the country in which they are seeking asylum. Buddhists persecute and expel Muslims, Muslims terrorize and assassinate Christians, Christian fundamentalists want to “restore” a Christian nation (the United States) by their limited definition of the term “Christian,” and Hindu fundamentalists want to “restore” a Hindu nation (India) by their circumscribing of the term “Hindu.” In turn, from country to country, ethnic-majority-religious groups ironically play the role of the persecuted victims, attempting to eliminate minority populations either legally or otherwise. So Hindus complain of not being able to be real Hindus, of India’s laws favoring the other religions; similarly, many Christians complain of not being able to be a real Christian in the United States any more, since the laws favor all the other religions or the secularists or atheists. Those regarded as “different” are often driven out of their space by the majority or the more powerful, or they are forbidden entrance to the space since they are too “different.” This is called “majoritarianism” in the worst sense. In more democratic nations, these racial, ethnic, sexual and economic minorities, the real victims, are summoning strength to speak out, to be “open” about their differences and their exploitation, to expect to be valued citizens without having to assimilate completely into the larger majoritarian mentality. They do not want a “bestowed” equality, since that is no real equality, but something only given by those convinced they themselves are superior. Equality cannot be “given” or “bestowed.” People either see all other living creatures as having the same “will-to-live,” and all other humans

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as inherently equal, or they do not. Those who do not are those who have not yet learned the first lesson required for humanization and civilization. Those who are discriminated against are extremely courageous when they speak out or protest in marches with signs since they are so greatly disadvantaged by the majoritarian or authoritarian culture of a government which takes a posture equivalent to a theocracy. But many others who are also disenfranchised, justifiably fearing reprisal because they are so vulnerable, choose to remain in the shadows, to not attract attention to their difference for fear of some form of hatred, or even overt persecution and death. Such fear is unfortunately real and justified. On the larger global scene, smaller nations’ particular cultures and values are continually vulnerable in a similar way to the influence, indirect coercion and unlimited power of the larger, more potently armed nations. Could they be blamed for fearing the larger economies and infinitely lethal armaments others stockpile? Even so, racial, sexual, ethnic, and economic aspects of one’s identity are not usually absolutized as are people’s religious identities, even though many people live as if they were the most important interest they have. But nearly all religions claim to know the Absolute, and that trumps any competing claim, well, unless the other has his or her own Absolute. Then you have a “standoff” or what Rawls called a choice of “either mortal conflict moderated only by circumstance and exhaustion, or equal liberty of conscience and freedom of thought.”7 While one’s being connected with the Absolute via one’s religion is comforting, one’s awareness that other religions provide their devotees with a competing Absolute, and this awareness generates the most fear of the “different.” Many religious and non-religious people express their adamant unwillingness to consent to living under civil and criminal laws which are shaped by any ethic tied to a religion they neither espouse, respect, nor understand. That rejection itself is not new. Many wars in history were fought over that very issue. What is new is the proximity the “different” ones have when they live next door or occupy seats on the same city council or serve as federal legislators. One then has a choice of befriending or not, recognizing the “other” as having the same rights one treasures or not. We need to hear Martin Buber’s “relational words,” that is, words we use which by the very usage create relationships—either of “I-You” or “I-It,” that is, we help create a relation either with another human being or merely treat the other as an object.8 Philosopher Richard Rorty emphasized that the world needs “social solidarity” or stability which can come only by our achieving a greater degree of sensitivity to the “other’s” cry or need, a sensitivity that will enlarge my scope of who I include in my use of “we” and diminish the scope of who I include in simply speaking of “them” or “they.”9 To speak and treat most people as “It” or “They” is to treat them as objects, not living subjects, and is a form of denial we engage

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in which is more sinister and detrimental than the psychological denial of having to die, which Martin Heidegger saw in the way we speak of death as something “they,” the “others,” do.10 Diversity, in any case, is here to stay. The question is whether we are able to adapt to it or try to isolate ourselves, our families, our nation, from people who are so different from us? Unless all forms of globalization and interdependence among nations are eliminated which would require an endless legal unwinding of the many, huge, multinational corporations which is impossible without demolishing the world economics‒‒and every group completely isolates itself, which is not possible‒‒the world population has to assume that there will continue to be more diversity and much more mixing of cultures, not less. People of the world need to figure out how to compromise, how to agree to accept difference, how to respect and be able to interact constructively with each other rather than fearing the different others “taking one’s place.” A normal existential realization of one’s finitude carries with it an awareness that one will eventually relinquish one’s time and space, but that does not justify night marches in which the protestors menacingly chant “Jews will not replace us!”11 This is the response of paranoia and hatred, not simply a realization of finitude. As long as religions or even pseudo-religious groups insist on their unique ethics as being based on absolute supranatural authority, including a quite dated and very narrow metaphysical or mythical schema, they cannot supply an ethic for a united but diverse world population. No religion can do that since all other people outside that specific religion would rightly object. If theocracies are therefore also not possible except in the smallest, most remote and backward pockets of the Earth, then people simply have to find a way to tolerate and appreciate difference rather than deny or fight it by demonizing people who look or think somewhat differently. The solution is to separate religion from the “freestanding” ethics that underlie the social contract and its laws so religion and government could do their own thing without interference from the other. That means that if, as a Christian, I think it is unethical to kill another human being, I can (1) assert that ethical judgment’s validity depends upon its prohibition coming from Jesus (or God), or (2) I can see that as being unethical even without Jesus having to say it is, which means I could treat it as a “freestanding” principal to discuss with others to try to gain a consensus, or (3) I can belong to a group which contains many non-Christians, but all of whom agree to live by that “freestanding” principle, and I can be a Christian who believes that Jesus spoke the truth in prohibiting murder while also being a citizen which sees the prohibition valid even if Jesus never said so. One could be both a citizen and a Christian under either #2 or #3. If I hold to option #1, however, I will create a barrier between myself and anyone who is not also

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a Christian, persuaded of the same about Jesus prohibiting murder. That was the very thing the Constitution’s Founders sought to preclude, what Jefferson and Madison had in mind with those two religion clauses of the First Amendment.12 If religious institutions or groups of religious individuals attempt to dictate public or legal policy, that absolutized stance creates chaos, resentment, and would likely destroy the new nation. The separation of government from religion was admittedly a huge break with the tradition of Christendom which had existed for the 1,400 years prior; it was part of a totally new and “lively experiment,” attempted by a nation of immigrants who fled from their ancestors’ history of rampant religious wars and persecution of dissident religions even in “peacetime.” This separation, of course, requires that individual members of a religion as well as the formal religious institutions must (1) find a way to endorse an ethic for government that stands on public reason rather than from some religion’s metaphysics and myth or even a “non-public reason”; (2) refrain from viewing any of those detached ethics as authoritative only because of their possible former metaphysical or mythical grounding; and (3) be able to view the authority of any workable government’s basic ethical principles as limited only to the amount of agreement to the principles reached by all other presently living interested parties. Anything else is simply coercion or religious propaganda. This was what the Founding Fathers accomplished even if they did not articulate it precisely in this way. But it is also Rawls’s approach. It makes sense even if he had not articulated it; its validity lies in the argument itself and whether present citizens agree to it. It might be countered that if the only authority which the ethic underlying civil law has is actually only derived from its acceptance by or from the agreement by living subjects, then it is strictly relative or in a state of flux and cannot be counted on in the long haul. However, even in countries that honor generations-old Constitutions, the real authority always lies in the present interpretation and present application even of the old formulations, whether by the legislature or Supreme Court, both of which are influenced by the present common citizens and public reason. In the best scenario the Constitutions even make provision for possible amendments. At the same time, there is no question but what each person should be able to count on a certain basic stability of general ethical and legal principles for his or her lifetime, as Rawls suggests, but reasonable agreement through foundational legal structures and responsible citizens who continually rethink their values and laws can and actually make that possible. That is sufficient stability to avoid the chaos that some people unjustifiably fear from the relative nature of living, communicating, and negotiating. The process of reevaluating and revising is really never ended unless the body dies, whether it is a human body or a governmental structure. Citizens of a democratic

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republic such as the United States, which has guaranteed freedom of speech, press, religion, and peaceable assembly to “petition the Government for a redress of grievances” (Amendment I, 1791), should not have to fear expressing themselves from some exaggerated image of total relativism leading to violent chaos and dissolution. If religions could make such a separation of their ethics from metaphysics, then all religious people could exist without fear of persecution or legal barriers as could all non-religious people. The religious could finally abandon their despising “atheists,” and those who believe in no personal “God” could also quit poking fun of the religious fundamentalists. In this mutual disowning of the “other,” neither group shows any awareness of where religious thought presently stands, as we shall see in a later chapter. With such a “separation,” the religious would still be free to “worship” as they see fit within a structure of neutral, universal civil, and criminal laws, and could continue to assist the needy and disenfranchised in their geographical areas. In fact, their believers could even go an “extra mile” in being more scrupulously ethical and more generous and compassionate toward those in need than required by the more common or universal ethical principles that form the public consensus for the base for the general laws. The basic freestanding principles simply guarantee this freedom of conscience, and any limitations occur only if people’s actions threaten to undermine others’ similar liberty.13 But neither the religious nor the non-religious would expect special standing in the law, a favored position, or advantages over others which exempts them from obeying the neutral or universally applicable laws of the country. For example, a religious communion might be able to appreciate how a general law prohibiting drunkenness could be justified and function without any mythical or metaphysical Absolutes, that is, as completely “freestanding,”14 while the religious group itself held its members to a stricter ethic prohibiting any consumption of alcohol strictly on metaphysical grounds. But they would not think they have a right to argue their idiosyncratic or particular, more stringent ethic be compelled of others outside their religious communion on the basis of some alleged metaphysical or divine authority it has. We will see in a later chapter that this is the central argument of Rawls. In most nations, those belonging to the majority religion can certainly understand how inappropriate it would be for minority religions to force their standards on others, but fail to recognize when they do the very same. Then they claim they are just protecting religious freedom (even if it is only of those belonging to the majority religion), as the Court recently ruled in a Montana case in favor of Christians who insisted on receiving public taxes in the form of credits for their children to attend a religious school.15 If it really was to protect the “free exercise” of religion, anything can count as “free exercise” as the ruling of the Court in this and the earlier Hobby Lobby case

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suggest, and the real question is whether the Court would have ruled that way if the parents had been Muslim seeking tax credits for their children to attend a Muslim school?16 Our voluntary common agreement based on freestanding ethical principles may provide one with the right to vote, but that does not mean one is required legally to vote and can be punished for not voting. It may give one the right to have a “living will” to direct doctors to take one off artificial life-support systems when one has a fatal disease or is in a comatose state from which there is no chance of reviving, but that does not mean that everyone is legally required to possess his or her own “living will” and to so direct doctors. One can elect entirely to leave the decisions totally in the doctors’ hands. If present law gives one the right to use various forms of birth control methods to prevent pregnancy, that does not require everyone to do so; it remains a right each person may choose to exercise or not exercise. The same is true of the present laws on abortion. The right to abort within certain restrictions specified in federal law does not require anyone to have an abortion; everyone still has, under the civil and criminal law, the option to decide on her own, but cannot expect her own opinion based on any metaphysical arguments she can use to be sufficient to change the law, to require the same of everyone else. This would amount to a utilization of her freedom to deny the same freedom for others. Rawls’s first principle of equal maximum liberty for all is something all would agree to, but no one would agree to a law which allowed others to violate one’s freedom just because of the others’ opinion. The question of when one become a person to be protected by the state is not an easy question, and it is certainly not answered by reading the modern issue back thousands of years into the sacred texts which were not discussing that issue at all. It is like hunting ancient texts to validate the scientific estimate that our universe is around 15 billion years old, or to validate DNA, or, reversing the logic, it is like trying to ascertain whether “God” wants us to use modern weapons such as bows and arrows, rather than just rocks and clubs, to kill His enemies, or does “God” have enemies and want them killed? The millennia between the origins of religions and their ethics and the present shows its impenetrable thick hide that does not permit penetration or an effortless moving back and forth as if one were in an elevator. As I have pointed out elsewhere, the different opinions people have about many ethical questions come from the different grounds upon which their ethics are situated, including the absolutized temporally and spatially unique metaphysics or myths, which can suffice in some people’s minds for the lack of the text having any explicit connection to the current issue. The “absolute” can be thought to shield anything one presently thinks, as that is read back into a text which says nothing about it. That is, people use the absoluteness

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of something they claim even if it is absent from their sacred text or tradition, so the claiming of the absolute is a subjective position which may have no corresponding objective reality. But that is often overlooked in people’s enthusiasm to apply their religion and its ethics to a problem about which they feel keenly. So the utter subjectivity of religion’s metaphysical claims also disqualifies the religious person from using them in pushing an ethic for the social contract that is built on those claims. They will be unconvincing if they are unable to use “public reason.” This does not stop the person from arguing any possible issue from “public reason” or utilizing completely “freestanding” ethical principles. But to argue otherwise, with some special reason or alleged divine revelation that is superior to all human reason would defeat the voluntary or non-coercive expectation of a social contract between equals. The ethics must be “freestanding” in order to have any chance of being acceptable to other people who have different religious beliefs or none at all. I simply cannot assume that everyone else in the world or even nation is obligated to join my religion so we can agree on our ethical foundation for law.17 Of course, if one pushes the expression “freestanding” too far, it becomes self-defeating, since everything has causal agents in its past; but all “freestanding” means is that the principles can gain their validity from present reasonable discussion and agreement rather than merely from something thought in the past to be ultimately and timelessly authoritative, whether a single person such as a parent, or “God,” or an institution. We hear much chatter today about a “culture war” going on in the United States or even in various other countries. On a deeper level, many distinctions are reinforced by people appealing to their religion which transforms mere differences into hostilities and even into a religious war, a war based on people’s Absolutes. It is not just “cultures” which are contingent and short-lived that are fighting each other, but it is their abstract Absolutes which the people consider as eternal, infinite, and unchallengeable—the absolute truth—though underlying their stance on all kinds of cultural-ethical issues. While nations have often used religion as a powerful tool to justify by subtle nuance their opposition to other nations, the inherent danger of its stance as the Absolute has often been recognized, even resented by others who belonged to the same religion. For example, many Muslims resented ISIS for appropriating the religion’s Absolute, because they see it as only one of many sects or because it dangerously misrepresents what others think of that Absolute, using it as a cloak for evil. The time has certainly come when our proximity to each other will no longer allow us to be ignorant of others’ beliefs or values, which includes their religion and ethics, a time when we must agree to reach some common or “overlapping” principles or consensus

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by freeing vital ethical principles from otherwise absolutized religions and their mythical pictures.18 “If not now, when?” This book is written for two groups of people who both share the same concern: that citizens of our nation and world need to agree on an ethical standard by which all would willingly live. The first group is that of people who profess some specific religious affiliation or equivalent who may always have thought their religious ethics, based on the Divine or Absolute, would suffice for universal ethics and civil laws. The second group is that of people who are secular, not religious, and have always thought their particular ideas on ethics, based on reason and experience, were fair and neutral enough to serve as a ground for a universal ethic and civil laws. These two groups include most people on earth since very few have no concern whatever about how humans relate to each other. That is, we nearly all think we know what the “good” is, in fact, have no doubt about it, and are convinced that the world would be a better place if all people would do the “good” as we understand it. This is to be expected since autonomy is a vital part of becoming a reflecting human. Mutual autonomy is a vital part of becoming a social human. Reasonable discussions are a vital part of arriving at an agreement of what it is to be an ethically social human. The following study will hopefully offer possible suggestions or clues about avenues which are available for beginning a conscious effort to think more inclusively. I am convinced that humanity really has no choice in the matter, if humanity is to survive. Some of the ground this analysis will cover may be very familiar involving things the reader already consciously or subconsciously knows, while some of it may be relatively new or a bit strange. My choice of direction and sources to use is simply my choice, and since all human perspectives are limited, therefore unique, any reader may easily think of other sources I should cover or a completely different approach. I can only admit that I feel, as did Nietzsche in Zarathustra’s analysis that “This is my way; where is yours?—thus I answered those who asked me “the way.” For the way—that does not exist.”19 But I can say that after struggling for many years, I feel much of the puzzle has pieces that seem to me to appear to fit together, and that gives me hope. But, more than ever, I still feel a need to be totally open to other voices, since there may be many other ways that might be better, so it is important that we all ask, “Where is yours?” A DIMINUTIVE HISTORY OF HUMAN RESPONSIBILITY AND RELIGION In the history of Homo sapiens, it is difficult to know whether any crude notions of ethical or personal responsibility between humans preceded

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religious ideas or were dependent upon them. Not that an answer to that question would determine which should be true today. My rough guess would be that the first humans who actually befriended each other or even who agreed not to obliterate the other preceded the development of formal religious structures (though perhaps not the religio-mythico imagination) by centuries. It seems fairly obvious that a sense of mutual relating to each other, or what we call morality, found its home first in pure self-preservation or survival instinct. Proximity to each other required some accommodation in behavior or self-restraint from all parties. Systematic reflection/rationalization came much later. That does not imply that our remote ancestors did not think everything in their world had some kind of life, spirit, or power, because we know that to “ancient man” the whole cosmos was considered quite alive with potential. But it took many generations before these vague ideas of animating spirits in everything were formed into systems of thought and ritual in which people formally worshiped a sun-god, fresh-water deity, vegetation god, or rain god. And the community embracing such ideas required further generations to accumulate the wherewithal to begin erecting the massive temples or templetowers (ziggurats) that eventually dotted the world landscape. Even then, morality was uneven, and ethical formulations put into civil law or rules were put together primarily to guarantee the order which rulers demanded of those over whom they had control. It was not a voluntary social contract, but coercively self-serving for the rulers. In some cultures, the morality and the order and good had even little or no religious connection, and in others, the religions existed virtually without any morality, but rather as sheer mythical/ ritual necessities for existing. Now fast forward thousands and thousands of years. Those millennia brought gradual change, the dawn of human reflection, more refined signs and finally sophisticated languages, self-consciousness and a growing awareness of relations with others, an awareness which continues to bring change as time still runs only forward.20 Freud noted that three empirical factors may have accounted for the origins of much of religion: human vulnerability to natural disasters, to death, and to being adversely affected by other humans.21 The third is obviously the moral or ethical sphere. These have more credibility than his idea of it being a primal murder. Even though his interest and expertise were in psychology, and in The Future of an Illusion, only the psychology of religion rather than the historical factuality of religious beginnings, he was probably not far wrong since religion, like ethical formulation, seemed geared in its earliest manifestations to self-preservation or sheer survival. Freud said religions were stimulated by the need to address these vulnerabilities. The various religions posited God or gods who could address if not exempt them from each of these problems:

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rain gods, corn gods, sun gods, gods of the underworld, gods of an orderly universe, gods of earth, war-gods, gods of sacred intoxicants, and gods of various human relationships and rituals such as marriage or childbirth, as well as a plethora of problems or accidents one might encounter, even if some religions were so all-encompassing as to have virtually ruled out accidents. In many cases, the culture believed that its “ancestors” had contact with these gods and knew how to do things properly, so the “ancestors” became somewhat a semi-deity or mediator. Of course, even the most mundane of those vulnerabilities were not cured or eliminated by any specific religion or by its deities. This was only “wish-fulfillment,” so the problems still plague human existence. If we fast forward again more thousands of years, the story is that Siddhartha Gautama became Buddha (“Enlightened One”), in the fifth century BCE. The sheltered lad of nobility finally was allowed to venture on guided excursions outside his castle grounds, and on the trips he experienced “Four Passing Sights” which gave birth to his search for the answer to life’s suffering. These were even more directed at the individual than the focus of Freud. They involved real people who were extremely old, were incapacitated because of incurable illness, and even dead. That is, he saw his first funeral procession. He saw the suffering involved and was informed that these were all universal existential experiences, so would include himself. Then the fourth sight was of a mendicant from which he received a possible clue for an answer. He left home to become an ascetic. After six years of extreme asceticism, in which he allegedly later recalled refraining from bathing until dried filth simply broke off his body, living off a bean a day or even a single sesame seed per day, nearly starving to death, he finally left that behind as well. Could he find a key to remove the suffering of old age, illness, and death from human life? Eventually, sitting in meditation under a bodhi tree, he received the answer. It was not a key to remove these negatives, since without them, life would not be real. Instead, it was to defuse them. He experienced “enlightenment” which was essentially “Four Great Truths” that although life is full of suffering, one can learn not to suffer over these things by learning not to desire, especially not to desire to be a permanent or a static, separate self in a given state. This is possible by following the “Eightfold Path” which focused or right view, aspiration, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, and meditation. Even these, however, were not absolutized but intended as provisional means. The “Eightfold Path” was the basic formula for escaping the vicious circle of ignorance which involved reification, that is, of naming things, thereby eventually and mistakenly seeing them as real, as attractive or desirable, of then yielding to the desire to unite with them, from which rebirth

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continues its cycle of unending suffering. Later, various specific ethical precepts for laymen and the monks were eventually added. This was not at first a “religion” in the sense of positing certain gods or suprahuman answers to control human life, or even any “Absolute,” but was a very ethical approach designed for individual human relations and self-consciousness, to realize the “no-self” (Anatta) and “emptiness” (Sunyata). Certain later sects of Buddhism developed what we today think of as the more typical “religious” elements of worshiping a form of Buddha and conceiving the Buddha as transcending time, space, and all specifics, or being both being and nothingness as well as neither being nor nothingness. It was this same time period that Karl Jaspers and his predecessors had referred to as the “axial age” of great ethical or spiritual thinking which took a jump forward in various cultures, the eight to fifth centuries BCE in Persia, India, China, Greece, and Judea. One discovers the great “reform” prophets of Ancient Israel whose message was largely a negative judgment on the people for their lack of morality which itself was seen to negate any positive effect they hoped to gain through their religion. Their God promised only to punish them for their immorality, their mistreatment of each other, and these prophets minimized the validity of the people being “religious” or engaging in offering sacrifices to God as long as they cheated their fellow-humans. Meanwhile Vedism evolved into Hinduism with the emergence of the Upanishads, and Jainism joined Buddhism’s revolt against Vedism. Zarathustra in Persia, and Confucius, Lao Tzu (sixth century), Mencius (fourth century), and others in China stimulated new ethical thinking, which varied from a definite connection to certain deities or “heaven” to very little focus on an “other” world but the primary emphasis on human relations and social/civic structures or having “heaven” within oneself. The fifth century BCE also saw the first moral philosophy dawning in Ancient Greece with Socrates and his student Plato, a focus on ethics quite independent from religion and even critical of the mythical and immoral Greek pantheon. From this sketchy history we learn that some ethics were shaped more by kings to control their constituency than by priests, so had little or no actual connection with religion. We could call them a civil ethic since their purpose was to ground civil and criminal law. In some cases, the primary ethical thinking was centered more on independent philosophers or wandering teachers of “wisdom,” but occasionally a king or emperor was also a significant ethical thinker. Kings often learned how to supplement their authority by utilizing the priesthood of the prominent local religion for their purposes, so were influenced by religion even in drawing up their ethics and civil law. In yet other cultures, the ethics devised by priests were obviously explicit religious ethics by which they often fought against unethical civil dealings and even kings. This does not imply there was no overlap or similarities between

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the ethics utilized by kings and that utilized by priests, but they often had different grounds, different purposes, and were in different ways limited to very specific but contingent groups of people, having little or nothing to do with any other people. In ancient times, most people did not deal with others who lived beyond their borders so were under completely different civil laws or even different religious ethics. In ancient times, anyone living beyond the immediate borders of a monolithic group was simply regarded as a stranger or enemy and avoided as much as possible unless they were involved in a war with them. In Ancient Israel, and especially by the time it became Judaism, there was no division of secular law from divine law. Ethics from Yahweh knew only one law, one ethic, which was the same, even as it eventually knew of only one God. Christianity arose from the Jewish followers of Jesus who had become convinced that he fulfilled the Jewish hope for a “Messiah” to vindicate the people. When he was crucified, the following could have been crushed, but for what they later report as encountering the one who died as now living. And St. Paul’s conversion from a persecutor of this group to a very different “Apostle to the Gentiles,” formed a completely different religion with an allegedly different power behind its ethics. Eventually, by the fourth century, though from more political than spiritual purposes, Constantine established a sort of “theocracy” in conjunction with the hierarchy of the Christian Church, thereby consolidating all power in himself. That form which we call “Christendom” continued all the way to the late eighteenth century, with the formal break with it initiated by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and the secular nature of that Constitution. Even within the past two centuries, it was still possible for a group to be small enough that it could live a fairly isolated existence, or large expanses could be divided up after a war into smaller, more uniform or homogeneous groups. But massive immigration of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries did not end movements of people. Wars, famines, religious persecution, plagues, and poverty continued to uproot people, which, in turn, meant a further mixing or blending of cultures and their values, all the way to the present. As a result of the immigrants and refugees, cultures that eventually became minority cultures within a large group were usually lacking in political and economic power sufficient even to be considered as “full citizens” by the majority, whether the majority was determined by a broad culture or specific ethnic group or particular religion. In fact, this was James Madison’s fear: that the most likely body to offend in the new government of the late eighteenth-century United States and its future would not be one of the formal branches of government as much as it would be sheer majoritarianism in this broad sense.22 That was the reason he and other Founding Fathers devised a government that would be

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representative of the most diverse possible elements of the citizens’ interests, to avoid just such possible abuse in the rule by the majority. Very early on, it was obvious that the religious divisions within Christianity that had plagued Europe for hundreds of years had not been left completely behind, so the Founders attempted by what became part of the First Amendment to the Constitution, to create a separation of the common civil and criminal law and legal institutions from any religion, without curtailing either in its legitimate sphere. That separation did not mean every ethical principle in each was quite different, but only that the metaphysical grounds even many Christians accepted were incompatible, so could not be agreeable to all citizens. On the other hand, the values of religion and government might be quite compatible at most points, but their primary concern appeared different, just as their ground, and the absolutization the religion’s metaphysics and ethics received still required separation from the government since the government had to allow people to negotiate to reach a consensus. Otherwise, the government might be no better than it was under England’s king. If our understanding in our human sciences over the past three centuries has enabled us for the first time to wrestle with the problem of what it is to be human,23 moving out from our metaphysical cocoons, our difference from ancient times in terms of understanding both what it is to be human as well as what the world is in which we live has radically evolved. As the cultures and often the religions of the world became less restricted or isolated, with the advances in modern communication and travel around the globe, religious pluralism in communities began to replace the former homogeneity and hegemony. The problem was not that some religions did not include any ethics; they all did. But the ethics of all the religions were unique, built upon their specific, contingent religious metaphysics or mythology which was one of a kind. If religions all encouraged people to do their own thinking about which, if any religion, they wanted to embrace, and which ethics, whether a religious or non-religious ethics, they wanted to promise to follow in civil or social relations, then a certain common body of beliefs or, in the case of ethics, a body of moral agreement, might be arrived at. But the uniqueness of each religion and its ethics, combined with the fact of its being grounded on a particular mythology or metaphysics which was eventually seen as unquestionable or Absolute, made that impossible, as the Dalai Lama noted.24 Despite the First Amendment coming from the late eighteenth century, the United States is just now beginning to see that freedom of religion does not allow one religion’s ethics, founded on its unique metaphysics, to be the ground for the civil or criminal laws governing all of its diverse citizens, even those of other religions or of no religious affiliation. That not only would be unfair, but unreasonable and impossible, creating division and dissolving all

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sense of unity by its coercion. I do not mean to imply that religious leaders and secular or government leaders have not tried to unite people enough to articulate an ethic that could underlie the civil law or social contract. They have done so to a small degree in most nations, but that social contract has been built more on a utilitarian ethic, grounded in an economic focus, even though many took it to be derived through Christian ethics, defined loosely, but still identified with a capitalistic and ironically Protestant-individualistic culture, with hardly any understanding of the real problems of transposing the imminent eschatological ethic of the New Testament into the present. If individualism and economics determine the “good” and the utilitarian criteria calls for the maximum good for the maximum people, one can understand why people of the South in the nineteenth century saw slavery as a “good” and their “right” to engage in, while people of the North, while still operating with the utilitarian criteria and individualism, did not have a rural lifestyle needing slaves in the fields, so it was easier for them to oppose slavery as a “good.” And both felt they were quite “Christian” in their opposing positions. Does this suggest that ethical issues may find subconscious criteria such as one’s environment, one’s security, one’s livelihood, and so on rather than simply the “greatest good for the greatest number”? But it is never presented as something determined by “my needs” but as the obvious, even divine, approval or need. The desire to try to find a common ethic in all religions has been attempted. One of the most humane and profound theologians of our day, Prof. Hans Küng, after being prohibited from teaching Catholic theology in 1979, was left in his university position at Tübingen to work with ecumenical studies and particularly with trying to get a universal or global ethic articulated by leaders of the major religions of the world. While this has been fruitful, it has not reached down to the lay people in the various religious groups, and when it does it will have a hard time justifying its authority vis-à-vis the absolute authority to which most of the religious lay people have already subscribed. Another notable attempt was made to formulate ethical principles by which the world could unite, apart from any religious metaphysics, by His Holiness the Dalai Lama in 1999.25 We will later examine Küng and the work of the World Parliament of Religions as well as the Dalai Lama’s courageous and insightful work as an example of a certain stage of delineating “freestanding” ethical principles in chapter 2. FROM HISTORICAL REALITY TO IMAGES OF REALITY TO ASPIRATIONAL SYMBOLS Most religions are built around myths, that is, stories whose origins cannot be reconstructed, but which had some meaning to an original community,

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perhaps signifying or trying to explain some truths of the group’s or its individual members’ existence or of some commonly recognized practice, standard, or element of nature. Myth usually involved some interchange between the world of humans and other worlds above or below which were believed to be populated with powerful agents for good or evil. So Rudolf Bultmann spoke of “myth” in the Western religions as presupposing a threelayered universe with Earth in the middle.26 A generation earlier, David F. Strauss had spoken of myth related to Christology as being the strength of the idea of the unity of the divine and human, but often assuming historical dimensions about one historical person (Jesus) which cannot be proven or taken literally.27 In religions that have been quite reflective, in which many scholars have subjected the claims of symbols, doctrines, and ethics to close scrutiny, there has been a continual erosion of the conflated historical-metaphysical or mythological claims in their absoluteness. Within the Christian religion, many scholars hang on to the historical “figures” or “symbols” or just “names” as in some way ethical examples or guidelines or some kind of existential truths, though not an actual historical reality of the past or even present. Others ignore the negative results of the historical research of the data referred to in those Christological claims, simply continuing to uphold a literal, supranaturalist view of the gospels, no matter what cognitive dissonance it presents in violating scientific knowledge. Most lay people have no time or perhaps incentive to develop expertise in historical methodology to ascertain whether or not there was ever any historical reality which the symbols or images seemed to claim. Harold Bloom noted a rather anti-historical attitude at the base of several Christian communions which arose independently in the United States during the past several centuries.28 Does this indicate that the images, stories, figures, and so forth from which the abstract claims are made are really more “aspirational” than descriptions of anything ever really encountered? This implies that the key figures, whether Jesus, Moses, Muhammed, Buddha, and others become only aspirational but unreal figures, which, even as Robert P. Scharlemann noted in his monumental Christology,29 could validly be filled with different content in different times and places. On the other hand, the religious institutions themselves usually insist that the figure is not a mere figure but is the most real, the only or most central truth of life, the Absolute without which one will simply continue in unrelieved suffering. The “answer” in both cases seems to be a very common aspiration of most religions which is for individuals to in some way transcend oneself, to overcome oneself, to alter one’s frame of mind, so that although one is still “in the world,” one is no longer “of the world,” that one can find one’s authentic self or even one’s “no-self” and thereby avoid suffering, This presumes that

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something is very wrong with “the world,” and that “world” stands as a roadblock to one’s aspirations being fulfilled. But the “wrongness” is not simply with the “world” but somehow also something very lacking in humanity’s nature or character.30 By the term “world,” religious people are not speaking of all of nature. They are not including all the physical cosmos as somehow perverted or evil, though perhaps a few seem to (e.g., St. Paul);31 but the “world” means the living, conscious beings, those who have a certain limited freedom, which includes a choice for self in its relation with others which we call the realm of the ethical or moral. Some religions see this lack or “wrongness” or ignorance so deeply ingrained that they visualize no possibility for humans to correct the problem. It must be done only and completely by divine agency from another world. The most obvious examples of this would be Lutheran Christianity and Pure Land Buddhism. Other religious groups inject an idea of the divine agency predestining some to being saved from this fate, while either ignoring or predestining all the remainder to an unrelieved suffering. And there are others who, even if they believe in some divine assistance, nevertheless insist, as most non-religious people, that any relief from the evil of our world and our suffering must come from human effort. In the Confucian view, the “mandate of heaven” was within people, not something external, and could be fully realized in this world if people paid attention to what was within them. Where this original idea of the universal ignorance, inability, perversity, lack, or evil of humanity came from is not apparent. But more pressing is the question of why it is still presumed as the universal trait and fault of humanity? We shall address it in more detail in chapter 6. Friedrich Nietzsche said Christianity, or more specifically, the Apostle Paul, came up with the idea of “redemption” which set that religion squarely against the Judaism of Paul’s own background. Nietzsche was even convinced it was the opposite of what Jesus stood for.32 Both his ideas have elements of truth intermixed with misunderstanding, but one thing is certain: the idea of “redemption” that Paul proposed was not new among religions. It was just novel in the way and milieu in which it occurred. But most religions had always propagated an answer to the problem of life, as they read it, and the problem was defined in such a way to exalt their answer as the only answer, both profound and absolute. “Redemption” is only one of the many ways of referring to this common schema of being liberated from what was “wrong” about one’s life. We have come to understand that in most religions, the answer of the Absolute, whether of a particular deity, a specific Incarnation, an eternal truth or set of truths, a particular sacred scripture, or even a combination of these, although originally framed with a quite unique historical setting, has been over time subconsciously stretched or released from that contingent historical narrowness to accommodate the changes in the world and the varied cultures

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the religions encountered. As A. C. Grayling has pointed out, most religions over time have had to “cherry-pick” to decide what elements of their ancient traditions are to be normative in their present, but without admitting this process.33 Then the real questions arise whether we still feel (1) that whatever the Absolute symbol stands for, it must have been an actual historical reality at one time in order to be valuable, or (2) the symbol or image can have aspirational value or even transforming power even if there was never an actual realization of it in history. I have shown elsewhere how the most influential and innovative Christian theology’s explanation of the Christian claims about Jesus (“Christology”) during the past two centuries (1832 to 2013)34 has evolved from vacillating between these two options, to finally embracing the second with only a trace of the first position left, that is, that such a symbol could still be true even if only “one person” in all history found the symbol powerful, even if what the symbol depicted about the past referent was itself only historically probable, or actual though not factual.35 That description probably seems bewildering, but it was formulated in the last two decades of the twentieth century. Of course, to presume that the symbol of universal lack, helplessness, or depravity is universally necessary in some powerful form has still not been justified. It remains a nagging question in itself. It has always been based on the conviction that there is an answer, a symbol, or picture or image or truth, which itself needs to presuppose that universal problem. This is really the “theological circle” which Paul Tillich admitted, even though he insisted it was not a vicious circle.36 It is the same presupposition that Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer found presumptuous, that in order to tell people the “good news” about Christ, one must first indoctrinate them about their sinfulness or fallenness, a “method” to which Bonhoeffer was sure Jesus himself never resorted.37 RELIGIONS’ DIFFERENT CONTINGENT PERSPECTIVES, FIGURES, AND ETHICS While many people on earth seem to think that humans would not be moral or ethical if they were not religious, the real answer to that as a question is not so obvious. The world-renowned religious leader, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, wrote in 1999 “I have come to the conclusion that whether or not a person is a religious believer does not matter much. Far more important is that they be a good human being.”38 He was convinced that they could be both spiritual and ethical without being religious at all, and that people needed to realize that in order to try to build a consensus on ethics that could ground the world in the new millennium. The same sentiment stood behind Alfred North

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Whitehead’s assertion that religions are “ambiguous,” a mixture of good and bad, even though they emphasize the development of a certain moral character39 in order for a person to reap the benefits the religion offers. What “benefits” do religions offer? Psychologist and philosopher William James described what people look for in religion very succinctly, as “more life,” not simply quantitatively but especially a higher quality of life. They hope to be empowered to overcome the things they sense are “wrong” about life as they experience it,40 whether it is their character flaws or their inability to realize their potential or their mangled human relationships. There is no question but that religions have held themselves out to offer an answer, usually in the form of “the answer,” which they feel is beyond all doubt, is Absolute. This is the case whether one inquires of Sikhism, Judaism, Hinduism, Jainism, Confucianism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, or most of the other smaller or newer religions, and the many offshoots found in the history of each religion. As our “world” gets smaller by our instant communication, extremely rapid air travel, and by continual immigration, our opportunity for significant conflict between our Absolutes becomes progressively more apparent. Adherents of one religion do not desire to be governed or judged by the ethics of any other religion or what they consider a godless, secular ethics, especially if that group were to use the civil arm of the government to enforce its ethical standards. Each religion, born in a particular time and place, differs from others, professes faith in other supranatural or mythical beings, events, sacred texts, sites, and histories, all of which are so historically unique that they do not mesh except in the most general moral ideas of extremely simplistic prohibitions of murder and theft. Among earlier generations, even without the proximity of opposites as is true of the present, religious groups often overtly fought each other through particular cultural, regional, or national governmental groups in which a particular religion was dominant, or where two religious groups were vying for control of the governing bodies or power structures. They have fought over temple sites, over historically significant cities, over specific mountains, over sites in specific deserts, and they have often fought primarily in order to have control over as large a group of people as possible. They cannot escape their histories whether it involved Crusades, the Inquisition, destruction of other religions’ temples, explorations of other countries to rob them of their wealth, or exploitation and enslavement of different people, mass genocide such as the Holocaust, or terrorism. If Sam Harris was correct in speaking of Islam’s theology and ethics being stuck in the fourteenth century, a similar picture of stagnation of human relations being determined by an ancient worldview can be found in most of the other older religions as well. Most of them formulated their theology and ethical positions long before they knew very much if anything about other

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cultures and other religions in the world. If the Qur’an has passages that are very tolerant of Jews and Christians as “people of the book,” there are also many Suras that view the Jews and Christians as infidels who failed to follow God’s will and thus deserve to be killed. Christians also can find opposite ethical examples in their sacred writings, even long before they realize the implications of the entire ethic being built upon the expectation of the imminent end of the world. For example, they can read the gospels and see Jesus as very non-judging of people’s sexual orientation, while one can also read St. Paul’s listing homosexuals among the most terrible sinners, though in very unequal lists of mortal sins including not only murder but even envy, greed, and gossip. To expect a uniformity or even consistency in ancient religious texts is itself aspirational but unrealistic; factually, it never existed, just as no single picture of what was meant by “Christ” was uniform. A century and a half ago, many Christians were persuaded they could justify owning slaves from the Bible, while many other Christians were just as convinced that slavery was a terrible evil, not tolerated by the Bible. The United States of the mid-eighteenth century, predominately Christian, after slaughtering and enslaving millions of other local Native Americans or Indians, fought a “Civil War” in which people on both sides thought they were Christian, and killed each other. So what were the Christian ethics of that era? These are quite radically different perspectives within the same time but quite different spaces in which the economic structures were considerably different. Even as recently as the last few decades we have witnessed an authoritarian conflict within the world’s two largest democracies, India and the United States, in which a recent repristinating nationalism (i.e., slogan to make India great again, or to make the United States great again) claims to accommodate religious diversity but covertly fights against it in deceitful fashion. To “restore” sounds so comforting to people who feel a bit disoriented or threatened or insecure. But it sounds like the “great” nation means turning back the clock, which is to revert to some imagined origins of the nation in which there was once a single religious-ethnic-national identity with no different opinions.41 That is not what the history reveals. Part of the problem, of course, of the whole scenario, similar to the problem with the Qur’an, is that different passages in the sacred scriptures of both religions come from radically different times and circumstances, as well as different authors and influences, so already articulated different perspectives, whereas adherents to both religions are usually taught that there is a single, unified picture in its scripture, that each part agrees with every other part. Nothing could be further from the truth of the history of those scriptures. There are also two other elements to this problem. First, in a fairly homogeneous culture, it is easy to think of everything local being of that particular religion, as Kierkegaard mocked the Christendom of his Denmark.

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He belittled them for calling everything “Christian,” pushing his satire to the extent of suggesting perhaps the highest animals as well as the local brothels should also be called “Christian”!42 Indeed the name or symbol of the predominant religion and its central figure can become the label for anything, and thus meaningless. But that is only in a homogeneous culture that embraces one dominant religion, which is becoming less and less a possibility in most countries of the world. Pluralism of culture and of religion is a fact as much as globalism and multinational corporations. It will not just disappear. But, second, the central religious claim or symbol can also evolve from a conviction that it was an actual Incarnation or divine incursion into history to the point of merely trying to articulate what the idea or meaning of such an event in history would be if it were to occur, and finally to a symbol of that claim and the meaning of the symbol which can be sufficient even if no historical event approximating the original claim ever occurred.43 So the “reality” being claimed ends up being only a picture or a story, a “Christ-figure” or a “Buddha-nature” or a claimed theophany, but not any real historical person such as Jesus, Gautama, or any personal God or discreet being in the theophanic disclosure. Over time, cultures unconsciously re-fashion their own “figures” or “images” of heroes and legendary characters, and this is especially true of religious founders. Even in the past century, great celebrities were speculated as still being alive elsewhere, way off in another country, perhaps even revived from death there. Hero-worship knows few restraints. These alleged historical people who were not simply heroes but great religious leaders, who were once professed as a “Messiah” or a “Buddha” or “Muhammed,” were subconsciously transfigured over generations, gradually being released from all the restrictions of the original historical circumstances, and finally having little or no connection with the reality which began the long process. The tendency toward reification and apotheosis continues culturally and mostly subconsciously, as languages evolve, words flourish and stagnate, and needs for answers remain. Without examining any historical evidence with a critical eye or actual reflection on the data, many people today can easily tick off what “Jesus” message or mission was, or what truth “Gautama Buddha” found, or what Muhammed stood for as God’s final prophet. It seems the less one knows of the actual evolutionary history of the image, the more certainty one can have about one’s description of it, a description of its perhaps never changing in the least. In truth, the images have been in a state of flux from generation to generation, but since each religion as an institution and ideology, denies that it has ever changed or deviated from the truth, the adherent is warned against ever accepting such heretical ideas that there has been any change, any cultural innovations in the reality. To even imply any historical change in one’s

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religious culture is to be accused of ignorance, a lack of true faith, or even blasphemy. That certainty of the unchanging image of the religious devotion is about as certain as thinking that the present-day heroes in modern films are precisely what they were a century or two centuries ago. Let me offer an example. At the end of the nineteenth century, Albert Schweitzer published his book on most of the significant, scholarly “lives of Jesus” written in Europe during the preceding two centuries (his subtitle was “von Reimarus zu Wrede”). Despite their scholarly methods, was it an accident that that “Jesus-figure” of nearly every book showed a striking resemblance to the era and culture of each scholar who wrote it? Of course, there were also some unique discoveries, since these were scholars, but the discoveries of most of the biblical scholars seldom if ever get conveyed on a popular level. If the lay people continued to think of Jesus in the most appropriate value-terms of its own culture, and that was confirmed by the sermons they heard and continue to hear preached in the churches today, it was also visible within many of the most scholarly analyses. If they lived in a capitalist society, Jesus certainly was for capitalism; if they lived in a socialist country, Jesus espoused socialism. If the parishioners were trying to achieve financial success, Jesus was a great businessman, and so forth. In the last half of the twentieth century, if egalitarianism seems to be the idea of the West, many in the “Jesus Seminar” which spent two decades studying the various gospels and analyzing every pericope, concluded that Jesus was egalitarian, that one of the keys of his life is his sharing meals, his “commensality.” They insisted that their Jesus is more the “historical” Jesus behind all the variety of redaction of texts and views. But was such a fortunate find to make Jesus relevant to U.S. culture purely serendipitous? Schweitzer, on the other hand, discovered a century before that the actual historical Jesus was most likely caught up in Jewish eschatology, predicted the imminent end of the world in Matthew 10:23, and the coming of the Kingdom, and died as what he thought was the necessary suffering of God’s servant to bring about that end. But it did not occur. He miscalculated. The wheel of history rolled on, and his mangled body hanging from the cross was, as Schweitzer says, his victory and reign, as he virtually destroyed the credibility of the eschatology which had motivated him. But Schweitzer concluded by saying that the Jesus of history cannot be moved into our time. (It probably ought to be obvious to most people that historical figures cannot be plucked up from the day in which they lived and transplanted willy-nilly many centuries away, as if we would know what they would do and say in such a different world, or that the person would not be a misfit.) Schweitzer assured his readers that Jesus transplanted into the new twentieth century would be only an “enigma” because of his very first-century Jewish-formed

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eschatological motivation. Predictably, the “Jesus Seminar” would have nothing to do with eschatology if it included any apocalyptic vindication, even by God, so Schweitzer, Crossan claims, simply confused the issue. They preferred someone more twentieth- or twenty-first-century type. Instead, for Schweitzer, Jesus’ mark of greatness was not that his ideas as literally read correspond with modern culture or that his physical being or finite understandings were supranatural, but rather it was his utter dedication to do what he thought was God’s will for him. It was his Spirit. So, we too may encounter Jesus, Schweitzer wrote, just as Jesus came to those originally by the lakeside, as he called them to follow him, calling as “one unknown.” That, in fact, is the only way he can be encountered, as “one unknown,” and Schweitzer was convinced that we each will come to learn, as he sets us to the tasks he has for us to do, who he really is.44 Certain elements of this discovery of Jesus’ eschatological preoccupation had been made much earlier by Herman Samuel Reimarus, but had little effect except for turning Christian systematic theology away from the negatives of historical research going on in biblical studies. After Reimarus’s negative picture of the early Christian leaders and the enigmatic element of eschatology in Jesus’ understanding and teachings, the nineteenth century brought a second powerful discovery about that historical Jesus, this time by David F. Strauss, who superseded the split between supernaturalist and rationalist interpretations of Jesus by his “mythological” interpretation. Then came Schweitzer’s reinforcement and more detailed analysis of the eschatological problem at the turn into the twentieth century, followed a few decades later by Rudolf Bultmann’s re-emphasis of the idea of “myth” in the New Testament, combined with his existentializing of the eschatological element. Bultmann and Strauss both insisted that the “myth” had to be seen for its depth beyond mere history, though they saw the answer in very different ways. Schweitzer emphasized the rather literal temporalspatial cosmic pictures of eschatology’s vision, though he admitted that this was not the answer, but rather the coming of the Kingdom in everyone’s heart, as St. Paul’s “Christ-mysticism.” Bultmann ultimately de-cosmicized the eschatological vision which he called “de-eschatologizing” or an “existential” interpretation. The “end” one faces is always one’s own possible end, not end of the world. That answer also failed to satisfy many scholars and probably not many people, if any were ever exposed to it. Obviously, the conflated historical/ mythological aspects of the story of Jesus as the Christ faced serious challenges. If Jesus miscalculated or was incorrect in his predictions of an imminent apocalyptic end of the world, could the problem be solved if he was only speaking of the always-possible death or “end” of each person, a thought which threw one into the choice of deciding to live by one’s own power

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or out of God’s power, as Bultmann emphasized? Bultmann was also sure Jesus had no systematic ethic at all.45 After all the elaborate Christological development by the Church over the centuries, was this the sum total of its truth? If so, there was absolutely no need for the doctrine of the Trinity or the Christological doctrine of Jesus’ “two natures,” or the doctrine of the pre-existence of Christ, or the sacramental idea of some “mystical” body of Christ being shared among the believers by the Eucharist or Lord’s Supper, or the Virgin Birth, and certainly no need for Christ’s bodily Resurrection. Only very occasionally in the twentieth century did any “systematic theologian” attempt to explain the meaning the Apostles’ Creed still has today in light of the present state of critical research of historical claims, such as the little book by Wolfhart Pannenberg.46 Protestant Christian fundamentalism, on the other hand, ignored most of the critical research, especially the mythological and eschatological problems, and continued to surge ahead in its campaign against evolution and for the absolute inerrancy of the Bible, while the Roman Catholic Church retrenched for several decades after declaring its absolute in the form of Papal Infallibility at Vatican I. Rome encountered Schweitzer’s Catholic counterpart in the same time period in Alfred’s Loisy’s approach to eschatology, and by the turn of mid-twentieth century, Hans Küng had embraced the eschatological expectation by Jesus sufficiently to sound fairly close to Pannenberg’s position on the Resurrection of Christ and his Hegelian embrace for the Trinity. Of course, most Protestant theology was still more informed by St. Paul’s writings than the gospels through Calvin’s and Luther’s original influences, and by the “Christ of faith” rather than the “Jesus of history.” Nevertheless, another sporadic search for the historical Jesus began in the mid-twentieth century, which became known as the “New Hermeneutic.” It was spearheaded by the work of Gerhard Ebeling and Ernst Fuchs, the latter of whom had done his PhD under Bultmann at Marburg. Its emphasis was upon language, building upon the dialectical theology of Barth, Bultmann, Gogarten, and others for whom the “how” of the transition of the words of men into the “word of God” was a focal point. Fuchs’s concern was to relate the contemporary terms of understanding what it is to be human (primarily existentialism at that time) with the Scriptural language. Heidegger’s existentialism as well as his later focus on language were stimuli for Fuchs’s new phenomenology of language. It attempted to supersede the impasse between the quest of the “historical Jesus” by historical data and the “Christ of faith” which had been emphasized by the great Christian absolute idealistic systems of Schleiermacher and Hegel, by seeing the spoken gospel words as actually presenting the reality of which they speak, whether it is the “love” of God or one’s being justified by God. This was a “speech-event” (Sprachereignis)

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which Scharlemann, from the early 1980s on spoke of as “instantiation” in his phenomenal ontology and Christology. It was not until 1985 that a large group of scholars which I already mentioned, formed the “Jesus Seminar” to do a more thorough, co-operative study of the historical Jesus, using sociology, archeology, politics, and so on as well as some new extra-canonical gospels that had been discovered. After more than two decades of research together, while there was not total agreement among all the latter scholars, there seemed a general agreement on the paucity of materials in the gospels that have any probable likelihood of being historically reliable acts or teachings of Jesus. It was less than 20 percent in each case. I have shown elsewhere that there seemed to be a fairly broad consensus among them that the historical Jesus was an itinerant sage, perhaps a “wisdom” teacher of a very “subversive” wisdom which pitted the justice of God against Caesar’s injustice, as it embraced the peasant class, or at least it was very much an egalitarian movement in any case, especially by its common meals. This interpretation appeared to ignore Schweitzer’s warning of the way a culture reads things into a text, even as it went to great lengths to discredit Schweitzer’s eschatological interpretation of Jesus. But members of the Seminar in some cases ended up with a “Jesus” figure that was obviously shaped more by modern culture than the ancient data supports. Were they really so oblivious to how culture shapes the “Jesus-figure” in subconscious ways, narrowing the way present readers can even find any relevance in the gospels? No person lives above his or her own cultural conditioning, even if one is unaware of it. But that has not deterred the many who are quite sure of who Jesus was or is. If they espouse the Christian religion they subconsciously read traits into the “Jesus-image” or “Christ-image” that they value in their culture; if they reject the Christian religion, they subconsciously read traits into the “Jesus-image” or “Christ-image” that they find repugnant ideas or values of present culture. It really is almost that simple, and they are not to blame. The problem is not with the “answers” the religious institution has given as much as it is a problem of the impossible questions that the basic claims raised, questions which cannot even be addressed, that have no method of falsification or verifiability at all because they mix the historical with the mythical, the visible with the invisible, creating an impossible metaphysics. Several years ago, a famous singer sang a Christmas song about Jesus in which Jesus was depicted as belonging to each particular race, one by one. That was a nice, universal sentiment. It was as logical as the creedal statement that Jesus possessed both human and divine natures in complete forms. What the song and creeds both depicted was a monstrosity or they simply left reality behind in favor of an abstract universalism, not any embodiment of its ideal. If one understands it as the latter, it may or may not operate as

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an effective symbol, but it might be that a symbol or image must represent reality in some ways if it is to be effective.47 PRESENT ETHICAL ISSUES AND IRRELEVANT ANCIENT ABSOLUTE ETHICS Most religious leaders and institutions demand that their ethics is founded only on its metaphysical, mythical, or supranatural claims, and they are unwilling to be open to ethics of other religions founded on competing metaphysical or mythical claims. But just as significantly, most ethics of the largest religions are also so ancient that they simply do not address present-day ethical or moral dilemmas. For example, most of the great religious traditions do not have as their ethical ideal any conception of human autonomy or equality of all humans since most were formulated in cultures in which there still existed either rigid “caste” systems or formal slavery structures. Women were not equal to men, and should not try to be. Women could have no more than one husband, and she was viewed as his property, but he could either have more than one wife or at least could have a female “servant” as a “concubine.” The idea that marriage can exist only between one man and one woman may have been the way the U.S. Supreme Court still read the Bible in the late nineteenth century,48 but it was a very superficial reading since polygamy and concubinage was certainly tolerated even within the Jewish scriptures. Those old ethics usually have no definition of what would constitute “torture” of war prisoners, no limits to what can be and must not be done in a war, no definition of the limits of honesty or secrecy that institutions or governments can sustain, and no limits to kings’ ownership, possessions or rule. In ancient India, there were even irrational rituals such as the Asvamedha, or “horse sacrifice,” in which a horse was set free for a year to walk wherever it chose, accompanied by the kings troops, and if it returned intact, it was sacrificed and all that territory the horse had covered became the possession of the king. There was no definition in those ancient ethical systems or laws of how a democracy could work. Even Plato considered democracy as pure chaos which would finally yield to tyranny. His mind had very fixed ideas of what a government leader should be, and the training or education necessary for one to receive that charge. In fact, his idea of the differences in people’s mentality was so fixed that the philosophical types among the men should be allowed to breed only with their equivalents among the women. There were certainly few if any ideas on what degenerate stage of life would permit active voluntary euthanasia, but Plato certainly thought one could reach a point in which one could no longer fill his role in life, so further medication

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or therapy should be discontinued. We know nothing of how he would have viewed abortions, vaccinations, pain-killing drugs, or surgeries which could ethically repair kidneys, arms, backs, hearts or even replace them, or whether it would be ethical to engage in human cloning. There were usually no discussions of business ethics, and since “corporations” are a very recent innovation, especially multinational corporations, there is no definition of whether stake-holders or managers of a “corporation” should really be protected under the legal fiction of the corporation being a “person.” Some ancient ethical codes settled violations largely by fines while others engaged in mutilation of bodily parts which U.S. criminal code labels a crime itself called “mayhem.” If some ancient ethical codes encouraged people to assist the needy, orphaned, widowed, and even strangers, the incentive for the latter was in one code the memory that “we were once strangers in a foreign land.” But that memory, when elicited, also brought forth visions of being ignored, exploited, and treated harshly in that foreign land. In most religious ethics, benevolence was confined to others within the same group. We do not learn from any religious ethics of individuals’ right to “free speech” or to be free from unreasonable searches or seizures or self-incrimination, and certainly not a right to belong to any different religion. In most of those old ethics, men had rights of which women could not even dream. In many ancient religions, men justified this inequality by being convinced that they were “protecting” the women by keeping them secluded by special dress, confinement or restrictions on any leadership position in the community, and by “possessing” them as their property. Punishments or remedies for violations were usually conceived as compensation for violations of the husband’s property, and, in innumerable ways were administered against wives as simply the “custom.” In some cultures, the nearest of kin would avenge the slighted husband by seeking out the offending wife and killing her; in others, a local priest would give her a solution to drink, insisting on her swearing her innocence, and assuming that God would punish her physically if she lied. No similar “adultery” tests were devised for husbands. Most of the ancient religious ethics are very vague if not ambiguous about what the relationship should be between the individual adherents to the religion and the state or governing bodies. Many of them have very specific racial, ethnic, and sexual categories in which certain ones are given priority over others. More commonly, they entail a belief in the superiority of those who belong to that particular religion, and often see outsiders to that culture as not simply strangers but enemies,49 even enemies of their “God.” Sometimes the superiority is minimized under a form of humility in claiming that they enjoy God’s grace through no merit of their own, while in others, the superiority is based upon their super-obedience or piety or even their abstinence from assimilating into a culture of outsiders. In some,

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these distinguishing marks are not seen as making them superior, but merely fortunate, or simply their particular lot in life, their identity. Even within the group of “insiders” or “believers,” superiority was often determined on racial, ethnic, sexual, and economic lines and justified as the “natural order” or divine divisions, and those “orders” continued even through the sixteenth century in Luther’s ethics. In any case, religious identity usually involved definite ethical standards, since all religious communities have felt compelled to mark off their boundaries as the “sacred” in contrast to the “profane” world, as sociologist Emile Durkheim told us, though he himself believed reality does not divide into such two spheres. But religions conceived the world this way in order to separate the types of behavior that would be tolerated by the community from those that would not. These ethical norms were often seen, as other elements, events, rituals, symbols, and general states of being, as the opposite of the “profane” world, as belonging to the sphere of the “sacred.”50 As both Durkheim and Eliade characterized the relation between the sacred and profane, such a huge gap divided the spheres that in order for a person to cross from the profane into the sacred was almost impossible, often requiring one to sacrifice dearly, or almost die, if not simulate that death by a death-ritual. For those within the religious group, it was taken for granted that everyone wanted to pass from the profane world into the realm of the sacred, thereby to participate in the power of the gods and/or their purity. This meant that other religious groups’ myths and ethics were not only unappealing but viewed as untrue and evil, and anyone caught fraternizing with some different diviner, spiritual person, priest, prophet, or witch was often expected to be summarily executed. This punishment of “witches” continued even into the early colonies of the United States. In fact, many of the religious immigrants to the “New World” believed that any residents who had different skin color and were already here had a simple choice of either converting to a particular brand of Christianity or being killed, and it was even imagined that this was basically what God predestined for them.51 What this means is that despite the moral good religions propagated by their ethical ideals or aspirations, it was often offset by gross evils and inhumane treatment of different others, and underlying the religions was nearly always the Absolute which was beyond all question or challenge. One was not to use one’s initiative to arrive at the idea of a moral life or “the good” or a system of ethics, but rather to simply do as the Absolute directs. It was that squelching of human autonomy—by that divine or other-worldly authoritarianism alleged to be based on “revelation”—which was the most sinister and dehumanizing element in the history of any religion and its ethics. If obeyed, people were turned into robots, but not moral persons, since the latter requires one making moral decisions from one’s own initiative, not by sheer threat.

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This conscious institutional suppression of autonomy ironically reached its extreme not in the second millennium BCE but in the second half of the nineteenth century CE as Protestants declared the plenary divine verbal inspiration of the scriptures in fighting Darwinian evolution, among other things, and the Catholic Church defined Papal Infallibility in fighting all the themes of the Enlightenment: autonomy, egalitarianism, rationalism, and idealism, the new human sciences, and the discovery of the religious pluralism of the real world. These extremes of inerrancy and infallibility, combined with the religious absolute Idealism of that period were bound not to win since history had not ended or reached its culmination as Hegel thought, and simply because time neither stands still nor goes backward. Nor do standards, measurements, and norms that are two millennia old necessarily have any relevance now. Yet there still exists the religious remnant of protest against any human freedom to figure out on its own what should be the common human ethic, often pejoratively spoken of by the religious as “mere humanism” or “secular humanism.” Fortunately, a great many of our fellow-humans who profess no religious affiliation have been quite ethical in their lives even by religious peoples’ judgments. Had that not been so, humanity would have disappeared from the Earth long ago. In fact, it has been only more of religions’ exclusiveness and therefore opposition to real difference or cultural diversity and actual life that spawned the heteronomous picture of humans being basically degenerate from birth as the truth. That doctrinal posture, whether of “original sin” or “universal ignorance” can be explained only as a hierarchical one of people who desire to make others dependent upon them, therefore stemming from their own desire to exercise power over others, to control other people’s lives and thoughts. Of course, religious people who find themselves in power over others are not usually so obvious nor are their institutions. Instead, they usually veil the relationship as their humble acceptance of the divine “call” they received, their commission of informing people of what that divine will is, so they convey the absolute standards to others not of their own choice but as their humble duty and service to others—which includes this negative judgment on the “outsiders” and their perversity. Indeed, they claim to have been “grasped by God.” Ivan Karamazov’s “Grand Inquisitor” even described the clergy as seeing itself as the victims, the martyrs, the people who graciously volunteered to free other people of their burden of freedom and its responsibility by taking that burden onto themselves as clergy and suffering under it.52 In any case, religious groups do not possess sole ownership of ethics or moral concern. Ethics has been explored on its own by any number of people over many millennia, without any connection to religion. Likewise, during the same period, many religions have become increasingly more adamant that

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they alone have the true answers about ethics or morality, usually anchoring it in some transcendent being and ancient practices of a group, insisting that its ethical truth has never substantially changed, just as human nature has never changed. But the fact is, human nature, if we can even speak of such as definable, has certainly changed since Homo sapiens’ arrival on the scene, and the understandings of what it is to be human have been more radically altered even since the late eighteenth century. It is not enough today for any single religion to assert that it only possesses the true or best ethic to be a universal ethic, nor can the difficult problems be resolved by slightly tweaking ancient ethics occasionally when they seem too dated or irrelevant when faced with a contemporary world problem. Any ethic that will enable humanity to survive will have to be one that all people will contemporaneously voluntarily accept and support, as what they themselves want.53 It becomes a “duty” only after agreement of all interested parties to embrace it, but even then is built really upon what each person “wants” or “desires” rather than some sense of subservience to a superior who dictates it as a “duty.” Otherwise, human autonomy is squelched by absolutism or authoritarianism, resulting in dehumanization. THE CHALLENGE OF AUTONOMY: STAGES OF THE “METAMORPHOSES” OF MATURING While I have shown in earlier volumes on religion’s future54 some of these “burdens” of the Absolute with which religious people have put up until they could no longer feel any integrity because of the cognitive dissonance, the one ground for ethics that has surfaced that does not need be tied with religion is that of mutual basic trust. In a society that is devoted to humans maximizing their potential, a society in which all are understood as having an equal voice, that ground of mutual trust necessarily converts quickly into a mutual autonomy. No one really wants someone else making all their decisions. With some of the most innovative Christian theologians of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries whose primary concern was theology and the traditional symbols, although autonomy was still mentioned, it was suppressed and the old traditional symbols of theology simply retained their formal priority as words but with little or no unique content, unless people neither accept themselves nor try to be “authentic.”55 But there are other voices out there. For that reason, in this volume I will analyze a handful of the most significant thinkers whose originality caused them either to expose religion’s shortcomings or at least shift to a more inclusive ethical ground in their actual lives or thought, despite the fact that all three were raised in Christian homes, and two of their fathers were Lutheran

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pastors. These two, Nietzsche and Schweitzer, eventually discovered the ethical ground as our instinctual affirmation of life. When Rawls, who, in college, had considered becoming a Christian pastor, later discovered a possibility of a system of justice as fairness to which all could agree, a voice was added. Then three voices can be seen to balance autonomy with a certain trust. They become grounds for beneficial or constructive human relations including a “social contract” as mutual autonomy and trust create a symbiotic equilibrium that allows for order as well as creativity on both public and private levels. That does not mean that religions have no future role in human life, but inasmuch as their Absolutes are culturally exclusive and divisive, the laws that form the structures of social and political life must be formed by a more neutral base consisting of “freestanding” ethical principles. One can still be a part of a religious community, still believe all kinds of theological assertions so long as one is willing to agree to and actually live by the common ethic that forms the laws of the community, state, nation, or world, as necessarily being based on these freestanding principles rather than on some alleged exclusive religious authority that exempts itself from public reason. One can still find the social solidarity and meaning of the religious community, can still participate in it, sharing one’s joys and heartaches with others,56 but must acknowledge the wider human community that is much more diverse, for which only a “freestanding” ethic will suffice to ground the social contract. The “freestanding” principles which the public negotiating realize actually “overlap,” thereby giving a consensus, do not have to contradict any religious ethic, but, in fact, could be very compatible. The difference remains the exclusiveness or inclusiveness of the participating group, the form of reason that is utilized, whether “public” or “semi-public,” and whether one is actually open to negotiating or compromising or instead does not want to yield from a static position. On the other hand, if a religious Absolute is combined with government powers and refuses to recognize any ethic that is more commonly held, insisting that only its particular religious ethic counts, that cannot be changed by a counterforce of mere nationalism, as is so typical. The reason is, the nationalism is itself turned into an Absolute or Unquestionable—or simply another religion or equivalent of religion—and the posture is then one of a sheer power conflict, unending war, rather than the survival and flourishing of humanity in its uniqueness and differences. That is a step backward in maturity and a loss for the long history of becoming human. Even in several countries which appear legally to accommodate religious difference, this resentment of the different other is often barely below the surface, just awaiting some crisis that will stimulate reprisal by “hate groups” or even intimidation or stifling of the competing religious groups. Trust, mutual autonomy, and equality appear to be the only answers. Forms of nationalism,

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authoritarianism, or formal attempts at a theocracy move in exactly the opposite direction. So the question remains whether these values of honest mutual trust and autonomy of equals built on the common will to live are important enough to motivate people to distinguish religious from political ethics, enough to give priority to the more inclusive political ethics which is based on “freestanding” principles from public reason where the two sets of ethics may conflict. Only such broader inclusion can hope for the survival of humanity. In my book, Will Humanity Survive Religion: Beyond Divisive Absolutes, I introduced Friedrich Nietzsche’s idea of the symbols of “camel,” “lion,” and “child” as the three metamorphoses of the human spirit by which one matures toward autonomy, which he elaborated in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. To the degree that Nietzsche was intent on preserving autonomy and creativity, the different stages he named in the metamorphoses of the human spirit had quite different functions. The “camel” stage is the life of one “burdened” by the authoritarian or heteronomous other, the chimerical other, the bad-faith other, or the resentful or pitying other, which results in weakness of spirit in which one becomes ashamed of his or her own will. In fact, Nietzsche thought it can also be found in the superficially “strong” person who triumphs in certain cases, but is too insecure to move past the conquest to new challenges.57 Finally, the “camel” takes the maximum burden he can bear, in a self-overcoming gesture, goes out in loneliness to the loneliest of lonely deserts and dumps it, leaving it behind. He returns from the desert no longer as a “camel” but as a “lion.” This metamorphosis represents the need to fight against the last, most subtle, most “sacred” of the enemies of autonomy, the great enemy, the last dragon, morality. In his typical hyperbolic form, Nietzsche paints this as a fight to the death, so to speak, in which one must consciously resist every form of heteronomy, every “Thou shalt!” And this dragon’s body is clad with scales of “Thou shalt” all over it. Even when “I will” is a response to “Thou shalt,” it is still dehumanizing heteronomy. “I will” is the response Nietzsche feels is necessary for autonomy, but it cannot be evoked by any “Thou shalt,” but must be simply primarily one’s own will initiating it. This is his metaphor for one’s discovery of the need to reevaluate all of one’s values, especially those that may have been built upon a religion and its Absolute. He warns that to challenge even what was considered the most sacred or to consider finding a new or different value can be a “terrifying assumption,”58 especially since one cannot live without values, which means one has to explore or ask the question anew of what values and why them instead of something else? It is not difficult instinctually to fault some ethical principles as being outdated or even self-destructive or anti-life in their formulation or application. But human relations are more complex than merely a couple of obvious

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external problems when the inherited or cultural ethics is both anti-life and built upon false causation, unworthy ideals, and propagated strictly by heteronomy, allowing no dissent. That is the “last enemy,” the dragon which has to be defeated in the “lion” stage. This question of ethics or morality as a religious burden or the “last enemy” one faces en route to becoming autonomous has to be resolved in one of two ways. Either one finds a way of retaining a life-affirming ethics but detaching it from its religiously absolute metaphysical base, or one simply seeks an ethics that has no religious or Absolute base. By such absence of an absolute ground, both alternatives seem to point to a relativism, and relativism is frightening to many people to the degree that they think it connotes the haphazard, unpredictable, idiosyncratic, selfishly pragmatic, or mere opinion. But “relative” does not necessarily carry any of these meanings. It basically means related, not independent, but something receives its value or quality by its relation with something else, or that it is subject to change or movement so is neither absolutely fixed nor beyond connections, but to Nietzsche the ethic, however it was approached, had to be life-affirming and should not be heteronomous or static. The first alternative of asking about the possible separation of the religious ethics from the absolutized historical-metaphysical claims of the religion which were losing credibility I sought in Ethics and the Future of Religion: Redefining the Absolute. I asked whether the most central claims of Christianity, its Christological claims could form a basis, not through historical proof but through some form of consciousness, that would provide it the certainty it lost by historical research, in order that it might serve as a ground for a universal ethic. The result of intense scrutiny of four of the most significant Christian thinkers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries turned out negative, but supplied elements which might serve in another approach to find “freestanding” principles. Yet even in the non-theistic framework established by the final two of the four Christian theologians, there was no desire to find an ethic that could be universal, but primarily only to defend a Christology as universal which actually released one from the “world” or Heidegger’s “care” or ethical relation to others. The gift of one’s acceptance by God through a universal symbol was alleged to accomplish what no human effort in ethics could. But the reflexivity pointed only to a “depth” of truth rather than to any ethical principles, to the “truth of truth” which was only the diversity of perspectives among humans. Of course, that truth must be acknowledged, but when it comes to living with each other, we need to agree on at least a few ethical principles out of this diversity which can serve as a base for our behavior in these relationships. In this present study, I am not satisfied that humans need make no effort in relating to others, so I push that exploration a bit further with other Christian themes as well as anti-Christian critiques of the religion, to see if

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it is possible that one could retain one’s religion either with or without the unprovable metaphysics while still viewing the completely “freestanding” principles agreed on as the social contract as having priority in human relations over any ethic based on some supranatural ground and exempt from public reason. I ask further if a non-religious approach to ethics can not only be independent of any absolutized base or ground but also simultaneously be considered as binding. As a side note, I am not demanding that the feeling of being “bound” to the ethic be as strong as Kant required, as if it were God’s command, since that would defeat the whole pursuit of autonomy by using heteronomy as the method to get there. Nor can the feeling of being “bound” come from something outside oneself. It must be only one’s own decision to bind oneself or require a certain action of oneself. This is more of the “lion” stage of attempting to retain autonomy rather than be swallowed up by a completely heteronomous ethic of “Thou shalt.” It does not imply one is immoral or amoral, but rather truly moral in the sense of consciously thinking about and willing the “good” by one’s own choice. It will help answer the question of whether religious people can regard their ethics as “freestanding,” but also whether the non-religious can regard their ethics as binding even if admitted as relative or confined to their religious association. If the answer by both the religious and non-religious could be “Yes,” it would mean there is a possible transition point from “Thou shalt” to “I will,” which can be normative and contingent without being Absolute. It can be universal without being vacuous if people can realize their own contingency as well as the tentativeness of all formulations of norms. It could be voluntarily accepted by both religious and non-religious people if it shows a possible “overlapping” area of principles which could serve as a ground for a social contract, as John Rawls anticipated. That would be the realization of Nietzsche’s third stage of the metamorphoses of one’s spirit, the stage of the “child.” That means this present study is concerned with both Nietzsche’s stage of the “lion” as well as the “child.” So how does Nietzsche see the “child”? The “child” stands not just for autonomy and innocence but for creativity and honestly owing one’s own will without shame. Nietzsche explains the distinction between the “lion” and “child” and then the “child’s” distinctive work in the following words: To create new values—that even the lion cannot do; but the creation of freedom for oneself for new creation—that is within the power of the lion. The creation of freedom for oneself and a sacred “No” even to duty—for that, my brothers, the lion is needed. . . . He once loved “thou shalt” as most sacred; now he must find illusion and caprice even in the most sacred, that freedom from his love may become his prey: the lion is needed for such prey.

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But say, my brothers, what can the child do that even the lion could not do? Why must the preying lion still become a child? The child is innocence and forgetting, a new beginning, a game, a self-propelled wheel, a first movement, a sacred “Yes.” For the game of creation, my brother, a sacred “Yes” is needed; the spirit now wills his own will, and he who had been lost to the world now conquers his own world.59

The irony of the “child” being the symbol of the culmination for one’s spirit in its search for autonomy or its “way” is not lost. But to think of the child as either ignorant or incapable would be to misunderstand Nietzsche’s emphasis on one’s maturing to a “will to power” that involves sublimation, and sublimation is developed only by the conflict of maturation which is the opposition of one’s own will and that of others, a development if not daily process for every maturing child. We will analyze Nietzsche more closely later. At this point, I can simply say that as I elsewhere defined “religion” as an “absolutizing” of a deity, human, event, book, set of principles, worldview, or anything that proposed to be beyond any question or challenge, and usually attached to a community that venerates or worships that Absolute, and has rituals, symbols, institutional orders, and other elements, it remains an irony that the “child” stage stands for the goal of maturing toward autonomy whereas we usually consider the child as quite immature. But maturity and autonomy are not a fixed and permanent state attained and thereafter never compromised or lost, but rather always a process of human life every day. That process is one that is extremely obvious in the child’s maturing, the process of even subconsciously honoring one’s will to power as well as to “overcome” self by sublimation. With this understanding, it is perhaps not strange at all that both Nietzsche and Jesus are said to have insisted that the best life can be found only if people are “born again,” so to speak, become like children in their innocence, originality, and especially in not being either presumptuous or ashamed of their own will and ideas. When Nietzsche wrote his famous Antichrist, it was not Jesus he opposed; he was opposing Paul and the later Christian church. As Nietzsche saw it, Paul reversed Jesus’ position. Of course, neither Jesus nor Nietzsche were addressing children but adults, adults who needed to recapture the spirit of a child. Jesus’ statement about the children was against the presumptuousness of his disciples who tried to intervene to prevent the children from bothering Jesus, a presumptuousness of adults being condescending or belittling to children instead of seeing the children as creatively and naively innocent. Nietzsche insisted that only the spirit as “child” is capable of creating new life and new values, because only here are innocence and forgetting not a problem.

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NOTES 1. The Southern states that attempted to secede from the Union each drew up documents of secession, of which the South Carolina one of 1860 is typical. Its main cause was to maintain slavery. Its primary reason, then, was built upon two charges: (1) the various (mainly Northern) states were in violation of the Constitution, Article IV, Section 2 (3) which directed that any fugitive slaves should be returned to the states from which they unlawfully escaped; and (2) that the new president (Lincoln) was intent to abolish slavery. Other defenses were added later, mainly, that (1) any state had a legal right to secede from the Union if the latter violated the Constitution and/or to nullify any federal law that the state disapproved of; and (2) the burden of taxes, especially tariffs on imported goods that worked a special hardship on the rural South, must be nullified. The latter, of course, points to the primary element of the economy of the South which was slave labor. 2. Members of the Corporate Board which was a focus for the study of ethics and business by Silk and Vogel. See Leonard Silk and David Vogel, Ethics and Profits: The Crisis of Confidence in American Business (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1976). 3. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971), pp. 223, 226, 231. These pages also point out other ways the effect of one person, one vote is diluted if not obliterated, the most obvious by the economic inequality. 4. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, pp. 221–22. 5. I analyze this idea in a separate study, Reconciling Opposites: Religious Freedom and the Contractual Social Ethics of a Democratic Society. 6. Oral argument for Thomas Van Orden, Petitioner v. Rick Perry, No. 03-1500 (3/5/2005), see especially arguments by J. Scalia: pp. 4, 8–9, 16–17, 20, 23, 26, 27, etc. 7. John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York Columbia University Press, 1993), p. xxvi. 8. Martin Buber, I and Thou, tr. Ronald G. Smith (New York: Scribners, 1958). See also Robert P. Scharlemann, “Does Saying Make It So? The Language of Instantiation in Buber’s I and Thou,” in God in Language, ed. Robert P. Scharlemann and Gilbert E. M. Ogutu (New York: Paragon House Publishers, 1987). 9. Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1989), p. xvi. 10. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, tr. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), pp. 279–311. 11. This was chanted in a night march by White Nationalists and Neo-Nazis in the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, VA, of August 11–12, 2017. 12. See “James Madison to Edward Livingston,” July 10, 1822, Writings 9:100–103 in The Founder’s Constitution, ed. Philip B. Kurland and Ralph Lerner (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987), vol. 5, pp. 105. Madison referred to it a “perfect separation” in which religion and government could both exist in “greater purity” and flourish more. He concluded saying “We are teaching the world the great

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truth that Govts. do better without Kings and Nobles than with them. The merit will be doubled by the other lesson that Religion flourishes in greater purity, without than with the aid of Govt.” Most religions have not yet realized this. 13. Rawls, TJ, Section 35, pp. 216–21. 14. What the words “detachment” or “freestanding” mean can be seen by asking, “Is ‘x’ immoral because Buddha (or Socrates, Jesus, or others) said so?” or “Did Buddha (or others) say ‘x’ is immoral because it is?” Or the difference between “We must agree that murder is wrong because Jesus said it was” and “It makes no difference what famous individuals have said murder is wrong because we have independently agreed that it is.” Why would an appeal to agreement by all humans of interest have less justification than appeal to an invisible or unavailable authority or someone who lived thousands of years prior? 15. Espinoza et al. v. Montana Department of Revenue et al. No 18-1195; Decided June 30, 2020. 16. Of course, the Court would reply that the latter is only hypothetical and that it does not give “advisory opinions.” But it does function from precedent, and the “establishment” cases in the second half of the twentieth century would likely have ruled this Montana decision a violation by the obvious religious purpose of the parents’ desiring to place their children in the Christian school at public expense. The precedent that this latest case establishes is mind-boggling, leading to greater and greater hostility between the religions as “free exercise” becomes so inclusive as to be meaningless. See my forthcoming Reconciling Opposites: Religious Freedom and the Contractual Ethics of a Democratic Society. 17. Rawls, TJ, pp. 216–17. 18. I have analyzed in two other studies some of the most basic problems or burdens in religion, focusing primarily on Christianity, but showing other parallels in other religions, burdens that are largely created by the institution’s marking off some central claim of the religion as Absolute or beyond all questioning. See my Will Humanity Survive Religion: Beyond Divisive Absolutes (2020), and Ethics and the Future of Religion: Redefining the Absolute (2021). 19. Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in The Portable Nietzsche, tr. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Viking Books, 1954), p. 307. 20. Sean Carroll, From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time (New York: Dutton, 2010). 21. Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion, tr. James Strachey (New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 1961). 22. See James Madison, The Federalist Papers, ed. Isaac Krammnick (New York: Penguin Books, 1987), LI. 23. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Vintage Books, 1994). 24. See note 25. 25. His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Ethics for the New Millennium (New York: Riverhead Books, 1999). 26. See especially Rudolf Bultmann, History and Eschatology: The Presence of Eternity (New York: Harper Torchbook, 1962); History of the Synoptic Tradition, tr.

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John Marsh (New York: Harper & Row, Pub., 1963); Jesus and the Word, tr. Louise Pettibone Smith (New York: Charles Scribneer’s Sons, 1958), Kerygma and Myth (New York: Harper Torchbook, 1961); and Theology of the New Testament (2 vols. in 1), tr. Kendrick Grobel (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1951, 1955). 27. David Friedrich Strauss, A Life of Jesus Critically Examined, tr. George Eliot (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1972). 28. Harold Bloom, The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation (New York: Touchstone Book, 1992). 29. Robert P. Scharlemann, The Reason of Following: Christology and the Ecstatic I (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1991), pp. 202–5. 30. It is interesting that some religious cosmogonies depict humans as more of a threat to the order of the world than the animals or natural elements, especially in African cultures In the Barotse people’s (of modern Zambia) account of human/divine relations, the god had to retreat back to the sky and break the connection so humans could not access him; likewise, in the Yao tradition from modern Mozambique, the humans ruin the harmony of the world by setting fires and killing animals to roast and eat, so God retreats to the sky. See Barbara Sproul, Primal Myths: Creating the World (New York: Harper & Row, 1979). 31. Romans 8:18-25. Admittedly, Paul refers to the “creation” rather than “nature,” but he still insists that it “was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it,” i.e. God. 32. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist, in The Portable Nietzsche, tr. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Viking Books, 1954), pp. 616–22. 33. A. C. Grayling, The God Argument: The Case Against Religion and for Humanism (New York: Bloomsbury, 2013). 34. See my Ethics and the Future of Religion: Redefining the Absolute. The four great theologians I analyze are Schleiermacher, Hegel, Tillich, and Scharlemann, which takes us from an idealism to an existential ontology to a phenomenalist ontology, in dates from the birth of Schleiermacher (1768) to the death of Scharlemann (2013). 35. Robert P. Scharlemann, “The Argument from Faith to History,” in Scharlemann, Inscriptions & Reflections: Essays in Philosophical Theology (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1989), pp. 185–96. 36. Ultimately, Tillich’s answer was only the certainty of mysticism, without the acknowledgement that the mystic cannot really explain or write an “apologetic” theology as Tillich called his. Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1951), vol. I, pp. 8–11. 37. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison: The Enlarged Edition, ed. Eberhard Bethge (London: SCM Press, 1971). 38. The Dalai Lama, Ethics, p. 19. 39. Alfred North Whitehead, Religion in the Making (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1933). 40. William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, A Study in Human Nature (New York: University Books, 1963), pp. 506–508.

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41. This has been apparent in the rise to power of the Hindutva ideal in India which began in the 1920s, but has risen to power with the RSS and the BJP especially in the last five years. Its opponents regard it as a form of fascism; its proponents describe it as only a nationalism based on “ethnic absolutism” to preserve the Hindu values. It also spawned a rewriting of an alternate U.S. religious history during the last several decades to make that earlier age of the early immigrants bear the uniform ideal of the new country being founded only as a “Christian nation.” Steven K. Green’s Inventing a Christian America: The Myth of the Religious Founding (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2015), is a profound analysis of this concerted effort to alter the history of the immigrants. The “original ideal” postulated by these groups in India and the United States sketched a fictitious uniformity in the cases for both nations. In the United States, the new president in 2016 found a conservative religious base that bought that alternative history, and his anti-immigration instincts pleased them, similar to what happened with the new prime minister of India in 2014. 42. Soren Kierkegard, Attack on Christendom, tr. by Walter Lowrie (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1968). 43. This is pretty much the development of nineteenth- and twentieth-century innovative Christian theology that I analyzed. 44. Of course, this is impossible since 2,000 years of Christian reflection on the gospels, which we now recognize were not some purely objective history to begin with, means that if where one encounters Jesus is in the text of the Christian scriptures, it already has a very high Christology attached to him. There is no meeting this unknown person by a lakeside or starting from scratch. One has to try to figure out a way to get “behind” the Christology, yet many Christian theologians such as Paul Tillich insist that there is no “Jesus” behind the biblical picture of Jesus that one could ever discover with any degree of probability. And for him, historical probability is inferior to “faith” which is certain. See my Ethics and the Future of Religion: Redefining the Absolute, ch. 4. 45. Rudolf Bultmann, Jesus and the Word, tr. Louise Pettibone Smith (New York: Charles Scribneer’s Sons, 1958). 46. Wolfhart Pannenberg, The Apostles’ Creed in Light of Today’s Questions (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1972). 47. It faces the same problem Tillich spotted in art as he tried to explain the religious “dimension” in art as the abstract expressionist style, but toward the end of his life speculated that perhaps such expressionism was going to have to restore and incorporate some form of representation since he saw the “truth” of expressionism as its message that persisted despite all the concrete image being negated, which corresponded to his idea of the symbol of the Crucifixion as the negation of negation. There has to be something to negate. The book to read is Paul Tillich, On Art and Architecture (New York: Crossroad Pub. Co., 1987). 48. Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. 145 (1879). 49. For a twenty-first-century approach to this, a must-read is Martin E. Marty’s When Faiths Collide (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005). 50. Emile Durkheim, Elementary Forms of the Religion Life, tr. Joseph W. Swain (New York: The Free Press, 1965). Durkheim was careful, however, to express his

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objection to the reality of two realms of “sacred” and “profane,” emphasizing that we know reality is only one. 51. Brian Dippie, The Vanishing American: America’s White Attitudes and U.S. Indian Policy (Lawrence Kansas: Univ. of Kansas Press, 1982). 52. Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (New York: Pengin Books, 1991), pp. 283–304. 53. This may sound too idealistically optimistic. In real life, there always seem to be “holdouts” or those who object. In such cases, a more sensitive form of introspection, education, and “re-valuation” of one’s own values must be found, and agencies from the home to school to bodies of government must assist in creating and accentuating a more natural, neutral sensitivity toward the “other.” Richard Rorty saw the power of great literature to create or increase this sensitivity, and that is certainly true, but all forms of media continually confront the superfluity of the banal, aggressive, assaulting, and violent, which, even it is devoured as only “entertainment,” has an effect on the psyche. See Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. 54. See my Will Humanity Survive Religion: Beyond Divisive Absolutes and Ethics and the Future of Religion: Redefining the Absolute. 55. See my Ethics and the Future of Religion: Redefining the Absolute. 56. This was one of the great contributions made by Rabbi Richard L. Rubenstein’s work, especially his profound After Auschwitz: History, Theology, and Contemporary Judaism, Second Edition (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1992) and his social-psychological analyses of religion. 57. Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in The Portable Nietzsche, p. 138. For anyone who has only heard that Nietzsche was a nihilist, this kind of description that he gives should help dispel that caricature. 58. Ibid., p. 139. 59. Ibid.

Chapter 2

Adjusting to the New Millennium in Search of a Common Ethic

As humanity approached the beginning of the third millennium of the “Christian Era,”1 people’s imaginations ran the gamut. There were those who speculated it would be the end of history, maybe some terrible “apocalypse,” to others even the “return” of Christ. Prior to year 2000, an enterprising person offered to “stay behind” when the Rapture occurs, by which the believers ascend to meet Christ. For a small fee, he seriously offered to tend to the suddenly abandoned pets of those faithful who were anticipating joining Christ in the Rapture. To his dismay, he did not have as many “takers” of his generous offer as he anticipated. Interestingly, a similar offer has been repeated by others periodically during the ensuing two decades, depending upon whether one’s minister thinks Judgment Day is coming very soon or people are going by the Mayan calendar. In any case, the anticipations of the “new millennium” took many forms for the religious and non-religious. Throughout history, significant markers on the calendar or signs in the cosmos quite often have been disconcerting. The eclipse of the sun made many of our ancestors believe the world was ending. Earthquakes and tsunamis did too, and in many cases did mark the end of some people’s lives. People seek to understand what might come and are receptive to “signs,” “omens,” cards or astral bodies, or they seek out “oracles” at Delphi or “spiritual” masters in Philadelphia looking for clues. But so far, the clocks simply keep moving forward as time seems always to do. The strange mixture of the negative and positive residual elements of disquiet and celebration were removed from the streets and minds sometimes within a day or so, or perhaps it lingers on one’s “back burner” for longer, but life usually goes on very much the same as it was.

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PROSPECT AND RETROSPECT: DECADENCE AND DETERMINATION Perhaps a few people noticed a couple of publications that appeared for the new millennium, one by a religious leader, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and the other by an erudite cultural historian and critic, Jacques Barzun. Both conservative authorities of world fame engaged in a rather unusual approach to the millennium. Barzun provided his fantastic analysis of the preceding 500 years of “Western Cultural Life” in his usual meticulous and profound way, which, of course, was not what made his book unusual. That element appeared at the end, as he allowed himself to take liberty at age eighty-eight (in 1995) to attempt to foresee the future in his unpresumptuous manner.2 Cultural historians are usually quite careful if not reluctant about looking to the future rather than simply the past. His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, at age sixty-four, also temporarily stepped away hypothetically from his Buddhist metaphysical presuppositions and position as a religious world authority to hunt for a common ethic for the new millennium.3 Again, parallel to Barzun’s venturing a task most of his historical colleagues would avoid, most world leaders of a religion are not in the habit of bracketing out their religion to hunt for an ethic that all people would be able to accept whether they were religious or not. In the Dalai Lama’s search for an Ethics for the New Millennium, he emphasized that, as important as religions are, a very small percentage of people are really actively involved with the religion they espouse.4 Further, if the world needs a unifying ethic, which is pretty obvious by the divisiveness that is ripping at the seams of the growing globalism, the separate religions cannot provide that since each one feels it has the only true ethic, just as each one is built upon its own unique metaphysics and myths. So he stressed that he has realized that there are other faiths, and other cultures, no less capable than mine of enabling individuals to lead constructive and satisfying lives. What is more, I have come to the conclusion that whether or not a person is a religious believer does not matter much. Far more important is that they be a good human being.5

It is very unusual for a religious leader to say such a thing, especially to assert that it is more important to be a “good human being” than to be a “religious believer.” To speak of it being more important to be a good human being than to belong to that religion implies that ethics is more important than religious doctrines or even specific religious allegiance. With this conviction, he described what he thinks could actually work for an ethic for all humans in the new millennium. Throughout his book, he suggests principles

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and the cultivation of thinking right to create an “inner peace” which is real “happiness,” which will manifest itself in concern for others, thereby creating both the happiness humans themselves seek as well as mutual ethical behavior.6 In suggesting these, he does not appeal to some metaphysics, religious mythology, or religious authority. Nor does he say one “must” adopt these principles or habits of thinking, nor does he discourage the reader for even thinking for herself. He speaks of his personal experiences in which he has found how well these principles actually work for himself, and he admits that although most of these principles he knew from Buddhism, their origin does not seem to be as important as their reasonableness and pragmatic value. He does not emphasize his authority or some eternal authority of the principles he suggests, but rather encourages his readers to exercise their own judgment or autonomy, even to disagree or reject certain suggestions if they do not help.7 I reiterate that this is an unusual approach for a religious authority to take, that he is not stating norms or commands as an authority, much less is he appealing to some authority of Tibetan Buddhism, even though he is precisely that authority. Nor is he appealing to the antiquity of the ethical principles of Buddhism as giving them authority. The appeal is to the reader’s own reason, openness, or common sense, an authority one discovers if these actually work. So he offers the book as an invitation to experiment with some of his ethical suggestions, independently of their being embraced by Buddhism. The ethical revolution he feels is needed is a “spiritual” revolution, but that does not mean that it is to be built on any specific religion since the differences between them lead only to confusion and divisiveness. Religious people must become more familiar with other religions and respectful of them, but they will probably find within their normal experiences of interactions with other people sufficient incentive to probe their ethical insights and attitudes to change their behavior without changing religions. The answer is in seeing oneself not as independent but as intricately connected to everything and everybody, therefore with a sensitivity to others’ suffering (p. 73) so one who develops empathy and compassion. This is the most important theme of his book. It also points to part of the thesis of this present study as I have explained. The Dalai Lama assumes that to be human, one must become responsible for one’s own decisions, not simply following ancient rules, aping others, or being totally subservient to other authorities in such a vital area as one’s ethics, or one’s relation with other people. Only if a person finds oneself in circumstances which are truly hopeless, not just hopeless in one’s own perception, does he say that “religious belief can be a source of comfort.” But he insists “that is a separate issue” (p. 112).

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That separation is miles removed from the more typical Absolute stance of each religion when it speaks of its dogma or its ethics. The Dalai Lama’s approach obviously comes from a person who is very concerned with all the people of the world, for constructive, practical ethical formulations that all could accept, whether religious or non-religious. The state of the world certainly appears to need this since even international treaties between countries do not explore their ethical presuppositions prior to discussing particular policies of the relationships, which means the ground for one nation’s ethic may be a complete antithesis to the ground of others, which would make all policy discussion superficial at best, very fragile with a deep division underlying it. He is convinced that in order for one to make an ethical response, one must spend time conditioning one’s mind for it, cultivating the empathy and compassion for others, restraining one’s negative thoughts and “afflictive emotions,” so “recognizing ourselves clearly in all others,”8 in order to attain inner peace and ethical behavior. The primary problem that I sense is simply the question of how one cultivates empathy and compassion or recognizes oneself in all others. Is it dependent upon a special will power of mine, or of my having some intuitive capacity or quite compassionate nature to begin with, or is it something I have to be taught or learn or cultivate? Is it natural and quite possible to reach, or does it require almost gargantuan effort and determination? That is, can it be realistically accessible to all humans, so be expected of all humans, so could actually form the basis for a social contract or structures of justice in addition to helping in one’s private relations? Schweitzer, Nietzsche, and Rawls will be necessary to answer my question of what elicits the altruistic response. What about Barzun? Jacques Barzun, as world-famous cultural historian, had profoundly analyzed the previous 500 years of Western cultural life as reaching its particular “end,” a stage of “decadence.” This period in the West offered the world a set of ideas and institutions not found earlier or elsewhere . . . it has been a unity combined with enormous diversity. Borrowing widely from other lands, thriving on dissent and originality, the West has been the mongrel civilization par excellence. But in spite of patchwork and conflict it has pursued characteristic purposes—that is its unity—and now these purposes, carried out to their utmost possibility, are bringing about its demise. This ending is shown by the deadlocks of our time: for and against nationalism, for and against individualism, for and against the high arts, for and against strict morals and religious belief.9

This makes sense when one understands Michel Foucault’s analysis of the development of the human sciences beginning at the end of the eighteenth century. The forms of comparison via representation prior to that had been

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based on a “metaphysics of infinity,” in which a science of language, labor, or even of what it is to be human, was not really possible. But things changed as scholars began to see how the empirical entities themselves provided the data and possible approaches to analysis and comparison. Thereafter, the “metaphysics of infinity” became challenged more and more, as its explanations, analytical tools, and language were all no longer practical or relevant.10 Barzun’s scope of 500 years, from Luther to 2000, covers all those years of the gradual movement away from “classical” forms of measurement within the “metaphysics of infinity” by the discovery of the sheer empiricities of real life. Yet his title “from dawn to decadence,” is not a value judgment of going from “good” to “bad” in five centuries. Contrariwise, Barzun defines “decadence” only as a “falling off” which he insists does not mean even a loss of energy, talent, or moral sense but a loss of obvious “possibility.” That is, the forms, whether of art, institutions, or other structures or entities, seem stagnant by the end of the twentieth century, and many function only painfully. “Repetition and frustration are the intolerable result. Boredom and fatigue are great historical forces.”11 Therefore, at the end of this complex history of culture, connected sagaciously and briefly in more than 800 pages, he tried unpresumptuously to see “possibilities” of the distant future, looking back (as a historian would) from the year 2300.12 His three-page description defies description. But I shall try. It is seemingly a realistic possibility, but is quite disconcerting, as he portrays the early centuries of the new millennium dividing the people of the West into the cyber-technical-world of science, math, and business for the few educated, on the one hand, and on the other hand, the masses of the uneducated whose lives are extremely limited and controlled. Public education had been abandoned since everything other than the mathematical-digital world seemed superfluous to the few in power. Political structures and democracy dissolved or metamorphized into corporate structures, with everything driven by math. Voting was no longer needed or existent. Most people became illiterate and their entire lives were controlled by the computerized programs the cyber superiors had devised. Faith in science had created a uniformity in which dissent no longer existed. The illiterate masses were finally rescued from sheer “brutishness” only by a few people discovering old extant cultural remnants. From these artifacts they began to teach themselves to read, and by this reading and new cultural exposure, they expanded their knowledge of possibilities. Finally, after a little more than a century, boredom took over the entire Western mind, and a handful of even the privileged elite finally realized through ancient texts and photographs that they were missing out on something, that they were not living the flourishing life. So they demanded reform. From even their “twisted view” of the cultural sources, a renascent culture began to have its

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foundations laid, which in turn resurrected an enthusiasm in the young and talented “who keep exclaiming what a joy it is to be alive.”13 While this specific kind of rescue might certainly be expected from a cultural historian who spent his whole life trying to connect and understand such a complex evolution of the diverse and dynamic Western culture, and is persuaded of the power humans can derive from knowing history, a power to create culture and meaning in the face of boredom, I must leave the details of those three pages to any reader after they have relished the earlier 800 pages. I point it out only because the details of his possible picture suggest a long period of de-humanization, a loss of meaningful and constructive relations between humans, a division that has no ethical compass but only a mathematical equation underlying it. That is why I say it is so unique for Barzun’s writings, again, not to suggest that he himself did not often reveal his positive or negative feelings about movements, events, styles, and even people, because he did that. Nor am I oblivious to the fact that he always saw a driving power within humans even in moments of steep cultural decline. But what he sees is significant simply because it is a realistic possibility of a long period ahead of the West without humanizing or ethical relations— which is truly terrifying, even if a few finally turn to history to try to revive a sense of direction for humanity. Even if we could be certain that such a revival will occur, how could one stand the thought of such a long period of de-humanization? Without a concern for humanity, how can we think that revival will occur? Without a public education for all that includes the “humanities,” how will people be exposed to their own history which shaped them, so how could they have any real concern for humanity? Without any real concern for humanity, how can humans be expected to think and live ethically? Then if ethics is about human relations, how could any relations be constructive or meaningful? EARLIER AND CONTINUING RELIGIOUS ATTEMPTS TO ADDRESS THE WORLD’S ETHICAL PROBLEMS Prior to the new millennium, there had been ecumenical attempts to build trust and respect and to have genuine constructive dialogue between various religions, usually sponsored by the more liberal or tolerant sects of the various religions. But ecumenism was seldom, if ever, a major interest in any single nation for any number of reasons. In 1993, two of the most influential religious representatives in the world, His Holiness the Dalai Lama (whom we have already noted published his book on a new approach to ethics six years later, in 1999) and world-renowned Christian theologian and ecumenical advocate at the University of Tübingen, Prof. Hans Küng, were closely

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involved in an international ecumenical meeting of several thousand religious leaders. The gathering for a week at the Palmer House in Chicago was a centennial of the Parliament of the World’s Religions which had met originally in 1893. The Dalai Lama presented the keynote address on the closing day of the centennial Parliament in Chicago in 1993, and Prof. Küng had worked out an early draft for discussion by the group over several days which resulted in a Declaration Toward a Global Ethic. In this Declaration, the participants from the many different religions were saying that even though they were individually unique in many ways, in their totality, they had a common set of normative ethical principles that could and should be espoused by all people, not just the religious. They appeared to base the authority of these as being supplied by their antiquity and general or obvious reasonableness, rather than upon some claims of being divinely inspired or Absolute revelation, or even general acceptance by humanity in the present.14 The questions that emerge in such an approach would be (1) How the group determined that these principles were themselves inherently “binding” and “irrevocable” values and attitudes, or whether they were not but were simply the consensus of the select group itself, which they claimed to be a “fundamental consensus”? (2) How they determined which principles from their ancient traditions actually are binding and irrevocable in the present or have transcended the limitations of those ancient cultures—since they did not adopt all the ancient principles and even avoided mentioning them in the Declaration? (3) Were the principles in the specific religions actually grounded on something that they considered unquestionable or Absolute, and shown to work, or were they articulated as “aspirational” or ideals not yet realized, or was is it all human attempts as a kind of “trial and error” to figure out how humans can peacefully and constructively co-exist? and (4) Since the document claims that each person must be responsible for himself or herself, is that really the case, or are these ethical ideas normative from a mutual agreement and mutual autonomy from the beginning, or have the adherents to the specific religions always been subject to a traditional heteronomy from ancient times? The Declaration was quite thorough in articulating that while there may be many people who live quite moral lives, there are sufficient ethical problems to have pushed the world into a stage of crisis. (Recall that this was “way back” in 1993 already.) So they listed numerous different ways in which contemporary humans and organizations are unethical. They were even self-critical of religious leaders or members who incite “aggression, fanaticism, hate, and xenophobia—even inspire and legitimize violent and bloody conflicts. Religion often is misused for purely power-political goals, including war. We are filled with disgust.”15 Of course, the unethical activities sponsored even by religions are nothing new. They have often involved

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even the most egregious forms of violence, war, genocide, and so forth, in a given era if not the most hypocritical behaviors via the local religious leaders. That fact would seem more to negate the validity of looking at religion for the answer, when it is seen as one of the major problems throughout history, with its Unconditioned, Unquestionable, or Absolute. To say one is “filled with disgust” seems a rather puny response. In any case, the Declaration lists one general principle—“What you do not wish done to yourself, do not do to others. Or in positive terms: What you wish done to yourself, do to others!” These are immediately recognized as specifically religious, coming in a negative form from Jewish rabbi Hillel, and the later positive expression attributed to Jesus, known as the “Golden Rule” (p. 7). Both men suggested this was the “whole” of the Torah. So this is very Jewish and Christian. Then the group delineated “four broad, ancient guidelines” which it calls “irrevocable directives.” They are (1) “Commitment to a culture of non-violence and respect for life”; (2) “Commitment to a culture of solidarity and a just economic order”; (3) “Commitment to a culture of tolerance and a life of truthfulness”; and (4) “Commitment to a culture of equal rights and partnership between men and women.” These four are explained as adaptations of four of the ancient “Ten Commandments” in Exodus 20: prohibiting killing, stealing, bearing false witness, and committing adultery (pp. 8–13). Again, it is very Jewish and Christian, as if other religions as well as the non-religious people had no sense of basic “irrevocable” ethical directives. But the narrow ancient apodictic commands were amplified and extended into broad fields of human relationships, in some cases hardly related to the narrow and specific ancient command the group used as their base. For example, the demand for a just economic order, the extreme poverty which creates hatred, and so on has only a marginal connection to the very specific “directive: You shall not steal!” upon which they based the idea of the economic justice. There are profoundly potent descriptions of the world’s problems within these pages, combined with many ethical statements of what is needed in the way of a principle. There are also candid admissions that religious ethics cannot offer a solution to all of the very specific problems, but the assertion is that at least these four irrevocable directives grounded on the general “Golden Rule” would establish a proper common base for addressing the problems. As insightful and even profound as some of the features of the Declaration are, the group suggests that as “religious and spiritual persons we base our lives on an Ultimate Reality.” Though not considering ourselves “better than other women or men,” nevertheless we “have a special responsibility for the welfare of all humanity and care for the planet Earth” (p. 5). However, this whole position is based on the group’s “truth that the ancient wisdom of our religions can point the way for the future.” But the overriding

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questions are the “why” or “whence” of their special responsibility and why does antiquity have more wisdom than the current time? It might have been better to say “we feel (or “we share”) an important responsibility . . .” which would not have been so centered upon religions. Does religion’s “special responsibility” come only from their idea of Ultimate Reality or upon the very antiquity of the wisdom from which they are drawing? My fear is that a non-religious person would think such an approach as utterly presumptuous and irrelevant if not insulting, that they are only speaking of themselves to themselves. I could hope otherwise, but the document is basically a plethora of short statements of value judgments as if all were obvious and generally accepted or at least generally acceptable. Further, the Declaration says the religious are not trying to make normative some ethics of any single religion, and certainly not of some “global ideology or a single unified religion beyond all existing religions” (p. 6). But what then gives these ethical principles such “binding” and “irrevocable” authority if they are not appealing to their religious, metaphysical, mythical base as the Absolute? Just being ancient does not invest value in something nor make it “binding” or “irrevocable” for all future times. Those terms reveal the absolutizing each religion carries with its believers, but it is precisely that which absolutizing prevents it from being an inclusive ethic, as I have already shown. The “ancient wisdom” is very questionable in any professed use today. Corporations today do not look through the ancient business wisdom of 2,000 or 3,000 years ago to lay hold on the “irrevocable” principles. Nor do medical doctors, astrophysicists, CPAs, or farmers. If one looks at even one example in the Declaration, it becomes obvious that their ethical principles were in many cases actually more informed by present-day culture than any specific religion or all of them combined, often having little or no connection with the ancient understandings, while they are claiming the ancient norms as being the irrevocable principles. For example, how do they arrive at the idea of even sexual equality? Not from Islam, nor Judaism, nor Christianity, nor Hinduism, and so on, and in fact, only from aspirational secular theory even in the most religious countries, but even then, not in practice. That equality idea came in the West from the Enlightenment philosophy, not from the Western religions. This is just one example of the emptiness of claiming antiquity of religions’ ethical values, the ancient ethical wisdom and belief in an Ultimate Reality when there is no obvious connection between those and the values they assert in the text. Let me be more specific. This part of the Declaration on equality declares that “We have the duty to resist wherever the domination of one sex over the other is preached—even in the name of religious conviction” (pp. 12–13). But in fact, in this one example alone, it is the Christian religion, influenced by St. Paul and St. Augustine that explicitly intensified the religious, unethical

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inequality, the Absolute subordination of women to men. Not equality. Does the group excise or ignore that inequality from the very Christian scriptures and two millennia of practice? The Christian church simply perpetuated an ancient universal practice and sanctioned it with Absolute status which pushed it far beyond a mere contingent cultural standard. Should Hinduism appeal to the same ancient idea of equality when even in the ancient Ramayana one finds a defense of the caste system?16 Or does one admit that these inequalities in ancient times were quite accepted as a universal practice, so could not possibly be normative or irrevocable for humanity in the twenty-first century? If so, why is the special “religious ethic” cited as the norm? What becomes obvious is that the shortcoming of writing such a “global” declaration from a religious standpoint is the fact that the religious all felt a need to embrace their ancient standards, and when they do that, it necessarily becomes a “cherry-picking” process of which standards from their past should be considered valid and which ignored—unless they adopt them all. From what perspective does one decide which values, norms, and standards, and of which religion of the ancient times is permanent, “irrevocable,” and to be universally applied? To accommodate all the specific religions, only the most general maxim from the past could suffice as the key for the whole, which we saw cited by the group as its base: “We must treat others as we wish others to treat us.” But to move beyond this to the marginal ramifications on even the four irrevocable principles lacks ancient connections, or to move behind this basic “Golden Rule” to explain why it is irrevocable opens up a can of worms about the diverse grounds or basic metaphysical and mythical bases of each religion. How can one use the term “must” without inserting a form of heteronomy against others’ autonomy? This is a significant difference between a “Thou shalt” and an “I will,” as Nietzsche unveiled years ago. The [you or we] “must” used throughout the Declaration is not autonomy unless the person using the expression says that this “must” comes through a process of “our” mutually autonomous, voluntary agreement as the only factor that “binds” us to such a principle. So it should be spoken of as “We will . . .” instead. That being the case, if the validity of the principle depends primarily if not only on our mutually autonomous, voluntary agreement, then why would there be any binding or irrevocable element in the antiquity of a command? To make the latter appeal—that is, its age‒‒is an attempt to create authority via a heteronomous structure, a structure “outside” a person, so here some structure outside and in the past. But that negates autonomy the more it is emphasized, and that is inevitably dehumanizing. As I questioned before, what happens when one appeals to ancient standards in the sacred scriptures and tradition which instead consist of actual discrimination against people sexually, racially, ethnically, economically,

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and so on which diverge so far from modern cultural-ethical ideals? What happens to present reasoning, present mutual autonomy, present genuine dialogue? That raises the questionableness of the group saying over and over that this “basis” for a universal ethic “already exists,” is “already known,” and is an “irrevocable, unconditional norm for all areas of life . . . found in the teachings of the religions of the world.” That is simply intensifying a very selective heteronomy. It has already been figured out, millennia before? (p. 2). If those religions provided the norms all these centuries, why are there any ethical crises in the present? If they had the standard already defined, is this being claimed on the basis of some supranatural or divine revelation or Absolute authority which is itself not credible to the non-religious or even acceptable among the religious to each other? Are Christians really welcoming the metaphysical base of Shariah ethics and law? Are Muslims really welcoming the metaphysical or mythical base of Christian ethics? And so forth? Is it not a fact that the appeal to the antiquity and supposedly “irrevocable” nature of those old religious ethics is actually what creates many if not most of the ethical problems religious people feel in the modern world and which separate them from the non-religious and even from each other? If people of one religion can find in their ancient scripture that the “infidels” (meaning anyone who does not believe in its single God, or in the coming Final Judgment, or in Muhammed as God’s final prophet) should not be allowed to live, is that supposed to become a “global” and “irrevocable” ethical principle because of its antiquity? If some Christians find in their sacred scripture that those who are not heterosexual “deserve to die” (Rom. 1:26–32), is that supposed to become a global and irrevocable ethical principle because of its antiquity? To suggest that religion is best equipped to address the present ethical problems, but then to use ancient traditions to form the ethical base for solving the problems, can only result in unending chaos, even as the Dalai Lama acknowledged in his book six years later. He said that [T]he difficulty with tying our understanding of right and wrong to religion is that we must then ask, “Which religion?” Which articulates the most complete, the most accessible, the most acceptable system? The arguments would never stop. Moreover, to do so would be to ignore the fact that many who reject religion do so out of convictions sincerely held . . . [and] we cannot suppose that such people are without a sense of right and wrong or of what is morally appropriate. (p. 17)

In the years after this centennial, the Parliament of the World’s Religions met again in 1999, thereafter every three to five years, each time addressing ethical/religious problems that were fairly unique to the host country, along with very general sinister problems, issues such as AIDS, terrorism, the custody

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of our Earth, inequity and poverty, clean air and water, war and refugees, or even relationships between groups such as the Aborigines of Australia and those who later migrated there. These are certainly vital ethical topics that need to be a part of humanity’s public discourse, and the ethical dimension is often quite absent when the politics and economics get involved as the primary factors by which to make decisions about any action, money, or bills. These Parliament meetings have involved thousands of leaders from dozens of different religions, and have proven the religious leaders’ consciousness of problems that seem unaddressed or even chronic in certain areas of the globe. Its work cannot be minimized so far as its concern. But it remains very problematic in trying to stay connected with the specifics of the actual ancient traditions without “cherry-picking” while at the same time expecting those of different religions and especially the non-religious to embrace its ethical formulations. As noble as their efforts are, from a purely pragmatic standpoint, do their guidelines filter down to the average member of their religious traditions and find understanding and acceptance there? How far can ecumenical efforts go without antagonizing the formal narrow seminary training within a specific religious sect, even if the participants in the Parliaments themselves feel no cognitive dissonance? Are those who are preparing for the priesthood, the clergy, or leadership positions in most religions actually being encouraged to learn how to detach their religious identity from their ethics so as to find a greater ethical unity with those outside their group, all those others who likewise are able to detach in the same way, so that the larger group consists of people who present only “freestanding” ethical principles rather than those principles grounded in their religion’s founder or basic documents? That would be quite exceptional. The religious-centered ethics drives us to the question: When those involved in the ecumenical dialog assert that something is “wrong” (so “we must not . . .” do a certain thing) or that something is “right” (so “we must . . .” do a particular thing), are they thinking it is “right” because their religious founder said it was, or that they are convinced on other grounds and voluntarily agree to live under a social contract with other living people that it is “right”? Or could anything be judged as “right” despite the religious founder’s insistence that it was “wrong”? Are members of any religion allowed to challenge any or all ethical principles which their religious tradition requires them to embrace, or would they be asked to leave? Are they able and willing to say that new ethical formulations and reasoning must occur because of the world’s new problems? When the Declaration suggests near the beginning, “Too many old answers to new challenges,” (p. 4) it sounds like the “new” requires a genuine re-valuation of all values. In that sense, it seems to contradict the Declarations’ major thesis of the validity

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of the old or ancient answers held by the religions. Or is it simply saying “old answers” that don’t work are those that are not religious answers? Are they still thinking that the truth and the true ethic are found only in their separate and quite different religions, or, despite the denial, are they forming a quasi-supra-generic-religion from all the participating religious groups? Can one really believe in each religion as it presents itself to those they want to “convert” and at the same time proclaim an ecumenical unity with people of very contradictory views? The answer is likely “No.” However, if the answer to the latter is “Yes,” then they may have reached the point of placing greater value on persons than on ideas, on reality than on the invisible, on the knowable than on the unknowable—and that would certainly be the best position if one really is interested in people being authentically themselves, as fully human, as mutually autonomous in a trusting environment. But that would change the focus of what most religious are hoping to do—to “convert” others. It would then no longer be the religion’s traditional Absolute. THE RUDE AWAKENING: THE DISSOLUTION OF TRUST AND THE TWIN TOWERS Less than two years into the new millennium, four commercial airplanes took off from Boston and Washington, DC, for Los Angeles. Two diverted into the Twin Towers of New York City, one into the Pentagon in Washington, and the fourth crashed into a field near Shanksville, PA after passengers tried to wrest control of it from the terrorists. A total of 2,977 people died within a few hours, and many more have died subsequently from the after-effects of the fiery, poisoning environments of those crashes. The United States received an inhumane notification, a rude awakening, that despite or primarily because of its wealth, power, hegemony, and dominant religion, it was not uniformly loved nor even appreciated throughout the world. But why was that a shock? The nineteen terrorists who hijacked these four planes were sponsored at an estimate of half a million dollars, in very careful, long-range planning. This was not the end of the world some thought the new millennium would usher in. Nor was it even the end of Western culture. Certainly not. But it potently signaled the end of many innocent lives. It also put an end to any nation thinking the whole world was operating under its own ethics or its specific religious ethics, or that it was universally admired. It also marked the end of thinking in terms of any realistic or reasonable global isolationism, even though several national strongmen leaders have emerged since to denounce globalism as if that in itself would turn the clock back and problems would disappear. Finally, the event placed a big question mark in front of the principle of trust for many people, leaving in its wake a deep, foreboding of

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extreme vulnerability. That has not been relieved in the subsequent years and crises. The World Parliament of Religion had said in the Declaration Toward a Global Ethic that “We are convinced of the fundamental unity of the human family on Earth . . . [and of] the intrinsic dignity of the human person, the inalienable freedom and equality in principle of all humans, and the necessary solidarity and interdependence of all humans with each other” (pp. 5–6). It had emphasized that “[p]ossessed of reason and conscience, every human is obliged to behave in a genuinely human fashion, to do good and avoid evil,” as well as resolve conflicts through the “most non-violent peaceful solutions possible” (pp. 7–8). Globalism and interdependence notwithstanding, the barbarous inhumanity of the attack, as most evils, simply spawned more vindictive evil and the longest theater of active U.S. war—based on incorrect facts as justification—in U.S. history. The present inextricable skeins that create a vital interdependence of nations around the globe are simply obvious facts, and predictable repercussions are stimulated endlessly through the synapses’ programmed purposes, no matter how frayed they seem at times. “Transactional” or “uncalculated” behavior on the world stage induces chaos and a deepening of mistrust. As polarization and mistrust flourish on the international level, the dispersion of terrorists throughout the world with thousands upon thousands of refugees of the wars also fleeing for their lives, forms a picture which evokes fears which in turn cause the former “golden doors” of immigration to close and lock. This action itself spawns even greater polarization within the populations of various countries as they argue the ethical problems from the perspective of the tension between their own private vested interests and their culturalethical ideals. These destabilizing wars begun by the United States in alleged response to 9/11 have continued without complete resolution with the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives, and permanent mutilation of minds and bodies of many thousands more. Soldiers on one side provided the world public with graphic pictures of their beheading innocent reporters. Soldiers on the opposite had their pictures taken while standing on naked bodies of dead or incarcerated enemy soldiers. Most soldiers did not stoop to these things, but for many, the horror of that war presently remains a troubling, terrifying, if not suicidal, nightmarish power in their minds. Terrorism has struck country after country, not simply by foreigners but by local residents who have learned to hate those who are different in any way. Many nations have turned to sheer authoritarianism in their governments, hoping for but not realizing a constructive or equitable unity. To complicate the polarization by virtue of the military conflicts, 2008– 2009 brought the near collapse of the world markets, again, driven primarily

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by U.S. monetary and fiduciary abuse and failures. As a result, the long recovery was born by the lower and middle classes, and the gap between rich and poor has become more accentuated by world markets affecting all countries, and by deceitful investment practices and exorbitant incentives for greed. Money laundering is rampant. In fact, money is allowed to buy elections even in the few countries that profess to have legitimate elections. Corruption, authoritarianism, disrespect, military preemption, and killing by stealth are keys for success or at least survival. Racism has been exposed more but remains violently operative throughout most societies, even blatant by police brutality as well as in marches of White Nationalists who proclaim they are superior and will not be replaced by Jews. The private gun possession in the United States has made it a nation of world records of personal homicides and suicides par excellence, so anyone of any age can be killed anywhere at any time, whether on the freeways, in a shopping center, theater, synagogue, or even in an elementary school. After every crisis, especially every mass killing, even the Covid-19 pandemic, new gun sales explode, adding more fuel to the fire. Many states have resorted to allowing not simply concealed weapons but “open carry,” as if we had no legitimate law enforcement agencies, and even carrying military-style weapons openly in front of state court houses or other places to intimidate their political opponents. The law enforcement agencies are often outgunned since many states allow private citizens to own and carry military-style semiautomatic weapons that are easily converted into fully automatic weapons. No nation on earth allows its population to be so indiscriminately armed as the United States, killing tens of thousands of its own citizens every year. The problem does not lie in maliciousness or some pervasive mental illness of U.S. citizens, but with the same form of approach used by religions and their ethics, that is, of absolutizing a principle of a very specific ancient time and its contingent, particular conditions for the present which is radically different. The nation only gradually recognized that the economic benefit to drug corporations did not justify all the deaths caused by the mass-produced and subtly coerced opioids and the addiction, even though those deaths over the past ten years do not total the number of deaths of innocent children and adults being killed by firearms in the United States. If trust and the principle of the common “will-to-live” are actually the necessary ethical ingredients for a stable nation, as we will show, the United States has a long way to go. But in 2020, it flounders helplessly in the midst of a pandemic, as the least effective national government in the world, in which the common “will-to-live” and sense of equality and basic trust have been ignored, basically destroying the sense of unity of the nation, notwithstanding the courageous and compassionate self-sacrifice many in the medical and adjacent or ancillary fields have

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made. Citizens are being driven to question things they took for granted, and a re-valuation of values will occur, even if it is uncomfortable. Crucial international treaties, basic agreements, political protocol, established legal precedents, and even marriages—have been nullified for little or no cause at all, or even strictly from materialistic ego-centered greed. Is all this the “boredom” of which Barzun spoke? Sexual assault, exploitation, and slavery has been graphically exposed but not stopped because sexual and racial discrimination have never been adequately and thoroughly addressed for a long enough period. Dissembling and pretense have become par for the course in a group that fears reprisal. Minorities have been not simply stereotyped and caricatured, but underemployed, profiled by police, over-frisked,17 over-incarcerated, and punished disproportionately. Refugees simply wanting safety to live have been refused entrance into nation after nation, in some cases, children separated from their parents with no hope of being reunited. Young men, especially black men, have been incarcerated for decades under a former “three strikes” law for having a few ounces of cannabis on them, while pharmacological corporations make billions in profit selling addictive lethal drugs whose safety they falsely advertised, causing thousands upon thousands of deaths. And so far, there has been little or no imprisonment for these “white-collar” criminals. Yet our supposed leaders get indignant about petty larceny or looting during demonstrations, and promise retribution against these “protestors” and “looters” while the blatant racist murders by police which evoked the demonstrations continue almost weekly. Many ask if the U.S. justice system exists only to punish the disadvantaged, the powerless, the marginalized, and protect the privileged? Again, the basic “will-tolive,” equality, and mutual autonomy with protected liberties for all needs to be rediscovered, not as a form of egoistic nationalism but as principled life of responsibility. As Barzun described, many structures in most nations even at the turn of the millennium, experienced the negating “deadlocks of our time: for and against nationalism, for and against individualism, for and against the high arts, for and against strict morals and religious belief.” This thing he called “decadence” or a loss or unconsciousness of real possibilities, created stagnation within structures or entities, and many structures or agencies function now only very painfully, as, for example, political parties who decide that the customary idea of honest dialogue, argumentation, and compromise is no longer applicable, as they absolutize their partisan allegiance, and the political machinery grinds to a worthless halt. As Barzun summarized, “Repetition and frustration are the intolerable result. Boredom and fatigue are great historical forces” (p. xvi). Are we not now beginning to see a positive emerging “historical force” arising from the “boredom and fatigue” of the disenfranchised, victimized

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minority communities, being joined by many of the majority community, to demand a re-valuation of all values and a restructuring of the structures of justice? There can be no meaningful process unless there is some kind of contractual idea of ethical grounding behind the restructuring of relationships, and that cannot exist unless there is mutual trust of equal people who value life above everything. That element—mutual trust—seems to be the most absent attitude in the present world. The word is hardly meaningfully present in the entire Declaration Toward a Global Ethic. Trust does not mean groundless belief, blind trust, arbitrariness, capriciousness, or unconditional allegiance, just as it also does not include heteronomy, authoritarianism, or an Absolute. Trust is a mutual agreement, either articulated or at least understood, between equals in their freedom, in recognition of the subjective freedom each has and must continue to have, so is always mutual, never one-sided, and is always subject to change if one party proves untrustworthy. To think otherwise, or to try to build an ethic without mutual trust as its base is to build a house of cards. Mutual trust and mutual autonomy go far beyond the “Golden Rule” which is aimed strictly at the individual, trying to shape his or her attitude and behaviors toward others ethically. But real ethics always involve real relations between people—not simply principles for one person to follow—real people who “contract” or “agree” even if without explicit articulation, still an understood agreement of trust. This picture I have painted of our present situation sounds pessimistic, as if many find life impossible in the world today. That, of course, is the honest truth. Many millions do find life quite distasteful if not unbearably impossible. But they can easily escape notice by the privileged as well as the political leaders. Many of them sleep under the freeway overpasses, or wander homelessly along alleyways to hunt for some food scraps in garbage bins, or huddle against foundations of buildings since they do not even have the comfort of a chair. In many cases, one has to be very blind to not see the destitute, the marginalized, the de-humanized, and the terrorized. Yet with subconscious skill, a very privileged person can look right through the destitute or the victim without seeing him or her, as if the latter is invisible or transparent. Or one can “divert” one’s gaze on the more pleasant, the lessdepressing, less-threatening to one’s self or one’s self-worth. With practice, one can even talk a great game of helping the marginalized, lifting the fallen, funding the poor, without ever being personally involved. This person with the “liberal” talk and philosophy but lack of constructive action was one of the biggest problems Martin Luther King Jr. wrote about in the Civil Rights Movement, in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” I intentionally use the word “de-humanizing” as a passive word, because the de-humanization is wrought by inequitable or cynical structures18 and other individuals; it seldom if ever is the victims’ own choice or doing.

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Yet, of course, there are many conveniences of the modern world for those who can afford them, enough that no one really wants to restore the old inconveniences of outhouses, chamber-pots, streets filled with horse dung, or many of the illnesses to which we have found cures. In this new millennium, we live in a fantastically connected cyber world for those with means to afford such sophisticated technological devices. But is it tending toward a division of humanity between the privileged and the others, with the former getting educated into the science/math/cyber technology of which Barzun spoke, while the majority cannot afford higher education, a trend that justified Barzun’s anticipation of a long period of a reinstatement of Dark Ages in which the majority of citizens have no real freedoms and become basically illiterate? Is the world slipping into such a cesspool of stagnation, or will the majority arise with a new, more inclusive vision of equality, of human rights, of citizen responsibility? Where education is only “digital,” that is, about numbers, how would one ever realize the richness of human history and culture, and how would one ever see anything outside numbers as being “right” or “wrong,” that is, how would one ever develop any sense of ethics? Fortunately, for Barzun’s readers, he also ended the projection a bit optimistically by suggesting that eventually boredom would set in, not only for a few among the illiterate masses but also for some of the elite and they might all begin to rediscover their empty lives and once again seek to know the human cultures of the past. This stage of even the elite finally recognizing that one’s possessions do not insulate one from tragedy and unhappiness was paralleled in the Dalai Lama’s estimate that people who enjoy all the material privileges of life do not escape pain and find more happiness than those who have less or even nothing, since the true happiness is basically in the “inner person,” not in things owned or possessed or status symbols of success. (I will illustrate this more graphically in two examples that conclude the book.) Or, life is found more in human relationships rather than in merely manipulating digits, a fact which is accessible to all who learn to transcend the materialistic trends. RELIGION’S ETHICAL ANACOLUTHON: THE PRESUPPOSED ABSOLUTE TO FINISH THE SENTENCE “Jesus died on a cross . . . you must not steal.” There is the “anacoluthon” that is so obvious but so invisible to some people. It remains an anacoluthon even if you insert between the two parts a word such as “and,” or “but,” or “so.” It is a statement about a person dying on a cross, a very ancient form Rome used to kill criminals in the most torturous, publically humiliating way.

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But the sentence breaks to a different topic, a command not to steal. It shifts subjects as well as verbs, as well as eras. How could there be a connection? This is clearly an “anacoluthon.” Yet most religions, not just Christianity, see no break, no anacoluthon at all in this or comparable statements. It is simply an abbreviation of their central theological or metaphysical belief and their consequent ethics as a result of that belief. But if one placed any other name in it other than “Jesus,” the typical Christian would see it as strange, as having no real connection at all, such as “Jack died on a cross . . . you must not steal.” It simply would make no sense. But in between the two parts, Christians supply their presupposed Absolute. What does that mean? In what way does a Christian add or presuppose necessary elements to the few words to make a meaningful connection? First, “Jesus” is a man, and the “cross” is understood as being the means by which he was killed. But that has nothing to do with my being told that I must not steal. What else happens? The Christian understands “Jesus” to be not merely a “man” of the first century who lived in Nazareth and who was crucified outside Jerusalem, but now thinks he is . . . what? Is he the Jewish Messiah (or “Christ” since the terms are equivalent, a man simply “anointed”) such as the people’s king, by God, but still only a man, since Judaism did not believe that its God had either sons or daughters or competitors? The Gospel of Matthew says that this was the official charge, written and placed on his cross, “This is Jesus, the King of the Jews” (Matt. 27:37). Or is he a “Christ” (Messiah) in a different sense (completely non-Jewish), and not merely wholly human but also wholly God, as the much later Creed of Chalcedon articulated in 451, two complete natures but united and without confusion within a single person? It involved (1) a totally Divine eternal nature, which, somehow despite its Divine nature, was at one time “begotten” by the Father, and (2) a totally human nature, except for the fact that all humans by their nature are universally sinful, yet he never sinned. At that point, our relative, reasonable world was left behind and the mythical categories, so pervasive in the ancient Greek and Roman world of the fifth century, dictated a new god, who is also not only fully god but fully human. This was the first step in Hegel’s “double negation” that actualized Absolute Spirit. When Jesus is defined in that way, the Absolute overwhelms the rest of the sentence; otherwise it is not Absolute. As Soren Kierkegaard said, if you begin with the statement “Jesus is a man,” there is nothing in history or existence or reason that can enable you to move to say also “Jesus is God”; but if by faith you being with the assertion “Jesus is God,” then you need nothing to make any transition, and the historical reference is superfluous to faith.19 But, then, is Kierkegaard’s “Christ” really a man at all? Actually, Hegel, as an absolute idealist, did not think Christology depended upon historical facts,

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either, but he saw it being understood only by reason or Spirit (Geist), not faith. But if the historical facts are superfluous, then even the first element in our statement—“Jesus died on a cross”—is also quite superfluous. Yet the Christian church (including Hegel and Kierkegaard) certainly never considered that so. On the contrary, that would be judged the worst heresy. So where is the consistency? Moreover, if we can deconstruct so as to find the motivation for one being converted to the Christian idea, why would one even think of making such a statement about a human being by which one’s presuppositions actually nullify the historical claim? Here, the insertion of the Absolute may connect the sides of the sentence, but it annihilates reason. Yet even when one presupposes that Absolute, it is still not clear why the existence or being of that which is Absolute would require me not to steal. So, one must explore further. Then the Christian must re-examine what is meant by Jesus dying on a cross. What was it that died, and why, and how is that related to the command for me not to steal? Can God die? Or is it possible to separate those two natures that were allegedly totally united without confusion in him, so that death could have killed only his body? Did his death prove he was more human than divine, or more divine than human? If only his single body died, how can that suffice as a vicarious death for all of humanity which deserves to die? Or did he have to die as a human to become fully God, that is, his personal, contingent body had to be removed from the scene to realize his Infinity or Absoluteness as God? Was his death his own choice as a human, or was it totally God’s choice so was also Absolute, not contingent, not voluntary, so a forced or coerced death, a killing, neither predetermined nor an accident, which theology asserts? So he, even though fully human had no choice, not even the choice of a typical martyr, because God decided to require it and God is Absolute or beyond Question? So it was neither Jesus’ will as a human nor was it an accident, nor was it even a real choice for Jesus? He could not not have died since God determined it as the Absolute. But if he is also completely Divine, then did he irrevocably will his own death yet struggle against it in the Garden? But then his two natures collided which the creeds insist that his two natures did not lose their specific identities nor did one of them negate the other, nor was there any antagonism between them. Did his death accomplish anything, and if so, what, and how does one know? It is quite possible that answers to any or all of these would still not necessarily have any logical connection to the ethical demand, “you must not steal,” other than simply eliminating Jesus’ choice of stealing or not stealing. One quickly discovers the chain of obvious unfounded presuppositions involved from moving from any alleged fact to a moral demand.

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Most religions have short-circuited this whole process by a heteronomous position of presupposing or professing to know the Absolute and what it, as personal, expects from humans. If the first part of the sentence is itself the Unquestionable or the Unconditioned or the Absolute, then it necessarily encompasses the last part of the sentence no matter what that says, even if it said, “kill the infidels.” For, after all, if the Absolute is presupposed, not only as being, but as a personal being with an infinite will and power, then it is open to whatever people think that Divine Will is, and its ethical absolute must be obeyed, whatever people think that is. Who has the key to that, so knows precisely what can or cannot be the will of the Absolute? But that is all presupposed in the anacoluthon. It is not a picture of Jesus as an ethical example in dying on a cross, but the ethical command not to kill is based on Jesus being Absolute, “God,” that which is beyond all questions and challenges, Who is presupposed as demanding this. Prof. Küng admitted in formulating the initial drafts of the “Declaration” that he wanted to ground it on belief in “God,” but he realized that many Buddhists would object, so to include them as a “religion,” he did not use the word “God.” But he used substitutes which carry the same authority; otherwise his appeals to “religion” meant nothing at all. He also decided before undertaking the framing of the Declaration that it had to emphasize that it was coming from religious people and that it must itself “have a religious foundation,” which meant that the view being presented was that “the present empirical world is not the ultimate, supreme, ‘absolute’ spiritual reality and truth.” How this corresponds to the neutrality he hoped for is not apparent, when shortly thereafter he insisted that the Declaration “has to be related to reality” or seeing “the world as it really is and not just as it should be.”20 Again, the problem with people of different religions attempting to negotiate an ethic that will satisfy all of them is that their definitions of the Absolute or Incommensurable or Unquestionable are all uniquely different, all contingently formulated from within quite different specific situations, and when the bases are so different, there can be no chance for any negotiation or unity so long as the unique base of the ethics remains in place. If the ethical principles cannot be detached from the metaphysical or mythical base, there will be no ethical consensus possible. The four ethical principles they all seemed to agree on are not unique per se, but quite common to most non-religious ethics as well, yet these people wanted those principles to be seen as “religious” and “binding” or “irrevocable,” so not dependent on any human judgment at all. They wanted the religion to dictate the global ethics, or the authoritarian and heteronomous ancient principles to be the norm, nothing humanly autonomous—even when they admitted how limited was their scope of agreement. I have already suggested using Friedrich Nietzsche’s analogies of “camel, lion, and child” as the metamorphoses of one’s spirit toward autonomy, so

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this inquiry utilizes both the lion and child stages. It is not merely the general metaphysical or absolute theological burdens that one has to relieve oneself of, but especially religion’s moral heteronomy, its apodictic “Thou shalt.” A moral person comes only from the person’s voluntary rather than coerced thoughts and actions, especially if the coercion has incentives and penalties, and is not subject to any criticism from the person herself. To defeat that pervasive “sacred” apodictic “Thou shalt!” requires the “lion” stage. Then for the creation of “new values,” or to re-valuate all values, the “child” stage is necessary because of the child’s unhindered and spontaneous creativity. This “revaluation of all values” is a prerequisite to even thinking in terms of any global ethic possibility, just as the autonomy in moving beyond all “Thou shalts” must first dislodge the unwarranted presuppositions that form the anacoluthon. Do we really think that we understand precisely the same thing even by the word “human” as people did 2,000 years ago? Or our idea of “human rights” carry the same meanings as those words used by people two millennia back in time? That ancient metaphysics of infinity’s anacoluthon no longer has logical credibility. This present analysis examines especially three scholars who were raised as Christians, but who eventually discovered the need for a more inclusive set of values, a more instinctual understanding of ethics which would be accessible to all people. We will see how they moved through the “lion” stage of detaching one’s life from a heteronomous ethic to the “child” stage, through a re-valuation of values, to finally arrive at their own values, to see if it can become a basis from which to negotiate with others a universal ethic and therefore social contract. Nietzsche, of course, did not admire equality since he thought it came from ressentiment, and he did not advocate a social contract. Yet in describing himself and how he determined who he was and what he wanted, he mentions in third person his dependence upon others which his most severe critics as well as ardent admirers should contemplate as Nietzsche describes the one who “turns out well.” Instinctively, he collects from everything he sees, hears, lives through, his sum: he is a principle of selection, he discards much. He is always in his own company, whether he associates with books, human beings, or landscapes; he honors by choosing, by admitting, by trusting. He reacts slowly to all kinds of stimuli, with that slowness which long caution and deliberate pride have bred in him: he examines the stimulus that approaches him, he is far from meeting it halfway. He believes neither in “misfortune” nor in “guilt”; he comes to terms with himself, with others; he knows how to forget—he is strong enough; hence everything must turn out for his best. Well then, I am the opposite of a decadent for I have just described myself.21

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TOWARD MUTUAL HUMAN TRUST AND AUTONOMY: PREREQUISITE FOR LIVING TOGETHER In the history of Homo sapiens, it is difficult to know whether any crude notions of ethical responsibility preceded religious ideas or were dependent upon them. Not that an answer to that question would determine which should be true today. The years bring change, and time still runs forward only. If our understanding in our human sciences over the past three centuries has enabled us for the first time to wrestle with the problem of what it is to be human,22 our difference from ancient times in terms of understanding both that as well as the world in which we live has radically evolved. To understand “human” problems of relating to each other, we need to confine ourselves primarily to the period after humans realized the insufficiency of the old “metaphysics of infinity,” and began to develop the “human sciences,” though certainly many human problems today are not completely different from problems of ancient humans. We can learn much in looking back occasionally, even if our intention is to “update” our neutral ground for a global ethic rather than simply subscribe to one single religious ethic of ancient times. We can see how those old ethics were limited, lacking in an understanding not only of humans, but of the world, and of the powers they called “God” or other terms of Divinity. While a great many people on earth seem still to think that humans would not be moral or ethical if they were not religious, the real answer to that as a question is not so obvious. Fortunately, a great many of our fellow-humans have been quite ethical in their lives even by judgment by religious people. Had that not been so, humanity would have disappeared from the face of the earth long ago. In fact, that view has been only more of religions’ closedness to diversity and to actual life that enabled the picture of humans being as basically degenerate to be established heteronomously as the truth. That posture is a hierarchical one of people who want to exercise power over others, to control other people’s lives and thoughts. Religious people who find themselves in power over others are not usually so obvious, nor are their institutions. They usually feel they are humbly accepting the Divine Will and informing people of what that Will is, so they convey the absolute standards to others as their service to others. In any case, ethics as the study of that which is moral or good in human relations has been explored on its own, without any connection to religion for centuries. Likewise, during the same period, many religions have become increasingly more adamant that they alone have the true answers about ethics or morality, usually anchoring it in some transcendent being and ancient practices of a group, insisting that its truth has never substantially changed. By this assertion, the religion’s god, religious founder, metaphysics, and morals all become absolutized, unchallengeable, irrevocable, incommensurable,

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and inhospitable to competitors. While that provides comfort to the adherents of that religion, if people are deprived of their own critical functions through such absolutism and authoritarianism, they are dehumanized to that degree. Any de-humanization cannot be moral. While I have shown in earlier volumes on religion’s future23 some of these “burdens” religious people have put up with until they could no longer feel any integrity because of the cognitive dissonance, the grounds for ethics in the title of this book do not need to be tied with religion. Mutual trust, mutual autonomy (which implies equality), and a common or instinctual “will-tolive” can easily stand on their own. Any relationship between conscious beings requires mutual trust. In a society that is devoted to humans maximizing their potential, a society in which all are understood as having an equal voice, that ground of autonomy necessarily converts quickly into a mutual autonomy. This is not a substitution of autonomy or mutual autonomy for any religion’s Absolute, since humans know their choices and knowledge are always limited, contingent, and quite relative. On the other hand, to place any confidence in mutual autonomy does not spawn absolute chaos as is so often painted by authoritarian figures. Even some of the most innovative Christian theologians of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries whose primary concern was theology and the relation of these to the traditional symbols, autonomy was still emphasized. The problem was that it was finally suppressed by the old traditional symbols of theology which simply retained their priority, if not totally eclipsing the individual’s ideas or will. Finally, the instinctual common “will-to-live” does not derive from any religion or any thinking, but as Schweitzer says, is instinctual, is prior to the Cartesian cogito as the primary reality of life. This will become clearer in the following chapters. In the preceding section, the “anacoluthon” of religious claims, I touched upon the basic problem of any connection between a Christological statement and a morality based on it. No instinct or reason bridged the gap so as to eliminate the “anacoluthon.” In chapters 3 and 6, I analyze two of the other biggest problems within the Christian religion which are common to other religions under different symbols, the idea of “God” and the idea of human lack or deficiency. The question remains as to how much either of these primary ideas comes primarily from instinct or from reason. But reason has certainly shown grounds for not taking either of them literally or as reality. In chapter 4, I focus primarily upon a very Christian ethic which Schweitzer discovered but finally saw beyond from which he developed the idea of a universal “Reverence for Life,” rooted in one’s awareness of the “will-to-live.” In chapter 5, I set in contrast to that “will-to-live” the “will-to-power” of Nietzsche, to try to ascertain the relation of instinct to reason in any candidate for being a ground or base for a universal ethic. Finally, in chapter 7, I follow the ideas of a common “will-to-live” with its assumed mutual autonomy and

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trust to the point of analyzing how the political philosophy of John Rawls fits with its very unique ideas about the process of people reaching an agreement or social contract through either a hypothetical “veil of ignorance” or recognition of the necessity of “freestanding” principles from which the “overlapping consensus” can be reached as the “final” agreement. In the concluding chapter, I also provide a couple of additional examples of how common and natural such a life of ethical agreement can be, even in circumstances one could never have imagined for oneself. Whether humanity can actually reach such an ethical unity in time to avert the danger of nuclear warfare, cybernetic annihilation, cosmic pollution, and extreme global warming that dissolves the habitable conditions of Earth is another question. But if Auschwitz showed the absence of any rescuing “God,” our present condition cannot be addressed either by any “politics as usual.” NOTES 1. “CE” is the more neutral term used among scholars than “AD,” which means in “the year of our Lord,” so is only a Christian conviction. 2. Jacques Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence—1500 to the Present: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life (New York: Harper Collins Pub., 2000). 3. The Dalai Lama, Ethics. 4. Ibid., p. 20. 5. Ibid., p. 19. 6. Ibid., pp. 62, 77, 99, 120, 179, 234. 7. Ibid., p. 131. 8. Ibid., p. 130. 9. Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence, p. xv. 10. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), ch. 7. 11. Barzun, p. xvi. 12. Ibid., pp. 799–801. 13. Ibid., 801 14. While this would seem strange within each religion where the basic ideas of the religion are taken for granted as divine revelation, but obviously most religions do not want to equate the ideas of competing religions as being based on divine revelation, so the Parliament spoke only of “antiquity” of the ethical norms. That exclusive claim by many if not most religions makes any attempt at a group consensus quite contrived. Further, the mere appeal to “antiquity” itself does not do justice to the antiquity of the great ethical explorations of very influential non-religious people, for example, in the West, of people such as Plato, Aristotle, and so many others. 15. Hans Küng and Karl-Josef Kuschel (eds.), A Global Ethic. The Declaration of the Parliament of the World’s Religions (London: SCM Press; New York:

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Continuum, 1993). Copy from Chicago, Sept. 4, 1993, p. 4. Subsequent pages are in parentheses in body of the text. 16. P. T. Raju, Structural Depths of Indian Thought (Albany: State Univ. of New York, 1985). 17. The Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1; 88 S. Ct. 1868; 20 L. Ed. 2d 889 (1968) decision of mere “reasonable suspicion” satisfying for a momentary “stop and frisk” was pushed to gross dimensions in NYC at the same time the Courts began, first under CJ Burger, to dismantle the “exclusionary rule.” Combined, these opened the door to invite egregious abuse by law enforcement from the 1970s onward, especially in the pursuit of the illegal drug trade, while pharmacological companies made fortunes off legal drugs, killing thousands of people, only to be discovered in the middle of the second decade of the new millennium. Under the innovative “three strikes” criminal law, many minority kids went to jail for decades if not for life over a few ounces of cannabis, and owners or executives of the big “pharmas” simply paid a fine at most? 18. Dorothee Soelle, Choosing Life, tr. Margaret Kohl (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981). 19. S̷oren Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, eds. and trs. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1991), pp. 25–32. 20. A Global Ethic and Global Responsibilities: Two Declarations, eds. Hans Kü̷ng and Helmut Schmidt (London: SCM Press, 1998), pp. 56–57. Küng also acknowledged not simply the problem the Declaration had to satisfy Buddhism, but of such family and sexual issues concerning the role of women or whether they had real equality, and so forth. The Parliament then turned the document over so each religion could explore how its particular or unique elements related to it. But the claim of the antiquity and “absolute” being within the realm of religions rather than the world as sensibly perceived, was as unjustified as was its optimism that the agreement between the various religions would amount to anything more than “bare bones” without real criteria upon which agreement could make ethical progress. 21. Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, tr. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Modern Library, 1968), pp. 680–81. 22. Foucault, The Order of Things, p. 308. 23. See my Will Humanity Survive Religion? Beyond Divisive Absolutes and Ethics and the Future of Religion: Redefining the Absolute.

Chapter 3

The Relief of Recognizing Different Ethical Grounds or Sets

CRITICAL REFLECTION VERSUS THE INSTITUTIONS’ RETENTION OF METAPHYSICS OF INFINITY As already noted, the Dalai Lama insisted that religion itself cannot serve as a foundation for a global ethic since the question of “which” religion would be irresolvable. For the person who is religious but has even a nagging question whether he or she should know more about other religions to be sure he or she has made the right choice, relief from that doubt or discomfort can surely be felt only if one is able to detach the quest for a global ethic from all religions, including one’s own. Yet even within any single religion, there are many different conceptions of what is meant by “God” (whether one uses the actual word or a substitute), and what kinds of ethical principles are established on the authority only of that “God” as the latter is postulated as the Ultimate which has an interest in humans living ethically, the meaning to which they hold is usually considered Absolute and beyond challenge. That is due to the retention of the idea of the specific absolutized metaphysics as the ultimate authority by the religious institution since most religious institutions claim to be the final or only truth and never to have changed essentially or significantly in their scriptural, doctrinal, creedal, and moral positions. What I am asking is whether it could be possible that both religious and non-religious people, as well as religion and government, could all get some relief if people were willing to think in terms of there being two sets of ethics? That may sound ridiculous. I am not saying that they are totally conflicting. Not at all. Rather, a better analogy is two sets of clothes. Most of us have more than one set or type of clothes. Why? Because different situations seem to require dressing differently. These different clothes do not mean we are hypocritical or have no values or don’t know what we are doing. Most 87

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people think one needs to dress appropriate to where one is going, including thinking about what other people will be there and what they will be wearing, as well as what one is planning on doing while dressed that way. I will not wear my suit in order to mow my lawn. Nor will I attend a funeral in my bib overalls. But I am quite comfortable wearing the latter when I am doing work on my car or my lawn mower. The sets of clothes themselves often have quite different elements that are dictated not only by the special work one anticipates engaging in or the formality of the occasion, but even by the nature of other elements of the dress appropriate for the completion of one’s outfit. So if a woman is attending a quite dressy affair, no matter which dress or other accessories she might choose, she very likely will select some shoes which we call “heels.” In such a case, she probably will not choose flats or thongs or tennis shoes, unless they have made their way into that particular fashion scene. A man invited to a “black-tie” affair will not likely choose to tie it over a worn-out T-shirt in which he might work in his vegetable garden. That is, each style has its own specific components and scope, and one’s specific comportment is often also dictated by that same occasion for which one is dressing. Even religious people who believe the deceased goes directly to God in “heaven” do not usually cheer or clap at a funeral as one might at a tennis match. The two sets are not distinguished simply on the basis of one being social or political and the other being only individual, since ethics does not concern simply what thoughts or beliefs one keeps to oneself. Ethics is concerned with the interaction between people. To the degree that religious belief affects the way one acts toward others, it is as socially or politically ethical as any social ethic except for the fact that it is (1) not inclusive but an exclusive association; (2) not open to revision by “public reason” or compromise but operates from a “non-public” reason or “faith” that is considered by the group to be superior to public reason; and (3) it is not open to any individuals’ autonomous thinking. It is this exception, based on these differences which explains why John Rawls did not classify a nation’s religious ethic as “political.” “Political” meant for him these three elements of inclusiveness, public reason, and autonomy and even compromise. For an ethic to be inclusive of all people affected by the decisions, it must be established on the common or public reason, open to genuine discussion, disagreement, and compromise, which is quite different from the ground and constituency involved in the typical religious ethic. To separate or distinguish the two sets of ethics, one is not required to have comprehensive certainty of anything, but at least a reasonable expectation or past experience of the specifics, but not of any totality. (There is a more theoretical way of putting this argument.)1 It does not require comprehensive knowledge to realize that one does not act the same way in a court of law as

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one does at a wedding reception. Even a fairly observant child who attended both of these types of occasions could sense the different elements and comportments. Now, if one has no idea about a particular occasion to which one has been invited, whether it is formal or quite informal, one usually attempts to find out prior to attending, so to be able to dress accordingly. Few, if any of us, would consider simply wearing what we want and are comfortable with, and expect it to fit in, and we certainly would not expect everyone at the occasion, upon seeing us, to quickly run home to change into an outfit similar to what we wore, especially if they had nothing like that in their closets. On the other hand, if we were told that it was to be a casual affair, or dress comfortably, we would be afforded considerable choice, but not forced to wear some particular item. So one’s individual freedom is not eclipsed by having different sets of clothes or ethics, but one must realize a responsibility to other people in deciding which to use. In a legal system such as a democracy, there are many freedoms that are presented, but the law does not force every person to engage in those freedoms, whether it is freedom to marry, freedom to own a business, freedom to worship, freedom to have an abortion, or even the freedom to vote. One’s religion might forbid the abortion, and its ideal might even forbid marrying if one wanted to be a priest. Some religious people have even wanted to remain so detached from “this world” that they have felt it sinful for them to vote in elections. That may seem quite irresponsible in a modern democratic republic, but the law will still not force people to exercise that freedom. Those are not contradictions but choices people can make on their own. The legal system might allow people to drink alcoholic beverages, while one’s particular religion sees that as ethically wrong, in which case one is free to avoid the alcohol to honor the “stricter” ethic. But one cannot force one’s religious association’s opposition to alcohol on all people by turning it into civil law, just as one cannot force by law all people to belong to a certain religious group and to worship with them and support them financially. It is essential to be able to see this separation of government from religion as well as all other “comprehensive schemas” which do not embrace all citizens and are not open to challenge by “public reason.” In this sense, we can say that regarding the structures of justice under which a people live as citizens, if it is a democracy, its basic ethical principles must be agreed on by all, so they have priority overall, despite perhaps some religious people feeling their metaphysics should have priority. The latter cannot be true if people are to be treated as equals, having equal freedoms under the civil law, which are limited by the equal freedom of all citizens, and thus agreed by all, and to which all agree that those basic principles have priority and all agree to strictly comply with them, as Rawls insists. Beyond that basic structure of political justice of the social contract, each has freedom

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so long as one does comply with the basic ethical principles and the constitutional framework which is based on it. This way, the political conception of justice forms the necessary laws for the social co-existence to flourish, so must have priority for life to exist, within which one may have freedom for one’s own compatible desires, interests, and goals which can be quite different from that of other citizens. A social unity establishes the basic ethic, the basic “set of clothes” in our analogy, but within its guidelines, we all have liberty to have special sets of clothes for our own unique interests and goals, as Rawls emphasized, and, as Madison and Jefferson said, government will not intrude upon those, not even on religious beliefs and practices, unless or until one violates the fundamental or general laws of the political agreement of the whole of the citizenry. Life consists of making responsible choices between the two sets of ethics. If the clothes analogy works at all, one must realize that one’s liberties are extensive, but must accommodate other people’s similar reasonable liberties even if they are very different, but that can be done by a democratic society whereas it has not even been a goal of any existing religion. Rawls will describe the two different sets of ethics as “metaphysical” and “political” conceptions of justice As I pointed out, the first comprises a limited group, as an exclusive “association” who voluntarily select to be in it (or reaffirm their allegiance to it as something they learned from their parents or others), a group which has its own special limited reasoning in the sense that they are not open to somebody outside the group trying to change their minds, since they feel they are doing what is dictated by “God” or some other Absolute. Under the “political” conception of ethics or justice, people are born into a nation and have no choice about belonging unless they want to leave the country; but in a democratic society, that political conception of justice is not shaped from some outside Absolute or force but by the people themselves. It does not become exclusive nor does it extinguish autonomy, but rather establishes a ground guaranteeing the latter by its inclusive nature, which can be called “liberal” in that sense. That is all Rawls means by “political,” not partisan politics. If the people themselves shape and reshape the concept of justice, this means that they can and should always be open to reasonable discussion about the freestanding ethics which they think best serve their social contract. Of course, the “political” conception can itself be undermined where people absolutize the stance of their select religion or other association, even their particular political party, to the point of being unwilling to carry on a reasonable discussion or to be flexible enough to cooperate to work out a reasonable consensus. Even a political party can destroy the “political” concept of justice. So “political” must be felt in its most basic sense, as the will of the polis, or the people, the entire people, not just a majority. We will analyze “majoritarianism” later.

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These two sets of ethics might be very similar or quite different. The more they conflict, the more cognitive dissonance one will feel in participating in both groups, and if they conflict, if the unity is to be retained, it has to be resolved by the basic principles which were agreed on behind a hypothetical “veil of ignorance” in the “original position.”2 Rawls’s main argument was that not only will both government and religion each work better in such an independent format, which Madison and Jefferson and others behind the First Amendment also believed, but the principles of the political conception will very likely enable and even legally guarantee people to embrace different views of many significant things, including religious freedom, as long as they agree to the constitutional basics the social contract requires as neutral and universal laws, whereas the “metaphysical” conception is usually very limited, exclusive, and unyielding since its base is seen as Absolute. It is geared to work to the advantage of all in its basic fairness, but to prevent anyone from taking advantage of any other people. Rawls’s “second principles” or “principle of difference” will make this clearer when we discuss it. This may seem burdening the simple point. But if people can visualize two different sets of ethics, as they do their clothes, and many other aspects of their lives,3 they could, as individual citizens in a nation—which is a democratic society with a constitutional structure built upon their overlapping consensus of freestanding principles—decide on their own whether they want to be religious or not, and, if so, which religion, and follow the ethics appropriate to each “set” or structure within the basic principles of the political constitutional structure. That means that one could be quite ethical and a good participating citizen without feeling a need to impose one’s exclusive goals or values unreasonably on others who are not in that same religious group. On the other hand, to the degree that one can see any of those values of even one’s religious ethics as “freestanding,” or being true and valid whether or not some religious leader or deity spoke such, one can engage in a reasonable discussion with others who do not belong to one’s own religion. But one cannot enter such “political” discussion of “public reason” with some unyielding, absolute, or fixed position which is based on something other than “public reason,” and expect any reasonable discussion. This was exactly what His Holiness, the Dalai Lama recognized in his splendid book. That was the strength of his position. The only problem it had, which we will address in the chapter on Rawls, was that, similar to Schweitzer and Nietzsche, he left the cultivation of the ethical disposition of empathy and compassion, as being rather difficult or unnatural, except in his statement that when one makes others happy, one is herself or himself happy by doing so. I am suggesting that, to begin with, at least one can get some relief if one can view it as two sets of ethics, appropriate to the constituents or participants which are not exactly the same, and appropriate to what each

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group hopes to accomplish. Further, the Dalai Lama’s emphasis upon empathy and compassion is certainly desirable, but Rawls will show us how in the structuring he is suggesting, all citizens could agree to it without even moving beyond self-interest, so it can be done without expecting such development of altruism or compassion from everyone. It would simply be “common sense” to agree to those basic principles, even though we might hope that one’s ideal might also be to develop more consistent empathy and compassion within a reasonable approach, not just emotions. Perhaps the greatest relief for the religious person would be in (1) not having to feel that he or she has to resolve all the difficult questions about which is the true religion, which religious ethics is the only true one, or how “God” or the equivalent Absolute must be conceived, and (2) not having to feel that the social contract must be simply a replication of one’s religious ethics, since one is aware that not all the citizens of the nation espouse that religion. That should be a great relief, not a compromise, especially if the social contract is agreed to by all and does not require that all become exemplars of compassion. But that relief will become clearer as we progress. Humanity’s way of viewing the reality of the world and universe has changed very radically in the past two centuries. Michel Foucault has explained in detail how the late eighteenth century brought about the possibility of the human sciences for the first time in human history. A new era and approach of science began to eclipse the ancient “metaphysics of infinity” with its forms of representation by new forms built upon the finitude of even the human, even of his or her “organic” body.4 Our focus on both ethics and religion in the twenty-first century should begin at that point rather than trying to reinstate or rehabilitate the ancient metaphysics since the latter so painfully conflicts with modern science. If we no longer believe in the sun rotating around the earth, nor in our being reincarnated endlessly over centuries and millennia, nor gods dwelling on Mt. Olympus, nor “demons” or “jinn” occupying and directing our bodies and minds at will, nor that “witches” should be burned alive, nor that certain chants and sacrifices will guarantee male progeny or assist one in one’s gambling or cure baldness, and we have come to new understandings about “life, language, and labor” which Foucault addressed specifically and empirically, we can no longer oversimplify ethics by a shrug of the shoulders and saying that “humans have never changed, so the ancient religion’s ethical answers are still correct.” Our understanding of “humans” more in bodily or material terms than formerly means what it is to be human have changed, and become more relative as we have discovered even the contingency of language itself. The same is true of “labor” especially by the material emphasis placed on it by Marx and others. Just these three areas of life, labor, and language pose a radically new way of viewing religion, positively and negatively.

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Despite the retention of the metaphysics of infinity by hierarchical imposition, many lay people and even a greater number of scholars have accumulated a much greater and more accurate knowledge of religions themselves, and have discovered that not only have humans changed over the centuries and millennia, but even specific religions themselves have evolved, and, in most cases, never were what could be called “uniform” in their basic ideas and practices. Reflection on them and their claims which encompass a worldview has caused a greater cognitive need to admit a change and diversity in human understanding of everything, including the essence of religion and the actual history of religions and how religion is used.5 Since the Enlightenment, largely because of the new limits to epistemology that affected the way scholars began to understand empirical entities in distinction from non-empirical phenomena, much of the focus on religious studies has had to begin with the facticity “that” one is, not of knowing the essence of “what” one is, thus only cautiously exploring through the new sciences what it is to be “human.” But the more it was discovered in the past 150 years that human thinking comes from the brain and its empirical or material connections, the more difficult it was to assume the mind or spirit was somehow an otherworldly or Divine or eternal dimension of life, and the more difficult were the questions of what is meant by one claiming to have a relationship with something invisible or non-empirical, such as “God” or “Spirit” or whatever Absolute a religion professes. Philosopher A. C. Grayling was not being sarcastic in describing the difference between the way a religious person views claims of his or her own religion vis-à-vis the parallel claims other religions make. He said it is sometimes said that “everybody is an atheist about almost all gods, the difference between true atheists and Christians or Muslims being that the latter still have one more god to go, one more god to stop believing in.”6 Foucault noted the inevitable irony of humans being both the object of new sciences being investigated as well as the subject doing the investigating, the one who formulates the parameters including limitations of the reflective pursuit, of which the encompassing sphere of human language is a crucial part. This change came not as a mere arbitrary choice or even sheer accident, but from new forms of perception of the “givens” of life and methods of analysis.7 He classified three forms of knowing: (1) mathematical and physical sciences; (2) the empirical sciences such as language, life, and labor; and (3) philosophy. The third forms a common plane with either or both (1) and (2). The human sciences (psychology, sociology, history of culture, or of ideas or science) do not have a separate or well-definable space except that he is sure they are included “in the interstices of these branches of knowledge, or, more exactly, in the volume defined by their three dimensions.”8 He profoundly explained that the human sciences

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are addressed to man in so far as he lives, speaks, and produces . . . his corporeal existence interlaces him through and through with the rest of the living world . . . [and] because he has a language, he can constitute a whole symbolic universe for himself, within which he has a relation to his past, to things, to other men, and on the basis of which he is able equally to build something like a body of knowledge . . . [so] he is that living being who, from within the life to which he entirely belongs and by which he is traversed in his whole being, constitutes representations by means of which he lives, and on the basis of which he possesses that strange capacity of being able to represent to himself precisely that life.9

Where then do “religion,” “ethics,” and “theology” fit into the life-framework of contemporary humans? Once upon a time, in the medieval period, theology was regarded the “queen of the sciences.” Since the end of the eighteenth century, both religion and theology have been demoted in the West, especially to the degree that they opposed much of the method and even results of modern science for the past four centuries. If we confine our analysis to the Christian religion, as we must, in asking it to serve as one possible example of religion in today’s world, “theology” is viewed by many people, even professed Christians, as being of no real significance to modern life, perhaps no more relevant than the proverbial caricature of disputing over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. In fact, astrology and various forms of ancient concern seem to be part of the recent anti-scientific revival and posture of the present, even a new primitivism, and perhaps theology for most people is hardly above astrology. I do not say this lightly nor with any joy since I have been a theologian/philosopher of religion since 1961. Within the Christian faith, that ancient metaphysics of infinity developed out of a Hellenization of Jewish monotheism of a rather literal approach to its scriptures and traditions, an evolved monotheism of a very anthropomorphized, personal God, which was “first” encountered in the Exodus tradition as “Yahweh,” a “God of hosts,” or War-God or Redeemer-God, and Law-God, but later was also considered to be the Vegetation deity, the Creator and Sustainer of the Universe, and finally Glorious, Eternal, Ineffable, Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnipresent, and All-Loving, who dwelt in “heaven” above but could appear within human history by “His” own choosing at any time to intervene in events and human affairs, especially to rescue or save His people. In its Christian form, it moved into the “Gentile,” especially Greek and Roman culture, spreading not only because its adherents manifested care and compassion for other people10 but because it was temporarily so non-centralized geographically and theoretically, with a variety of different views in its formative and malleable stages that it adapted to even radically different cultures. Eventually, Constantine, out of self-interest,

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made it the religion of his state, and Christendom existed predominately as the state/culture/religion of Europe and spread from that point, not being structurally dissociated from the state until the “lively experiment” in the late eighteenth century in the United States by a nation of immigrants. If we can reconstruct anything about it, at first, Christianity did not just drop out of heaven. Originally, some Jewish disciples of Jesus began to preach that he was the long-awaited, rather amorphous, Jewish “Messiah.” But that hope would have died alongside Jesus on his cross before it ever got preached had not some disciples claimed that he had been raised from death. Judaism anticipated no “resurrection” of its “Messiah” from death, much less of a “Son of God,” but with the later Christians, the “Messiah” (“Christ”) (anointed king) quickly shifted with its Hellenization, and Jesus, though still called the Christ, was seen as being raised from death which alleged event somehow confirmed that he was not just “anointed” or Messiah of God but even God’s “Son.”11 (Romans 1:1–6) It was later conceived that Jesus of Nazareth, through the Spirit, as the Logos, gave his (human) life in a Crucifixion which was viewed not simply as something to blame his executioners for but for which to give God thanks since it must have been God’s vehicle of grace for “saving” those who accepted it as His disciples. That “salvation” moved quickly from an “anointed” of God on earth (“Messiah” as in Haggai and Zechariah) only partially experienced in this earthly life, if at all, which marks its departure from Judaism, but even the vision of Christ returning from heaven (I Thess. 4:17) to bring that salvation to some realization became problematic, so Paul projected it, though still imminent, as being the time when the control of the world is turned back to God and God becomes the “all in all” (I Cor. 15:28). The Apocalypse of “John” appends to this picture a Final Judgment by God separating the “saved” and “damned” for eternity (Rev. 20). A less vindictive picture of the “end” is earlier found in the writings of Paul, raising the question of whether or not all humans will be “saved” at the end (Rom. 11:28–32). Paul was at least convinced that even the cosmos itself would be redeemed (Rom. 8:18–25). But what could that mean vis-à-vis apocalyptic? Thereby, everything in the universe and history was measured and valorized only from the infinity or ineffable nature of God to whom everything is subjected. Innumerable theological additions and ramifications from this base were fought over and “decided” by the Church over the centuries, but this remains an ancient metaphysics of infinity as the base. Yet even in its earliest stages, various Gnostic, anti-material, and anti-historical emphases were options in certain localities as we can see from the Gospel of Thomas, and even between the lines of Paul’s letters, though he may have been more concerned with this cosmos and material reality than was later thought, if one can decipher those elements in the midst of his obvious mysticism.

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Many religions have traditionally promoted some form of a “metaphysics of infinity,” and in certain countries there are still many Christians who take all this metaphysics as reality, as literal history and literal expectations about their future. On the other hand, a form of a rigorously critical or reflective study of the Christian religion developed over the last five centuries, but also in other religions. Those critical approaches to religion often utilized empirical data and some of the new human sciences. Modern theology has been informed not only by philosophy whether sympathetic to the religion or very critical of it, but also by some of the human sciences such as history of ideas, anthropology, psychology, and others. While in either theology or a critical history of religions the focus was on the claims about the Absolute or Transcendent, both approaches nevertheless certainly involved the study of humanity and history. Yet today they often provide a different picture of what humans are—even if still talking in terms of “essence”12—rather than the current results of modern anthropology, sociology, psychology, philosophy, and even biology. So while some areas of professional occupations of religious studies and theology profess to involve contemporary “human science,” much of the form and content of the religion is still shaped and formed by the ancient “metaphysics of infinity” at least subconsciously by the leadership of the religious institutions and seminaries, not from the actual “empiricities” of the alleged subject matter.13 These “metaphysics of infinity” themselves lie at the heart of “burdens” which lay religious people experience. I examined some of these elsewhere in detail,14 and noted them briefly in the introduction to this study. But the continued use of those metaphysics by the religious institutions has greatly intensified the possible “burdens” of the “Absolute” in the past two centuries because most Christians have experienced considerable changes in their thinking with regard to many of the natural sciences and even social sciences, while their religion, as officially propagated by the traditional institutions, continues to utilize the old metaphysics of infinity as if human knowledge in this field had never advanced. The conflicting emphasis has not diluted and probably will not until people in one religion develop the very closest of friends who are actively devotees of a different religion or friends who are very ethical but are not interested in embracing any religion. Even then, attitudes will change only if the tenacious hold of an Absolute can be dislodged by more logical reflection or public or common reason, especially since religion’s Absolute can be so easily exploited by other, less humane interests. This retention of a metaphysics of infinity or the ancient understandings promises a certain cognitive dissonance among the more reflective religious lay people. One need only view such ethical areas as birth control, abortion, voluntary euthanasia, sexual identification, and marriage, or questions of corporate conflicts of interest, insider trading, minimum wage, universal health

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care, or climate change, or equality and autonomy, “torture” of enemies and “war crimes,” and so forth, to view the difficulty of trying to read from an ancient ethic based on “metaphysics of infinity” any unequivocal sense of direction for such present splits in people’s opinions about an ethical response to these issues. This retention of an ancient base for ethics through a religion has also been partially responsible for a considerable disinterest among the younger generation in affiliating with any formal religion. They tend to see most religions as simply an unnecessary institution fostering outdated ideas and authority rather than significant insights and understandings of the real world in which they live.15 But this makes religion, with its claim to both antiquity and an unquestionable status even more attractive for ideologies to exploit, refilling the vacuum of discarded ancient interests with their own present self-interests. On the other hand, what would it mean if one could ask the question of ethics without in any way involving the ancient “metaphysics of infinity” or any absolutized theologies and mythologies of the millennia far past? The first step is to see that one could be free of having to wrestle not only with the traditional burdens of the Absolute in any religion or pseudo-religion, some of which I have already articulated, but could avoid having to worry about the difficult and obtuse development of contemporary philosophy of religion and theology which have evolved, deepened, and splintered. One could avoid the complex analyses and of having to choose sides on difficult, obscure or even obfuscating questions. One would not feel that to be moral or have an ethic, one had first to decide on whether to be religious or not, and if so, which religion, nor to have to decide whether one should be a polytheist, monotheist, henotheist, deist, pantheist, pan-en-theist, monist, atheist, or another “-ist,” or an agnostic, since to make such a decision autonomously rather than merely relying on a heteronomous authority such as the Church would require a lifetime of study and difficult theoretical wrestling.16 Instead, an actual, possible, global or universal ethic may not require anything so obscure, esoteric, equivocal, or earth-shaking, but might be as natural as making a friend, while being inclusive of significant differences. Therefore, the remainder of this chapter traces through in a sketchy, broad outline of how the traditional “theism” in Christian theology changed as the “metaphysics of infinity” lost its hold in scholarly circles, and then to a large degree with the general public since the Enlightenment. As the Dalai Lama observed, it is doubtful that even a billion, or one-sixth of the world’s population are “dedicated religious practitioners.” He is persuaded that “[t]he influence of religion on people’s lives is generally marginal, especially in the developed world.”17 Religion’s particular and ancient views are so divisive, ancient, obscure, and often impossible of resolving, and their proposed resolutions are so difficult to understand, as will become evident below, that these

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many different burdens lifted would bring great relief, and can be understood as another reason a global ethic cannot come from religions, that is, the first reason being simply the unique differences in each religion’s theological base are not acceptable to anyone outside that specific religion. In the following historical recounting, the reader can observe the philosophical move away from a presupposition of “God’s existence,” to (1) an admission that there may be “necessary” being, but even that is not what is meant by “God,” and nothing (including God) can be known as it is “initself”; to (2) the focus on the “meaning” of “God” if “God” really is, first by examining the subjective side of human consciousness corresponding to what might be meant by one’s “encounter” with “God,” and in the alternative, looking for “God” as an object, although not of some historical or empirical entity, but rather within Reason or Spirit (Geist) itself, common to both “God” and humans; to (3) the contention that “God” is only an subconscious projection of the unlimited potential of the human species, nothing more, and to reduce “God” to only negative attributes or “predicates” negates “God” itself; to (4) a position that even if “God” once “existed,” “God” is now dead and the emptiest of concepts; to (5) an objection that “God” is not any thing so cannot be said to “exist” or to have certain attributes or qualities, much less to “be dead,” but only to “be” the correlative symbol of the “depth of being” beyond the polarity of being and non-being; to (6) a position that “God” simply does not and never has “existed,” but can be “manifest” through its being in a variety of things in the world which can be seen as the “otherness” of God’s being God, that is, of God’s not being God. This sequence is also chronological from the end of the eighteenth century to the early twenty-first century. THEOLOGICAL AWAKENING: THE GRADUAL IMPLOSION OF THEISM If the national awakening in the twenty-first-century attack on New York City’s “Twin Towers” came as an explosion from outside by two attacking planes, occurring surprisingly within few minutes of time, a theological awakening occurred by the twenty-first century but came only through a gradual two-century implosion, that is, from the “inside,” from devoted Christian pastors and professors in their attempts to answer the difficult questions that were being framed about religion in general, and Christianity and the Christian “God” in particular. Both events eroded people’s traditional trust, whether of other nations or at least of some of its people, or trust in one’s own nation to protect its people, or even trust in the personal “God” who, in the Jewish-Christian tradition, they claimed, promised to be with them, even to

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the end of time. The main difference was that the first “Ground Zero” shocked nearly everyone who saw it since its consequences or ramifications were easily visible; whereas, the second awakening involved very few scholars at “Ground Zero,” with the majority of humanity being unaware of the radical implosion that took place over two centuries, and they simply went on as usual. What became evident in both is that real trust cannot operate without empirical data as its ground, and any assumed ground for a common ethic may be only a groundless presupposition. In that sense, they both changed the human terrain and social expectations considerably. For a more detailed analysis of the scholars of this following section than I have room for here, see my book, Ethics and the Future of Religion: Redefining the Absolute, but I offer here a brief sketch of the change. Moving Away from “Proofs” to a “Postulate” of “God’s Existence” While at the end of the eighteenth century, Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) separated the “understanding” achieved through matching sensible percepts with mental concepts, those “categories” of judgment innate in the mind were conceived as purely logical, so to achieve understanding there had to be some sensible or empirical experience. Knowledge could never be derived simply from single, isolated representations, but requires a whole formed from the manifold sensations spontaneously coordinating a “threefold synthesis” consisting of the transcendental apprehension in intuition, the transcendental reproduction in imagination, and the transcendental synthesis in concepts. These are all a priori but necessary to forming judgments of sensible experience.18 On the other hand, religious assertions or symbols do not include elements that have perceptible qualities such as quantity, quality, relation, and modality,19 neither within time nor space, but instead utilize ideas of pure reason, which cannot be “understood” in the same sense. Religion, therefore, belonged to “practical reason” or morality or ethics rather than theoretical reason. “Practical reason” was somewhat a blend between philosophy and the empirical sciences, yet without any explanation of the real motive source of the moral concern or “categorical imperative” by which one presupposed both one’s freedom and the necessity of one’s maxim being capable of becoming a universal law.20 This required a “postulating” of “freedom” for humans to feel responsible in their lives, but the thing postulated cannot be proven either by appealing to pure reason or to experience. Kant still retained the idea of “God” in morality by postulating “God” as the intelligent, moral First Being, from which the summum bonum with its moral content originated, which means that the “categorical” element of the

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moral imperative was the equivalent of a people hearing a command from God.21 This meant that “God” as a symbol or idea can function similarly to what might be thought of as a “real God,” without worrying about whether it is real or not. The function itself definitely impinges on the real world or one’s real relating to others. Further, Kant was persuaded that the Christian religion had many ethical elements that could fit into the Christian faith. Yet when he tried to explain such things as the symbol of the Crucifixion or the innocent dying for the guilty, he saw it simply as an individual’s own personal experience of “suffering” as a moral person who has finally arrived at a maxim that could be universalized, but was now suffering in his new life for his previous life when his maxim was not universal but rather self-centered.22 While such a psychological effect may be experienced, Christianity has always seen this as more a historical-mythical claim about the Crucifixion of the innocent Jesus rather than an individual-existential occurrence. Such a sweeping change of posture was too radical for most Christians, conditioned to the idea that their “metaphysics of infinity” was the only truth. He also proceeded too far too fast in insisting that the moral idea is valid but the moral Ideal, that is, the actual embodiment, is not intelligible.23 This meant that one cannot speak of any person, even Jesus, as embodying moral perfection, since the “good” is only the “good will,” and to judge anybody would require certainty of their will or actual mind-reading. Finally, any aspect of religion such as prayer or sacrifices that had no moral significance was simply pseudo-religion. On the other hand, he also offended the spirit of the Enlightenment to the degree that the moral imperative seemed to be only a re-clothed form of heteronomy rather than true autonomy, despite his insistence that the command or sense of duty comes only from within the individual. Nothing that comes merely from within the individual has that sort of absoluteness about it, no matter one’s certainty. Regarding the theological question of “God,” Kant, in his Critique of Pure Reason, was convinced that humans cannot know any object as it is in itself (Ding-an-sich or thing-in-itself) but only as it relates to the human mind through sensible experiences. Therefore, there can be no such thing as knowing “God” as “He” is-in-himself, nor does God relate to humans sensibly through experience. Further, he argued that none of the traditional “proofs” for God’s existence actually proved that. On the “ontological” argument, he insisted that only if one assumes that the concept guarantees the existence of the thing is there any necessity of the actual being or existence of it. For example, if a “most real being” (Liebniz’s ens realissimus) is really the most real being and does not exist, then it is not the most real being. Kant acknowledges this is true, but the question is why does one have to say there is a “most real being”? It is like saying a triangle can be said to necessarily require the existence of three angles. That is logical. To say I have a triangle

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but I reject the predicate of its “three angles” is a logical contradiction. But if I reject both predicate (the three angles) and subject (triangle) as well, there is no contradiction. One cannot simply presume existence dwelling within the concept itself without appealing to empirical experience and no such is available.24 Regarding the “physical-theological” or proof of God from the argument of “design,” this was Kant’s most favored of the three, but he said that it depends wholly on the “ontological” argument as the basic argument, without which it does not work. Nevertheless, as he examined the various steps in the traditional argument from design, he concluded that at most all it shows is a great Shaper or Designer, but not a Creator, not omnipotence, and not a completely orderly universe.25 Further, the harmony in works of nature “might prove the contingency of the form, but not of the matter, that is, the substance in the world, because, for the latter purpose, it would be necessary to prove in addition, that the things of the world were in themselves incapable of such order and harmony, according to general laws, unless there existed, even in their substance, the product of a supreme wisdom.”26 Finally, on the “cosmological” proof of God’s existence, in which Kant also opposed Leibniz’s ens realissimum, the argument concerned the relatedness of everything to everything else in our experience of the whole. The argument runs that if anything exists, then a “necessary being” exists. No existing thing is self-explanatory, but if the whole is not explicable, then there is no way of explaining the contingency of anything. So this necessary being is thereby the “most necessary being”? No, Kant argued, this last step, insisting that the equation between the necessary being and the most necessary being is not provable. Further, the ground that provides contingency to everything can be posited but not proven; in fact, one could not say what it was at all. It might be empty nothing, certainly not what people mean by “God.” Further, it misuses the idea of “causality” in applying it not merely to parts of the whole but to the whole itself, as was true also of the usual physical-theological or “design” proof.27 The Idea of “God”—Absolute Beyond Subjectivity and Objectivity Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834), accepted Kant’s idea of humans not being able to know “God” per se or as a Ding-an-sich, and made this plain in his most important work, The Christian Faith, in which he candidly admitted that all he was describing as “man,” “God,” and “world” were simply “states of mind,” not the thing per se or the Ding-an-sich. How then do humans encounter “God”? Through “feeling” or the sense of “absolute dependence” which he saw as innate, passive, and universal, the feeling

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of the very “Whence” (Woher) of one’s being.28 This sense or feeling of “Whence” requires no sensible attributes since it is not conceived as an entity. He conceived this “God” almost as the “Totality,” or “Whole,” bordering on Spinoza’s pantheism, but qualified that by saying he simply could not conceive of any area of the world which would be outside the sphere of “God.”29 All Christian “dogmatic” theology flows only from one’s feeling of absolute dependence, so even any question about God’s attributes has to be rooted only in that feeling of immediate self-consciousness or absolute dependence. To Schleiermacher, “God’s” attributes “do not denote something special in God, but only something special in the manner in which the feeling of absolute dependence is to be related to Him.”30 Such an interest in “God’s attributes” were not originally issued by a dogmatic interest, but came later by speculation over “God” as an “object of thought,” especially when it was thought that “God” was “the Original Being” and “the Absolute Good.” What dogmatic theology must do is treat the traditional ideas of God’s “omnipotence,” “omnipresence,” and “omniscience” in a way to minimize any anthropomorphic or sensuous element.31 Schleiermacher insists that there are only three ways of trying to explain these divine attributes, as a way of limiting, or negating, or by causation. He regards the first two as not being possible without appealing to something else outside which has to be presupposed; so “causality” is more valid since it “stands in the closest connection with the feeling of absolute dependence itself.”32 The “divine causality” has validity only in pointing out that the attributes do not “either in isolation or taken together . . . express the Being of God in itself,” or “the whole being of God,” but “are only meant to explain the feeling of absolute dependence.” They simply express the idea that “everything depends upon God” but God depends upon nothing.33 This “causality” or “Absolute Vitality” also includes the idea of God’s “eternal” nature, and this is justified since one’s consciousness of God “becomes actual only as consciousness of His eternal power,” which cannot be satisfied with the idea of mere “infinity” which could suggest inactivity. Only when “eternal” is combined with “omnipotence” can one escape the mistake of utilizing “time” within the expression which is a contradiction, and he insists that “the antithesis between the temporal and the eternal is not in the least diminished by the infinite duration of time.”34 Since “feeling” was more basic and passive than either thinking (theoretical reason) or acting (practical reason or ethics), any theoretical conceptions or even moral norms could not be equated with “God.” They were positions outside or subsequent to the “moment” of unity one feels with God, so can never capture fully that feeling, much less the “God” responsible for it. But this “feeling” is known by the individual, and Schleiermacher insisted even

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in the Speeches, that although the “pious” person may not know much, what he does know cannot be wrong.35 “Ethics” was to Schleiermacher that “speculative presentation of Reason, in the whole range of its activity, which runs parallel to natural science.”36 It deals with “free human action,”37 and by its “depiction of the way in which reason and nature coexist, is the science of history.”38 But Schleiermacher sees feeling and reason as having the mission to make nature more reasonable, even though nature already has a degree of reason within it. He states that “the original human form of cognition is the definite separation of subject and object and thus of feeling and perception, in which the human being becomes I to himself and what is outside himself becomes a diversity of objects; whereas we do not attribute either true self-consciousness nor a true knowledge of objects to the animals.”39 In tension with this philosophical approach to ethics, in his dogmatic system, he insists that “Christian Ethics, however, will answer much better to its true relation to Dogmatics, and so to its own immediate purpose, if it drops the imperative mood altogether, and simply gives an all-round description of how men live within the Kingdom of God.”40 This sounds like he has two different sets of ethics. But at heart, he did not see a contradiction and employed “feeling” even within his philosophical sketch of ethics. And, within his dogmatic system, he insisted that the “sanctification” of the believer is all the “work of God,” and nothing in it can even be elevated enough to call a human’s “cooperating” with God. Ethics is simply left up to the power of God.41 It is not a matter of one getting more moral each year or even co-operating with God’s grace in improving his maxims more and more as in Kant. God simply is that upon which everything depends, and somehow, although humans may have a certain freedom, vis-à-vis God they do not, but are absolutely dependent. Perhaps the tension between non-religious ethic and Christian ethic in Schleiermacher can be found in his earliest writing, as he emphasized that humans must love humanity, an undivided humanity: All is present in vain for those who set themselves alone. In order to receive the life of the World Spirit, and have religion, man must first, in love, and through love, have found humanity. . . . Work on individuals, but rise in contemplation, on the wings of religion, to endless, undivided humanity. Seek this humanity in each individual; regard the nature of every person as one revelation of it, and of all that now oppresses you no trace would remain.42

At this time in his professional life, he was still more rational, more convinced of human activity, less concerned to keep the whole of one’s life within the realm of passivity, which was the way he defined the “feeling of absolute dependence” in The Christian Faith. How much he actually was

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able to separate “God’s work” from his own self-initiated activity or freedom in relating to people remains quite questionable, but, in any case, he largely reduced ethics to the power of religion. G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831), became Schleiermacher’s new colleague at the Univ. of Berlin in 1818. Hegel feared Schleiermacher’s approach to Christianity made knowledge of “God” impossible and unimportant, thus making a mockery of the idea of “revelation,” so he discontinued his earlier use of “feeling” to speak of religion. Both he and Schleiermacher, in their early works, spoke of the connection of the Infinite and finite. Schleiermacher emphasized more the passivity of the subjective side, that one needed to perceive the Infinite within the finite, while Hegel stressed more the objective side, that the finite person needed to understand its inner Infinity which was its true reality.43 Hegel pursued religion and the idea of “God” (Infinite Spirit, Mind, or Reason) from both the historical development of religions as well as the development of Reason or Spirit (Geist) in individual human beings and within history and culture itself. He was convinced that Spirit, which is at work in all thinking, whether logic or otherwise, and is involved also in every discovery of truth, is a three-fold movement or going from a stability or self-identity to conceive or initiate opposition to this restrictedness. The final movement unites the two positions by a higher unity, dismissing negatives but preserving the best of each. This is referred to as the “dialectic” process, taking up (aufheben) or “sublating” the best elements of the contradiction. The discovery of this meant that many polarities were actually not complete opposites but could be discovered as essential unities, including finite/ Infinite, idea/reality, subject/object, freedom/necessity, and so forth. The “synthesis” is not dependent upon utilizing some external term or argument but merely from the content of the determinations of the thesis and antithesis themselves. He was convinced that the idea of “God” in ancient religions involved “representations,” so in his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, he traced at length the long evolution through which the religious mentality changed. In its early stages, it was often irrational, animistic, or polytheistic, and only gradually purified itself through the dialectic of Spirit in history. The form of monotheism was therefore a real advance beyond the ancient animisms, superstitions, and polytheisms. The highest form of these was Christian monotheism, and within it, one sees the idea finally united with reality in the Incarnation itself, in which the Infinite realized itself in the process of becoming its opposite, yet retaining the best elements it had, and human beings likewise realized the Infinite within them, driving Spirit to reflect not on material things but only upon itself and its own process, which he called “Absolute Spirit.”44

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To be “absolute” could require nothing less. Spirit or the animating power of Mind or Reason could be absolute only in encompassing or knowing everything or at least the limits of every possible thought, yet moving above all physical or empirical elements in the pure notion (Begriff), contemplating only itself.45 Hegel’s system was a tracing of the realization of Spirit over Nature in this dialectical purging of all representations or historical and material elements until it was pure notion (Begriff). While he took the power of Spirit to be the ultimate power driving individual maturation, as well as the purification of all representations, so that religion was finally able to realize its culmination in philosophy, this also accommodated Hegel’s concern to understand human freedom as being driven by the same Spirit within humans. He believed the Spirit, working in human history through especially Christian influence, was moving toward its “absolute” stage in Germany, and the Church had sacramental means facilitating its ethical growth through recognition and reconciliation with the opposition by which Hegel concluded that the stage Germany had reached in his day could be seen as the “true Theodicaea, the justification of God in history . . . what has happened, and is happening every day, is not only not ‘without God,’ but is essentially His work.”46 When he applied this speculative approach to Christology, “good” and “evil” are “reconciled” in the unity of the Absolute with its otherness, not because they are the same or they are absolutely different; rather, their “truth” is not in either side but in the “movement” or “moments” in thought which transcend the question of same and different. In the Spirit, both abstract aspects are affirmed and nullified, lifted up and suppressed, as the double meaning of Aufheben, which is the power of dialectic to create a new synthesis of the best elements. The “figurative” or pictorial way the movement of Spirit occurs, that is, of Infinite Spirit becoming its opposite, as finite Spirit in Christ, dying as a Person, yet being resurrected—shows the basic truth of the actualization of Absolute Spirit via the “dead Divine Man, or Human God implicitly is universal self-consciousness.”47 Hegel’s idea of the Spirit controlling or finally perfecting Nature presents a problem herein since he can see the “death” only as that of a man, not God or Spirit. So he writes that the Divine Being is reconciled with its existence through an event—the event of God’s emptying Himself of His Divine Being through His factual48 Incarnation and His Death. The grasping of this idea now expresses more specifically what was formerly called in figurative thinking spiritual resurrection, or the process by which God’s individual self-consciousness becomes the universal, becomes the religious communion. . . . In spiritual self-consciousness death loses this natural significance; it passes into its true conception, the conception just mentioned. Death then ceases to signify what it means directly—the non-existence

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of this individual—and becomes transfigured into the universality of the spirit, which lives in its own communion, dies there daily, and daily rises again.49

One has to wonder if the “representation” is not still being engaged in, or if the Spirit actually ever “died,”50 the latter which Hegel seems to try to avoid saying, but laid the door open for Nietzsche to say. If he insisted that he remained Lutheran, though quite influenced by mysticism, his system can be read in a number of ways, either from the side of the Christian theological tradition or from a quite humanistic view of the Absolute knowledge attainable within human culture. His influence was great, even more than Schleiermacher’s and Kant’s, and his idea of the “dialectic” of thinking, a three-fold movement, and of the “negation of negation” is still being explored by a few Christian theologians, even though the driving force of the “dialectic” was altered by Marx, while the allegedly improved Christian ethics with its supposed imminent Kingdom of God collapsed with World War I. One has to wonder if Schweitzer’s criticism of Hegel was not spot-on as having a “supra-ethical” mysticism which focused not on individuals nor the physical world but only on institutions of collective humanity, and the Spiritual, assuming that ethics belonged primarily within the broad category of law.51 In any case, no spiritual or legal institutions stepped in to prevent World War I. No intervening Christian “God” nor even the meaning of the Idea of God and the Absolute Good stopped the hideous slaughter. The Idea of “God” as a Subconscious Projection of Humanity Among those influenced by Hegel were especially Ludwig Feuerbach and Karl Marx who was influenced by Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872). Feuerbach could accept the Hegelian thesis of the unity or identity of God and man, but he was not convinced that one side of that was anything more than a word. Feuerbach explored the “objective” side of the discussion and reached the conclusion that Hegel had things backward. The real “object” in Christian theology is not some Transcendent “God” who then finds himself within humans, but rather one’s consciousness of the human species that individual humans project into “God.” The reality was “man” in its singularity, but also “God” when one saw the whole human species. Hegel’s summary that “human consciousness is simply God’s self-consciousness” was flipped over by Feuerbach to say “God-consciousness is simply human self-consciousness.”52 But if it is only in human feelings and wants that the divine “nothing” becomes something, obtains qualities, then the being of man is alone the real being of God—man is the real God. . . . Why does thou vindicate existence to God, to

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man only the consciousness of that existence? God has his consciousness in man, and man his being in God? Man’s knowledge of God is God’s knowledge of himself? What a divorcing and contradiction! The true statement is this: man’s knowledge of God is man’s knowledge of himself, of his own nature. Only the unity of being and consciousness is truth. Where the consciousness of God is, there is the being of God—in man, therefore; in the being of God it is only thy own being which is an object to thee, and what presents itself before thy consciousness is simply what lies behind it. If the divine qualities are human, the human qualities are divine.53

To him, the real atheists or idolaters are those who worship or honor the wrong thing or nothing as if it were “God” rather than humanity which is true “God.”54 The reason people do not realize this subconscious element of the religion is because when they make a judgment about most things, they realize the sensible intuitions that affect their judgment, but in their attempt to assess anything claimed about “God,” they have no intuitions of the object since it is invisible, and here they subconsciously project the qualities of the human species as a whole. They are not wrong in equating “God” with the human species; they are wrong only in thinking “God” is a separable entity from that species. Since people think of their “God” in the highest terms possible to them in any given culture, it is not but to be expected that “God” would be described in anthropomorphic terms in an exaggerated form. He rejected theology for its giving priority to the Spirit rather than matter, as if reason itself did not depend upon the human body and its brain. He writes that his purpose in the Essence of Religion is simply to prove that the nature god, i.e., the god whom man distinguishes from himself and looks upon as the ground or cause of his own being, is nothing other than nature itself, while the human or spiritual God, the God to whom he imputes human predicates, consciousness, and will, whom he conceives as a being similar to himself, whom he distinguishes from nature viewed as devoid of will or consciousness, is nothing other than man himself.55

Religions originally began as a form of survival, as the early humans projected life and anthropomorphic qualities into various powers in the cosmos such as astral bodies or even animals. In nature religion man worships nature not only as the being through which he now exists or without which he cannot live or do anything else; he also worships and views nature as the being through which he originally came into being. . . . But where nature is viewed and worshiped as the being that created man, nature itself is held to be not created . . . it is only where man cannot explain his own

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being by nature that he goes beyond nature and derives nature from something else.56

The problem was their focus on individual beings, entities, or persons rather than realizing that the power which was divine was the totality of attributes, the “predicates” they ascribed to these entities. “The fact is not that a quality is divine because God has it, but that God has it because it is in itself divine: because without it God would be a defective being.”57 This is reminiscent of the “early Hegel” who said the earliest Christian church engaged in an apotheosis because it confused Divinity with the individual person of Jesus, so worshiped him rather than the attributes he manifested. But he parts ways with Hegel who isolated the “spirit” from the body. To the contrary, Feuerbach argues, if nature is the first object of religion because of its assumed effects on humans, then the sensuous world [is] the first element of psychology and of philosophy in general; but my “first” is not merely the “first” of speculative philosophy, meaning what has to be transcended; I take it in the sense of what cannot be derived, of the self-subsisting and true. I can no more derive sensibility from spirit that I can derive nature from God; for spirit is nothing outside of and without sensibility, spirit is only the essence, the sense, the spirit of the senses. And God is nothing other than spirit conceived as universal, spirit without reference to the difference between mine and thine.58

Truth requires sensations, and to have knowledge requires a body that therefore has nerves or faculties for sensing, which requires a “materially existing head, that reason has an enduring material foundation in the head, the brain, which is the center of the senses.” It works that way rather than the reverse of the body being derived from the mind or brain.59 He reiterates, Man’s first belief is his belief in the truth of the senses, not belief in conflict with the senses, such as theistic and Christian belief. Belief in a God, in a disembodied being who rejects and negates every trace of the sensuous as profane, is far from being an immediate certainty, as theists have so often maintained. The first being of whom man had immediate certainty and consequently his first gods were sensuous objects.60

Feuerbach’s whole sketch of Christian theology works off this understanding that the human quality is what is divine, and not made divine because it was first “God’s” quality, but vice-versa, insisting that conceptions of “God” always emerge from what humans think of themselves. So “God” as the human species, is personal, moral, merciful, just, holy, and so forth,

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and yet the more reflection that occurs, the more theology, the more these human qualities are increased for God, the more they are denied for individual humans, so the identity of the human and divine is conversely denied.61 Ultimately, however, whatever individual humans withdraw from themselves in this denial or antithesis, they are compensated ultimately “in an incomparably higher and fuller measure in God.”62 Thus, humans willingly give up their highest values, attached to the senses, such as reason, knowledge, personality, moral goodness, to receive all of it back through the grace of “God.” This means that man projects his being into objectivity, and then again makes himself an object to this projected image of himself thus converted into a subject; he thinks of himself as an object to himself, but as the object of an object of another being than himself. . . . God is the highest subjectivity of man abstracted from himself; hence man can do nothing of himself, all goodness comes from God. The more subjective God is, the more completely does man divest himself of his subjectivity, because God is, per se, his relinquished self.63

But all this “object” thought of as “God” is simply the species-consciousness. Therein, the human aspect of these qualities is correct, but they do not comprise a separate metaphysical being, but only the infinite potentiality of the human species. This is rooted in Feuerbach’s assertion that “consciousness” requires that one’s species or nature is an object of thought, something which distinguishes humans from animals. This awareness enables a human to be “at once I and thou,” being himself but also putting himself “in the place of another.” But in order to do that, he must be conscious not only of his finite qualities as an individual, but of the infinite or unlimited nature of the species as a whole.64 The basic human qualities as a species that distinguish humans from animals are listed by Feuerbach as Reason, Will, and Affection. He calls them “absolute perfections of being. To will, to love, to think, are the highest powers, are the absolute nature of man as man, and the basis of his existence. Man exists to think, to love, to will. Now that which is the end, the ultimate aim, is also the true basis and principle of a being.” But they are not simply possessed by humans, they are simply what it is to be human, and humans cannot resist them.65 Attributes which seem beyond the physical, that is, more metaphysical, such as thought, intelligence, and understanding, are not properly speaking of some projected “God” but are simply human acknowledgment that these faculties are necessary uniting powers, the highest powers, or most real powers available, promoting one’s freedom and independence.66 Of course, a subject must have some attributed characteristics, and when theology gets

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so sophisticated that it speaks only as a “negative” theology, negating each adjective or attribute of “God,”67 the result is an elevation or transcending of the sensible world, but actually the erasure of the very subject. As predicates of human life, morality and love are a higher power than many attributes, so they are posited in “God” without limit.68 The problem remains, however, that religion and theology emphasize the theological side, stressing the antithesis between “God” and humans (that is, the disparity of any attribute when one compares the species-consciousness with the consciousness of the individual human), and pushes this contradiction between idealism and materialism, particularly in giving priority to “faith” over “love.”69 But love is the essence of religion; faith is only the form religion is given. However, faith is viewed in a way that makes love and faith antithetical. “Love identifies man with God and God with man, consequently it identifies man with man; faith separates God from man, consequently it separates man from man, for God is nothing else than the idea of the species invested with a mystical form—the separation of God from man is therefore the separation of man from man, the unloosening of the social bond.”70 Any attempt to derive anything from God is to sacrifice reason, to institute it as indubitable, unassailable, sacred without rendering an account why. Hence self-delusion, if not wicked, insidious design, is at the root of all efforts to establish morality, right, on theology. . . . We need no Christian rule of political right; we need only one which is rational, just, human. The right, the true, the good, has always its ground of sacredness in itself, in its quality. Where man is in earnest about this, they have in themselves the validity of a divine power.71

Another unique interpretation of religion being a projection in this period came from Sigmund Freud which I will discuss along with greater analysis of Feuerbach in a later chapter in which I address the question of “lack” within religion which is always so central to its “answer.” But, as the primary motivation for ethics, one can move beyond the negative image of humanity as totally lacking or perverted or estranged, and see instead the positive potential of humanity, that humanity has ethical power within itself. The Idea or Reality of the “Death” of God The “death of God” was proclaimed in Nietzsche’s writings more than half a century before it was announced by Thomas J. J. Altizer and William Hamilton just prior to Paul Tillich’s death in 1965. Because of the publicity given to the announcement by Altizer and Hamilton, other scholars such as Gabriel Vahanian, Paul van Buren, and others, including Jewish Rabbi

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Richard L. Rubenstein, were at times lumped with those two. Since this must be brief, I will describe only Nietzsche, though refer to special insights of Altizer and Rubenstein in later chapters.72 Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), trained in philology but showed his philosophical and psychological insights even more prominently in his writings. He called himself an “immoralist” and spoke of the “death of God” in his ironic protest of the state of moral philosophy and the idea of “God” in his day. He was no more an atheist than Hegel or Tillich except in his boasting of it. He insisted he was an atheist but not through some play on words or paradoxical ontology but rather by sheer instinct. He was protesting the superficiality and anti-life moral ideals which were being supported by the Christian church.73 To miss this cause of his hyperbole is to miss what his life was all about. That Christian ethic of his day was built upon the decadent “Nay-sayers’” “ressentiment,” upon “false causation,”74 upon historicism’s “crab-like,”75 or “mummifying”76 retrospective and presumptive valuations based on a hatred of “becoming” and honoring only of “being,”77 upon “pity” as a dehumanizing of the particularity of people’s sufferings, and upon the absurdly blind egoistic idea of “Providence” that distorts all realities even for those who find a totally anthropomorphic God unintelligible, upon the devaluation of instinct, inclination, and uniqueness.78 It was obvious to Nietzsche that if an ethic was built upon a religion and the latter’s basic theology had lost credibility, so had its ethics, The morality of Christianity has truth “only if God is the truth—it stands and falls with faith in God.”79 This caused him to be extremely critical of Kant for trying to retain the ethics by merely postulating the religion’s base.80 It was this which caused him to refer to Kant as the “most deformed concept-cripple of all time,”81 and speak of God as the “last, thinnest, and emptiest” concept, but is placed first, “the cause, as ens realissimum.”82 He belittled Kant for his pride in his “categories,” his “a priori synthetic judgments,” his discovery of “new faculties,” especially for finding the new moral faculty,83 for equating the “thingin-itself” with God,84 and for his moral decision to place the value not in the result of one’s action but only in one’s intention, while he ignored human inclination or natural drives or instinct.85 “To love man for God’s sake—that has so far been the noblest and most remote feeling attained among men.”86 Nietzsche asks about atheism, and replies that “God” as “father,” “rewarder,” “judge,” and even his “free will” have all been “thoroughly refuted. He neither hears nor, if he could hear, does he know how to help. So Nietzsche observes that while the religious instinct seems to be growing in Europe, theism is being refused “with deep suspicion.”87 On the one hand, Christian ethics or morality lost its supranatural base in the absence or the “death of God,” but the theism or theology of Christianity also lost its credibility because of the ethics or morality being so “anti-life,”

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so full of ressentiment, so otherworldly, so oblivious to natural causes, so full of lying, pretense, and self-deceit, and seemingly justified in believers’ minds as being their “conviction,” or being useful in helping them achieve their goals, or at least enabling them to hope for achieving their goals via a life after death in another world, thereby deprecating their life in this world now.88 At the base of Nietzsche’s ridicule of the present Christian ethics or morality of his day was not only its illogical war against sex, a form of “castratism,”89 but also even its theological formulation of “justification by faith” which allowed the people of faith to be able to excuse themselves from having to put forth strenuous effort to live the right kind of life.90 Here, he saw Luther’s utilization of the Apostle Paul as the precise inversion of the historical Jesus, so both Luther and Paul became the “annihilators of the law.”91 Luther found Paul as the path whereby people could simply go ahead living as they had and as they wanted to, and simply not worry about it because they were justified by faith.92 So the Christian church’s depiction especially of the “Christ” (through Paul) rather than Jesus, and its specific traits it marked as “good” rather than “evil” were not only against human instinct and inclination but against reason,93 and helped cancel each other out. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Zarathustra encounters a thin, melancholy man along a path out in the mountains, who claims to need some help. He has come as “the last pope,” having witnessed the death of his master, “God,” whom he served until he died, and he is now without a master but still not free. He came seeking the “most pious man” but found his cave empty except for two wolves who were howling in grief over the man’s death. So he fled, and decided to find the “most pious of all who does not believe in God,” Zarathustra. Zarathustra identifies himself graciously to the man as the “most godless Zarathustra.” The last pope replies that he is probably even more godless than Zarathustra. Zarathustra inquires how he knows of God’s demise, and asks if it is true that he strangled to death on his own pity, that is, “when he saw how man hung on the cross and that he could not bear it, that love of man became his hell, and in the end, his death.” The last pope did not answer, but Zarathustra insisted to him repeatedly, “Let him go.” Zarathustra points out the queer nature of that God, to which the last pope says he knew him every better. He explains how this God was once harsh and vindictive, but over time became more mellow, finally like a grandmother, full of pity, weak, weary of willing, and finally choked to death on pity. The old pope requests to go home to Zarathustra’s cave, so the latter invites him there but says he must be absent as he must hurry on to find others who need him. At this point, one sees Zarathustra himself being pulled frenetically on in pity for others.94 Following this episode, Zarathustra is surprised by meeting the “ugliest man” who poses a riddle which he immediately solves, which points to

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“pity” once again, in fact, is the “pity” that was the murderer of God. After his long reply to Zarathustra, praising Zarathustra for not having pity on him but blushing in shame instead, and his tirade against the “little people” who have made “pity” their virtue when it is actually disrespectful of misfortune, ugliness, and failure, so offends one’s sense of shame, he also is invited to Zarathustra’s cave or another abode among the various animals that live there. This same problem of pity becomes the “final sin” of Zarathustra as he reflects on what the “soothsayer” had earlier spoken to him, his pity for the “higher men,” which he then leaves behind to simply continue his work, and leaves his cave with his animals.95 Earlier, however, Zarathustra reiterated several times that “God is a conjecture,” but Zarathustra would limit people’s conjecture to what they could create, which does not include gods. But they could create the “overman.” He also insisted their conjecture correspond to their will for truth, but this means dependence upon what they can sense, which also excludes “God.” He explained his rejection of pity as a virtue, that it creates a false-pride in the one who manifests pity, while it demeans the person pitied, shaming him. Great love must be far above the pity.96 Zarathustra says, “Thus spoke the devil to me once: ‘God, too, has his hell: that is his love of man.’ And most recently I heard him say this, ‘God is dead. God died of his pity for man.’”97 How that squares with the idea that great love must be far above pity, yet God died because of his love—or was it just his pity for man—is not clear. In any case, “God” is “dead.” In The Gay Science, it is the “madman” who proclaims to the crowd first that he is seeking God. They mock him since they themselves do not believe in God. He finally interrupts them, declaring that “God is dead” and “We killed him.” When he tries to describe how that would happen, he shows the incongruity of murdering God, the magnitude of such a killing, and the coldness and darkness or vacuum such event produces. But then he admitted that he came “too early,” that this event has not yet occurred, or that even though it already occurred, it takes a long time for people to realize what they did.98 When they do, however, it will bring chaos to the world, wars, and barbarian hordes that are unrestrained. But this is only the madman talking. Aside from the idea of the “death of God,” in Ecce Homo, “Why I Am So Clever,” Nietzsche lists questions he has never taken seriously or personally, such as his own “sinfulness,” or the “bite” of his conscience, and he includes “immortality of the soul,” “redemption,” “beyond,” and “God.” This did not cause his atheism; the latter was simply instinctual. He writes, “I am too inquisitive, too questionable, too exuberant to stand for any gross answer. God is a gross answer, an indelicacy against us thinkers—at bottom only a gross prohibition for us: you shall not think!”99 At this point, he says he was more interested in questions of nutrition, of what type of recreation,

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of his location and its climate and place, of avoiding a sedentary position as much as possible, of self-love, self-discipline, and self-preservation—all of which seemed more pertinent to the salvation of humanity than the ideals and religious symbols—as he calls it “that damned idealism—that was the real calamity in my life, totally superfluous and stupid, something of which nothing good ever grew, for which there is no compensation, counterbalance,” and it was not until the end of his ten-year professorship of philology in the Univ. of Basel that he realized how idealism had been the “fundamental unreason” of his life to that point.100 Even for those who did not see “God” in anthropomorphic terms, there was to Nietzsche a terrible danger in thinking of “God” as “Personal Providence.” This was a blind response to everything that is and happens in one’s life, pleasant or tragic, that it always works out for one’s own good, but Nietzsche finds such both dangerous and repugnant, to “believe in some anxious and mean Divinity who knows personally every little hair on our heads, and feels no disgust in rendering the most wretched services.”101 To see events that way is to deceive oneself, the most immoral and self-disintegrating activity in which one can engage. When one puts together even these few references he made to “God” and the “death of God,” it is easy to realize that he was talking only about an idea or Ideal of religious people, a cultural event, not of some literal metaphysical or supranatural being.102 “God” was an idea whose gradual dissolution in culture was hardly noticed, even denied by some, but has occurred. Nietzsche had the madman predicting that the world was not yet ready to accept it, and that if the world did, gross barbarism would ensue, with wars such as the world has never seen. Does this mean that humanity is a hopeless cause, that man is a “wasted passion,” as Sartre called him? To the contrary, Nietzsche is positive that the future can bring a re-awakening to the natural world, an “ascent to naturalness” vis-à-vis some delusion of a supranatural world, that honesty and self-discipline and sublimation can become widespread, that a basis for real morality can be seen in the “willto-power” or dispensing one’s energy which is common to all but formerly buried under Christian morality, that is, a genuinely and honest creative autonomy, which can inspire others also to find their path, since each one is unique, and there is no single way.103 This perspectival approach by Nietzsche points to the necessity of humans dealing with relativity rather than simply giving a negative caricature of the word. Morality will thereby be found, not in capturing some chimera of “perfection,” but in responsibly being who one is,104 not being demanded by an imagined God or others to be a certain way. It is only people who cannot command themselves who have to resort to or find comfort in having some God rule their lives with its “Thou shalt.”

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“God” as the Symbol of the “Depth” of Being-itself The most innovative and influential Christian theology of the twentieth century was without a doubt that by Paul Tillich (1886–1965). His theology was a mixture of the positive and negative, as regards a basis for ethics, reaching an impasse which was his final answer, simul justus et peccator, or “always saint and sinner,” or always a combination of essentialism or idealism and existentialism, a “theontology” which I have analyzed in more detail elsewhere.105 Here, in a very brief analysis, we only see what happened to the question of “God” in his theology. “God” should be put in quotation marks since it did not for Tillich denote a discreet entity, but rather “being” in everything that is. Of course, to even use the word seems to suggest a definite entity, yet Tillich insists it is non-existent, only the power that enables the entity to be or to exist. It is beyond essence and existence, beyond the polarity of being and not-being, beyond potentiality and actuality, beyond freedom and destiny, and beyond the polarity of subjectivity and objectivity.106 That “beyond” he usually refers to either as the “depth” or “abyss,” but even that is not anything more than a negation of the polarity of which it is spoken of as being “beyond.” He insists that none of these terms used for God can be taken literally. “God” is the symbolical correlate of the power or ground of the ontological structure, but is neither that structure nor any part of it, since “God” is not a being within or in any way limited by time and space, even if it is “that” which gives shape to or empowers anything that is in time or space.107 Tillich wrote an “apologetic” Christian “theology,” that is, a defense of the theology, while insisting he was not a theist but either an atheist or a pan-entheist. He could not be a theist as long as he insisted that “God” is not a being of any kind. That points to the term “atheist” since the alpha-privative negates the word so means one who believes in “no god.”108 That indicates one who does not believe “God” is a discreet, existing being or entity. When he said he was more into “pan-en-theism,” he meant the idea that “God” somehow is within everything, not that everything is God. To say everything is God was to Tillich pure nonsense, which is the way pantheism is often construed. Inasmuch as everything has “being” within it or participates in “being,” “God” is within everything, that is, everything that is said to have being. But because Tillich distinguishes “existence” from “essence” or pure potentiality by emphasizing the “ex” of exist or existence which means “out of” essence or mere potentiality, yet admits that both are pure abstractions derived from reality which is the ambiguity of life, “being” borders on irrelevance or sheer confusion.109 How anything would be “beyond” the polarity of being and non-being is not obvious, but Masao Abe thought it simply revealed Tillich’s

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unjustified or illogical bias toward being in his asymmetrical polarity of being and non-being.110 Panentheism111 is less conspicuous in his works, but is certainly the basis of the “correlation” between the philosophical question and theological answer, since they are held together by his embracing a form of mystical unity. In that way, he can say that any person asking the question about “God” or “being” or “ultimate meaning,” and so on already stands within the answer by his or her very question. This certainty he derived from Augustine’s theology when combined with the influence of Christian mystics.112 In truth, he was a Hegelian speculative idealist who utilized existential insights including Heideggerian ontology. “God,” was the religious symbol which “correlated” with a concept such as “being-itself” or “source of being,” or “power of being,” or “ground of being,” or “depth of being” beyond the polarity of being and “nonbeing,” and “unconditional meaning and being.”113 These were all ways he spoke of “God.” As “being-itself,” God is beyond “the contrast of essential and existential being,” which points also to God’s “transcendence” and “immanence.” “In calling it [being-itself] creative, we point to the fact that everything participates in the infinite power of being. In calling it abysmal, we point to the fact that everything participates in the power of being in a finite way, that all beings are infinitely transcended by their creative ground.”114 Being-itself transcends every finite being, yet everything finite “participates” in being-itself or its infinity. How a finite being “participates” in infinity, he does not explain. As being-itself, one cannot distinguish between potentiality and actuality of “God,” or of God “living” in a literal sense, but only in a symbolical way as the “ground of life.”115 Certainly, “God,” as one’s “ultimate concern,” was nothing subjective, and is beyond any possible objectifying; otherwise, it could not be “ultimate.” He opposed traditional and biblical literalism, and insisted that the anthropomorphic images of God cannot be understood literally. Yet, even though “God” cannot be thought of as a “person,” “God” as the source of all personhood must be at least what a person is if not much more than a “person,” since it must be concrete, and “man cannot be ultimately concerned about something which is less than he is, something impersonal.”116 But how is “God” concrete yet not objectifiable? On the other hand, religions have conceived of subhuman and superhuman character of their gods, when they have been assigned attributes of animals or of astral bodies, since for the gods to be set only in anthropomorphic form causes them to lose their “fascinosum and tremendum.”117 Tillich uses this insight to suggest that the equivalent of sub-personal and transpersonal attributes can be provided simply by unusual words which “disrupt and transcend their personal form” or create tension between the concrete and universal. But why would the word “sun” not more adequately

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express the depth of being than some anthropomorphic term? We could live without the sun? He attempts to accomplish his apologetic theology by what he calls “paradox” by which he defines “final revelation,” “Jesus as the Christ,” and simul justus et peccator.118 But God does not have ontic status, so no analogia entis is possible,119 and no quality attached to God can be anything but symbolical. In fact, Tillich emphasized that everything we say about “God” is symbolical except this statement itself (“everything we say about God is symbolical”) which alone can be taken literally. Or, he can speak of “God” as “Spirit,” which is the unity of power and meaning, but one has no idea what such a unity would be.120 “God” had to be non-objectifiable or not only would that make “God” less than “ultimate,” but it would give humans power over God conceptually, which Tillich regarded as mistaken attempts at “self-salvation.” Therefore, he insisted that the only god he felt was valid was the “God beyond the god of theism,” since a theistic God would eliminate human freedom.121 Finally, he rejected the “ontological” and “cosmological” arguments for the existence of God.122 He insisted one cannot “argue” the existence of God when God is beyond the polarity of essence and existence. Further, the questions of “God” are themselves natural since humans in their finitude carry with them a sense of belonging to infinity, but the answers cannot be deduced from the conclusions based on mere data of the question. Consciousness of being finite in one’s conceptions does not provide details of a being that exists which is beyond all those conceptions; to know that one is not self-caused does not itself posit a necessary or highest being as the First Cause; the question about whether there is meaning in the universe does not provide the telos of ultimate meaning or personal God who provides that meaning; and the question of one’s sense of morality or the good does not, contrary to Kant, require even postulating “God” as the summum bonum as he did his Critique of Practical Reason. What all these ontological elements provide is a natural question which Tillich says can only be answered by revelation,123 which itself is only (or hyperbolically) paradoxical. Tillich did not speak of human estrangement from other humans but only estrangement from God, the only “sin” being singular as “the sin” against God,124 because he was opposed to any form of works-righteousness or attempts at self-salvation,125 emphasizing that people are saved by grace in forensic justification. What Schweitzer wrote about earlier speculative idealists, Hegel and Fichte, applies also to Tillich, that the “material” or “empirical” world is reduced in importance, amounting to only Platonic appearances, whereas true reality for them is only the Spirit which is distinguishable from everything material, including the human brain, and using it to further spiritual causes. And if everything that occurs is because of that

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Spirit in humans which is identified with God, then there is no place or need for ethics at all.126 As Tillich, Hegel, and Schleiermacher all said, God does everything. After all the horrendous wars, genocides, plagues, pandemics, fraud, injustice, racism, pollution of Earth, and so forth, the “everything” shrinks to a very limited “everything”—meaning only “everything” to “save” a person spiritually, whatever that means. But its meaning has been drained of anything approximating any assistance in the material world in which we exist. Can humans really live in this material or empirical body within a material world populated by many other animal bodies (including humans), and think whatever “God” or “Spirit” is, it is unconcerned about the material, yet does everything that is important? Yet none of these even thought “God” assists in making a human a “better person” morally, they were convinced that humans themselves cannot really make themselves better. They just do not need to. This is the opposite of what the Dalai Lama thought, that what the world needs is for humans to be “good people,” not just religious people. It seemed to be also what Jesus of Nazareth, Gautama Buddha, and many others have taught. But this evolving picture of “God,” as the equivalent only of “beingitself” or the “source” or “power” of being, but not any specific being, this “God” could have no consciousness, since that would necessarily be one of the anthropomorphic designations which Tillich said should not be taken literally. However, the days are past when “Spirit” can refer to a nonmaterial power of consciousness connecting humans with the Absolute; Tillich’s reluctance to see the dependence upon the physical brain is less excusable than was Hegel’s, since Hegel preceded Darwin, and the positing of the Divine or Absolute Spirit or perfection in one single human of the past which D. F. Strauss recognized as violating modern science is even more obvious today, as is also the idea of human “projection” of its qualities into a “God.” “God” as Symbol of Power of Being Which Can Also Not Be “God” Robert P. Scharlemann (1929–2013), one of the primary interpreters of Tillich, moved past the latter’s theontology to a phenomenological ontology, with special attention to the power of words to “instantiate.”127 His assessment of Hegel’s closed system of thought, in which any argument within the concepts used was already anticipated by Hegel, was that it offered no choice but to declare the “death” of such a God as Nietzsche did.128 It is an irony that Scharlemann was close to engaging in the work of a philologist such as Nietzsche yet found language offering a different approach. Overall, his conceptions of “God” are fairly similar to Tillich’s that “God” is the “power” or “source” of being, “being-itself,” but not simply any or all particular being

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at all, and not the structure of being. He foresaw the end of theism long ago. So what, then, is “God”? Scharlemann avoided the talk of “essence” or being of “God.” It is not a question of “what” God is but “where” or “when” “God” might be manifest, just as with trying to speak of “humans,” the first datum can no longer be assumed as human “essence” or “what” humans are but only “that” they are, that is “where” and “when” they are as Dasein indicates. His answer comes in many forms, one of which is the old “ontological proof” of God’s existence articulated by St. Anselm. As Tillich and especially Barth, Scharlemann understood this not as any “proof,” not any “description” of “God.” It is simply a guide to what occurs by thinking or using the name. The expression used by Anselm was “that than which a greater cannot be conceived.” This is not merely an issue of deciding between positive or negative attributes, but reaches in Scharlemann the question of which would be the “greater”—God which can only be God, or God which can not only be God but also be not-God? The logical answer is the latter, so he undertook the task of trying to explain where God could be experienced as “the being of God when God is not being God,” an idea that Tillich would have rejected since he was sure God could not be not-God. On the other hand, although he does not use the following example, a simple illustration of this might be Tillich’s insistence that if the ontological correlate for the symbol of “God” is beingitself or the power of being, then one cannot conceive of “God” as a person since that is a discreet entity, making it less than ultimate, but one also cannot conceive of “God” as less than a person or sub-personal since persons, as the highest known beings have their origin in God. Or, God cannot be conceived as “living” since that would imply that he is subject to the structure of being which, if He is beyond that structure, he cannot be, but he also cannot be conceived as “not-living” or “dead” since the structure of finitude exists only through God or being-itself. But even these are still questions to a degree of “what” God might be conceived as, rather than placing the question on “where” one might encounter God showing himself, a manifestation or self-disclosure of God. Scharlemann saw the “where” as indicating the being in all beings, the “is” of any actual existence of anything at all. That “where” of God, as the source of being, is the “is,” whether articulated or implied, of everything in every sentence. Yet that is not commonly what people expect in speaking of “God.” That is because they are still thinking in theistic terms, of some discreet, separate entity with very anthropomorphic characteristics. If God is not that literal separate personal being, the question then becomes how “God” shows Himself or manifests Himself in anything. Scharlemann insisted that God is not anything but also not nothing, and Christ is not a particular being, but an image or symbol which, as one of the

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ways “God” can be known, can be experienced in any culture in any number of possible forms. That is, if “God” is conceived as “reconciling” the world to Himself, and the ministry of Jesus is shown to be this very thing, then “God” could be said to be manifest through that Jesus as the “Christ,” but this does not mean Jesus had divine attributes in any sense. This is God’s own selfdisclosure or manifestations through His own “otherness.” This “otherness” was manifested in what Scharlemann understood as the most definitive religious symbol, that of the Cross, since it can point to “God” only if it negates itself while still being, and that is precisely what occurred as Jesus sacrificed himself as Jesus to be Christ. “God” can also be seen in the depth of “truth” as found in “reflexive” thinking, or the depth of the Word (or words) underlying or presupposed by any religious symbol, a disclosure of the “truth of truth” beyond the schism of mere “reflection.” As the depth of the self-negating symbol which accommodates its own negation, reflexive truth embodies all perspectives of inadequate and inconclusive reflection. This conclusion corresponds with Scharlemann’s focus on Anselm’s formulation of “that than which a greater cannot be thought” as not a definition or proof of God, but a pointer to the “Otherness” of God,129 the “where” and “when” “God” could be revealed through any medium by one’s sensing its voluntary presence or “donation” and naming it. This redirects the entire conversation from attempting to find the “what” of “God” as definable, credible, and real to the “being of God when [and where] God is not being God.” So the question of God is not a question of whether religious figures or symbols are alike or different, have similar or different teachings, or show different character. Rather “it is a question whether the one known to his disciples as Jesus, the self-showing of God, can also be recognized in another name with other features, other meanings, perhaps even other teachings,” which Scharlemann thinks that even Barth’s exclusivism may not rule out.130 If so, “one can see a third possibility besides absolutism and relativism or besides a traditional exclusivism and a traditional universalism.”131 The form in which “God” shows or manifests Himself does not tell us what the dignity and power are but shows itself as a place where they are. . . . If the exstantial I is a symbol of God, in this sense of the word symbol, then it is as the exstantial I that God (who is not I and not the world but not nothing either) exists. The exstantial I is not what God is but where God is.132

Among various approaches to explain this which Scharlemann utilized, one of the simplest is the “I-Thou” terminology and insights of Martin Buber. Buber called these “relational words.” There were the relations of “I-Thou” (or I-You) and “I-It.” The “Thou” or “You” implies that I am experiencing

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the other as a subject as myself; the “It” implies that I am experiencing the other only as an object. The terms, when used, that is, written or spoken, do not simply speak of a relationship, but help create or “instantiate” it. “I” can be without recognizing that I am “I,” but I cannot recognize myself as “I” unless there is another (either an “It” or another “I” which would be “You” to me) to whom I am relating. I can realize a relation to either another “I” or an “it,” but can experience my humanity only in a relation of “I-Thou” but not “I-It.” The “it” is that which has no subjectival dimension, but only objectival. So if I treat another person always as an “It,” I will be dehumanizing the person or destroying any humanizing relationship with it. We shall see, however, that this “You” is not actually even limited by Buber to human others, but to that from which one feels an exclusive presence. The “instantiating” power Scharlemann applies to one’s relation to other possible “you’s” by virtue of Buber’s insight that the relation of an I-Thou becomes possible if one feels a “presence” in the other, though Buber illustrated this by referring even to a tree which manifests a “presence,” especially an exclusive presence, so one can think or speak of it even as “Thou” or “You.” This would be also quite true of most household pets though Buber speaks instead of a work of art as another example of this “exclusive presence.” This transcends the dogmatic Christian idea of “final revelation” being tied to a single Incarnation in Jesus, which leaves the picture wholly mythological and theistic. It also moves beyond Hegel’s position that God or Spirit is present only in one’s reason, in which case trees and pets would not be available for God’s disclosure. More than that, for Hegel, the revelation came primarily within the process of reason reflecting itself, working only with pure notions. Scharlemann, on the other hand, opens up other possibilities, referring even to Moses’s experience with the “burning bush.” His conclusion is that anything can manifest the presence of “God,” and this would involve the not-being-God in its particular form but would be “God” in one’s experience of its exclusive presence, or in its power to “grasp” one’s attention and interest, whether it is alive or not, thereby feeling or speaking of the thing as “You” now in the sense of “God.” Since “God” can also be experienced in its subjectival capacity as another “I” vis-à-vis me, or the equivalent of “You,” it fulfills the function of “You” but actually exceeds it, since “God” points to the power of being itself, and the Infinity of that is nothing like a simple finite person as a “You.” In this sense, the “I” in the “I-God” relation is even different from the “I” in a mere “I-You” relation with other humans, yet the “relation” itself is instantiated by the very use of the word “God.”133 This, he insists, can only be dialectically grasped through speculative reason in which “every you and every it bear the eternal you in themselves as their origin or their coming to be at all.” It would seem from Scharlemann’s

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other writings that he would opt for this idea of the eternal “you” being within all particular “you’s.”134 But here he argues that under such a view, the eternal “you” would not be a “genuine you whom we encounter, but, as it were, the framework in which the relation to you or it takes place at all.”135 He states that this also was not acceptable to Buber because he was insistent upon maintaining a “genuine dialogical relation between the human I and the divine you,” although Scharlemann expressed doubts that the dialogical principle could be retained if the difference between the one and many could not be shown how it was to be understood.136 Scharlemann suggests Buber failed to treat the word “God” as one treats the “I” and “you,” as itself instantiating, something Scharlemann learned from Karl Daub, by which the difference between the words “temporal” and “eternal” is solved. He uses the words of the “Doubting Thomas” who, when he acknowledged the risen Jesus, said “My lord and my God.” “My lord” was the temporal, and “my God” was the eternal.137 This means that within the singular presence both identity and difference are maintained which in reflexive reason points to the “depth” of truth embracing both positions and assertions. He cautions that “It is a real difference only if the instantiating capacity of the one word is equal to that of the other; it is a real identity, because it is one and the same physical figure, and one and the same time, that evokes the two words.”138 If that is the case, then the saying ‘it’ establishes the world of objectivity, the saying ‟you” establishes the world of exclusive relation, and the saying ‟God” establishes the world of the eternal.139 He summarizes: Through the saying of the word “God,” what is shown is the “not” of every it and every you, as well as of I—God is not this or that or any other one, and not I either. But, at the same time, God is not nothing either, so that the presence of the eternal is not only the negative that is shown upon any it, you, or I but also the negative of that negation in turn.140

This corresponds to his understanding of the role “reflexivity” plays as it moves beyond the “schism” of “reflection.” Reflexivity forms the notion that when the thinking process as such which is always a thinking of being and which it names by the word “God” is transformed from pure activity into an object, the result is the object that the word “word” refers to: language. Conversely, when language is translated into the pure activity which it embodies, the result is the thinking process as such, which “God” names. A reflection on language leads to the thinking of being, and the communication of the thinking of being leads to the word “God.” “God” names the one whose being is thinking—he is not a person or a thing; “word” names an object whose

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thinking is being—a meaningless sound “is” not a word; and “God is the word and the word is God” asserts that what we think in the word “God” and what we perceive in the word “word” are the same in the different. The meaning of assertions about God corresponds to the reality in the giveness of language. That is their truth. . . . The word “God” instantiates what it signifies, and the word “word” means what it instantiates.141

But the word “God” actually instantiates the negative since it points away from itself. It therefore drives a subject first out of itself to some object—“God” as “notI” opens my eyes to what is other than I, and what I see first is some object, a “this.” But “God” also instantiates a “not-this,” and hence it urges me to look still further. It instantiates a continual opening, related to whatever comes into view, but never filled out by anything. “God” thus actually instantiates the dynamic openness of being in the world.142

Since the thinking process and speaking process always involve being, Scharlemann’s hope was that people could come to “name” more things in their world as “God,” which makes the connection between Tillich’s idea of “being-itself” or “source of being” and Anselm’s “definition.” But one has the suspicion that for most Christians, when they speak the term “God,” they still think only of a single supranatural being, one from whom everything originated, and one who is presupposed to have a keen interest in humans being moral, even legislating to them how they are to live. That long tradition, no matter how it conflicts with modern science and even modern Christian theology, will probably continue until people’s pastors, priests, and ministers can help them understand it is not that simple, that they have a role to play in the ethics of this world, but even in a democracy, if Rawls is correct, they could continue to be uncritical religiously so long as they give primacy in social matters to the principles of justice that all citizens have accepted as the basic ethic of the social contract. CONCLUSION This evolution of thought reveals the increasing difficulty religious scholars and theologians have felt in speaking of “God,” exacerbating any attempt to validate or even make intelligible a Christology. Schleiermacher saw “God” more as Infinite or Totality, Hegel referred to it as Infinite or Absolute Spirit; Tillich saw it as a paradoxical symbol of the Ultimate, the depth or power which underlies or is beyond everything; and Scharlemann said it never was

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or is or can be a discreet entity, but can be a felt presence that is manifest and grasps us through anything in our world when we think or speak. Feuerbach was persuaded it actually denoted the unlimited potential of the human species, and Nietzsche was convinced that it was an empty concept kept alive only by the ressentiment of decadents. So the history of its recent exploration has offered no single resolution or consensus. The most significant Christian doctrine is its claim about Jesus being the Incarnation of “God,” and the confusion becomes even greater since this means that which is not any distinct entity was somehow actually discerned in history as one particular person, and most of the scholars listed above were forced to fudge on their ontologies or reading of symbols in order to have any Christology, but none thereby validated the actual Christological claim.143 If Christian theologians and philosophers of religion have struggled with the question of “God,” this brief survey of only one particular trend within several of the most influential theologians of the past two centuries presents even more difficulties for the Christian who has been persuaded that the Bible is to be taken literally as the Word of God, and that its message is simple and “perspicacious,” as Luther said. While the Hubbell telescope sends back thousands of photos of the unexplored regions of distant space, some Christians still insist that “beyond” our exponentially expanding space is some power or intelligent being that is the Great Omnipotent Designer or Source of All Purpose who expects humans to live ethically with each other, despite the facts of reality that humans, with impunity, continue to slaughter each other for almost any or no reason at all, though some do it even in the name of their “God,” and no “God” steps in to resolve these gross conflicts and tragedies. The crisis of the warming of Earth which is not a mere natural cycle but is exacerbated by human greed and carelessness, is quickly making the Earth uninhabitable. But there seems to be no “God” to stop it, just as there was no “God” to prevent the murder, wars, the genocide, the deceit, theft, fraud, and abuse. The absence of any “God” who can intervene to alter even the “natural” side of the warming of the Earth has the most extensive negative effect, and humans are faced with the ice caps melting faster, rising oceans, rampant fires, tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, pandemics, or even the periodical and extreme famines and starvation. Has “God” left it all for human hands to destroy? Yet on “holy days,” such a loving, powerful “God” is still the wished-for object as people pray in desperation to be cured of their illnesses, to be able to put a roof over the heads of their family and feed them, to be treated by others with respect and dignity and equality. And when the prayer is not answered, some place their only hope for a better life in the future, to soon leave this tragic world behind to live forever in “heaven” with God. What are we doing

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to ourselves, expecting so much comfort while we create chaos, alienating our companions and depressing ourselves by carelessly “spoiling our own nest,”144 the only home we have? As Feuerbach pointed out, “faith” in another future world, post-death, has desensitized many humans, especially Christians, to the fact that their “home” is really here and now, a world they need to care more about even if their subconsciously projected “God” does not. In any case, the traditional picture of the “metaphysics of infinity” is certainly still propagated by most of the Christian institutions as they speak of “God” and pray to “God” and there is no admission of thinking of a less personal or powerful “God.” Yet this is juxtaposed against the most common expression of “God” today which is “Oh, my God!” or an OMG written, which reduces to a mere ejaculation of surprise, either of pleasant or unpleasant nature. One hardly remembers that one of the Ten Commandments made that name so sacred—since to use the name in ancient times, meant that you could access power to your advantage—that the command was not to take it “in vain.” The name was allowed to be used only if one was swearing a serious oath to God, not a fake oath or a promise one did not intend to keep. The latter was to incur the wrath of God. But no amount of frivolous use of the name brings any “wrath” or punishment from “God.” The desacralized and demythologized Western world has long been beyond any realistic expectation of “God” intervening in the most disastrous problems humanity faces. Is not the end of a legal oath such as “so help me God” only a vague expression to induce an atmosphere of solemnity. In presidential speeches in which there is not the slightest implication of what Otto and Tillich thought was the “mysterium” and “tremendum” of anything “holy,” and perhaps no belief in that power which is allegedly being invoked, is it simply an empty symbolical gesture, done merely for the sake of ancient custom or added authority to some citizens? Is it only a secular formality and not religious at all, which is the way the Court saw a legislative prayer in the state of Nebraska, since if it had a “religious purpose,” it would have violated the Court’s own Lemon test as an “illegal establishment” of religion?145 Are the “acts of God” in insurance policies really anything more than disclaimers of liability to protect the bottom line of the company? Did not Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer finally realize that the world has “come of age” in the 1940s, and Christians must stop waiting for “God” to do what they themselves can and therefore must do. He and others tried to stop Hitler and were ultimately executed for it, while others wanted to remain “pure” of such questionable actions, waiting and praying. During those years, millions were killed in the war, yet the constant cloud of smoke over Germany was not from the bombing as much as from the furnaces in which many millions more, especially Jews, were cremated in the extermination

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camps. Bonhoeffer’s question was, “When do we become responsible?” and his answer was that we must “live before God as if God does not exist.” By that, he did not mean live immorally or chaotically but responsibly, even in crises. Foucault predicted an ongoing tension in that “modern thought, then, will contest even its own metaphysical impulses, and show that reflections upon life, labour, and language, in so far as they have value as analytics of finitude, express the end of the old metaphysics.” In his words, “the philosophy of life denounces metaphysics as a veil of illusion, that of labour denounces it as an alienated form of thought and an ideology, that of language as a cultural episode.”146 For the present generation of Christians who feel some cognitive dissonance between being a Christian and being able to defend it, the position sketched by Scharlemann probably remains the most convincing, and he himself remained an ordained Lutheran pastor till he died in 2013. His inclusive view of the symbol of the Cross and reflexive reason which embraces all different and opposite perspectives offers a possible way of seeing a religious base as presenting a possible conception of relativism which is grounded in a sense of universalism so one does not feel compelled to issue negative judgments of people of other religions or none. To the degree that religious people could accept that their religious convictions are only one of many possible relative perspectives in this world, rather than being the Absolute One, that would reduce the problem within all social contracts by no longer being exclusive. That net result is at least theoretically compatible with the “freestanding” principles from which diverse people could arrive at an “overlapping consensus” upon which to have a sense of unity in their ethics and social contract and its legal structures of justice, even if ethics was not Scharlemann’s primary concern in writing. His focus was not on “what” “God” is but “where” “God” discloses itself. But if the “where,” as Scharlemann analyzed, is anywhere, in any person or presence, then that returns us to the question of how we would detect that manifestation of “God.” He said it would enable us to find our authentic being. That could suggest that the “what” is actually knowable and directly in our lives empirically. If the symbol of the Cross and reflexive reason provides a sense of “truth” or “unity” that embraces different perspectives, then he also emphasized the instantiation of relations by words we use, as suggested by Buber. If we think of relations and what creates or destroys them, there are certainly words that describe attitudes which affect relationships, all of which have independence from religions such as “autonomy,” “authentic self,” “trust,” “acceptance” of different perspectives, “acceptance” of self, as Tillich emphasized, or being able to not be ashamed of one own will, as Nietzsche stressed, or, going back to Hegel, the need for continual “reconciliation,” or to Schleiermacher, the need to envision one’s being part of the

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Whole. None of these required a religion to articulate it, and all have strong ethical implications. The same is true of words such as “empathy,” “compassion,” or “kindness” which the Dalai Lama used over and over, and they are significantly universal so are not dependent upon Buddhism for their validity, as even he had emphasized. So one can avoid being trapped by the retention of the “metaphysics of infinity,” with metaphysical issues which are beyond resolution so should not be conceived as having any real bearing on ethics, especially the ethics of all people and all perspectives. John Rawls will illustrate how this can be in a democratic society if it is built on “freestanding principles” which are based on public reason. Even theology has struggled with the “name” as if the Other is a single entity, a specific being, but Scharlemann said “God” was not any particular being per se, but the power of any being to enable us to find our authentic being. That surely is what ethics involves as we find ourselves in a social world. It reinforces William James’s idea that the “more life” people seek when they are religious does not require some supranatural “God” but any person or even unexplored dimensions of one’s own mind which can assist us in taking the “next step.”147 Thus, philosophy of religion and theology has moved far from the old theism, even if most theologians still use the name as they analyze it in non-theistic terms. Or, if we take Feuerbach’s insight more fairly, we might discover that the “other” of human concern can be redefined as all those living beings that are discreet beings in our midst by which we become human—rather than some invisible presence that is supposed to provide us our divine destiny. That was the reason he emphasized “love” rather than “faith.” For those who realize the crisis of humanity as it lacks a common ethic, it may be possible to take a simple “agnostic” position, that is, of admitting that even if one does “not know” with any great certainty what “God” is or means, or what the entire Universe is or means, one can nevertheless work with anyone else on trying to agree on a ground for ethics and principles that all humans could embrace, and it might well, as Rawls suggested, arrive at the most basic principles to which all would agree, of the maximum equal liberty for all, and a principle of compensating for inequalities that are bound to occur—which could provide liberty to many forms of religion as well as nonreligious people and other “comprehensive doctrines” of various associations. It has to be a bit confusing to Christians who still think in theistic terms of a personal God who expects them to live by His moral or ethical standards. Nietzsche, described the “madman” who proclaimed the death of God, that “We have killed him—you and I!” but then realized how overwhelmingly disorienting such a realization could be. After a lengthy discourse on it, the “madman” corrected himself by saying that he had come prematurely, that

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the time was not right, that this event of God’s death has not yet reached the people’s ears. Yet he remained convinced that they had “done it,” so when he left those people, he visited different churches on that very day and delivered the same message of the death of God. We can only hope that Nietzsche underestimated the human capacity for accepting challenging ideas and overestimated the disorientation such an announcement would produce. We can hope that human morality is more deeply instinctual within humanity than any heteronomous religious traditions, and that those whose identity is primarily within their religion or belief in some God could at least feel relieved that there is a possibility of two sets of ethics, and the one on which government is based can provide stability but also the freedom to be religious or non-religious so long as the citizens follow the ethics and laws that all citizens agreed to in the Constitution in order to have a stable nation that can tolerate diversity. But what would that kind of modesty look like, of admitting that one does not know (agnostic) many things about the world and certainly not about the metaphysics of a religion but does know or thinks one can learn what would comprise an ethic to which all humans could subscribe? An answer that may be helpful is the example of the Nobel Peace Prize winner in chapter 4, Dr. Albert Schweitzer, an inspiration to thousands, whose ethic based on the universally obvious instinctual “will-to-live” does not require great knowledge of either the universe or of some metaphysics, and this ethic is finally becoming appreciated on a wide scale by religious and non-religious people. NOTES 1. I have to thank Joseph Flay’s criticism of Hegel’s mistake of presupposing that the referents for the ground of the totality or whole are identical with the referents for the ground of intelligibility. He thinks that this formed for Hegel an unjustified certainty of the presupposition of a comprehensive intelligibility through Spirit in his Phenomenology of Spirit, which would in the end result in a nihilism accommodating any different ideas of certainty about the whole, dissolving the meaning of all difference. I have obviously placed his criticism in a simpler schema of different “sets” of clothing to justify thinking one can actually live with what Flay acknowledged as many demands for quite different comportments in different circumstances, even within a single day. See Joseph C. Flay, Hegel’s Quest for Certainty (Albany, NY: State Univ. of New York Press, 1984), pp. 252–67. 2. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1971): conflict over liberty must be resolved by principles or the original position (221). 3. For example, different sets of tools, dishes, even different chairs and rooms in a typical house, serve different functions, but all their differences making sense as

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united not by their specific totality but simply by the will of the one possessing and using them. 4. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), ch. 7, pp. 314–17. He notes “As long as these empirical contents were situated within the space of representation, a metaphysics of the infinite was not only possible but necessary; it was necessary, in fact that they should be the manifest forms of human finitude, and yet that they should be able to have their locus and their truth within representation; the idea of infinity, and the idea of its determination in finitude, made one another possible. But when these empirical contents were detached from representation and contained the principle of their existence within themselves, then the metaphysics of infinity became useless. . . . Whereupon the entire field of Western thought was inverted. Where there had formerly been a correlation between a metaphysics of representation and of the infinite and an analysis of living beings, of man’s desires, and of the words of his language, we find being constituted an analytic of finitude and human existence, and in opposition to it (though in correlative opposite) a perpetual tendency to constitute a metaphysics of life, labour, and language. But these are never anything more than tendencies, immediately opposed and as it were undermined from within, for there can be no question of anything but metaphysics reduced to the scale of human finitudes. . . . Modern thought, then, will contest even its own metaphysical impulses, and show that reflections upon life, labour, and language, in so far as they have value as analytics of finitude, express the end of metaphysics: the philosophy of life denounces metaphysics as a veil of illusion, that of labour denounces it as an alienated form of thought and an ideology, that of language as a cultural episode.” 5. Despite the great work on ancient religious myth by scholars such as Mircea Eliade and others, one can hardly take a position that “myth” has always said the same thing to people from those whose lives were dictated by it (even though they did not call it “myth”) to modern people who speak glibly about its “existential” meaning, but whose lives are dictated by modern science rather than those ancient “existential” meanings in the myths. It would be just as reasonable as claiming that quantum physics, string-theory, DNA, etc. were all known existentially by people three or four millennia ago, even though their lives showed no real behaviors that could be attributed to a knowledge of those things. This is anachronism, not historical facts. 6. A. C. Grayling, The God Argument: The Case against Religion and for Humanism (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2013), p. 33. 7. I am not saying all the changes are planned, but rather, as Rorty, that they “just happen,” but on down the line, they are seen in retrospect, and some sense can be attributed to them at times, a present meaning, though not a prior meaning. 8. Foucault, The Order of Things, p. 349. 9. Ibid., pp. 351–52. 10. Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1996), ch. 4. Stark thinks the compassion of Christians even toward non-Christians was exceptionable in early Christianity, and accounted for the religion’s success. Up beside what the “empire” was affording

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them, it may have been significant, though I am not convinced his examples really prove much. 11. One has to ask whether, since Judaism knew of no “Son of God,” this is Paul contrasting this Christ with the venerated Caesar of the Roman Empire, whom the New Testament reveals as the primary threat to some of the early Christians or “Judaeans.” Certainly, Paul, as a Jew, did not have in mind that this “Christ” was “Son of God” in the later Trinitarian sense, with the “same essence” (homoousias) as God the Father as the Nicene and Chalcedonian creeds spelled out along typical Greek/Roman conceptions of who could be a “Son” of a famous god. 12. As, for example, Tillich distinguishes the “essence” (Systematic Theology, Vol. I) from “existence” (Vol. II), in which he admits that both “essence” and “existence” are only abstractions derived from the ambiguous actual life (Vol. III), but the process and criteria of such derivation of “essence” and “existence” from actual life is not very clear. 13. Even the titles of profound works show which field has priority over the other as in Wolfhart Pannenberg’s Anthropology in Theological Perspective, tr. Matthew J. O’Connell (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1985). Of course, theology per se has no “empiricity” until a religion makes a claim of some deity intervening in history. At that point, the big problem surfaces which has yet to be answered, though Robert P. Scharlemann is one of the most astute theologians who developed a very novel though complex possible schema of answering from the empirical or existential as a phenomenological ontology in The Reason of Following in 1991. 14. See my Will Humanity Survive Religion? Beyond Divisive Absolutes (2020). 15. A variety of forms of measurements of such trends is obvious, and Pew Research has been on the cutting edge. This non-affiliation with religion is especially true in the United States with “millennials.” 16. I will personally attest to this, having experienced the continual challenge for the best part of more than sixty years of my life, and having seen it in the postures of many of my professional colleagues (university professors and pastors) over decades. 17. Dalai Lama, Ethics for the New Millennium (New York: Riverhead Books, 1999), p. 20. 18. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, tr. F. Max Muller (New York: A Doubleday Anchor Book, 1966), pp. 98–106. 19. Ibid., pp. 60–67. 20. Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, tr. H. J. Paton (New York: Harper Torchbook, 1964), pp. 127–31. He emphasized that the postulating is only of the possibility of such causes, but not as some theoretical understanding of them, and this may correspond with his statement in The Critique of Practical Reason that the “admission of [God’s] existence . . . itself belongs to the domain of speculative reason,” which could be called either “hypothesis” or “pure rational faith,” depending upon how it was seen. See also his Critique of Practical Reason, in Great Books of the Western World, #42 Kant, Robert Maynard Hutchins, editor in chief (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1952), p. 345. 21. Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, p. 345. “[T]he summum bonum is possible in the world only on the supposition of a Supreme Being having a causality

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corresponding to moral character. Now a being that is capable of acting on the conception of laws is an intelligence (a rational being), and the causality of such a being according to this conception of laws is his will; therefore the supreme cause of nature, which must be presupposed as a condition of the summum bonum is a being which is the cause of nature by intelligence and will, consequently its author, that is God. It follows that the postulate of the possibility of the highest derived good (the best world) is likewise the postulate of the reality of a highest original good that is to say, of the existence of God. Now it was seen to be a duty for us to promote the summum bonum; consequently it is not merely allowable, but it is a necessity connected with duty as a requisite, that we should presuppose the possibility of this summum bonum; and as this is possible only on condition of the existence of God, it inseparably connects the supposition of this with duty; that is it is morally necessary to assume the existence of God” (p. 345). But it remains a postulate. 22. Immanuel Kant, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, tr. Theodore M. Greene and Hoyt H. Hudson (New York: Harper Torchbook, 1960), pp. 68–71, plus ft. on p. 69. 23. Kant says that even if one could imagine such an example of moral perfection, it is generated only from our own reason, and when people push for it to have been actually embodied in a person, it becomes a hindrance to any adoption of the idea of moral perfection. The person would either be completely human, or else it serves as no real example at all (Ibid., p. 57). 24. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, pp. 398–403. He argues, “Being is evidently not a real predicate, or a concept of something that can be added to the concept of a thing. It is merely the admission of a thing, and of certain determinations in it. Logically it is merely the copula of a judgment. The proposition, God is almighty, contains two concepts, each having its object, namely, God and almightiness. The small word is, is not an additional predicate, but only serves to put the predicate in relation to the subject. If, then, I take the subject (God) with all its predicates (including that of almightiness), and say God is, or there is a God, I do not put a new predicate to the concept of God, but I only put the subject by itself, with all its predicates, in relation in my concept, as its object. Both must contain exactly the same kind of thing, and nothing can have been added to the concept, which expresses possibility only, by my thinking its object as simply given and saying, it is. And thus the real does not contain more than the possible. A hundred real dollars do not contain a penny more than a hundred possible dollars” (401–2). 25. Ibid., pp. 413–18. 26. Ibid., p. 416. 27. Ibid., pp. 404–13. For a recent, more readable examination of these arguments, see A. C. Grayling, The God Argument, pp. 65–128. 28. Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, ed. H. R. Mackintosh and J. S. Stewart (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1960), pp. 16–18. 29. Schleiermacher, On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers, tr. John Oman (New York: Harper Torchbook, 1958), p. 103, ftnt. 2. 30. Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, p. 194. 31. Ibid., p. 195.

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32. Ibid., p, 197. 33. Ibid., p. 198–99. 34. Ibid., pp. 204–25. 35. Schleiermacher, Speeches, pp. 31–38: “Just as one cannot be truly scientific without being pious, the pious man may not know at all, but he cannot know falsely. . . . His nature is reality which knows reality, and where it encounters nothing it does not suppose it sees something. . . . What can man accomplish that is worth speaking of, either in life or in art, that does not arise in his own self from the influence of this sense for the Infinite . . . how can both [science and art] come to life in you except in so far as there lives immediately in you the eternal unity of Reason and Nature, the universal existence of all finite things in the Infinite?” (38–39) 36. Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, p. 5. 37. Ibid., p. 3. 38. Schleiermacher, Lectures on Philosophical Ethics, ed. Robert B. Louden, tr. Louise Adey Huish (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 8. 39. Ibid., p. 18. 40. Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, p. 524. 41. Ibid., pp. 520–21. 42. Schleiermacher, Speeches, pp. 72–73. 43. In his Spirit of Christianity, he faulted the earliest disciples of Jesus for failing to see their own “divinity,” that is, that they had the same “Spirit” as Jesus, which was God’s self-consciousness (though he does not say the latter five words that early). See his explanation of Peter’s confession of Christ at Caesarea Philippi, and Hegel’s belittling the disciples for their apotheosis of Jesus. W. F. G. Hegel, The Spirit of Christianity in Early Theological Writings, tr. T. M. Knox (New York: Harper Torchbook, 1961), pp. 265–67. 44. Hegel, Philosophy of History, in Great Books of the Western World, #46: Hegel, Editor in Chief Robert Maynard Hutchins (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1952), p. 306: “The recognition of the identity of the subject and God was introduced into the world when the fullness of time was come: the consciousness of this identity is the recognition of God in his true essence. The material of truth is spirit itself—inherent vital movement. The nature of God as pure spirit, is manifested to man in the Christian religion.” The unity of man with God “must not be superficially conceived, as if God were only man, and man, without further condition, were God. Man, on the contrary, is God only in so far as he annuls the merely natural and limited in his spirit and elevates himself to God . . . for the natural is the unspiritual. In this idea of God, then, is to be found also the reconciliation that heals the pain and inward suffering of man. For suffering itself is henceforth recognized as an instrument necessary for producing the unity of man with God.” See also the final chapter in his Phenomenology, as in note 45 below. 45. G. W. F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind, tr. J.B. Baillie (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1967), pp. 751, 755–56. “It is the pure notion, pure thought, or self-existence (being-for-self), which is immediately being, and, therewith,

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being-for-another, and, qua this being-for-another, is immediately turned back into itself and is at home with itself (bei sich)” (p. 759). 46. Hegel, Philosophy of History, p. 369. 47. Hegel, Phenomenology of Mind, pp. 774–85, esp. 778. 48. Significantly, Scharlemann corrects both Hegel and Tillich on this idea of Christ’s “factual” being, distinguishing “actual” from “factual,” admitting that Jesus as the Christ was only the former, not the latter, which I have criticized. See the chapter on Scharlemann, ch. 6, in my Ethics and the Future of Religion: Redefining the Absolute (2021). 49. Hegel, Phenomenology of Mind, p. 780. 50. Hegel was still operating with a presumption that spirit and matter are opposites, so mind or thinking is not connected in his thought with the human brain, but from Feuerbach forward, thinking was being connected to the brain by those willing to make the mental separation. There had been evolutionary ideas for centuries, and Lamarck published in 1801, prior to Hegel’s joining the Univ. of Berlin. Feuerbach was only 5 when Darwin’s work was published. 51. Albert Schweitzer, The Philosophy of Civilization, tr. C. T. Campion (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1960), pp. 213–20. 52. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, tr. George Eliot (New York: Harper Torchbook, 1957), p. 12. 53. Ibid., p. 230. 54. Ibid., p. 32. 55. Ludwig Feuerbach, Lectures on the Essence of Religion, tr. Ralph Manheim (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), pp. 83–84. 56. Ibid., p. 84. 57. Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, p. 21. 58. Feuerbach, Lectures on the Essence of Religion, pp. 86–87. 59. This understanding he had of evolution distinguished what was reasonable from the unreasonable for him, and this was one of the primary reasons he could not accept Hegel’s total focus on Spirit vis-à-vis body or the material. This acceptance of Darwinian evolution was also what enabled Schweitzer to transcend the need for creeds, dogma, etc. of religion, or even Christian mysticism. The philosophy established by evolution supplied for Schweitzer a universal source of Reverence for Life for all people in all cultures. See also Feuerbach’s Lectures on the Essence of Religion, pp. 134–39. He uses a political analogy which is apropos, “it is just as absurd, just as unreasonable to derive a God from the power that governs nature as it would be to sniff out a prince or monarch in the president of a republic” (139). 60. Ibid., p. 87. 61. It is interesting that the prolific late conservative Hegelian systematic theologian, Wolfhart Pannenberg, defended Feuerbach against Karl Barth, in which Barth had belittled Feuerbach for not knowing death or evil, and for confusing the infinite species with the individual, sinful human. In all these, Pannenberg says Barth’s criticism was mistaken, just as he was in also thinking all subsequent theology tended to become anthropology after Feuerbach. See Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic

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Theology, Vol I., tr. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 1991), pp. 104–5. 62. Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, p. 26. 63. Ibid., p. 31. 64. Ibid., pp. 1–2. 65. Ibid., p. 3. 66. Ibid., pp. 33–41. 67. For example, in the Nirguna Brahman of the Upanishads or in Maimonides’ Guide to the Perplexed. 68. Feuerbach, Ibid., pp. 44–58. 69. Ibid., ch. XXVI. 70. Ibid., p, 247. 71. Ibid., p. 274. 72. For my fuller discussion of Rubenstein, see ch. 10 of my Will Humanity Survive Religion? Beyond Divisive Absolutes. 73. Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, in The Portable Nietzsche (New York: Viking Press, 1954), pp. 486–91. 74. Ibid., pp. 492–501; also Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, pp. 209–22. 75. Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, p. 470. 76. Ibid., p. 479. 77. Ibid., pp. 478–82. 78. Nietzsche, Joyful Wisdom, tr. Thomas Common (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1960), pp. 213–15. 79. Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, pp. 515–16. 80. Ibid., p. 524. 81. Ibid., p. 512. 82. Ibid., p. 482. 83. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, pp. 207–209. 84. Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, p. 495. Actually, the Ding-an-Sich was not limited to “God” but included anything treated as an object. 85. Ibid., p. 234. 86. Ibid., p. 262. 87. Ibid., p. 256. 88. The Antichrist, in The Portable Nietzsche pp. 611, 617–19. As Nietzsche reinforces: “Christianity promises everything, but fulfills nothing” (p. 617). 89. Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, p. 487. 90. Nietzsche, The Antichrist, p. 613. 91. Nietzsche, The Dawn, in The Portable Nietzsche, p. 78. 92. Thus, Nietzsche regarded Protestantism as the “partial paralysis” of both Christianity and of reason. The Antichrist, p. 576. For a succinct description of Christian morality by Nietzsche, as a despising of the “very first instincts of life,” and being totally anti-nature see Ecce Homo, pp. 788–90. 93. Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols., p. 576. 94. Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in The Portable Nietzsche, pp. 370–75.

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95. Ibid., pp. 375–79, 354, 439. 96. It is interesting that the Dalai Lama takes the same position as Nietzsche on “pity,” that it is a form of shameful condescension, not empathy or compassion at all. The Dalai Lama, Ethics, p. 73. “Empathy,” he emphasizes, is “the inability to bear the sight of another’s sufferings,” p. 64. This connects with Rorty’s idea of a sensitivity to such suffering as the basis of solidarity. 97. Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, pp. 197–202. 98. Nietzsche, Joyful Wisdom, pp. 167–69. The title is more typically The Gay Science. 99. Ecce Homo, in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, pp. 692–93. It is a “gross” answer telling one “not to think” precisely because “God” is usually absolutized and the voice is heteronomous, which is a presumptive command “not to think.” 100. Ibid., pp. 694–97. 101. Nietzsche, Joyful Wisdom, pp. 213–15. 102. Walter Kaufmann, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist (New York: Meridian Books, 1950), p. 84. 103. Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p. 307. 104. Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, p. 517: “One must know who one is.” 105. In my Ethics and the Future of Religion: Redefining the Absolute. 106. Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, 3 Vols in 1 (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1951, 1957, 1963), Vol. I: 213, 234–39, 242, 248. 107. By terms such as “depth,” “abyss” and “ground,” he speaks of a “dimension” that is beyond the ontological structure, since even though theology must speak of God, to a degree, as an “object,” it really cannot be since it would then not be “being-itself” or the “ground” of being, but within the ontological structure (S.T. I:172). Here he also suggests that mysticism “tries to overcome the objectifying scheme by an ecstatic union of man and God, analogous to the erotic relation in which there is a drive toward a moment in which the difference between lover and beloved is extinguished. Elsewhere, he explains the importance of the analogy with sexual symbols which were retained more in Catholic theology than in Protestant (p. 119, nt. 4). This points to the “depth” “abyss,” and “ground” as being beyond all difference or derivation, as he says. On “abyss,” see it also contrasted with “ground” by being the negative limit to everything, where the “ground” is the positive. “Revelation” is the manifestation of the depth of reason and the ground of being” (p. 117). If one asks what precedes “subject and object” or “self and world,” that is the point, Tillich says, at which “reason looks into its own abyss—an abyss in which distinction and derivation disappear. Only revelation can answer this question” (p. 174). 108. Ibid., pp. 235–37; 245. 109. Ibid., II:20–21. He also calls it a standing out of the state of relative non-being (p. 21). 110. Masao Abe, “Double Negation as an Essential for Attaining the Ultimate Reality: Comparing Tillich and Buddhism” in Masao Abe, Buddhism and Interfaith Dialogue, ed. Steven Heine (Honolulu: Univ. of Hawai’i Press, 1995), pp. 104–11.

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111. Which means “everything is in God” he uses, for example, in speaking of “eschatological panentheism” (III:421). 112. For the dependence on Augustine, see Tillich’s Theology of Culture; for his influence by Christian mysticism, see Robert P. Scharlemann, “The Mystical Correlate of Symbolic Appearance in Tillich’s Systematic Theology,” in Scharlemann, Religion and Reflection: Essays on Paul Tillich’s Theology (Munster: Lit Verlag, 2004), pp. 215–23. 113. Tillich, Systematic Theology, I:235–38. 114. Ibid., p. 237. 115. Ibid., p. 242. 116. Ibid., p. 223. Unfortunately, Tillich failed to examine the real sequence of arguments of his predecessors such as Schleiermacher, Hegel, Strauss, Feuerbach, and Nietzsche, usually giving a caricature of them. For example, he accused Schleiermacher of almost killing theology by making “feeling” the source for theology, yet later admitting that what Schleiermacher meant by “feeling” or “immediate self-consciousness” was almost the same as he meant by “ultimate concern,” which was not seen as theology’s “source” at all unless one spoke of it as one’s object. His usual put-down of Feuerbach was that you cannot have any “projection” without a “screen.” Yet his positing of the meaning of the various “symbols” of God were as lacking of a screen as was anything utilized by Feuerbach. The demand itself was illogical, interpreting “projection” too literally, and Feuerbach’s argument deserved careful and precise reply especially in light of the issue of whether a subject actually is when one has denied all its predicates. 117. Ibid., pp. 215–16, 223. 118. Ibid., p. 223, I:150; II:97; III:223–26. 119. Ibid., I:131; I:239–40; II:115. He tried to say that the analogy of being cannot furnish details (or attributes?) of “God” from an analogy with finite being since “God” is not “finite.” But Tillich also insisted that “God” is not “infinite,” that “infinite” is merely a “directing” concept, not “a constituting concept” (see I:190, where he tries to explain “directing” as the fact that the word “infinite” “directs the mind to experience its own unlimited potentialities, but it does not establish the existence of an infinite being”). So “God” is nothing definite. But humans do not have “unlimited potentialities” nor an “infinite destiny” unless they are not “finite. So was Tillich only against forming a “natural theology” from the analogia entis? Yet he says there is enough analogy whereby we can speak of God, so long as we know we are only speaking in symbols or only “indirectly” since we cannot see behind the analogy to see what it really is. If that be true, how would one ever have any idea whether the symbols were adequate or not, much less whether there was any truth in them? Is it only determined by whether or not the symbols “transform” the believer? Yet in Tillich, the believer remains always saint and sinner, so is never really transformed, so how does one justify the language about God or Christ? 120. Ibid., I:149. 121. Tillich, The Courage to Be (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1952). 122. Systematic Theology, I:204–10.

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123. He ends the discussion of each different aspect of reason by suggesting it leads to the quest for revelation. Ibid., I: 83, 85.89, 92–94, 97, 100, 105. 124. Ibid., II:57. 125. Ibid., II:80–86. 126. See Albert Schweitzer, The Philosophy of Civilization, pp. 198–207, 213–20. 127. Most of the following themes and complex arguments can be found in three of Scharlemann’s works: Robert P. Scharlemann, The Being of God: Theology and the Experience of Truth (New York: Seabury Press, 1981); Scharlemann, “Does Saying Make It So? The Language of Instantiation in Buber’s I and Thou,” in God in Language, eds. Robert P. Scharlemann and Gilbert E. M. Ogutu (New York: Paragon House Pub., 1987); and The Reason of Following: Christology and the Ecstatic I (Chicago: The Univ. of Chicago Press, 1991). 128. Scharlemann, The Being of God, p. 10. 129. In April, 1994, in honor of Scharlemann’s sixty-fifth birthday, fifteen of his international colleagues presented contributions at the International PhilosophicalTheological Conference on “The Otherness of God” at the Univ. of Virginia, and subsequently published the articles in his honor. Orrin F. Summerell, ed., The Otherness of God (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1999). They offered the volume to pay “tribute to Professor Scharlemann’s persistent engagement in mediating continental and especially German philosophy and theology with Anglo-American thought—and that in terms of reflection on the being of God and the experience of truth.” (vii) 130. RF, pp. 202–205. 131. Ibid., p. 205. 132. Ibid., p. 198. 133. In The Being of God, he attributes this insight about the word “God” having instantiating power to the speculative idealist, Karl Daub, pp. 159–71. 134. For example, he ends The Being of God with the following: “Theology has the task of inscribing ‘God’ upon all names, ‘God is’ upon all events, and “God is God’ upon all identities. In carrying out that task it has the intention of speaking the truth so that the truth can be seen or heard. Sometimes it will, and sometimes it will not, succeed in this effort . . .” p. 183. 135. Scharlemann, “Does Saying Make It So?” p. 126. 136. Ibid., 126. 137. To make the title “Lord” only temporal is a real stretch since it became the title of exaltation given to Jesus by the early church, as especially seen in the Apostle Paul’s writings. It is equivalent of deity, of eternal deity. See Phil. 2:5-11. Verse 11 formulates the ultimate Christian confession the “Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” It is not that he was a temporal lord which differs from an eternal deity; they are used synonymously. See also I Cor. 12:3 in which the temporal being, “Jesus” is confessed as the eternal power, “Lord,” which Paul thinks can be confessed only by one who has the Spirit. Of course, kyrios or “Lord” was also used for Caesar, so this is a competition, yet Jesus’ lordship is not just temporal, so superior. 138. Ibid., p. 127. 139. Ibid. 140. Ibid.

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141. Scharlemann, The Being of God, pp. 170–71. 142. Ibid. p. 171. 143. See my Ethics and the Future of Religion: Redefining the Absolute. 144. Carl Sagan, Billions & Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium (New York: Random House, 1997), with regard to humans learning to cooperate with the manifold forms of life that comprise the Earth, wrote, “Birds, whose intelligence we tend to malign—know not to foul the nest. Shrimp with brains the size of lint particles know it. Algae know it. One-celled micro-organisms know it. It is time for us to know it too” (p. 68). 145. For the Court’s ruling on legislative prayer, see Marsh v. Chambers, 463 US 783 (1983), and for its “purpose” element of an illegal establishment of religion, see the Lemon test, defined first in Lemon v. Kurtman, 403 US 602 (1971). 146. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things, p. 317. 147. William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (New York: University Books, 1963), p. 525.

Chapter 4

Ethics of the “End” Myth/Mysticism, “Will-to-Live,” or Total Presence?

If one is searching for an example of how it is possible to find “freestanding” ethics, totally detached from religious myths and metaphysics, an ethic that might serve as a “global” ethic to unite civilization rather than divide it, Albert Schweitzer’s life and thought is one obvious possibility. His genius, life of service to others, and attempt to elucidate a more inclusive ethic for the world, is a great encouragement for humanity. His discovery of eschatology opened up a new dimension in Christian understanding, moving the ethic from a literalism of the church’s select, favorite passages such as the “Golden Rule” to a more credible historical accounting as an enigmatic system of Jesus’ presupposition of the impending Final Judgment, from an unpalatable (to the church) interpretation of its base as mythical to an accessible experience of a Christ-mysticism. This was still a very particular experience, limited only to people exposed to this kind of understanding of the Christian message. Through serving others for years in Lambarene, this historically particular identity of the mythical element was transcended by a universally accessible ethical ground as he discovered a mysticism of Being in particular beings, not in some totality of being. This not only eliminated the negative or punishment side of the apocalyptic picture but also the necessity of thinking of “God” as the Totality which one must know and obey to be ethical. The mystical unity required only a relation with any specific living being, even animals, so was universally accessible. It is this universal experience that enables the primary awareness of the “first datum” of life to be the common “will-to-live.” This “Reverence for Life” carries such moral impetus that it releases one from the necessity of seeking other knowledge either of this world or any possible other world, that is, an admission of one’s limited knowledge or agnosticism, 139

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but one does know of one’s “will-to-live” and recognizes it in all others with whom one relates. The power of this “will-to-live” and Schweitzer’s influence did not stop there, but was eventually discovered and developed in different ways. Thomas J. J. Altizer was persuaded that Schweitzer’s reading of Jesus was correct, but he pushed apocalyptic much further than Schweitzer in his explanation of history as the “death of God” whose apocalyptic nature put an end to Transcendence, resulting in two reversals of the human consciousness, finally arriving at a form of anonymous but total presence. To Altizer, this solitude marked the end of the old world of objectification, reification, and exclusive opposites, finally positing a new understanding of the coincidence of opposites, which is a new origin for moral grounding as one discovers the real others who are “anonymous,” a position which ultimately may be more Buddhist than Christian in blending the religions, but we must view it along with a couple of other variations at the end of this chapter because of their dependence upon the early view of Schweitzer. But first, “Ethics of the ‘End’” may seem ambiguous. If life comes to an end, no ethics is needed. If we can agree that “ethics” refers to a system of morality, thought, articulated, or even embraced by a variety of people, and “moral” points more to the actual behavior of people relating to each other and also other forms of life, “end” is not so unequivocal. “End” can denote the termination of a project, a result sought, a purpose or goal which could be at the end of one’s life but also in many different forms purposes or goals that are more short term or can be achieved even many times within a single lifetime. Any of these fit the Greek word telos. But it can also indicate a termination by accident, or not having any obvious purpose whatever, or even a welcome termination that was unplanned or at least planned by someone else. This might still involve the connotation of being the telos of someone else, but otherwise would fit more the idea of eschaton as finality. Why talk about the “end” in ethics? Because if the “end” shapes one’s responses to others, it involves the sphere of morality or ethics. Further, Kant was convinced that ethics cannot be built upon a telos or end that humans fashion since that tends to be open to “inclination,” that is, egoistic impulses or egocentrism, which to him indicated something dictated more by nature than by reason. He could not have meant that ethics should be only unplanned or the plans of someone other than myself. To the contrary, he insisted each person had the categorical imperative or sense of moral duty inherently within them, and they needed to plan, to reason, to calculate, to be able to think abstractly, to conceive of principles as not just individual maxims but universal principles. One needed to put forth effort to measure up to that imperative, which itself becomes the telos. By each person having this inner sense of “duty,” he hoped to preserve autonomy while escaping chaotic relativity. For one to be willing to live by a

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principle which is able to be universalized for all rational creatures, that very principle of universality or working with the autonomy of rational creatures also becomes the telos. It is still conditioned toward a sought result or desired end, and unless one is willing to live in a society in which there is no moral discussion and no moral reciprocity, one still always has interests at stake. So even when one’s ethics appear to be strictly “deontological” or founded only on principles instead of ends, as Kant sought, there remain “ends” or purposes, and even Kant made it very personal by emphasizing that humans, as rational creatures, must be treated as “ends-in-themselves,” that is, that there is nothing superior to them in value. Of course, he could reply that even that understanding of humans is only derived from the categorical imperative since it is only a reflective sense of duty that distinguishes humans from the instinct of animals. The “end,” however, appeared also in his short treatise on the alleged right to lie from altruistic motives. Kant’s argument was that a principle such as “I will tell the truth when it is convenient, but I will lie when it would be to my advantage,” could never become a universal principle simply because a lie would no longer work but rather would be self-defeating. Further, it would undermine a system of respect for the law, thereby producing disorder. So both the end which shows when the principle actually worked and a law that is not undermined by exceptions to it are desired results or teloi, which seem to determine the principle rather than the principle causing the results. Nevertheless, a universalizable principle can go a long way in establishing ethical relations, but it pushes the question one notch back so one must decide why ethical relations are themselves “good,” and that depends upon the diverse perspectives of real human beings who surely have priority over abstract principles. It also awakens the issue of natural desires or inclinations or needs of humans, and why Kant felt the moral “good” had to operate with no normal human inclinations. On quite the other end of the scale, an “end” that is not planned by humans, which might be unfortunate or even quite welcome, seems hardly to be a candidate for a ground for ethics. One might meet one’s end in a car wreck or by a heart attack, but one usually would not shape an ethic looking to that accident or unforeseen possibility as being the most normative nor desirable source, ground, or justification for one’s ethics, even though one might very well guard against it happening in any number of ways. If it simply means I will drive more defensively or I will eat healthier foods, these are probably not the usual behaviors called “moral,” however, unless they involve other people significantly. On the other hand, when one thinks seriously about one’s end in the sense of death, it certainly may shape one’s attitude and behavior toward others. Likewise, if one thinks of the possible end of the world by nuclear war, or the end of human history through the

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human abuse of the planet, or by some divine miraculous disaster coming soon. These might be considered ta eschata (the last things), but unless one is anticipating something very beneficial occurring by that ending, it is not particularly welcome in the sense of a telos or purpose. On the other hand, if one’s life is plagued with marginalization, starvation, or abuse by others or a debilitating illness, or an obvious and intentional overwhelmingly unjust treatment, one might welcome the end. This is where some religions have drawn in many converts and conditioned their thinking toward looking to a better existence post-death. It sometimes includes not only imagination of the beatitude the “believers” would experience in their new lives but also emphasizes the horrific punishment of their and God’s enemies. In that sense, “eschatology” could be quite vindicative or justifying but also vindictive. These two elements are often mixed within the single word “justice.”1 If we turn once again to Christianity, the discovery of this eschatological element, not seen as simply an incidental remark here on there by early Christians, but rather as being the primary orientation of Jesus, Paul, and many other of the church’s earliest leaders—was articulated in detail first by Albert Schweitzer in 1906. Later studies by people such as Martin Werner and others, built upon Schweitzer’s pioneering perception to show how the early church a few decades later began to engage in a program of de-eschatologization when the end of the world did not occur. The church developed its sacramental system to sustain people until that receding and more remote “end” did actually take place. Much of the hope of a post-death life was kept alive by this sacramental system, but also by the theology of St. Augustine in the fourth century, since he saw two “rebirths” and two “resurrections,” the first in each case being the “rebirth” or “resurrection” of the soul when one has faith and is baptized, the second being the “rebirth” or “resurrection” of the body, which occurs at the end of the world for the last judgment.2 But by his time, the “end” or Final Judgment was not widely preached as imminent, since one can live under such temporal tension only so long. Eschatology reappeared periodically, and was most pronounced in the medieval period in the life and writings of Joachim de Fiore, whose eschatological self-denial and schema of the Apocalypse of John into three periods of history were impressive. He was opposed, however, by St. Thomas Aquinas, who attempted to explain the future eschatological hope of the believer’s “resurrection” as rationally or naturally as possible in that even if one did not receive back the actual molecules of one’s earthly body, one would receive an identical number of them. The “soul,” being propagated in its Neoplatonic form by Augustine, however, received more emphasis than any bodily “resurrection” over the centuries, and did not begin to lose its credibility prior to the Enlightenment,

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if even then. For most people, it was still apparently more credible than some bodily resurrection. But the idea of an ending of this world or a new radical world continued to fascinate from Dante’s time through William Blake’s, and even occasionally created new Christians communions who were expecting the imminent Parousia. But the study of the new human sciences saw how integrally one’s body was to one’s identity, so by mid-twentieth century, Wolfhart Pannenberg emphasized this as he looked back to try to determine the origin of Christianity. He concluded it was the resurrection of Jesus, and therefore, with the loss of credibility in the “soul,” he was confident that the idea of “resurrection of the body” could regain its original status as the focus of eschatological hope and one could tie that with Christology.3 Of course, Schweitzer’s unearthing of the “thorough-going eschatology” of Jesus at the turn of the twentieth century enabled Pannenberg to have a scriptural base. If the Enlightenment had brought a de-literalization of the Christian scriptures for many of the Idealists of the nineteenth century, as their Christology slipped categories enough to be satisfied to focus on the meaning of an event and discover only the origin of Jesus’ exceptional nature, they did not follow D. F. Strauss in reinterpreting the gospels mythically, but retained the basic structure of most of the Christian myth even within speculative idealism. The logical contradictions of the “two natures” Christology—of a single man being so lacking in human traits, yet being spoken of as “fully human” and “fully divine”—had been explained by Schleiermacher. But it did not move him from his idealism, nor move the church from the “two natures” Christology of the Chalcedonian Creed. Nor did the de-literalization and desacralization of the Enlightenment mean that Feuerbach’s protest that theology is actually a projection of the human species as a whole find many takers. Instead, most Christian theologians mocked him, even those who said it was important to read him, such as Karl Barth. But World War I was so shocking to Europe that the new generation of Christian thinkers rejected the positions of their mentors and hunted for new ones, discovering people such as Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, and others who, having died without making an impact in their own day, were discovered by these young theologians as a possible answer to the outdated idealism. This was shortly after Schweitzer’s book on the historical Jesus came from the press. The war, combined with the protest made by the new “dialectical” theologians who were using “dialectic” in quite a different way than had Hegel, minimized the impact of Schweitzer’s discovery. Systematic and dogmatic theology had basically separated itself from biblical studies, except for needing it as a rather symbolic base. Schweitzer’s conclusions had made him suspect among the more conservative Christians despite his holding a professorship prior to his medical study and departure to a leper colony in Lambarene in French Equatorial Africa. The religious group that sent him

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to Africa insisted that he agree that he would never preach or teach theology there.4 Why? THE MYTHICAL END AND THE MYSTICAL END The answer gets to the issue at the heart in this book: Schweitzer had discovered that Jesus’ teachings were completely eschatological in their Jewish apocalyptic sense, which made that historical man an enigma to the present culture. His worldview was radically different from contemporary people, so the ethics he taught were as well, even though the famous church historian, Adolf von Harnack, in his What is Chistianity?5 had painted the essence of Christianity as very popular ethics, and had seen the eschatology as so much “husk” to be discarded today, finding the ethical truths of the “fatherhood of God,” the infinite value of the human soul, and the Kingdom of God, and human reasonableness as the message of how to morally perfect the world. Schweitzer was convinced that a historical person, including Jesus, cannot be moved willy-nilly to another spot in history thousands of years away, and make sense. Especially if his ideas are so steeped in such ancient mythology. But he reassured his readers that it was not this physical person who in his specific limitations was important for our time, but rather his Spirit, which drove him to offer his life on the cross, doing what he thought was God’s will for him, even though the way he conceived it in Jewish apocalyptic terms, it was bound not to happen. Schweitzer observed that all the biblical theology up to his day still presumed to be able to construct an intelligible “life of Jesus” from Mark’s pericopes by assuming there was a connection between them all. This connection, however, was in fact supplied only by the scholars themselves by their ingenious, unsubstantiated assumptions about some psychological development that went on in Jesus’ mind or in the minds of the disciples, none of which is actually present in the gospels.6 Today it is understood fairly widely how much of the “connectives” between pericopes is nothing more than a single word or concept that may be common to the two being connected, very similar to the given letters one works from in the game of Scrabble. The connectives are often quite arbitrarily attached and therefore are different from gospel to gospel. He continued, Formerly it was possible to book through-tickets at the supplementary-psychological-knowledge office which enables those traveling in the interest of Lifeof-Jesus construction to use express trains, thus avoiding the inconvenience of having to stop at every little station, change, and run the risk of missing their connexion. This ticked office is now closed. There is a station at the end of each

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section of the narrative and the connexions are not guaranteed. The fact is, it is not simply that there is no very obvious psychological connexion between the sections; in almost every case there is a positive break in the connexion. And there is a great deal in the Marcan narrative which is inexplicable and even selfcontradictory. (Quest, p. 333)

Despite other scholars’ futile attempts to extricate Jesus from any Jewish eschatology, the whole of early Christianity and of Jesus teaching and ministry was eschatological, Schweitzer insisted, not as a general apocalyptic movement arising from a historical event, but rather arising only from two men: John the Baptist and Jesus. Jesus was so confident the end was imminent that he predicted in Matthew 10:23, as he sent the Twelve on an urgent mission of preaching the coming Kingdom, that they would not have gone through the cities of Israel before the eschatological “Son of man” had come. That did not happen, nor did the suffering he predicted they would encounter. That miscalculation of his, of course, remains a likely historical fact that is seldom if ever disclosed to the lay members of the Christian church. But it was quickly central to the shaping of the Christian faith. Schweitzer writes, The whole history of 'Christianity” down to the present day, that is to say, the real inner history of it, is based on the delay of the Parousia, the non-occurrence of the Parousia, the abandonment of eschatology, the progress and completion of the 'de-eschatologizing” of religion which has been connected therewith. It should be noted that the non-fulfillment of Matt. x.23 is the first postponement of the Parousia. We have therefore here the first significant date in the 'history of Christianity”; it gives to the work of Jesus a new direction, otherwise inexplicable. (Ibid., p. 360)

Although Mark utilizes a Messiahship-secrecy theory, and Jesus’ usage of “Son of man” often sounds as if he was speaking of another person than himself, Jesus knew that he would be the one who brings in the Kingdom, therefore is himself somehow that future imminent “Son of man.” Shortly after the disciples returned from the Mission of the Twelve, not having experienced the suffering of which he warned them, Jesus concluded that the “eschatological suffering” that was thought to precede the coming eschatological Kingdom must be his alone, rather than the suffering of the whole nation, so he determined to go to Jerusalem to die to initiate this End. It still did not happen, and Schweitzer summarizes, There is silence all around. The Baptist appears, and cries: 'Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” Soon after that comes Jesus, and in the knowledge that He is the coming Son of Man lays hold of the wheel of the world to set

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it moving on that last revolution which is to bring all ordinary history to a close. It refuses to turn, and He throws Himself upon it. Then it does turn; and crushes Him. Instead of bringing in the eschatological conditions, He has destroyed them. The wheel rolls onward, and the mangled body of the one immeasurably great Man, who was strong enough to think of Himself as the spiritual ruler of mankind and to bend history to His purpose, is hanging upon it still. That is His victory and His reign. (Ibid, pp. 370–71)

What Schweitzer discovered in covering the “lives of Jesus” from Reimarus (1694–1768) to Wrede (1859–1906) was that much if not most of the conclusions in those studies spawned a picture of a Jesus who never really lived. As Schweitzer famously put it, The Jesus of Nazareth who came forward publicly as the Messiah, who preached the ethic of the Kingdom of God, who founded the Kingdom of Heaven upon earth, and died to give His work its final consecration, never had any existence. He is a figure designed by rationalism, endowed with life by liberalism, and clothed by modern theology in an historical garb. (Ibid., p. 398)

Because of this unhistorical recasting of Jesus over the centuries, if we truly encounter him in his actual thoroughgoing eschatological life, he ‟will be to our time a stranger and an enigma,” (Ibid., p. 399) and, as such will necessarily pass by us and return to his own time. This negative judgment, however, did not mean to Schweitzer that Christianity has lost its historical foundation, for that grounding does exist, but only in the eternal truths in the words of this Jesus that were in fact “based on an eschatological worldview” (Ibid., p. 402). What he means is that only the world-negation of eschatology or apocalyptic can move one to a world-affirmation, and somehow that can be accessible to anyone hearing Jesus’ “call” and by hearing and responding.7 [T]he truth is, it is not Jesus as historically known, but Jesus as spiritually arisen with men, who is significant for our time and can help it. Not the historical Jesus, but the spirit which goes forth from Him and in the spirits of men strives for new influence and rule, is that which overcomes the world . . . Jesus as a concrete historical personality remains a stranger to our time, but His spirit, which lies hidden in His words, is known in simplicity, and its influence is direct. Every saying contains in its own way the whole Jesus. The very strangeness and unconditionedness in which He stands before us makes it easier for individuals to find their own personal standpoint in regard to Him. (Ibid., 401)

This is very Hegelian other than the fact that he is still directing people to pay attention to Jesus words, that is, from the Spirit. It has not reached Hegel’s

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Absolute Spirit which is simply Spirit thinking of Spirit. Although his book on St. Paul’s Christ-mysticism was not yet written, the groundwork is visible, perhaps due somewhat to the mysticism that was prominent in Hegel’s writings. What is important is Jesus attitude of service to others and his dedication to what he thought God would want him to do, as we will see later when we add a few biographical details. It becomes obvious that the true encounter with Jesus, as Schweitzer judged it, did not result from creeds, dogma, or theological tests but in an individual’s freedom from the world to truly serve others in the world, a world-affirmation and life-affirmation found possible only through the world-denial of eschatology. This meant that Jesus’ words somehow contain the expression of a mind for which the contemporary world with its historical and social circumstances no longer had any existence. They are appropriate, therefore, to any world, for in every world they raise the man who dares to meet their challenge, and does not turn and twist them into meaninglessness, above his world and his time, making him inwardly free, so that he is fitted to be, in his own world and in his own time, a simple channel of the power of Jesus. (Ibid., p. 402)

It is in this sense that Jesus comes to us, as he long ago came to those by the lakeside, as “one unknown,” and he calls us to follow him, and to those who “obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal Himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He is” (Ibid., p. 403). A few years later, he published his book on St. Paul’s “Christ-mysticism,”8 which was an eschatological or apocalyptic, rabbinical, juridical, and systematic explanation of redemption, as eschatological as were the teachings and ministry of Jesus but with no reference to the “Son of man” which was prominent in the gospels. The key to Paul’s theology was the believer’s unity with Christ expressed by “Christ in you” or one’s being “in Christ.” Jesus’ eschatology was based primarily on Daniel and the Similitudes of Enoch whereas Paul’s eschatology was more derived from Baruch and IV Ezra. Although Paul’s letters assumed a “resurrection” had already occurred, which Jesus’ teachings did not, they were nevertheless attached to that imminent end and it moved them to a necessary detachment from this world, and especially to a renunciation of participation in the world, from which both could derive a more wholesome affirmation of the world or of other people’s needs. Paul’s “Christ-mysticism” differed radically from any Hellenistic mysticism because there was no way he could conceive of a God-mysticism since his Jewish idea of God was so transcendent.

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Of course, eschatological hope tends to dissolve Transcendence, but since both already co-existed prior to Paul, he needed only to emphasize the Christ event which connected them, the temporal and eternal, by a Christ-mysticism (Mysticism, p. 37). However, once the expectation of the imminent return of Jesus began to dissipate, the very base for the Christ-mysticism was no longer understood, and the more the church abandoned the theology of Paul. (Ibid., p. 39) The church found the idea of the Logos Christology more meaningful than any Son of Man Christology or First and Second Adam analogy posited by Paul. Whereas for Jesus and the book of Daniel, the resurrection was to take place prior to the Messianic kingdom, for Baruch and Ezra, it was to occur at the end. For Jesus, this Messianic kingdom appeared as final, but Baruch and Ezra conceived of the Son of man as too supernatural a figure not to return to his former state, thus an eternal blessedness supersedes the blessedness of the Messianic kingdom. Paul, in assuming that death will be conquered only at the end of the Messianic kingdom, shows that he follows the rabbis and Baruch and Ezra. He distinguishes two stages of blessedness, Messianic and eternal, but alters even this system to grant to the Elect of the last generation a participation in the Messianic kingdom via resurrection, and to assign to the future participants in the Messianic kingdom who are now alive a resurrection mode of existence even at present (Ibid., pp. 77–93). Jesus’ death and resurrection could not be considered as a “pre-Messianic” event but rather a “Messianic” one, since in Him the supernatural had already entered the natural world, and since His resurrection cannot be thought of as an isolated event, Paul was bound to conclude that the predestined solidarity of the Elect would mean that those “in-Christ” are already experiencing a “quasi-physical: resurrection experience, a dying and rising again which begins at baptism and continues in one suffering with Christ” (Ibid., pp. 94–100). Therefore, one’s relationship to the Spirit, the Law, faith, the sacraments, and ethics is all conditioned by eschatology. Paul bypasses the “transcendental view” Joel assumed about the Spirit and its connection to the End by embracing rather the prophetic view of the Spirit of Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and Second Isaiah. He develops this into the Spirit which is the life principle of the participants in the Messianic kingdom. Since the supernatural age has already dawned in the death and resurrection of Jesus, those “in Christ” possess the Spirit as a sign of the resurrection of the Elect. This Spirit-possession raises the Elect from the natural state of existence even now, elevating them above the limitations of the flesh. One “in Christ” speaks by the Spirit, walks by the Spirit, performs signs by the Spirit, but most of all, understands by the Spirit. In this way, Paul was enabled through the Spirit to receive revelations “direct from Christ,” which

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helps explain why so few traditions about Jesus or His teachings are found in Paul’s letters. The Elect have the eschatological Spirit, which makes the law superfluous during the Messianic kingdom, despite the fact that the post-exilic prophets thought that the Kingdom would occur only by people’s keeping the law perfectly. Paul therefore insists on a “status-quo” ethic, that is, people should remain in the same state in which they were “called,” and this explains why he thought Jews should still keep the Torah, but not Gentiles. This resulted in him losing the contest when he returned to Jerusalem and was arrested because he was regarded by those Jews as one who simply taught that the Torah was irrelevant. His position became triumphant only by the Destruction of Jerusalem a dozen years later (Ibid., pp. 170–204). Later interpreters of his letter to the Romans, especially the Reformers, Schweitzer insists, misinterpreted Paul’s theology. They thought it was built around “righteousness by faith” that is individualistic, intellectual, and uncosmic, when in reality it was collective, quasi-physical, and cosmically conditioned. In fact, “righteousness by faith” was only a fragment of his eschatological concept of redemption as can be seen by the fact that that emphasis on faith was addressed in only two places in Paul’s letters in circumstances in which he is forced to combat false notions of the law. So although it might seem to some that he substituted “righteousness by faith” for keeping the law, the former cannot be isolated since it is only a provision of the “being-in-Christ” which mystical union is initiated at baptism and continued through suffering with Christ. It is the sharing of Christ’s suffering and death that abolishes one’s relationship with sin, and this suffering replaces the artificial second repentance for post-baptismal sins in the early church. Once the eschatological nature of this mystical union was lost, the Hellenistic church was unable to understand how Jesus was able to communicate the results of His death unless through the Lord’s Supper, which then took on new importance it had not held in Paul’s thought. Finally, Schweitzer thinks Paul had it over the Reformers in that they saw nothing by which to bridge the gap between redemption and ethics since they focused on simply justification by faith. Paul had long before bridged the chasm naturally by his eschatological mystical being- in-Christ which supplies the Spirit, which, in turn, bestows a new mind and heart on the Christian. Jesus’ ethics were an “interim-ethic” and would have been anachronistic had Paul adopted them, even though the imminent End stood over the ethics of both men. The difference was their different positions in time, that Paul’s eschatology was built on the mystical union made possible by Christ’s death and resurrection. In sum, ethics is for Paul the necessary outward expression of the translation from the earthly world to the super-earthly, which has already taken place

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in the being-in-Christ. Further, the man who has undergone this translation has placed himself under the direction of the Spirit of Christ, so has become Man in the highest sense of the word. By his eschatological mysticism, Paul gives his ethic a relation to the Person of Christ, and makes the conception of the Spirit an ethical conception. By his eschatological thought, he grasps ethics as life in the Spirit of Christ, and thereby creates a Christian ethic valid for all time to come (Ibid., p. 333). DETACHMENT FROM THE WORLD AS RELEASE TO SERVE OTHERS Because Jesus and Paul were operating with the idea of the imminent end, circumstances did not require from them some extensive articulation of an eternally valid ethical system for a distant future. Their ethics were also not emphasizing divine authority that comes from an external source. For Jesus, the focus was on one’s heart, one’s attitude, one’s disposition toward others, rather than upon some legalistic heteronomous rule. In light of the imminent Kingdom, there was no room for duplicity, hypocrisy, or ostentatious altruism any more than there was room for selfishness, stinginess, self-centeredness, hatred, or abuse. For Paul, the focus was also on the inner person, on the Spirit which enabled one to feel a unity with others who shared suffering as well as joys, which elicited a respect and sense of equality and humility in one’s relationships. In both cases, it appears that the morality was chosen by the person not from constraint of authoritarianism but from compassion and care for others. This was summarized as “love” which could be thought as the essence of keeping the whole law, a commitment to others including those one would usually think of as one’s “enemy.” If one found a mystical unity with Christ, as did Paul, a world-denial or dying to the world and a new life even now, then the mythical dimensions of a cosmic eschatology were transcended with the essential ethic being fulfilled, in fact, fulfilled without any desire or need of the vindication or vengeance often disguised as apocalyptic justice.9 Nor did it simply slip into a “love” ethic as the early Hegel espoused, which placed an emphasis upon a basic unity as what “is,” and what “is” is supposedly transcending any need for laws, commands, or mere duty, but that can be true only if the “unity” is specific and qualified since not every unity is good or conducive to anything constructive or positive. Hegel’s idea of one relinquishing one’s rights in order to be reconciled, are very noble, but could make little sense or appeal if there were no conditions set on it. The same could have been said for the ethics Jesus espoused, for example, in the “Sermon on the Mount,” except for the fact that these do have conditions, the condition of the impending end.

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For example, Jesus spoke of willingly allowing another to defraud oneself, of being able to relinquish one’s garments to another, of going the extra mile, of turning the other cheek, and Paul insisted that people not avenge themselves, but instead answer evil with good, and to retain the “status quo” because of the shortness of time, whether one was bothered by being enslaved or in a bad marriage or desiring to get married. These were all “interimethics” of Jesus or “status-quo” ethics in Paul’s terms, just staying in the state one was in when one was “called.” When the reader of such instructions has no idea of the expectation of the imminent end of the world, the imperatives reach absurdity, and have often tortured exegetes. But these were good only if the end (for Jesus) or the Parousia (for Paul) did come very soon, and both were convinced of that fact. Schweitzer compared their ethics in the following way: Jesus taught a “simple ethic of preparing for the Kingdom of God by being other than the world” and Paul altered it to be a “mystical ethic of being other than the world through having died and risen again with Christ, and through the possession of the Spirit.” In both cases, one finds oneself as “being other than the world” while still within it. The Kingdom so conceived in the Jewish eschatological terms did not come and in fact, Schweitzer said it could not be realized in that form, nor could the particular ethics formulated for such contingency have any longevity of foundation. But the goal of the self-denial or denial of the world provided more opportunity for service of an ethical nature to others in a more universal way, not dependent upon a cosmic apocalypse, although for Paul, the cosmos itself still hopes to be redeemed (Rom. 8). The world-denial implicit within Jesus’ eschatology can fit into any era simply by virtue of one’s detachment from ego-satisfaction and inordinate desire for possession of material things, power, fame, or other self-centered interests. It facilitates a freeing of one’s mind and time for more human relationships. It removes the center of attention from things or even alleged commands or ideas to relationships with real people. This is part of the eschatological or end which brings the apocalyptically new life of simplicity, pruning-down, minimalization, and more attention to relationships and helping others. It is not a masochistic altruism or a sign of some perversion or weakness by which one tries to persuade oneself that one is virtuous, like Nietzsche belittled what he called the “small virtues” and false values, but is more like what one would experience as one follows the “going under” and “sublimation” of which Nietzsche spoke. This was not an ethic originated and being handed down by the authority of some Transcendent God, but was, as Schwetizer saw it, more like Jesus’ “call” to those original fishermen on the Sea of Galilee, a call from another person, perhaps even someone “unknown” previously. It is not a call from a member of a Divine Trinity, nor even the most natural dialectical process

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of human thinking as Hegel conceived it. It is but a call, a cry, a look, a presence—of anyone whose need for human help can stir within oneself the willingness to respond positively rather than treat it with indifference or as detached as a voyeur. For Schweitzer, it often referred back to the scene of service in Matthew 25. The call from any other was for Schweitzer not merely Scharlemann idea of the call “Follow me!” as one’s own voice in the other, but could be simply a call for help or assistance, but both saw the “call” as one by which one finds one’s true self. FROM THEORY TO EXISTENTIAL SERVICE: THE REAL GROUND OF ETHICS Schweitzer was a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1952, not for his brilliant writings or his musical genius, nor even for being a medical doctor. It was because of his philosophy of “Reverence for Life” which was exemplified by his willingness to give up all his formerly privileged life to serve the ill and diseased people in Lambarene for decades. This means his biography is an actual “case study” of his ethical insights. There are innumerable fine biographies on him and analyses of his profound thinking, and one of the most astute and balanced is the recent publication of David K. Goodin’s An Agnostic in the Fellowship of Christ: The Ethical Mysticism of Albert Schweitzer.10 Schweitzer also wrote autobiographical works. Here I can only mention fragmentarily how his commitment came about that led to such a remarkable life. Albert Schweitzer was born in the Upper Alsace region of Kayserberg and raised in Gunsbach. He later attended the University in Strassburg, so appeared originally to be following in the footsteps of his father, a Lutheran pastor. Schweitzer received a doctorate in philosophy from the University in 1899, and doctorate or licentiate in theology in 1900, and subsequently took a post teaching religion. He was simultaneously becoming one of Europe’s outstanding organists, an expert on organ building, as well as one of the world’s leading authorities on Bach. But his life’s direction was not yet solidified. Later, reflecting on the decision and “call” that motivated him to spend the last two-thirds of his life as a medical missionary in the Congo, Schweitzer wrote the following: On October 13th, 1905, a Friday, I dropped into a letter-box in the Avenue de la Grande Armee in Paris, a letter to my parents and to some of my most intimate acquaintances, telling them that at the beginning of the winter term I should enter myself as a medical student, in order to go later on to Equatorial Africa as a doctor. In one of them I sent in the resignation of my post as Principal of the

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Theological College of St. Thomas’s, because of the claim on my time that my intended course of study would make. The plan which I meant now to put into execution had been in my mind for a long time, having been conceived so long ago as my student days. It struck me as incomprehensible that I should be allowed to lead such a happy life, while I saw so many people around me wrestling with care and suffering. Even at school I had felt stirred whenever I got a glimpse of the miserable home surroundings of some of my schoolfellows and compared them with the absolutely ideal conditions in which we children of the parsonage at Gunsbach lived. While at the University and enjoying the happiness of being able to study and even to produce some results in science and art, I could not help thinking continually of others who were denied that happiness by their material circumstances or their health., Then one brilliant summer morning at Gunsbach, during the Whitsuntide holiday—it was in 1896—there came to me, as I awoke, the thought that I must not accept this happiness as a matter of course, but must give something in return for it. Proceeding to think the matter out at once with calm deliberation, while the birds were singing outside, I settled with myself before I got up, that I would consider myself justified in living till I was thirty for science and art, in order to devote myself from that time forward to the direct service of humanity. Many a time already had I tried to settle what meaning lay hidden for me in the saying of Jesus! “Whosoever would save his life shall lose it, and whosoever shall lose his life for My sake and the Gospels shall save it.” Now the answer was found. In addition to the outward, I now had inward happiness.11

He still was not clear about where he would go to serve, but had been involved even as a student in some social services, and had later taken in a few orphaned boys temporarily when the Strassburg Orphanage burned down. He thought perhaps to give himself to caring for the homeless and prisoners, but then one day in the autumn of 1904 he encountered a magazine placed on his writing table by a woman who knew of his interests in African missions. This issue contained a special appeal, noting how shorthanded the Congo missions were. He admitted that by the time he finished reading the article, his “search was over,” despite both the subsequent well-meant attempts to dissuade him from what his friends and family felt was a sheer folly and others’ negative speculation about his true motivation. What many could not understand was why, if he had to go to Africa to help others, he could not go as a missionary rather than as a medical doctor. After all, he had the credentials theologically, and as of yet no medical qualifications. But, although he knew how difficult the ensuing years in medical training would be, he explained that he wanted to be able to put his love into action, not just talk about it.

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I wanted to be a doctor that I might be able to work without having to talk. For years I had been giving myself out in words, and it was with joy that I had followed the calling of theological teacher and of preacher. But this new form of activity I could not represent to myself as being talking about the religion of love, but only as an actual putting it into practice.12

Medical practice would make that possible. He admits that he also anticipated problems in being selected to be a missionary to Africa since although the leaders of the orthodox and pietist missionary societies were quite happy to receive funds from the liberal Christians, they actually did not send liberal Protestant missionaries, despite the fact that the actual pietist missionaries themselves nearly always showed themselves more liberal in their mission work than the leaders of the missions back home. From 1905 through 1912, Schweitzer pursued his medical education, amidst his (1) work of completing and publishing his Quest of the Historical Jesus; (2) giving frequent performances on the organ in Paris which each time took a minimum of three days; (3) co-editing all of Bach’s organ works to enable modern organists to know what Bach was accustomed to in organ stops, pedaling, fingering, and showing them how they could experiment with such to get it to sound like Bach. The medical studies were very demanding for him. After passing all the exams and internship, he wrote a dissertation for his medical degree on a psychiatric study of Jesus. Then he had to convince the missionary society to allow him to go to Lamabrene. The society’s appeal for help was quite broadly publicized, begging for more volunteer missionaries. When the leaders of the society suggested that Schweitzer meet with their committee for an examination of his beliefs, he sensed that such a meeting would result in their refusal to send him. He therefore rejected a group exam, but offered to call on each member of the committee in person to discuss his religious beliefs and his mission. They agreed. He finally got approval to proceed, provided he never preach in Africa. Then, after receiving his MD degree, he and his wife, physician and researcher, Helene Brasslau, departed on Good Friday, 1913, for Lambarene.13 The rest of his life is largely a history of service to those in need, as a medical doctor, fundraiser for his hospital, and hospital administrator. His work became known throughout the world, and it eventually led to innumerable volunteers requesting his permission to assist him. Despite having little time to call his own, even for his family, because of the medical needs, he nevertheless made time to continue to read and write such monumental works as his Philosophy of Civilization and several other significant works, often even writing while riding in a car or on board a ship or in hotel rooms or restaurants when he was visiting in Europe to raise funds for the medical work.

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He learned the different culture and its values and traditions and honored the people, housing the sick people and their families and often their animals at the hospital. Very early in his medical career, the Paris Bach Society sent him a zinclined piano with attached organ pedals so he could continue his love of music there, though time for practice was very rare. In 1952, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and invested the funds back in the hospital. It was here that he expanded his vision of ethics, opening up even a non-religious (though what he called “spiritual”) foundation first in his Philosophy of Civilization. MYSTICISM OF BEING, AGNOSTICISM, AND THE COMMON WILL TO LIVE Schweitzer’s monumental The Philosophy of Civilization14 followed the same extensive procedure as did his study of the research of the history of the “lives of Jesus” and the studies on Paul. Here he covered a vast field of experts from ancient Greek culture and Asian philosophies to spend a major amount of time analyzing the past five centuries of Western thought and culture in order to clarify what the basic problem(s) of civilization were and are, and what the best present answer was. He had the ability to penetrate to the core of the philosophy of a writer in a very brief space and provide an assessment of it in a few words, for the most part, with tremendous accuracy. Again, our purpose here is only to elucidate enough for the reader to realize that it is not only possible but even very beneficial for many religious people to seek to isolate or discover a separate possible ground and method for a global ethic, that is, a ground completely detached and independent from the non-transferable, specific mythical, exclusivistic, and absolutized metaphysical bases of any religion. The Fundamental Datum: Not Thinking or Pain and Pleasure, but the “Will-to-Live” Schweitzer became convinced that an ethic cannot be extrapolated from nature nor merely from some epistemology. It also must offer a specific universal basic ethical principle, not just a formal definition as Kant did. Nor can it be determined simply by a historical dialectical force of antitheses which are reconciled as Hegel tried, since that forms a “supra-ethic” rather than an individual ethic. It also cannot prevail if it is only world- or life-negation or pessimism, and it cannot unite worldview with life-view. On this latter point, one can stand in awe of how visionary Schweitzer was as he illustrated how

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the understanding of life cannot be derived from our understanding of the world because in the course of nature there is no purposiveness to be seen in which the activities of men, and of mankind as a whole, could in any way intervene. On one of the smaller among the millions of heavenly bodies there have lived for a short space of time human beings. For how long will they continue so to live? Any lowering or raising of the temperature of the earth, any change in the inclination of the axis of their planet, a rise in the level of the ocean, or a change in the composition of the atmosphere, can put an end to their existence. . . . We are entirely ignorant of what significance we have for the earth. How much less then may we presume to try to attribute to the infinite universe a meaning which has us for its object, or which can be explained in terms of our existence! (p. 273)

It is not just that the universe or nature does not present humanity with a purposiveness, but we have not even detected any general purposiveness in the course of nature itself, but all we have are limited examples of purposiveness without any uniting of these into a general picture (p. 273). He discovered the “will-to-live” as the fundamental datum, the basic universal principle of life rather than something like the Cartesian “I think, therefore I exist.” He argues that Descartes’ “cogito” is not the most “immediate and comprehensive fact of consciousness,” but rather a “paltry, arbitrarily chosen beginning . . . [which lands one] irretrievably on the road to the abstract . . . [and] remains entangled in a dead world- and life-view.” “True philosophy,” instead, must start from the obvious and universal “fact of consciousness, which says: ‘I am life which wills to live, in the midst of life which wills to live’” which is confirmed in every given experience in my life, and in “every moment of reflection. . . . A mysticism of ethical union with Being grows out of it” (p. 309). As Schweitzer depicts the last half of the nineteenth-century Western search for an ethic, he says that basically various forms of ethics—especially utilitarianism which had initially filled a space in the over-confident optimism of the West in “progress”—were still being continued even though they had lost much of their answering power, so the attitude became increasingly one of pessimism. Much of this was the problem that plagued most of the ethical systems, a failure to explain the relationship between “instinct” of one’s “will to live” and whatever is the “last and most original element” of that instinct as it reflects beyond instinct toward actual application in real life (p. 226). The Inner Certainty: The Instinctual Will-to-Live Discovered in Mysticism of Being He thinks the connection between the “will-to-live” and ethics is supplied not merely by “will” which lacks content, but a mystical relation through finite

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others with Will or Being which depends upon no knowledge of the world at all, but actually raises the individual above all knowledge of things. In his words, When it comes to clearness about itself, the will to live knows that it is dependent on itself alone. Its destiny is to attain to freedom from the world. Its knowledge of the world can show that its striving to raise to their highest value its own life and every living thing which can be influenced by it must remain problematic when regarded in relation to the universe. This fact will not disturb it. Its world and life-affirmation carries its meaning in itself. It follows from an inward necessity, and is sufficient for itself. By it means my existence joins in pursuing the aims of the mysterious universal will of which I am a manifestation. In my deepened world- and life-affirmation, I manifest reverence for life. With consciousness and with volition, I devote myself to Being. I become of service to the ideas which it thinks out in me; I become imaginative force like that which works mysteriously in nature, and thus I give my existence a meaning from within outwards. (p. 283)

When he says “Being” “thinks out in me,” this sounds very Hegelian, very idealistic, especially when that is seen as the “mysterious universal will,” and when he speaks of how the “will-to-live” is absolute and must never be relativized (pp. 292, 317, 324–25). But it stands in contradiction with Hegel, as we will see in this analysis, despite the fact that he uses the term “spiritual” even when he had denied “Absolute” as having any reality. Thus, the capitalized “Being” is universal, but not absolute. There are three motifs blended together in the final fifty pages of The Philosophy of Civilization: a mysticism of Being, a Reverence for Life, and an agnosticism or admission of not knowing either the universe or world or even how the “will-to-live” or Being underlying it can be known or explained. Both the reverence for life or will-to-live and Being are simply givens that are immediate and justify themselves through instinct which is not dependent upon knowledge, but utilizes reflection on the nature of that will-to-live” to maximize it to the fullest. Robert Scharlemann will later emphasize that the “schism” of “reflection,” as it separates one from “God” or “Being,” can be overcome only by reflexive or speculative reason or a religious symbol which can be self-negating in affirming itself, so rises beyond the exclusivity to a new form of universality.15 Yet, to the degree that he suggests that one’s authentic self is found in a form of ecstasy in which I hear my voice in that of the other, it may not be too far removed from the unity Schweitzer is describing as a mystical union. While Schweitzer is not distinguishing some level of reason as “reflexive” whereby the schism of reflection, that is, the “separation” from its object, is resolved as with

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Scharlemann, the primary unity of which Schweitzer is speaking seems not to involve any separation that needs repairing at all since it is always within one instinctually, not by reflection. It may be another matter of actually squaring the two theologians, but they are both concerned to move beyond an old exclusive theism and a Hegelian Absolute Spirit that can be known, yet retain some certainty about oneself, whether it is one’s life-instinct or one’s authentic being of being “beyond” the world in a way while still being in the world. Reverence for life means to be in the grasp of the infinite, inexplicable, forwardurging Will in which all Being is grounded. It raises us above all knowledge of things and lets us become like a tree which is safe against drought, because it is planted among running streams. All living piety flows from reverence for life and the compulsion toward ideals which is given in it. In reverence for life lies piety in its most elemental and deepest form, in which it has not yet become involved with, or has abandoned the hope of, any explanation of the world. It is piety which comes from inward necessity, and therefore asks no questions about ends to be pursued. (p. 283)

He earlier states, “My knowledge of the world is a knowledge from outside, and remains forever incomplete. The knowledge derived from my will-to-live is direct and takes me back to the mysterious movements of life as it is in itself” (p. 282). We do not know either how this “original striving” of being driven by our will-to-live to attain the “highest possible perfection” and assist others in doing the same occurred or how it developed, but when we arrive at the “critical point” of reflecting on it, we will experience its impulses to expand, sustain, and develop even in thought this work of the will-to-live within us (p. 282). Union with Real Finite Beings: Beyond Religion to Actual Ethics The three significant elements here seem to be: (1) the ethical impulse is stirred to reflection by actual relations with real other living beings; (2) it is not dependent upon encountering the “whole” of Being or Will but rather any finite life, that is, the instinctual awareness of one’s “will-to-live” recognizes a similar instinctual “will-to-live” in the other; and (3) the reciprocity of mutual, finite “wills-to-live” move beyond authoritarian religion or abstraction, through the origin of mystical union with definite beings to discernible ethical relations or specific conduct. The awareness of a mutual “will-to-live” between two people, Schweitzer believes, is sufficient to push them toward “self-perfection” which causes them to maximize the “will-to-live” wherever

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it is found. This way both instinct and reflection based on one’s perception are required for one to manifest empathy since the latter is not instinctual. The question remaining is how the instinct and reflection would combine to basically dilute the self-centered survival instinct of one’s “will-to-live”? A change of heart is possible, but is that based only on one’s identifying with the needs of the other, or might not it begin even more disinterestedly in simply realizing that one’s life can not only be enhanced by a relation with another being or also be endangered by another living being, so therefore some kind of agreement or mitigation is necessary for the “will-to-live” to realize its goal which, by its reciprocal relation, will be mutual? For the real explication of that, we finally will have to turn to John Rawls in the chapter 7. Whatever the path of thinking by which Schweitzer arrived at this point, he appears either to have shifted from a religiously grounded mysticism to a non-religiously grounded mystical unity, or else he saw them as accomplishing the same possible goals so able to meets the needs of both a Christian as well as a non-religious person, or person of any religion. However, why one needs the more exclusive form once one realizes the accessibility of the more inclusive form is not clear unless one simply is never exposed to the possibility of an ethic standing on its own, needing no authority from a divine unity but simply a unity with any living being. To a degree, of course, that depends upon what one means by mysticism, and whether that is thought to be only an idea or imagination or is actually a union with the whole of “infinite Being,” the latter of which Schweitzer thinks is never encountered. Whether a religious person finds any mystical unity more credible than the form of theism he or she might have espoused remains a real question, especially if the authority behind the theism still has a hold on the person. Instinctual Certainty versus the Relativism or the Inaccessible Knowledge Does this kind of mystical unity reduce one not only to claim an agnosticism about the universe or world but even preclude one from speaking of “God” or “Being” or “Will” or the experience of mystical unity that involves any totality? If the union is only with the being in another finite person, then it would seem to limit what one could ever say about “God” other than saying as Scharlemann did, that God is not anything but is also not nothing. That is, “God” is “that than which a greater cannot be thought” and one can think God as both something as well as nothing, as being God but also being not-God, and being able to be both is greater than being only one of the possibilities. Is this still a mysticism that leads, as it did even for Rabbi Richard Rubenstein, in reducing him to “silence” before it as he experiences the group worship in which others are speaking because he cannot since the words no longer have

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credibility with him?16 Or is it a mysticism only in a looser sense, more as in Hegel, in which silence is not the end result but rather more intense reflection and attempts to influence others? If it is infinite Being or Will, and it motivates one to ethical thinking and behavior, has it really moved past Kant or Hegel in any way other than overcoming Hegel’s neglect of the individual and Kant’s failure to state more than a mere formal definition for ethical principles as content? Is it more than Kant’s “postulate” of a Being as the summum bonum? Yes, inasmuch as it does not need to subvert human reality or “inclination” as Kant did, nor deny the importance of the physical or material world as Hegel did, and “yes” inasmuch as the principle of “will-to-live” seems more basic and universally autonomous than a sense of duty to live by a universalizeable maxim, and Schweitzer did not limit ethical response to rational beings as did both Kant and Hegel, despite their conviction that human reason must inform and ultimately control nature. In any case, the definiteness of the other with whom we finds a mystical unity provides specifics that can be said about that relation, even if not being able to talk about “God.” The latter concern of being able to speak of “God” but with no specifics, Schweitzer saw as mere Hegelian absolutism with no reality. The ethical is easy to know, as instinctual, and its concrete needs dwarf speculative intellectualism. Schweitzer found real people in his life in Lambarene who were quite different from those he left behind in Europe, and he realized existentially the value of their “will-to-live” as equal to his own, and he viewed the preciousness of life in all the sick and diseased as only those within the medical profession can experience. If it was their custom to bring the whole family to the hospital, even their animals, it all became a giant mosaic of the “will-to-live” of every living creature. Here he did not have the only perspective on the world, the true culture of cultures, but had to become open to a radically different culture and its varied perspectives and what seemed at first to him, its strange values, and he had to learn to appreciate the quite different perspectives on life and the things of the world. He did not become unrealistic about life, but more realistic about priorities of life. He was faced with the relativity of so much, of the very contingency and vulnerability of life and relations, language and values. In his prioritizing, Descartes was not the answer: the instinct or “will-to-live” was prior to the thinking of anything. He realized that among living creatures, all have this instinctual “will-to-live” even if they cannot think. He was also aware that many live off or at the expense of the lives of others. If his new friends felt him strange because of his refusal to shoot an animal, he did not stand in judgment of them, but felt more deeply the respect and gratitude that should be felt by humans to the degree that they depend upon animals for medical experiments or eat animals for their own existence. In fact,

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Schweitzer always carried with him a sense of indebtedness because of his privileged position, whether it was in his childhood when his family provided him with so much comfort and security, or when he realized his good health vis-à-vis all the sick who came to him for help, or all the formal education he was privileged to receive—all of which he expressed as creating in him a personal debt to share with or assist others in like manner. The Instinctual Aspect Precedes Reflection on Relations To be confronted by the real other rather than being taught by creeds or catechisms or stories in scripture how one should live, which always border upon the ancient and irrelevant, even the gory and cruel examples as well as the extremely abstract, or, even neglect any dialogue on ethics—is certainly a more serious approach to learning how to live together. “Authorities” may want absolute power, but sooner or later, humans mature and ask questions, become reflective, and can become aware of their own consciousness of “will-to-live” in themselves and other living beings around them. It cannot be much more basic, universal or global than that. Yet, unless one realizes that a “will-to-live” has nothing inherent within it to turn it “outward,” as Schweitzer terms it, there seems no reason to think in terms of some “other” that may also have a “will-to-live.” What turns one’s attention and will “outward” is some “relation” between the self and other. Was it all in the way he was raised by his parents that cultivated his need to share his good fortune? But he did not suggest that the extending of one’s “will-to-live” outwardly depended upon having been the recipient of such privilege as he had enjoyed. He saw it as universally accessible. Relation can involve contiguity, proximity, or desire to meet, or even remote imagination about a real other. But when that “relation” comes to consciousness, it brings with it, through experience, a sense of causality, whether one is connecting being fed with the “other” (e.g., its mother) or mentally connects being burned by touching fire or a hot object. At the most primary stages, even wild animals “learn” to associate the good or bad experience with the object that “caused” it. Of course, one can call it their recognition of the other’s “willto-live” and their own “will-to-live,” but that is still too sophisticated. Their consciousness is simply one of association or “trust,” not of some likeness shared by oneself and the other. The person or the dog or the bird all have a basic instinct that enables them to identify very easily what to trust and what not to trust, even if they cannot reflect on “will-to-live” or “Being” or “trust.” Of course, something that has being, something that exists, was the “cause” of their being fed or burned, but the relation between them and the “cause” becomes an issue of trust because of the personal benefit or danger, even for those living beings who cannot “reflect.”

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Schweitzer hoped for something that would connect instinct with thoughtful behavior and principles (226). Trust by non-reflective forms of life can be called “instinct,” but even it shapes responsive behavior, though the response would not properly be said to be intentional. And Schweitzer assumed that a moral response requires intentionality. In conscious and self-conscious forms of life such as humans, the survival instinct not only causes responsible behavior but causes reflection or thought about it, so one can articulate to oneself who or what is trustworthy and who or what is not. Language is made an absolute necessity here. This thinking begins with the “other” as the subject rather than oneself, and eventually turns in deeper thought to include thinking of whether one himself or herself is trustworthy, or what it means to “trust” at all. The human baby experiences relations with others and learns trust before it can speak of it or know theoretically what it is to “live.” This means the relation is not seen by the baby as one with a distinct other called “Mother” or a “living-being,” but as satisfaction of one’s hunger, and only over time, repeated experiences that are similar, and finally with learning a vocabulary, the baby learns how to verbalize something to indicate either what she wants or who it is she wants to give it to her. But she still does not know what it is to “live” or “die,” and will not become that sophisticated for some time. Her instinctual “will-to-live” causes her to trust or distrust without being able to conceptualize or verbalize it or explain causality. But she has made connections through responses to her needs or their lack of meeting her needs. INSTINCTUAL TRUST AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF TRUST IN MUTUAL AUTONOMY If one applied Schweitzer’s mystical schema to this, the power the child would be experiencing would be coming from a relation which made trust necessary, once these passed the stage in her mind of being just disconnected elements. I have suggested elsewhere that “relation” may not be a mere “category” of judgment as in Kant, but could be as primary or elemental, if not more so, than either time or space, so that rather than seeing “being-itself” as a philosophical correlate for “God,” as Tillich did, it might be more appropriate to use “incommensurable relation.” But that would not make people used to a literal theism any more comfortable than Tillich’s “being-itself” or Schweitzer’s mystical union with Being or Will only in its finite forms. Nevertheless, the question should be put as to whether “relation” is not more fundamental than “being,” and “trust” is not more elemental and universal even than any consciousness of a “will-to-live” since many non-conscious forms of life cannot consciously trust but nevertheless depend upon their

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relationships to other entities for their lives. Does it really require some form of mystical union, or it is just instinct or even a relation which is recognized as a “given” and then subjected to one’s reason? Schweitzer’s answer to that question is very important. He does not dwell on “trust,” but it does underlie all the relations he analyzes. For example, when he addresses the question of how little power individuals have over economic relations, which they nevertheless must address in trying to bring civilization to a higher plane, he speaks of the “reverence for life” as the only power that can create the right disposition to change economic policies. He writes The understanding and confidence which we mutually accord to each other with a view to what is most purposive, and by means of which we obtain the utmost power that is possible over circumstances, can be enjoyed only if everyone can assume in everyone else reverence for the existence of the other and regard for his material and spiritual welfare as a disposition which influences them to the depth of their being. (p. 337) (emphasis added)

That is quite an “assumption,” that is, an extremely strong statement of the necessity of a universal basic trust, and appears to be a trust that supports the mutual purposiveness of regard for everyone’s material and spiritual welfare. It flows not from my thoughts of the other’s will-to-live, or my mere hope or presumption that the other is being motivated primarily by his or her “will-tolive” as I am, but from actual speech and activity of the other that benefits my life and our relation, enabling me to trust the other (p. 337). If I am operating only from my own “will-to-live” without grounds for trusting the other, the relation could be a disaster. So reflections on the specifics of any relation are extremely important in determining the specific response to be made by one’s instinctual “will-to-live.” UNIVERSAL ETHICAL MYSTICISM VERSUS SUPRA-ETHICAL MYSTICISM Schweitzer does distinguish between forms of mysticism. One form is fastened primarily to the conviction that one has immediate access to “God,” and that is the ultimate for the individual. On the other hand, he insists that there is no such reality as “Essence of Being,” “Absolute Spirit,” “the Absolute,” or “Spirit of the Universe.” Our only encounter of and knowledge of Being is in manifestations of Being in specific beings, but that does not justify our imaginative reification of then looking at “Being” or “Absolute Spirit” as a distinct reality. It simply is not. In his words, “[t]he only reality is the Being

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which manifests itself in phenomena.” Further, he insists “reality knows nothing about the individual being able to enter into connection with the totality of Being.”17 The unity is only with definite phenomena and their “will-to-live” but never with the totality of the “will-to-live” or Being. One knows “no relations except these of one individual being to another,” and those relations are very limited to each individual’s particular and restricted time and place, that is, only to the few living beings actually in one’s life. (pp. 304–5) The only confusion arises when he speaks of this as “Being” and adds “infinite” to it, for example: “There is no Essence of Being, but only infinite Being in infinite manifestations.” This could sound like the Absolute, but he denies that there is any reality or anything actual behind the word “Absolute,” calling it only a “purely intellectual act” which produces only a “dead spirituality” (Ibid.). Instead, he is speaking of a mystical unity with empirical phenomena, a “mysticism of reality” (Ibid.). His usage of “infinite” seems to be only his thinking of an undetermined amount of possible finite manifestations, not pushing “infinite” literally, and certainly not speaking of an Infinite Being which would the same as the Absolute he unequivocally denied. While one might think that this form of mysticism could include his earlier “Christ-mysticism” which he found in the Apostle Paul’s understanding of Christianity, it does not appear to since the latter was not of any empirical phenomena or manifestation of a finite person, but only a wholly invisible presence. This universal “mysticism of being” he discovered with various people and even animals he called “ethical mysticism.” He admits that the ethical content of even “Christian mysticism is alarmingly small,” that too much mysticism becomes “supra-ethical.” That was his judgment of Hegel’s system. The reason was that it was based on the idea of “Spirit” as having no inherent connection with the material world, even as the mysticism of St. Paul was based on something which was not empirical. That separation tends to minimize actual material existence in a Platonic way, so there is no ethical need, even as Tillich’s system similarly eclipsed any ethics by its Hegelian focus on the Spiritual Presence and mere images and ideas. Schweitzer insists that this kind of “[m]ysticism is not a friend of ethics but a foe. It devours ethics. And yet the ethic which is to satisfy thought must be born of mysticism” (p. 303). “Ethical mysticism” is the experience of one detecting the same “will-tolive” in others that one has in oneself, which places one in a relation based on what I am calling a “common will to live,” and Schweitzer says that one’s awareness of this in the other activates his or her own wonder and thinking, and compels him or her to become active toward it, and that makes the whole relationship ethical (pp. 302–12). As I mentioned earlier, before one recognizes any compulsion toward enhancing the life of the other, one might be pulled into such a compelling power through even fear of the other or a

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survival instinct, or an attraction to and desire for the other as also a part of one’s instinct to survive or reproduce, and either of these might well require some relational mutual agreement even long before one arrives at that reciprocal empathy with the other, and Schweitzer was sure that empathy is not instinctual. He tends to leave it that empathy is prompted by thought which is evoked from the awareness of the other’s “will-to-live” that has the same rights as one’s own. But this attribution of needing to respond to the other and of thinking that prompts one to activate a relation with it must be based on some unarticulated sense of equality that the mere presence did not provide. That is the reason I suggest it could have come even from instinctual fear or desire of the other at first, which prompted the thought of needing an agreement which itself would demand an equality or reciprocity in order to work. Again, this points to the necessary agreement between parties even out of self-interest or disinterest toward each other, as Rawls says, but can, of course, include even a self-interest in the attraction to the other, but either way manifests both the mutual autonomy and equality as well as necessary mutual trust. When he pressed himself to further define how the instinct of “will-to-live” is related to ethical thought, he emphasized that the role played by thought is that It seizes on something of which a preliminary form is seen in an instinct, in order to extend it and bring it to perfection. It apprehends the content of an instinct, and tries to give it practical application in new and consistent action. . . . It rouses the will-to-live, in analogy with the life-affirmation which shows itself in the manifold life which is everywhere around it, and to join in its experiences . . . [so the] life negation takes its place as a means of helping forward this affirmation of other life than its own. It is not life-denial in itself that is ethical, but only such as stands in the service of world-affirmation and becomes purposive within it. (p. 291)

If thought simply “apprehends the content” of the instinct, it seems this extension merely of the life-instinct from within itself seems not to need any other presence by this definition. What is that “preliminary form” or “content” that elicits the mind to seize on it rather than just leave it as pure instinct? That is the reason I am suggesting there may be more to it. Why does life-affirmation ever get to that point of life-negation, that is, of willingly sacrificing one’s life for another? What starts or even accelerates the reflection which finally arrives at that critical point? One might call it “love” or “compassion,” but what initiates the thinking toward that except from an awareness of a unity that takes priority over one’s individual life.

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But how does one even get started on this path of thinking toward a unity that would have such priority over one’s own life, actually reversing one’s own life instinct in favor of the other? Schweitzer calls it self-perfecting or perfecting of the will-to-live or the maximizing of the will-to-live in every way possible, but if it is not pure instinct but actually becomes one’s conscious reflection, then it is not simply driven by instinct. Do not the empirical and emotional elements of the nature of the actual relation assist in shaping one’s response, whether one’s primary emotions and thoughts of the relation are of personal fear or of personal love and desire? Even if one’s instinctual will-to-live was not at first extended outside oneself, would not the possible relation to the other which is determined by many factors of time and space, interests, and goals, provide either positive or negative assessments in one’s mind, whether it was at first a basic fear or vulnerability or an opposite attraction of desire? Over time, the many contingent factors can completely transform or supersede that earlier disposition either to an extreme fear of the other or the extreme unity of even hearing one’s own voice in the other, and a multitude of less extreme dispositions in between. Thus, the basic relation or bare minimum needed to have an ethical social order is a sufficient sense of either vulnerability or attractiveness toward the other to make one think in terms of a necessary agreement. If it involves a quite limited or exclusive relationship, such as two people, they may never even formally agree but after enough time together understand enough of each other that they trust each other and can commit to each other, whereas in larger groups, especially where there is no personal contact such as in a state or nation, a formal agreement must be presupposed or assumed. Of course, even ordinary business contracts between two people often require the formalizing of the voluntary agreement. If the contract itself intends to make the unity permanent as a final agreement in which very diverse parties agree to allow a certain freedom to each other, it will require not only a formalizing but as Rawls tells us, a certain amount of “disinterest,” that is, lack of knowledge each has about the others, but which have been, by the very agreement, precluded from giving an advantage to any party. While more intimate relations seem to move past a “disinterest” in the sense of “indifference” in the other, even identifying with the other person to a very large degree, this “disinterest” of which Rawls speaks will still continue in the sense that the relation will still operate most effectively to the benefit of both parties only if neither seizes upon his or her position in some way to take an advantage of the other one. This agreement part will have to be fleshed out by our later explanation of Rawls in chapter 7. Nevertheless, Schweitzer insisted that ethics and the “will-to-live” can only originate from mysticism or mystical unity with an individual, which must therefore be where the “content” of instinct and ethics points, though he

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does not say it explicitly that way. In any case, if the mystical unity or even instinctual unity is necessary to ground the process of the ethic, Schweitzer does warn against the danger of mysticism relapsing into a totally individual and isolating posture, whereby the mystic is satisfied to cut himself off from the world, which has nothing to do with ethics. That is the stage in which mysticism is the enemy of ethics. His description is overwhelming: Ethics are responsibility without limit toward all that lives. As a general proposition the definition of ethics as a relationship with a disposition to reverence for life, does not make a very moving impression. But it is the only complete one . . . ethics include also feeling as one’s own all the circumstances and all the aspirations of the will-to-live, its pleasure, too, and its longing to live itself out to the full, as well as its urge for self-perfection. (p. 311)

The Agnostic Element or Release to Trust My Will-to-Life in Trusting Others This same direction toward “self-perfection” we will see was certainly behind Nietzsche’s articulation of true values. For Schweitzer, Reverence for Life enables one to realize the impossibility of having enough knowledge of the universe to base ethics on knowledge. Rather, recognition of the “will-tolive” assures me that the only knowledge I need is that of the “will-to-live.” If science cannot tell us precisely what life is, the “will-to-live” can provide us with knowledge which enables life to continue and flourish even without knowing what all life entails or even knowing why the “will-to-live” is a universal phenomenon. In the process of our relationships, the “will-to-live” defines “good” and “bad” only in terms of what fosters or supports life vis-àvis what hinders, obstructs, or destroys life.18 All one must know is that the whole world of the sense is a manifestation of forces, that is to say of mysteriously manifold will-to-live. In this their thought is spiritualistic. It is materialistic, however, so far as it presupposes manifestation and force to be connected in such a way that any effect produced upon the former influences the force which lies behind it. Ethics feel that if it were not thus possible for one will-to-live to produce through its manifestations effects on another will-to-live, they would have no reason for existing. (p. 290)

Obviously, for a medical doctor to say one need not know much about the world, seems a bit strange, even if he says that what one needs to know is about life or the will-to-live. But that is instinctual and seemingly leads one’s reason. Of course, he had to keep up on his knowledge of medicine. His “willto-live” and his awareness of it pushed him to more and more thought and

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service. Schweitzer’s knowledge of many subjects was encyclopedic, just as were his abilities. Was he only being modest, or is he simply saying that true ethics requires no formal education in ethics, philosophy, religion, sociology, anthropology, or other sub-topics, but one needs only to open one’s eyes to the fantastic marvel of the life instinct in all living beings. One need not be overwhelmed when confronted by an ethical choice as long as one gives priority to the universal “will-to-live.” It is like once a person begins to notice the powerful but so unique form taken by the “will-to-live” in a variety of living species, one’s respect will come with almost no intellectual nudging, almost spontaneously, and those others’ “will-to-live” will stimulate one’s thinking endlessly. This will-to-live can quickly jump to the head of one’s list of values, taking precedent over many other things that are also important, but nevertheless secondary to the will-to-live. It is the most fundamental of powers and values, without which none of the rest of the values or goods have any existence. Schweitzer also pointed out that one’s “will-to-live” or ethic of Reverence for Life provides an extensive freedom. Some of this “freedom” is what one can call “agnosticism,” which we have just illustrated, that is, that one does not have to know certain things about the universe or even about Being by which one is mystically motivated. But one never gets free from the basic conflict between one’s “will-to-live” and the situations in which others’ “willto-live” opposes it, or the basic attraction of one’s “will-to-live” to another one who has the same motivation, and it never gets free of the responsibility of having to make ethical decisions afresh in new situations, since ethics is not something one does once and thereafter everything runs smoothly or one just repeats an action as a mere precedent without seeing the way the present circumstances may differ from when one responded that way before. When it comes to reaching some equilibrium or settling once and for all the competing interests of life-affirmation and life-denial in service to others, the “true ethics” places one “round and round in the whirlpool of the irrational” (p. 292). This is part of the agnosticism or apophasis which includes the mystical Being as unknowable, and knowledge of the world as secondary to one’s knowledge of the “will-to-live.” He refers to this as a “spiritual” power but is not a theistic religion. It involves a more inclusive “fellowship” which certainly could include those that are involved in a Christ-mysticism, provided their conceptions do not exclude such “agnostics” as Schweitzer. In Rawls’s approach, if the “non-public” aspect of the “association” or “religion” cannot allow the devotee to embrace a more inclusive ethical base, then “metaphysical” conceptions of morality and justice will be incompatible with “political” conceptions of morality and justice. But Rawls thought it possible for people to live as citizens in a democratic republic by the narrower conception, the “political,” which could actually guarantee one’s liberty of conscience and

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religion, which essentially means two sets of ethics involving different constituencies with different purposes, commitments, and comportments. In Schweitzer’s discussion of how one’s ethics of “reverence for life” does not allow things to “belong to me,” he insists that one never lives one’s life for oneself, but only in relation to everything that is happening around oneself. He says that ethics whispers uncomfortable words into one’s ear that if one is happy or has much; one is called upon to give much. Whatever more than others you have received in health, natural gifts, working capacity, success, a beautiful childhood, harmonious family circumstances, you must not accept as being a matter of course. You must pay a price for them. You must show more than average devotion of life to life.” (p. 321)

While this consciousness of indebtedness to others could actually achieve the same result as Rawls’s “veil of ignorance,” as we will see, on the surface, it seems to contradict his statement regarding what is “happening” around us, when he states that “[t]he true ethics of life, therefore, ‘in the spirit of what happens’ would seem to be that of Yang-tse and Friedrich Nietzsche” (p. 300). There is a bit of irony in insisting that one “must” do thus and so while at the same time insisting that each person must make his or her own decision alone. At any rate, as I suggested, this kind of divesting of one’s interests might approximate to a degree the profound hypothetical “original position” behind a veil of ignorance suggested by John Rawls, a sense of leveling out the playing field in order to create a legitimate social contract of fairness. We will speak of his theory in detail more later. But it is interesting how many of the principles Schweitzer felt he distilled from “will-to-live” are emphasized by great minds in our day. TRUTHFULNESS AND TRUST AS THE ETHICS OF THE WILL-TO-LIVE At the root of the “will-to-live” lies complete veracity with oneself and others in which one finds tremendous freedom from the world and from oneself, and this struggle for veracity with oneself is the means by which we influence others (pp. 314–15). If we hunt for an ethical spirit in the course of nature, we waste our time and deceive ourselves (p. 301), since the “meaning of what happens in the world is a thing we cannot investigate. What we do understand of it is only that all life tries to live itself out. The true ethics of life, therefore, ‘in the spirit of what happens’ would seem to be that of Yang-tse and Friedrich Nietzsche” (p. 300).

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Written in all these relations is the underlying, even if unmentioned, character of “trust,” since without trust, no actions between people would be stimulated or allowed. All recognition of another’s “will-to-live” can be obtained only within a relationship of trust, and without trust, no “will-tolive” will be effective either in acting upon, influencing, or being acted upon or being influenced by another. The ethical dimension is not just an inner disposition but a motivation toward action that stimulates and enhances life of self and other—because people trust each other. In this sense, it is hard to see the division Schweitzer made of “passive” and “active” ethics, since any ethical decision involves more than self, more than a mere disposition. This is certainly also what he said about “pure mysticism,” that it is not ethical when one becomes obsessed only with one’s own self being absorbed into the Absolute. That cannot be the “aim” or “end” or telos of life (p. 302). He points out that mysticism can destroy ethics, so one must see its usefulness as extremely limited, as only providing the original stimulation or depth or what he would refer to as the absoluteness or priority which the “will-tolive” must have over any alternative ethics. It is a sense of unity not merely dependent upon externals or will power. One ethical system Schweitzer mentioned in a single paragraph was constructed by Wilhelm Hermann in 1901 and was actually built around human language in which people understand the relation of mutual trust, so to speak, seeing themselves in each other, and asking what kinds of conduct make them “mutually reliable.”19 The idea of responsibility and trust surfaces again obviously in Schweitzer’s insistence that each person must make his or her own ethical decisions from his or her subjectivity, not from some input from others or culture or ideologies. And one must trust others in their autonomy to make their own ethical decisions, by their will-to-live, although Schweitzer does not mention trust per se. That means that neither must judge the other (pp. 320–23). This forms a mutual autonomy and relationship of deep trust and respect. When Schweitzer insists that the ethics of reverence for life offers us no rules, his emphasis is upon the individual being forced to make his or her own decision, whether this concerns one’s possessions, one’s time, one’s rights, and so forth. One has to decide how much one devotes to others and how much one keeps for oneself. Yet he simultaneously emphasized that “wealth must reach the community” in the form of the “greatest benefit for all” (p. 320). The latter sounds very utilitarian and heteronomous, requiring basic trust, just as it sounds quite egoistic to say that one’s giving to others is not because altruism is considered good but only so one can retain one’s honest self, as he says “It is not from kindness to others . . . but because by such behavior I prove my own profoundest self-realization to be true” (p. 315). But this is a part of what he calls one’s basic veracity, one’s sincerity toward oneself, the realization of

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how fortunate one has been in life and how one needs to share that with others not so fortunate. For those who come from less fortunate backgrounds, a mutual trust between people can suffice for motivation, since nearly all people have things in their lives or personalities that would be beneficially shared with others. However, many times if a person is asked why another person showed so much kindness or helpfulness to a third party, the reply might well be “that’s just the kind of person she is!” From that standpoint, it is good when a person truly knows who she really is, and it is certainly commendable that others can see that character in her as well, so if all Schweitzer is emphasizing is honestly knowing ourselves without any self-deceit (p. 314), and being able to admit that the fortunate elements in our lives have not all been deserved or rational, then this admission may accomplish the same thing as the hypothetical divesting of irrational advantages that Rawls advocates. That would also be in full agreement with Nietzsche, since Nietzsche also emphasized being honest with oneself and others, as well as being “suspicious of selfless drive” such as altruism and pity which “would entice him away from himself.”20 MINOR VARIATIONS ON THE ESCHATOLOGICAL THEME Schweitzer’s discovery of the Jewish eschatological shaping of Jesus’ teachings and life was felt by many as quite threatening, both to biblical scholars as well as philosophical theologians. For those who took the symbolism literally, it threatened to dislodge their Christology, not because it was mythical, which it was, but because Jesus predicted the imminent End and it failed to come. This threatened their Christology which was largely Docetic in which Jesus was seen as hardly human in any significant way other than eating and sleeping, so was not allowed such errors in judgment. Yet many scholars such as church historian Adolf von Harnack felt that his teachings were the focal point of his being, and they therefore had to be reasonable and true. To hold his teachings as “truth,” they were offended even if they saw it only as some eschatological symbolism rather than literal. Or they responded as did Rudolf Bultmann, insisting that it is only a kind of mythological symbol that one had to rid simply of its “cosmic” elements to see its true existential meaning as one’s personal end always standing as possibility in one’s future. Some Christian theologians like Paul Tillich finally admitted that if that eschatological talk actually came from Jesus, he was wrong, but that did not matter since the details of the historical person of Jesus are unimportant to Christian theology.21 His significance is only within the transformative power of New Being that he embodies.22 He dismissed Jesus error in judgment as

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never adversely affecting his “personal center” or his unity with God. Such a judgment that it did not matter, of course, was a misreading of where most lay Christians stood, to whom there could be no admission that Jesus was wrong about anything at all, certainly not when it was a promise of their being vindicated. Other theologians such as Hans Küng and Wolfhart Pannenberg made the attempt to say that even if the temporal element of the prediction was wrong, that was not important since Jesus’ resurrection itself guaranteed that the Kingdom is coming and/or the General Resurrection is guaranteed proleptically.23 I have shown how unconvincing Pannenberg’s idea of Jesus’ “resurrection” was.24 Biblical scholars were consternated when passages in different gospels gave different impressions about that coming Kingdom, whether it was still all in the future, or it was all present except for the sheer finality, or whether somehow it was both present yet had a significant future element, so was “already/not yet” which allowed Jesus to be at least half correct if one could overlook the other half. Most did not realize the ethics of the “Sermon on the Mount” as being only an “interim-ethic” as Schweitzer saw it, so gave a variety of ingenious interpretations as to those rigorous instructions to make no claims about one’s personal rights or personal property nor even any thought about providing for oneself for tomorrow, and, if necessary one should mutilate one’s body by removal of any offending part of it since that is preferable to missing out on the Kingdom because of that bodily part. This mutilation of the body was seen by Nietzsche as making the ethic absurd. Some like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his The Cost of Discipleship, temporarily straddled between a literal and symbolic interpretation by insisting that a believer should at least be willing to follow the command literally even if it is not necessary. But that left open an “escape-hatch” which actually allowed one to deceive himself. Robert P. Scharlemann, as a “radical” systematic theologian, focused on the “end” with which Heidegger struggled, rather than open up any discussion about Jesus and eschatology, though he utilized Christian eschatological symbolism from the gospels that the Jesus Seminar thought did not likely come from that Jesus, to illustrate his answer. For this to be intelligible in such brief reference, we must first mention what Heidegger saw as a problem. Martin Heidegger, also without any references to eschatology was concerned with the end of the human being, in its “being-there-now” or Dasein. Dasein’s primary orientation toward “care” (Sorge) gave it moral impetus as a part of its identity. But he viewed Dasein also as needing or desiring to experience the “totality” of one’s own being. That means that he or she is a “being unto death,” not simply a “here-now.”25 Despite the fact that one might try to imagine what death will be like, no amount of imagination, even when based on experiences one’s friends or parents have had,

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is ever the same as one’s own existential experience of dying. Of course, one cannot really “die” and experience it, for that experience ends the consciousness; therefore, “totality” in that sense can never happen except by imagination or anticipation, even when one senses one’s death as only minutes away. Heidegger saw the problem that unfortunately most people treat death in a state of denial, as something that happens only to others. Unless one moves past that denial to anticipate one’s own real death, one remains more fragmented, less whole, less authentic, than one would be if one spent considerable time reflecting on it as one’s coming existential experience. Ultimately, one must be able to conceive the “threat” that always lies against one’s own being there and then but not complete, but conceive of it not as illusionary as if it is only true of others, the “theyself.” One must “cultivate” the “indefiniteness of the certainty” of its “own most possibility,” which is “non-relational,” not to be “outstripped,” which means realizing ontologically and existentially one’s “being-toward-death” through anxiety.26 Jean-Paul Sartre, in contrast, challenged even this view of thinking one’s death necessarily as making sense in light of the life one had led, like a final chord of music, as something one needed in order to feel authentic or complete. On the contrary, he insisted, one’s experience of one’s “totality” does not depend upon one actually experiencing death or even anticipating it as a coherent climax to one’s life. In fact, many things can intervene to make the death not only incompatible with the actual life lived but even an irrational tragedy,27 so even anticipating one’s death may be only an exercise in futility, self-centeredness, or even pessimism and moroseness. So Heidegger and Sartre, both existentialists, had quite different views on the human’s attitude toward and conception of his or her own death. To return to Scharlemann, however, he tried to enable one to reach past Heidegger’s mere “anticipation” of one’s “end” by hearing the inscribed voice of Jesus as one’s own ecstatic and instantiating voice, claiming, “I am the resurrection and life.”28 That, of course, is the eschatological element. He felt those words should have as much instantiating power as when one says “God” in experiencing the power of being in the exclusive presence of any thing.29 This ecstatic identification of one’s own voice in the other should enable one who says “I am the Resurrection and the Life” to live still “in” the world, but not “of” the world, that is, dying to the world to live in the Word in total freedom to be one’s authentic self.30 Whether the theological idea of “speech-event” or linguistic instantiation should be pressed so far, seems questionable, especially since Scharlemann refers to that “end” or being of one’s “resurrection” as already happening, yet at other points says that one is assured of it as one’s future. Scharlemann’s concern was to find a base for Christology, not to uncover a base or ground for an ethic.

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EXTENSIVE RECENT ESCHATOLOGICAL OR APOCALYPTIC DEVELOPMENTS Rather than using a single eschatological symbol as simply a ground for Christology that is beyond any negative effects of historical data (as Scharlemann did with “I am the Resurrection and the Life”), several other figures during the last half of the twentieth century became very well-known for their extensive treatment of the eschatological or apocalyptic, nature of Jesus’ teachings, ministry, or his life. I am selecting only three of the five or six most well-known representatives of different usages of the apocalyptic theme: (1) representing biblical, historical work, John Dominic Crossan, vital to the work of the “Jesus Seminar”; (2) Hegelian conservative but perhaps the most erudite conservative Christian systematic theologian, Wolfhart Pannenberg;31 and (3) radical “Christian-atheist” theologian, Thomas J. J. Altizer. Altizer and Pannenberg judged Schweitzer’s historical analysis of Jesus’ immersion in eschatology or apocalyptic to be correct, but were miles apart on what this meant for the Christian religion. Crossan thought Jesus’ ethics was not apocalyptic, and although he felt Schweitzer had confused the distinction, he approved of Schweitzer’s life by which he lived out the selfdenial or world-denial of ethical eschatology. Pannenberg’s “historical” approach to Christology gave priority to an allegedly real historical event of Jesus’ resurrection, but saw this as a proleptic sign of a retroactive power of God’s future, so the meaning of the absolute “metaphor” of Jesus’ “resurrection” must await the ultimate end of history. Altizer’s approach was even more Hegelian, based on the Crucifixion, but seeing it within the second stage of human consciousness as the “death of God,” which marks the full self-emptying of the Transcendent God as the end of all dualism, objectivity, and history. There was no major explicit consideration of an ethics in either Pannenberg or Altizer. In Crossan, historical method reached its nadir, from which Crossan saw Jesus’ as a moral example and left anything about his divine nature up to the theologians of the Church, except for the fact that he redefined “Incarnation” to include any person who takes a non-violent stand against systemic injustice. Crossan’s “Ethical Eschatology” as Historical Incarnation John Dominic Crossan and his many companions in the “Jesus Seminar” approached a reconstruction of the “historical Jesus,”32 utilizing not simply the canonical gospels but also the extra-canonical gospels, and employed not simply historical method but also methods and insights of sociology, economics, archeology, anthropology, and other disciplines. Most of the results of the group showed an aversion toward eschatology in general. Jesus seemed

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to be an itinerant “wisdom” teacher. But Crossan, who saw Jesus as a subversive wisdom-teacher who was taking up the cause of the Jewish peasants against the systemic injustice sponsored by Caesar,33 attempted to establish his case in a tight method of comparing the evolution and changes made to the written texts conveying Jesus’ teachings during the first few decades after his death. He incorrectly characterized Schweitzer’s understanding of eschatology as a confusion with apocalyptic, and since “apocalyptic” to Crossan meant a vindictive desire for God to punish one’s enemies, Crossan found a way to exempt that and keep Jesus. He finally admitted that certain strands that were most authentic and earliest did contain an eschatology, but it was only an “ethical eschatology” with no apocalyptic judgment, vindication, or violence.34 The “apocalyptic” eschatology came only in the later evolution of the gospel materials and the other documents of the New Testament. That was the extent of eschatology he allowed. He thought all the other, especially in Paul and later writers contained a quite unethical sense of vindictive justice, or a violent God,35 which Crossan was sure opposed what was to him the most important passage in the whole Bible, Psalm 82.36 He envisioned Paul as offering his theology after rather than prior to Q and the Gospel of Thomas, so he gave priority to Q and Thomas rather than Paul. Further, he objected not only to Paul’s apocalyptic eschatology but to his own dualistic sarcophobic brand of the faith, which he was sure the Church has adopted over time to its ruin.37 His historical method of verifying specific redactions of the texts did not prove consistent or convincing. The priority he gave to the Gospel of Thomas appeared strange and unwarranted, even a bit self-contradictory since he was so opposed to Gnosticism, yet favored the Gospel of Thomas which he acknowledged as quite Gnostic. His insistence that he was only doing history and would leave the theology up to the Catholic Church while he was being faithful to both seemed well intentioned but impossible by the method and conclusions he reached. He offended the Church and its dogma by revising the meaning of “Incarnation” to include any flesh and blood person who stands for the Kingdom and the marginalized peasants against systemic injustice. He offended all historical-critical studies of the Old Testament by oversimplifying its picture of God, reducing it to a non-violent being in Psalm 82, overlooking tons of contradictory materials. He emphasized egalitarianism in Jesus’ ministry which distinguished the earliest Christians, but that is a sheer anachronism without historical qualification. That latter sense of ethics, of standing with those marginalized or exploited or ignored, I find very noble and relevant, but it certainly is not based on any theology which he provides nor on his historical tracing of redaction in the texts. That, however, might have value for Christians today who find both theology and the dogma of the Church to be a bit unbelievable and out of

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date, so would be willing to re-build their ethic from a non-religious base so it might help in securing a more humane world order. Of course, to read Jesus as being a unique egalitarian as shown by his commensality or common meals he shared with others, as Crossan does in some of his other publications, or to see his whole mission as a non-violent protest against Caesar and the systemic injustice being inflicted on the Jewish peasants is probably more eisegesis than exegesis. Even more difficult to explain is how the whole church got off on what he considers the wrong track when it came to writing about that Jesus and their eschatological expectations based on him, because it is surely insufficient to blame it all on the single leader, Paul. One might easily espouse an ethic of caring for the marginalized, but to think this is the primary message and meaning of the Jesus of history, only embroils one in an ongoing debate among historians. And Crossan was not contemplating finding an ethical base which was independent from both Jesus and Christianity, so it was quite limited in possibilities. Pannenberg’s Proleptic Eschatology of Absolute Metaphor Wolfhart Pannenberg (1928–2014) insisted as a systematic and historical theologian that the only thing that can explain and justify the Christian belief that Jesus was the Christ or Son of God is the unequivocal historical event of His resurrection.38 He places that event within the ancient Jewish eschatology, so that as Paul saw Jesus’ resurrection,39 it was God’s declaration of Jesus as the Christ and Lord of all. And Paul’s writings may well precede nearly all if not all the written elements which later comprise the canonical “gospels.” Whether Jesus claimed to be the “Son of man” or that was placed on his lips by later writers, there is little question that Jesus considered people’s response to him as determining their fate shortly when the end came.40 That the end did not come as predicted is inconsequential since many times people feel satisfied that a promise has been fulfilled even though the results do not conform precisely with what they expected.41 Further, the resurrection of Jesus was unlike any other raising from death in the Bible, not a mere resuscitation from which one would later have to die again.42 Paul used a paradoxical expression, “spiritual body,” to describe it, and it served, as he saw it, as the “firstfruits” of the end, of the Final Resurrection and Judgment. Until then, we will not fully understand all of the exact meaning of what that “resurrection” entailed, though Pannenberg is sure it was a historical continuity though not a substantial continuity, one which nevertheless left an empty tomb.43 While the “end” did not come, the power of the end did, since Pannenberg insists that not only was Jesus declared but actually became the Christ by his resurrection, without which he would not have been the Christ.44 That is, this appears to humans as a backward or retroactive causality. God

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was operating time from our future, time and causality running backward, so the end actually appeared in one person, Jesus. That form of reversal of time plays havoc with the human conception of causality, entropy, and so on, but Pannenberg insists that is no problem since time is simply all simultaneous to God.45 That, of course, makes one wonder how something new ever happens if it is already all there, or where one would ever have dreamed up such a “world” beyond time and space, a world of absolute simultaneity, which means no movement, no change, no life, simply static identity. Thus, all “appearances” are not only inferior but misleading: there really is no such thing as life, change, movement, or becoming.46 The resurrection of Jesus was the focal point of salvation for people of faith, but Pannenberg admits that neither the nature of Jesus’ “resurrection” nor even the “essence of Christianity” can be known prior to the return of Christ. It is all in process, as Pannenberg reads Hegel, and the process itself is everything with Hegel’s Absolute Spirit. Till the end, everything is “debatable” and that repeats itself over and over, as Pannenberg notes, a theme he embraced early in his career.47 That being the case, wherever morality or ethics fits into the “theological” framework of the church is hardly important, since Schleiermacher had said ethics is simply best described as God’s work in the process of sanctifying believers, and it is so much God’s work, that humans cannot even be said to be cooperating in it.48 Pannenberg approved Schleiermacher’s “limiting the function of philosophical theology to the investigation of the distinctive nature of Christianity,” though truth, he emphasized, lies outside the competence of both philosophical and fundamental theology precisely because “truth” will not be really known until the return of Christ.49 So with any truth about ethics, that we must await the point when history ends and there is no more question of human ethics to get the answer to ethics or in other words, when the question and answer are both irrelevant and superfluous. The nagging question remains of what is really being claimed about Jesus’ “resurrection,” as a non-substantial but nevertheless “historical continuity,”50 and specifically why Pannenberg interpreted Jesus’ “ascension” as only a symbol of Jesus absolute unity with God since it otherwise would be too supranatural a claim,51 yet based the whole Christian faith on his “resurrection” with Paul’s paradoxical idea of a “spiritual body” whose truth is only a metaphor, and of what precisely we will not know till the end of history. Science does not find an “ascension” to heaven any more incredible and mythical than a “resurrection” from the grave after being dead three days. But Pannenberg insists in his anthropology that the distinct human essence is an “openness to the world,” which he then transforms into an “openness beyond the world.”52 Does that mean being open to any claims of any party, no matter how incredible?

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Despite this, in his analysis of anthropology from a theological perspective, he does show insightful differences between egocentricity and exocentricity, viewing the latter as more basically human which would mean also more ethical even by ordinary terminology.53 Again, however, his treatment of the “eschatology” of Jesus’s teaching and especially “resurrection” poses an unresolved historical-mythical problem, and his view of ethics both eliminates human autonomy as so much hybris, and is based on the accepting the validity of his interpretation of that “resurrection,” from which Pannenberg later could read all kinds of things such as the “pre-existence” of the Christ.54 Although most Western ethics have dealt with the problem of egoism, it would have to be separated from the “metaphysics of infinity” here in Pannenberg, and would be better to start from a more reasonable base since non-religious and people of non-Christian religions cannot base their ethics on Jesus’s “resurrection.” Thomas Altizer’s Apocalyptic as Anonymous Total Presence Thomas J. J. Altizer (1927–2018),55 convinced of the correctness of Schweitzer’s analysis of the eschatological or apocalyptic nature of Jesus’s teachings and life, combined that with the “death of God” he found in Hegel as well as the cultural and literary signs of either apocalyptic’s revolutionary thinking or a sense of God’s total absence in the world such as in John Milton (1608–1674), William Blake (1787–1827), and James Joyce (1882–1941). Altizer’s genius in placing primary emphasis of “apocalyptic” was in breaking open possibilities of the radically new future. In the last half of the twentieth century, there were also several other theologians who began to place an emphasis on simply the future, rather than the “last” of “eschatology” or the vindication element carried in the typical Jewish apocalyptic. One of the most famous was Jürgen Moltmann,56 who had been influenced by E. Bloch’s emphasis on “hope” or even Marxism more than by Schweitzer’s rediscovery of the “apocalyptic” of Jesus. In some cases, there was given a new ethical emphasis of liberation or even revolution of a sort, but the point was not to separate a global and public ethic from the Christian faith, so they do not offer an example of how such a non-religious ethic would be important for Christians, but more in the spirit we saw in Pannenberg, tended to utilize non-religious sources such as anthropology exclusively to give credibility specifically to Christian theology or Christology. To a degree, even Altizer did not want to separate from Christianity, but wanted to be called a “Christian atheist.” At the outset of his publications, Altizer spoke of desiring to “redeem” the secular or profane.57 That seemed to suggest perhaps an independent world ethic, except for the concept of “redeeming” it. He also was quite influenced by Buddhism and its idea of

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Sunyata or “emptiness” and published works dealing with it, which suggested looking for some answer beyond a single religion.58 Dozens of times in his many books, he used the terms coincidentia oppositorum and absolute novum. All of this intimated the possibility of perhaps his opening a door for a non-metaphysical or non-religious ethic based on the “end” whether telos or eschaton, especially since he spoke of the “death of God.” Had he set about to formulate an ethic independent of religion from all this, he could have done it even had he desired to call himself an “immoralist” as did Nietzsche who proclaimed the “death of God” prior to him. He even referred to Nietzsche as a “theologian” on at least one occasion. But Altizer was serious about being what he called a “Christian atheist,” and of providing Christianity a new and authentic self-understanding. For those who knew him, his concern seemed to be set deeply on “God.” He further often insisted that atheism itself was possible only within the Christian religion since only its God had died, and only the Christian religion offered the radically new through its apocalyptic. He was also distressed that the church had alienated itself from culture and history, and by separating from history, it had alienated itself from its very source, the Bible, which is the “the only scripture in the world which is profoundly and comprehensively historical.”59 That sounds quite conservative vis-à-vis the radicality of his proclaiming the “death of God,” but it had been a part of his thesis that theology could not be done today for that very reason, not without admitting the “death of God.” Altizer’s primary concern was not ethics but rather to show from great thinkers of the past three centuries such as Hegel, Blake, Nietzsche, Joyce, and others, as well as actual events in history, that our world is aware of an “ending” which corresponded to the very message of Jesus, but more important than “ending” was the fact that “apocalypse” and even Crucifixion point to a totally new beginning, like nothing experienced before. That is, we are experiencing a “repetition” of Jesus’s apocalyptic situation, but even a fuller and final apocalyptic new because of a more extensive frustratingly objectivized world as it realizes the gap between its thoughts, names, and claims and the expanding and seemingly infinite objects which are only artificially distinguished. It is aware that time and space are no longer boundaries that provide separation or definition to separate entities, that science as well as modern culture including art and music have experienced the ending of all former styles, methods, rules, boundaries, and understandings. With all that former emphasis upon a duality, distance, or separation or “objectivity,” the predominant feeling was one of guilt and inability if not pessimism. So he felt a need to correlate this experience of apocalyptic of our times with the apocalyptic of Jesus,60 and from that to show not only the nature of the end but also thereby also the very positive elements of the absolute novum, the new

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freedom from the dualism and all of the unnecessary guilt, a freedom which flows only from such an ending through the Incarnation and Crucifixion. His ethical concern was present, but quite subordinate to his theological or philosophical concern, so we have only a few specific references in his writings to anything approximating ethics. I will mention them briefly after giving a very short description of what the “end” or apocalyptic (or “revelation”) meant to Altizer. Although he utilized both terms, eschatology and apocalyptic, he quite specifically associated the latter with revolutions throughout history, of a rejection of all traditional or even current institutions, power, and values—with results of something very new. Basically, Altizer divided the history of the world into three eras or mentalities.61 The earliest comprised an “undifferentiated plenum” or “primordial nothingness” or totality that was brought to its end by the “original act of creation.”62 In various ways, he insisted that “God” is now not only not “primordial nothingness” but also not what it became because of God’s speaking the Creation into existence and referring to himself as “I AM” which formed that second stage of dualistic thinking or objectification. That Divine once-for-all voluntary self-separation from everything God created, that is, His standing vis-à-vis humans and the cosmos, resulted in the Wholly Transcendent “God,” even though He was thought to be able to enter into history especially to rescue his people. Obviously, if “God” was “originally” (whatever “originally” can mean) undifferentiated plenum or “primordial nothingness,” and only by its own initiative (“God said”) created the world, distinguished itself thereby creating separateness or oppositions, leaving behind that earlier state which had known only silence, sameness, and serenity, it now knew of difference by the very speaking of the “I AM,” the separation or difference that was between the profane and Wholly Transcendent, which included change, history, self-consciousness, guilt, perishing, and death. If in the primitive mentality of undifferentiated plenum, people had archaic rites by which the “eternal” “returned” or was “re-presented” in a cycle, the speaking of “I AM” was a full actuality in an irreversible, once-for-all, self-negation, and self-annihilation of that eternity itself, a replacing of the circle with horizontal history as a “sacred history” which is seen in both the religion of Judaism (and Ancient Israel) and Christianity, which “is so if only because it is the self-embodiment of pure otherness itself.”63 This comprised the second stage of being and consciousness to Altizer. It is this stage of Transcendent Being which is the subject of the “death of God.” In his and William Hamilton’s early book, Radical Theology and the Death of God, they defined what they meant by the expression, the “death of God.” They insisted they were not proposing a straightforward assertion of atheism that “there is no God, and that there never has been.” Nor were they merely talking about a cultural idea about God or other less radical definitions such

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as “the time of the death of God” which Rubenstein preferred, which might be reversed someday. Nor did they mean only that the “idea of God and the word God itself are in need of radical reformation.” Rather, they were saying “there once was a God, to whom adoration, praise and trust were appropriate, possible, and even necessary, but that now there is no such.”64 That sounds fairly clear, although Richard Rubenstein and others objected that if there ever was “God,” there cannot be a time when God is no longer or it would never really have been what is meant by “God.” So Rubenstein used the expression “the time of the death of God” which was obviously referring to a historical way of conceiving things, in which simply the consciousness of such a Transcendent God had disappeared or been destroyed.65 Altizer’s final stage involved a continuation and conclusion of the voluntary total self-emptying in the Crucifixion of “God’s” Incarnate form. This had marked for Hegel the negation of the first negation (or self-emptying), so now in Altizer was a self-emptying of the individual for the new universal spirit, a negation of the individual which had been an earlier negation of its being merely an undifferentiated plenum. Altizer thought Hegel was correct to focus on the Crucifixion rather than something mythical such as the Resurrection, but he interpreted Hegel as embracing the church’s view that this death was only of Jesus’s body, whereas Altizer insisted it had to be the “death of God,” not just Jesus, even though the church had always opposed that idea. Actually, although Hegel did see spirit and body or matter as opposites, and in the Spirit of Christianity had been convinced that the early Christians made the mistake of failing to understand that they, just as Jesus, had the Spirit, they insisted on thinking of him only as a single, individual body, which necessitated the strange idea of his resurrection. In Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, the Crucifixion is the event or notion that Spirit has been released to become universal, which actually means Spirit has fully realized itself in itself as spiritual self-consciousness, and the old notion of the “natural significance” of “death” as “the non-existence of this individual is transcended by this actualization of the universality of the spirit, which lives in its own communion, dies there daily, and daily rises again.”66 This shows how the old “pictorial” representations, while needed, must be transcended by the pure concept (Begriff). In this transformation, the “totality” was experienced once again, but was different from the original primordial and undifferentiated totality, now an absolute totality but beyond all definition and naming, an anonymous presence, to Altizer, nothing that should be identified with former names of “God.” If Hegel conceived of the “end” bringing “freedom” through the Spirit which was realized as Absolute by the Crucifixion, Altizer saw it as a radical apocalyptic freedom, beyond all former categories of understanding and therefore necessarily beyond even the Begriff or concept or idea reflecting

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only itself as it was in Hegel. Anonymity prevails because of the absolutely new. So what did the “end” of “God” or the “death of God” mean other than the realization of the unlimited or at least unrestricted openness to the world, beyond the named structures and ideals and even sense of interiority? If Dante’s Inferno showed the modern experience as a “voyage into nothingness”67 and Blake’s Jerusalem anticipated this “end” in his apocalyptic visions, so Joyce marked the end of the writing of novels, just as science and art realized a shattering of the former norms, boundaries, and assumed limitations. This was truly a repetition of the apocalyptic condition and beginning of that final consciousness, one that had formed the mission, message, and fate of Jesus, one originated in and now re-focused on the parabolic paradox of the imminent “Kingdom of God” or its equivalent and thereby also now the ending of all dualistic thinking and objective history. Whatever the “death of God” or the “apocalypse” meant, “God” could not have been an unchangeable entity throughout the process of the three stages. That creation of “I AM” was the beginning of unique history, a beginning or “Fall” in the sense the former undifferentiated condition which knew no perishing, death or change, but only serenity and silence, so a “final fall. . .from the pure and total silence of a wholly inactual totality . . . which is itself the irreversible beginning of a full and final actualization,” but this actualization is nothing like the former “circle of eternal return” that characterized the consciousness of primordial reality.68 By creating history, these events and causality were irreversible, absolutely unique. This “death of God” does not mean only the dissolution of “theism,” as a human perspective. Altizer often spoke of “Godhead” in terms of describing what it means in the experience of “Total Presence,” while he also countered that he is not merely suggesting “God” has become Immanent. Thus, we are driven, as he said, beyond naming “God” or locating “God” just as in this third stage or repetition of the apocalypse we lack interiority, identities, and names in general. It is an experience of anonymity, but rather than view this with pessimism, feeling it is a de-personalizing, he views the “novum” of the end or apocalypse providing us freedom never before experienced. He was convinced that the nineteenth century and following entered the same apocalyptic consciousness that occupied Jesus, especially in his message of the imminence of the “Kingdom of God” which was unique with Jesus. Jesus mentioned the Kingdom only in his parables as an actual enactment of that, but Altizer emphasized the anonymous attraction even of Jesus, altering some of Schweitzer’s famous words: “If Jesus comes to us as one unknown, without a name, then not only is his an anonymous humanity, but he can be heard only by an anonymous humanity, an anonymous humanity that perhaps only now is being fully embodied in our midst.”69 But in what

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way is this awareness of an anonymous humanity or total anonymous presence bestowing us with a freedom unknown before? This is simply the character he sees in anything apocalyptic. It is freedom from whatever in one’s former way of life was restricting one, so is totally new. With the two driving themes of apocalyptic and the “death of God,” he articulated the self-creation of a new Godhead, the absolute novum, or new life and worldview. His basic schema duplicated Hegel. Although Hegel was unaware of the apocalyptic significance of Jesus’s message and person, he discovered the significance of history having an “end” or “goal” within the general emphasis on the future that began early on even in the religion of Ancient Israel, By the second century, Altizer notes, eschatology had become unintelligible in the church and was proclaimed a heresy in Montanism. The dualism that had characterized the view of Ancient Israel was developed by St. Paul into the self which alienated itself from “God,” then pushed further by Augustine, but though both still had some notion of apocalyptic, it became distorted to the point that apocalyptic only reappears over the following centuries within heretical movements.70 Thus, Altizer was confident that the “end” of the dualism which supported the Transcendence was actually announced by Jesus’s eschatological parables on the “Kingdom of God,” announced and enacted or instantiated that Kingdom, but was summarily forgotten by the Church. That new, apocalyptic Kingdom enacted by Jesus’s speaking parables was to negate completely the old structures and forms of thinking, to supersede religions entirely, to “redeem” the secular, to reveal the “coincidence of opposites.” Basically, he is saying that the old dualistic or subject/object thinking is dissolved as we realize how insufficient are the names, the boundaries, the alleged distinctions of supposedly separable entities. But, despite the original imminent eschatology which negated this type of thinking, he ironically speaks of the dualism reaching its most intensive and negative forms in Paul and Augustine, which means the influence of the apocalyptic kind of thinking and living was very short in duration and influence as the early church quickly reversed Jesus’s own reversal of values so the “new” apocalyptic nature of reality was not realized. With the alienation between the Transcendent God and humans made graphically disastrous by St. Paul’s dualism, the “novum” disappeared as a possibility or reality. Instead, more and more “opposites” were discovered whose relation to each other remained unresolved and were intensified, including Christ and Satan, good and evil, being and nothingness, despite Augustine’s attempt to eliminate the reified “evil” by refusing to give it ontological status, saying it was merely a lack of the good or real. But Western history has finally provided a second opportunity to realize the novum of apocalyptic, through the works of Dante, Milton, Hegel, Blake,

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Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Joyce, and the “end” of Christendom in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Europe, as well as Kierkegaard’s emphasis upon the “contemporaneousness” one has with Christ, but also on his attempt to rescue or reinstate subjectivity, and Nietzsche’s negative realization of Hegel’s idea of the “death of God” which became a nihilistic tool, but actually against the nihilistic culture of Nietzsche’s time and subsequent generations. To Altizer, the coincidentia oppositorum became reality in modern culture. If Hegel’s exemption of “God” from dying left the Spirit intact in its Absolute form, then if this “moral” Being is in charge of history, the following decades should not have brought the World Wars, the rise of the Nazis, and the Holocaust. That was not any Aufhebung of estranged ideas or parties, no Hegelian “reconciliation.” Instead, the falsity and groundlessness of values, the chimeric ideas of causality, the idealism which could not face reality, the moral chaos anticipated by Nietzsche’s “madman”—all the signs of decadence or nihilism diagnosed by Nietzsche—had come home to roost by Altizer’s lifetime. This was the same period of largely the nineteenth century putting an “end” to the “metaphysics of infinity” that Foucault elaborated, which I have mentioned before. Nietzsche was less optimistic about the world’s future than either Foucault or Altizer. Foucault knew there would remain the continual challenge of human consciousness and worldviews. Nietzsche tried to formulate an ethic although he saw no telos that was to dictate, but envisioned at least the possibility of strong humans exploring new avenues of life-affirming values. Nietzsche’s literary focus was not as solitary as his life of illness, so his writings were preoccupied with analyses of morality. Altizer’s description, on the other hand, appeared to exalt “solitude” due to an apparent uncertainty which had succeeded the false absolute certainty of values of former generations. Even here he could not avoid his dialectic terminology in order to show how mistaken modern notions are, as he said that “only by going beyond our interior can we reach those deep crevices leading to a truly common and universal humanity.” It is precisely this “common and universal humanity” that this present study is about, searching for a “freestanding” ethic that can be utilized by humanity universally rather than relying on the divisive and exclusive ethics of particular religions. So how do we identify this “common and universal humanity,” and what do we do once we identify it? Altizer’s answer is that it is not what some think—it is not found in mass culture or a mass society which is artificial, electronic, and unreal. Rather, it is found in what “is most invisible and inaudible in our society.” He rhetorically questions: But is it not true that none of us can now discover a human presence except in those rare moments when we are delivered from our own interiority, and

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delivered not by physical intoxication or cultural drugs, but rather by the actual presence of another, another who can never appear within, and never appear by way of anything which is a truly individual voice or gesture? The one so present is certainly not a person or a self, being neither male nor female, neither old nor young, neither black nor white. Self-consciousness is just what is most missing from all which we can know as a truly human presence. And the very absence of self-consciousness in our deepest and most actual moments is a decisive sign of the identity of that common humanity which has dawned in our time.71

What he means is that genuine solitude or genuine meditation leaves ego or self-consciousness behind, even that “it comes when we least expect it, and it comes to deliver us from everything which is only our own.”72 He thinks that the common or universal humanity which is “beyond any identity which can interiorly be present” can be found in “moments of genuine solitude” because it is precisely here when “our identities pass beyond an interior realm and realize a depth wherein everything which is present is not our own.”73 As we think of that which is or has been most beyond our interiors, it probably includes the “insulted and the oppressed.” These were not discovered in the ancient world before the time of St. Francis, then “went underground” again until the nineteenth century when we saw it in the American, English, and French Revolutions, in the work of Karl Marx in its realization of “dialectical materialism”—the “depths of humanity” and the “dissolution of the interior.” But he thinks that we have not measured up to that depth of consciousness of the plight of the insulted and oppressed since Dostoevsky.74 How Altizer measured or compared the depth of consciousness or awareness of the plight of the oppressed, he does not say, but the poverty, marginalization, oppression, insults, unjust application of “justice,” and even “structures of cynicism” as Dorothee Soelle called them,75 that exist even in or especially in the most “developed” capitalized countries, certainly abound. But much of Altizer’s language is steeped in redundant dialectic but also in an overuse of superlatives which, when applied with such abandon leave a reader aghast as to what data formed such absolutized adjectives, or whether the language is more for a shock effect as his “style” even if possibly aping Nietzsche. But Nietzsche’s style was different, even when he contrasted opposing views within a single paragraph. Only if the reader lacked familiarity with Nietzsche’s references would he be confused as to the meaning, so long as one can understand irony and parody. But with Altizer, even at the base, one often cannot distinguish whether he is describing reality which involves the sensible world or only human speech and ideas which construct a “world” which we know to be different from a mere “environment.”76 He is even less clear than Hegel who really wanted to have it both ways, but basically demeaned anything material or physical despite his optimism and/

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or hope that Spirit would finally reshape Nature. Yet the notion about notion (Begriff) coming only from Spirit or Mind, but not in any way being derived from the material brain leaves his absolutism gasping for air, (if that is not too metaphorical). It may seem that Altizer has replaced the invisible “God” of reflection with the invisible human, that all apocalyptic accomplishes is a trading of one nebulous image for another.77 The sensible proximity we have to other humans seems not to help. That is, only if one sees the apocalyptic stage of consciousness being anything more than ungrounded imagination. His tracing of cultural changes in art, music, and literature is interesting, but to say any produces an absolute novum is a gross exaggeration since one can see one style being superseded by another but always utilizing elements of the earlier in its new construction. For example, even dodecaphonic or “atonal” music of the early twentieth century was not something totally new, but stood in a fairly logical line of development from Classical key structure to Romantic extremes in chromaticism and dynamics, simply the next step. Likewise with the development of abstract expressionism and cubism in art. No matter how far abstraction seems to move from what was considered true “representation,” the defining characteristics of “representation” have simply changed. The same is true in the continual change of languages, ideas, or metaphors and symbols, as Foucault, Eco, Derrida, Fish, Rorty, and so many others have shown. Even Hegel’s Begriff is a form of representing or symbolizing. Altizer is not the first to discern that the human consciousness can be fascinated with supposed “wholes” or “totalities” as well as with parts that constitute the whole. But even in Schleiermacher’s articulation of the difference between knowing, feeling, and doing, knowing and doing were primarily concerned with objectification which separates, while feeling was of the totality or whole and provided meaning through showing connections or relating the parts to the whole. However, he never reached the point of suggesting that culture had or should or even could exist without the objective consciousness or consciousness of discreet parts which makes science and even morality and law possible. Of course, since Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, we have become much more aware of the limits of “objective” knowledge, but that does not dissolve into a blob of anonymity in which nothing is any longer designated and no one can have any reasonable explanation of what people are saying or writing or how they will respond to one’s own words. Here one may even think of language more as tools by which we address what we converse about which we speak as if it all were “real” but recognize that the language itself does not guarantee such reality, but may exist only to allow anticipations or expectations between people which will be implicitly agreed on, but always contingent.78

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One remains unsure about where Altizer stood since he was so certain that the dualistic world of objectification has been eclipsed completely by apocalyptic. But if that were true, it would have put an end to our science long ago. Ironically, even the discovering of new and exponentially expanding space and formerly unknown galaxies has not become meaningless, even if we realize that our “naming” newly discovered stars is only our own doing, so quite arbitrary, just a tool for pointing. While one can appreciate to a degree Altizer’s insistence that he is abandoning the idea of any possible “authorities” in any field, that is really a red herring since he only omits using scholars names but still refers to their specific ideas, which simply makes his arguments more pedantically esoteric. Anonymity within society may present more freedom, but that does not commend it morally, but quite the opposite. If one compares the cultures of the huge metropolitan centers with the very small rural communities, the anonymity dissolves the awareness of unique, particular individuals as well as a sense of responsibility or trust. The reason is not hard to figure: one does not trust the invisible, the unknown, the hidden, the unnamable, the amorphous which is beyond or incapable of any form or boundaries, no matter whether one claims to or not. These sources are reverted to only in times of desperation, but even “quantum mechanics” has more credibility in our contemporary culture than astrology, except as a relatively harmless form of entertainment. On the other hand, the “revolutions” which Altizer points to as embodying the apocalyptic mentality and its thirst for the absolute novum actually came from a lack of mutual trust, a feeling of being marginalized or deprived of one’s human rights as if one were not seen, not heard, invisible, without a name. That is a cultural problem, but it is very empirical-ethical. “Black Lives Matter” is not anonymous; rather, anonymity of black lives has been the problem. CONCLUSION If both Altizer and Scharlemann referred to “eschatological” or “apocalyptic” terms (in the sense of something “new”), neither of them were primarily concerned with ethics but with a pure theology and Christology, with articulating what is and how we can conceive of it, but not much about how one should relate to others. Scharlemann, however, in contrast to Altizer’s idea of “anonymity,” called for a “naming” which could instantiate relations, and a form of finding oneself in the other existentially; but even then he insisted that the identification one finds in one’s voice in the “other” always requires an obliteration of the actual predicates or qualities of the other, whether it is a person, Jesus, or even, in Buber’s illustration, a tree.79 Altizer saw relations coming

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from the sense of a common humanity which cannot be named or identified with oneself at all, whereas Scharlemann saw the significant relation being with oneself through the other whose facticity is not significant. This difference of how the relation with the other becomes a meaningful “presence” if it lacks any attributes, which was so important to both Altizer and Scharlemann, was not really a problem for Schweitzer. The reason is because he was not suggesting that one confronts the “total presence” of being or life, which both Altizer and Scharlemann were. Further, his idea was that one’s “will-to-live” recognizes the “will-to-live” in other specific beings, and he was confident that an ethic could be built upon that form of mystical union, including all the specific attributes of self and other, therefore not requiring one to have some union with some anonymous, amorphous totality of all being. Without the specific being and their qualities or attributes, there could be no such thing as a consideration of ethical relations. Although Scharlemann and Altizer differed over whether what one encounters in another can or should be named, their problem was that they could not get beyond the idea of wanting one’s confrontation to be with “God,” so they could “speak of God” or “do theology,” so speak of the Totality or Whole or Infinite Power of Being. Schweitzer, on the other hand, placed one’s relationship with others in the very materiality of their specific being, their real “presence,” and to know that “will-to-live” that motivates them is quite sufficient. One does not need to know the totality or whole. We will see the same thing in Nietzsche’s perspectival approach in chapter 5. That is, though Nietzsche may use a rhetorical flourish to insist that there is nothing but the Whole, he was speaking there only of any possible “redemption,” whereas his overall understanding was that there simply is nothing but limited, tentative, contingent different perspectives. Knowledge beyond the basic “will-to-live” is not needed, certainly not a knowledge of the Totality, whether of Being or of the World or even how the “will-to-live” originates. That kind of knowledge is beyond human grasp. The “will-to-live,” on the other hand, is universally experienced by all living creatures, and is consciously or reflectively known by those capable of reflection. Although one’s experience of the “will-to-live” could have been completely instinctual at first, requiring no personal or even generic names, no language, later, in the maturity of reflective beings, the person becomes capable of thinking about the instinct, in what Schweitzer terms as a “mysticism of Being.” But we saw that he insisted that there is no reality we experience which is the “totality” of Being, but only being found in individual forms of life. Schweitzer’s conclusion is not too far from Scharlemann’s idea of “God” that left theism behind saying that God is the manifestation of “being” in any particular being, even in Jesus, but never does it convert that particular being

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into Being as a totality or as being-itself which can be specifically called “God.” By combining this understanding of the symbol of “God” with the “depth of truth” of reflexive thinking which embraces even opposite perspectives and reflections, and with the symbol of the Cross involving a “double negation” so the truth of the symbol realized itself even when it completely emptied itself or was denied, Scharlemann was able to discover a new sense of universalism, not dependent upon any single perspective of any single religion. But the universal did not eclipse one’s individual perspective, but at best was seen as a sense of unity experienced only by people who recognize the relative nature of all their own judgments, so are driven to be open to any difference. While that may work with Anselm’s formulation of the nonthinkable, Scharlemann was still preoccupied with transcending this “world,” living in it but not being “of” it, developing a Christology rather than an ethic, and this universalism itself does not suggest how to discern between different perspectives. Altizer’s determination to redeem the profane sphere through the total presence is not an experience of anyone since no one experiences such totality, and since it remains anonymous, insisting that it has nothing in common with oneself, there remains no ethical guidance whatever. This nevertheless does raise a basic question of what causes the moral concern and what is the object of such concern, and especially the relation between parts and wholes, and whether one must choose between relating to others by ignoring their attributes or by owning up to the diverse attributes or irrationally vested interests and perspectives each individual has. We must explore in the following chapters under very different approaches to the moral question in what many consider its “private” and “public” ramifications, first by Friedrich Nietzsche in chapter 5, and later in chapter 7 by John Rawls. Hopefully we can find an answer, as well as explore the differences in chapter 6 between the individual human and the species as a whole in relation to their “lack” or their “potential,” and work further blending it with the nonreligious ethical insights Schweitzer articulated in his books and personal life. Schweitzer’s deepest ethical insights are found in his idea of “Reverence for Life” because the universal “will-to-live” enables one to move beyond any Absolute, whether of a religion or quasi-religion, even the earlier exclusive mystical union with Christ which he articulated from St. Paul. The “will-tolive” lights up a very inclusive world of relationships with all living creatures. Of course, those who are unfamiliar somehow with their own instinctual “will-to-live” and its inclusive ethic may still find their only answer in St. Paul’s Christ-mysticism. But if the temporal and exclusivistic elements of Jewish apocalyptic are no longer credible, even that eschatological mysticism collapses. If it remains by some literal approach of a metaphysics of infinity, however, the Christian would have to reckon with the imminent eschatological claim of those ethics which to date no Christian church has done.

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The discovery of “will-to-live” creates its own ethical ground as universally experienced without being exclusive or creating a barrier. It universality prevents it from being mistaken as a claim of superiority over alternative ethical claims or grounds. From the “will-to-live,” one should be able to live under any kind of government or political situation, any kind of economic structure, educational institutions, and so forth, though a government of trust, mutual autonomy, real equality based on the equality of the universal “willto-live” points to the ideal form of government as a democracy. The “will-tolive” can approach any social contracting as completely neutral, working with that simple idea and power as the consensus, and avoiding all divisiveness or claims of superiority at the bargaining table of the social contract. That is, it is an ethical grounding that is independent of all creeds, religious authorities, sacred scriptures, and “salvation history” as distinguished from the history of this world. Unlike any religion, the “will-to-live” is truly universal, completely instinctual. For those who read more closely of Schweitzer’s life in Lambarene, it is interesting to see how when the local missionaries asked him to fill in for them, to preach a sermon to the people, he obliged and spoke of common life-honoring ethics, simple to understand, using local specific and cultural ideas, to enable them to understand ethical principles. He did not focus on Christian symbols or stories or try to convert the people to a single religion, but to a uniting and responsible ethic which was possible without any dependence upon a religion. That did not mean he no longer considered himself “Christian,” but he did not see any exclusive ethics as the answer to human civilization.

NOTES 1. See Susan Jacoby, Wild Justice: The Evolution of Revenge (New York: Harper Colophon Book, 1983). The relation of justice and vengeance or vindication is a deep problem in John Dominic Crossan’s quite artificial distinction between “eschatology” and “apocalyptic” in The Birth of Christianity. He thought he could distinguish a legitimate “ethical eschatology” from a vindictive eschatology which is how he sees “apocalyptic.” Ultimately, he called for one to embrace a God of justice, which includes compassion, but no vindication or punishment. That simply is not justice, but merely the equivalent of laws with no incentive or constraint behind them, not even of one’s own conscience. In this way, he misjudged Jesus’ use of eschatology. See John Dominic Crossan, The Birth of Christianity: Discovering What Happened in the Years Immediately After the Execution of Jesus (San Francisco: Harper, 1998). For a deeper analysis of his work, see my Will Humanity Survive Religion? Beyond Divisive Absolutes (Lanham, MD: Lexington–Fortress Press, 2020), ch. 8.

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2. Augustine, Concern The City of God Against the Pagans, tr. Henry Bettenson (Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1972), p. 906. 3. This was the primary significance of his groundbreaking Jesus—God and Man, tr. Lewis L. Wilkins and Duane A. Priebe (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1968); see also Wolfhart Pannenberg, What is Man?, tr. Duane A. Priebe (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1970), pp. 44, 50. See also Systematic Theology, tr. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. Vol II (1994), pp. 181–202; 220–21; 356–59; Vol. III (1998), pp. 573–80. But even if it was historical without being material, Pannenberg is still convinced it left an empty tomb. The body was gone, so the “body” supersedes the old Platonic idea of an immortal soul. He is sure that Jesus’ resurrected “spiritual body” as Paul called it, involved the “whole man,” not just Jesus’ spirit. Jesus—God and Man, pp. 75, 77, 87. This is why he sees the idea of “resurrection” as more meaningful than the idea of an immortal “soul.” But he is sure the early kerygma did not mean anything that was substantial, structural or molecular, but only historical (p. 76). It meant basically the full attainment of Jesus’ freedom in God, a freedom connected to an empty tomb. “Christlicher Glaube und menschliche Freiheit,” Kerygma und Dogma, IV:4 (1958), esp. pp. 275–80. 4. Interestingly, as Goodin documents from earlier first-hand sources, the missionaries in Africa, after they became acquainted with Schweitzer, did, on many occasions request him to fill in for them in preaching, and his sermons were stirring, simple and practical ethical encouragements. 5. Adolf von Harnack, What Is Christianity? Tr. Thomas B. Saunders (Philadelphia: Fortress Press), 1986. His History of Dogma and his What Is Christianity both intended to release the Christian church from its enslavement to Hellenistic thought-forms, many of which he felt mutilated the Christian faith. Many younger theologians turned against his theology and biblical critical methods when he endorsed World War I, but this meant that many of them simply abandoned critical history in their treatment of the Bible and theology. Some remained persuaded that their “Christ of faith” was identifiable with the “Jesus of history,” but they continued to do theology in even a more ahistorical sense than had Schleiermacher a century earlier. Many of them could not deal with Schweitzer’s analysis of Jesus being so engrossed in eschatology since that seemed to dislodge his divinity which they presupposed. 6. Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede, tr. W. Montgomery (New York: Macmillan Co., 1959), p. 333. (Hereafter, in the text, designated as Quest with the page number.) 7. He later, in his Philosophy of Civilization, put it the other way around, that the one who discovers the “will-to-live” in himself and other living creatures, will proceed primarily with that attitude of “world-affirmation” in the sense of honoring others’ will to live, but that it might eventually reach a point of “world-negation” is stimulating one, in order to honor the reverence for life to deprive himself of more and more of the world’s pleasures or even forfeit his life to assist others. But either way can bring the same results.

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8. Albert Schweitzer, The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle, tr. William Montgomery (London: A.& C. Black, Ltd., 1931). (Hereafter in the text designated as Mysticism with the page number.) 9. Had John Dominic Crossan seen this in Schweitzer, he would not have been so severe in his judgment against Schweitzer’s theology or ethics, but he was sure that Schweitzer saw the eschatology of the N.T. all as apocalyptic and apocalyptic to Crossan spelled out the vindictive hope that God would finally do one’s dirty work of avenging believers by violence to those who were outside the religion. The way it was, he saw only a dualism in Paul that offended him, and he exaggerated the “apocalyptic” element of Paul’s eschatology, while totally overlooking his strictly “ethical eschatology” which Crossan valued. See Crossan, The Birth of Christianity. 10. David K. Goodin, An Agnostic in the Fellowship of Christ: The Ethical Mysticism of Albert Schweitzer (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2019). 11. Schweitzer, Out of My Life and Thought: an Autobiography, tr. C.T. Campion (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1933), pp. 102–3. 12. Ibid., pp. 114–16. 13. Helene Schweitzer Brauslau not only worked closely with Schweitzer in the hospital, but also tirelessly on his manuscripts, on assisting in raising funds, and in working with various foundations to perpetuate the medical work in Gabon far past the lifetimes of either her or her famous husband. 14. The remainder of references in parenthesis in the text are from Schweitzer, The Philosophy of Civilization, tr. C.T. Campion (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1987). 15. Robert P. Scharlemann, The Being of God: Theology and the Experience of Truth (New York: The Seabury Press, 1981); The Reason of Following: Christology and the Ecstatic I (Chicago: The Univ. of Chicago Press, 1991). 16. Rubenstein, After Auschwitz. pp. 200, 264. 17. In the sense of Being being manifest only in individual existences, Schweitzer is remarkably similar to Robert P. Scharlemann, but Scharlemann continues to speak in reifying terms of God manifesting Himself as God and God manifesting himself as “other than God,” which goes further than Schweitzer who would say that this is defying the understanding that Being is not something individual and could not reveal itself as not being Being or as being “other” than Being. See Scharlemann, The Being of God. 18. But this does not convert to a form of utilitarianism, as sheer calculations based on a single perspective. Individuals remain unique and different, the center of Schweitzer’s focus, as one would expect of any medical doctor since no two people’s experiences even with the same diseases, are identical. 19. Hermann’s ethic of trust was utilized in some detail in Scharlemann’s The Reason of Following, in the latter’s attempt to establish a phenomenological base for Christology, but it has significant ethical ramifications. See ch. 5 on Scharlemann in my The Future of Ethics and Religion: Redefining the Absolute. 20. See, for example, Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, pp. 782, 776,700, 688, 684, 674, 693, 710, 722, 747. He writes, “Zarathustra is more truthful than any other thinker. His doctrine, and his alone, posits truthfulness as the highest virtue; this means the

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opposite of the cowardice of the ‘idealist’ who flees from reality. . . . The self-overcoming of morality, out of truthfulness; the self-overcoming of the moralist, into his opposite—into me—that is what the name of Zarathustra means in my mouth” (784). Nietzsche calls himself an “immoralist” because he is fighting the decadent, anti-life morality of ressentiment which came largely from the Christian church in which he was raised, and fighting all heteronomy (“Thou shalts”) as the “last dragon (in Thus Spoke Zarathustra), and demanding a “revaluation of all values.” 21. Tillich, Systematic Theology, II:131: “Error is evident in his ancient conception of the universe, his judgments about men, his interpretation of the historical moment, his eschatological imagination,” and even his doubt “about his own work . . . and, above all, his feeling of having been left alone by God” prior to his arrest and crucifixion. 22. Tillich, ST, II:107; 115. If he is speaking only of transforming an “image” since that is all one finds in the “New Being in the biblical picture of Jesus the Christ,” then it does not mean anything about any reality behind that image, which Tillich admits. If he is only saying the “image” transforms the person who receives it in faith, in Vol. III, he shows there is no such transformation ever of any significance, that one always remains both “saint and sinner.” 23. Hans Küng, On Being a Christian, tr. Edward Quinn (New York: Wallaby Book, Simon & Schuster, 1978); and Wolfhart Pannenberg, Jesus—God and Man, tr. Lewis I. Wilkins and Duane A. Priebe (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1968). 24. See my Will Humanity Survive Religion? Beyond Divisive Absolutes, ch. 9. 25. Heidegger, Being and Time, pp. 279–311. 26. Ibid., pp. 310–11. Tillich tried to put this into a more understandable terminology, emphasizing that “anxiety” is a natural part of being finite (or just human?), which is therefore not related to specifics (which “fear” is), but to the inevitableness of “having to die.” Two problems, however, he fails to resolve: (1) why would one think one has the possibility of “infinite self-transcendence”? and (2) how does the ontological “courage” he speaks of, which supposedly answers the anxiety, be anything more than the anxiety itself? He goes to great length to emphasize that one must understand the “nothing” that creates the anxiety only as “dialectical nothingness,” by which he means it is dependent upon being. So he thinks if non-being depends upon being, and the latter has priority as well as the last word, so to speak, that enables one to experience “infinite self-transcendence”? Systematic Theology, I:186–201. Masao Abe asked the most penetrating question of Tillich’s schema, of its asymmetrical polarity of being and non-being which sees being-itself or God as “beyond” (the abyss or depth) that polarity. See Abe, “Double Negation as an Essential for Attaining the Ultimate Reality: Comparing Tillich and Buddhism.” 27. Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, tr. Hazel E. Barnes (New York: Gramercy Books, 1994), pp. 531–53. 28. Robert P. Scharlemann, The Reason of Following. 29. Scharlemann, “Does Saying Make It So?” pp. 114–27. 30. Scharlemann, The Reason of Following, p. 162. 31. Jürgen Moltmann did comparable work to Pannenberg, but did not distill all the different strands from his many books into a specific “Systematic Theology” as did Pannenberg.

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32. See John Dominic Crossan, The Birth of Christianity, and my analysis of his book in my Will Humanity Survive Religion? Beyond Divisive Absolutes (Lanham, MD: Lexington-Fortress Academic Press, 2020), ch. 8. 33. Crossan The Birth of Christianity, pp. 157, 3342–44, 25, 29. 34. Ibid., pp. 273–92. 35. Ibid., pp. 584–86. 36. Ibid., p. 584. 37. Ibid., pp. xxiii,2, 36–39; 45–46. 38. See my brief analysis of his system in Will Humanity Survive Religion? ch. 9. 39. It was “unequivocal” as to its inherent meaning precisely because it squared with the Jewish anticipations in eschatology, but, of course, it did not, since they involved the General Resurrection and Final Judgment, neither of which were a part of Jesus’ “resurrection.” So why would one honor the Christian interpretation rather than the Jewish rejection of Jesus as the Messiah since he did not fulfill the expectations? Alfred Zuhl noted that Pannenberg hoped to escape the problem of the Jewish interpretation, but he failed to see that the event without interpretation is impossible to recover from the past, whereas Pannenberg treats the event as if it were simply an event without any interpretation, so is unequivocal in meaning. Alfred Zuhl, “Zur Beurteilung der Ü̈berlieferung von der Auferstehung Jesu,” in Wolfhart Pannenberg ‘Grundzuge der Christologie,’ Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religions-Philosophie, XII:3 (1970), esp. pp. 298–300. 40. Pannenberg, Jesus—God and Man, pp. 53–66. 41. Pannenberg, What is Man? p. 140. 42. Pannenberg, Jesus—God and Man, p. 77. He insists that all the alleged “resurrections” of other people Jesus performed in the gospels are well distinguished by the authors’ from Jesus’ resurrection, since they were all resuscitations and the people would have to die once again. This is completely without any substance. See my “Jesus, Lazarus, and Others: Resuscitation or Resurrection?” Religion in Life, XLIX:2 (Summer, 1980), 230–41. 43. Ibid, pp. 199–106. 44. Ibid., p. 224: “In retrospect from the perspective of the resurrection, it is true that Jesus in his person was one with God also in his life before Easter. However, when Jesus’ pre-Easter life is conceived as having been already divine-human in a direct sense, our conception of Jesus falls back into the mythological realm. Jesus’ resurrection is not only constitutive for our perception of his divinity, but it is ontologically constitutive for that divinity. Apart from the resurrection from the dead, Jesus would not be God, even though from the perspective of the resurrection, he is retrospectively one with God in his whole pre-Easter life.” (emphasis mine) 45. Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, I: 252–53; 387; 401–10; II: 91; et al. His thesis is that truth, essence, and ultimate reality will only be experienced at the end of history, so all truth now is tentative, temporal judgments are not the equivalent of God’s eternal judgment, even death and entropy still await being conquered, as does all relative knowledge. Yet it is all known by God since God is eternal or its participation in time is only in simultaneity of all time. How that can be a practical answer to present life is simply not clear, since anything within the temporal schema or relative

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knowledge and contingent languages of humanity is simply relative, and Pannenberg is opposed to human autonomy since it attempts to replace God (II:265). How does his relative idea get equated with the ultimate or absolute truth, that is, what if all his talk about “God” is groundless? 46. At this point, he carried to an extreme what Nietzsche had classified as religion or history’s unrealistic and unjustified preference for abstract “being” over any kind of “becoming.” See Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, pp. 479–81. 47. Wolfhart Pannenberg, “Toward a Theology of the History of Religions,” in Basic Questions in Theology, II, tr. George H. Kehm (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971), p. 110; “What is Truth?” BQT,II:22; “Faith and Reason,” BQT,II; 59–64; Jesus—God and Man, pp. 134–36. 48. Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, ed. H. R. Mackintosh and J. S. Stewart (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1960), pp. 517–24. He insists every element in sanctification is only God’s work nothing that even can be called human cooperation with God. 49. Pannenberg, Theology and the Philosophy of Science, tr. Francis McDonagh (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1976), pp. 416–18. 50. Pannenberg, Jesus—God and Man, p. 76. He states that Jesus’ resurrected body was a historical continuity but had no substantial continuity. 51. Pannenberg somehow thought the “ascension” was more mythological than the “resurrection,” that the former was only a symbol of the exaltation of Christ. See Pannenberg, “Dogmatische Erwägungen zur Auferstehung Jesu,” Kerygma und Dogma, 2 Quartelsheft, 1968. This creates a real problem, then, because of that historical resurrected Jesus did not “ascend” or leave Earth, it must be still around here somewhere, according to Pannenberg’s strange categories. It probably would have been easier to claim that the “ascension” was historical, but the “resurrection” was mythological; at least then one would not have to be concerned with a historical body of “Jesus” circulating around amongst us. Basically, Pannenberg’s Christology dissolved with that kind of language, not to mention postponing the meaning of it until the end of the world, at which time the knowledge would be irrelevant. 52. Pannenberg, Anthropology in Theological Perspective, pp. 34–74. 53. Ibid. 54. In Pannenberg’s three volumes of Systematic Theology, he has no trouble pushing this “resurrected” Jesus through time back to a pre-existent unity with God, and other doctrines, through his idea of “time” being only a human phenomenon but God seeing everything as simultaneous. The latter, of course, eliminates all causality, all history, all meaning since meaning is derived from actual living beings in relation to each other. 55. Some of Altizer’s significant publications include Satan and Apocalypse: and Other Essays in Political Theology (2018); The Call to Radical Theology (2012); The New Apocalypse: The Radical Vision of William Blake (2003); The New Gospel of Christian Atheism (2003); The Contemporary Jesus (1997); Genesis and Apocalypse: A Theological Voyage Toward Authentic Christianity (1990); Total Presence: the Language of Jesus and the Language of Today (1980); Altizer and William Hamilton, Radical Theology and the Death of God (1966); and others and many chapters in books.

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56. In working on my doctorate I was introduced in 1968 to Jürgen Moltmann’s profound Theology of Hope, and continued thereafter to read his Christian publications with keen interest. His Ethics of Hope, tr. Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis: Fortress, Press, 2012), was years in preparation, as he recounts, and shows great purpose and monumental breadth as is typical of his publications. Since, however, he notes that it is a “deliberately Christian ethic” (p. xii), despite his eschatological orientation and even his specific references to “truth,” it is too narrow to be of use in this study. My purpose here is a search for a ground for an ethic which can be “freestanding” so as to appeal to a wider audience than the ethics of any single religion could since the latter are built on what the believers in that faith consider to be an absolute metaphysics or theology. I have shown some of the problems of even Christianity’s absolutized metaphysics or theology, especially its Christological ground which is supposed to ground its ethics, in my earlier volumes, published by Lexington-Fortress Academic, namely, Will Humanity Survive Religion? Beyond Divisive Absolutes, and Ethics and the Future of Religion: Redefining the Absolute. 57. Altizer read what he took to be the American sense of historylessness as the temptation of current post-Christian theology to embrace a Gnostic vision which would be Christianity’s greatest mistake. Instead, the “profane” existence in the present must become so radical that it drives to a dialectic which redeems the union of the profane and the sacred. He says this points to Kierkegaard and the validity of the “absurd” and “paradox” but he misread Kierkegaard if he thought Kierkegaard was endorsing Nietzsche’s idea of the “death of God.” In fact, Altizer’s construal of the “death of God” has a totally different attitude, one of joy of unlimited freedom as opposed to Nietzsche’s which could foresee social chaos. See Altizer’s “America and the Future of Theology,” in Radical Theology and the Death of God, Thomas J. J. Altizer and William Hamilton (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1966). See also Altizer, “The Sacred and the Profane: A Dialectical Understanding of Christianity,” in Radical Theology and the Death of God, pp. 140–55. His explanation is “By a kenotic negation of its primordial reality, the sacred becomes incarnate in the profane. Yet this movement of the sacred into the profane is inseparable from a parallel movement of the profane into the sacred. Indeed, the very movement of repetition and renewal—precisely because it is an actual and concrete movement—testifies to the ever more fully dawning power of the reality of the profane. Consequently, a consistently Christian dialectical understanding of the sacred must finally look forward to the resurrection of the profane in a transfigured and thus finally sacred form” (155). 58. For example, see Altizer, “Buddhist Emptiness and the Crucifixion of God” in John B. Cobb and Christopher Ives (eds.), The Emptying God: A Buddhist-JewishChristian Conversation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1994). The book consists of various scholars comparing notes with Buddhist scholar, Masao Abe. One major question posed to the Buddhist position was how Sunyata actually could make possible any ethic, and Abe’s contribution spoke of language operating on two different levels, which could involve the ethical and non-ethical. 59. Thomas J. J. Altizer, Genesis and Apocalypse: A Theological Voyage Toward Authentic Christianity (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1990), p. 12.

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60. Thomas J. J. Altizer, The Contemporary Jesus (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1997), pp. xxv, xxvii, 13, 203–4. 61. The “double movement” which involved three stages was of course, quite Hegelian, and not-surprisingly Trinitarian. Yet the idea of there being “three” basic human relations was articulated even before that by Schleiermacher, which included Feeling, Knowing, and Doing. While Kant had emphasized “doing” or ethics, and Hegel was concerned primarily with “knowing” in his speculative idealism, it was Schleiermacher who saw “feeling” as being more immediate since it was totally passive, serving as the mentality which connected the other two, a connection missing in both Hegel and Kant. Unlike Altizer, Schleiermacher did not see that the awareness of “Totality” should obliterate the objective consciousness which was necessary to all knowledge, but should simply provide the latter with meaning and relate it to human behavior. In this respect, Schweitzer is more aligned with Schleiermacher than is Altizer, and there is no radical break between the old and the new which Altizer imposes because of his reading of “apocalyptic.” But Altizer’s radical discontinuity between the old and new was conspicuously missing even in ancient Jewish apocalyptic or the most likely teachings or claims of the historical Jesus. The obvious break came instead with the Hellenization of the Christian message via Paul and later Augustine’s NeoPlatonism. 62. Altizer, Genesis, p. 23. 63. Ibid., pp. 48–55. 64. Thomas J. J. Altizer and William Hamilton, Radical Theology, p. x–xi. Of course, Rubenstein was not suggesting that as the “time of the death of God,” he was allowing the possibility that such a time “will doubtless pass.” He, too, left a simplistic theism behind. 65. Rubenstein first objected to the idea of God intervening in history. But as he explored that, he concluded that the most logical answer after Auschwitz was a combination of Lurianic mysticial thought and Hegelian pantheism, that “God” as the Shekinah of the “En-Sof” is in a state of exile but basically will be reunited with everything, as the source from which everything comes and to which it returns. (This sounds more like the world or humans are in a state of exile, separation, or diaspora, and will be, as waves of the ocean, merged back into the ocean from which they arose.) See Richard Rubenstein, After Auschwitz, pp. 296–99; 303–306. 66. Hegel, Phenomenology, p. 780. 67. Altizer, Genesis, p. 23. 68. Ibid., pp. 32–33. 69. Altizer, The Contemporary Jesus, p. 185. 70. Augustine was not totally dualistic, however, since he did not give ontic status to “evil,” but considered it only an absence of good or being. His conception of predestination also presents a real problem for any conception of actual freedom of humans. 71. Altizer, Total Presence: The Language of Jesus and the Language of Today (New York: The Seabury Press, 1980), pp. 104–5. 72. Ibid., p. 105. 73. Ibid., p. 106.

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74. Ibid., pp. 103–4. 75. Dorothee Soelle, Choosing Life, tr. Margaret Kohl (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981). 76. This distinction was articulated by Tillich, though it probably could be framed more precisely. 77. Or is the “death of God” in Nietzsche really synonymous with the “death of man” which Foucault discovered in Nietzsche, making room for the Übermensch? See Michel Foucault, The Order, p. 342. But Altizer has a separate problem not found in Nietzsche, since in Altizer everybody and everything is not only invisible but anonymous or non-identifiable. 78. This is Richard Rorty’s way of reading Davidson’s theory of language. Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, pp. 9–20. 79. Scharlemann, The Being of God, p. 183.

Chapter 5

The Instinctual End or Purpose as Life-Process

Schweitzer’s early ethics based on his Christ-mysticism was modified or broadened by his later “mysticism of Being” in any being; it became a more universal ethic. But the question was whether it was too simple, and whether the two forms of mysticism were substantially different. If so, his “Reverence for Life” would not be felt as an answer by Christians; conversely, if they were really different forms of mysticism, then non-Christians would still be turned away by its residue of religious and specifically Christian orientation in still speaking of it as “mysticism.” But it did seem to be suggesting two possible ethical systems, which we have already mentioned, even if Schweitzer’s primary articulation was of individual ethics rather than structures of justice. In his later years, he voiced his strong concern over some of the larger international structural issues such as nuclear armaments. Schweitzer had certainly become aware that the idea of an Incarnation, despite its alleged supranatural and eternal claims, after thousands of years of civilization, had not united humanity behind any ethic at all. One could not very easily have imagined even most Christians able to re-interpret Schweitzer’s discovery of the eschatological world-negation as a possible affirmation of the world. The “enigma” of eschatology remained, with an “interim” ethic or “status quo” ethic, with no rescuing Parousia, which canceled out both the ethics of Jesus and Paul, the ethics of Church and Scripture, so one was left only with a mystical unity with “Christ.” Schweitzer’s new, broader mystical unity moved beyond the eschatological problem, but in that sense also seemed to leave the historical Jesus behind as well, except in the minds of those few who might be able to connect the two forms of mysticism. From his new universal mysticism with being-in any other living creature, Schweitzer had judged as inadequate even Kant’s simplifying the ethical impulse to show how it corresponded with Christianity. He argued 199

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that it presented only a formal rule but no real substance, and therefore not sufficiently life-affirming. It still used an imperative form rather than reading responsibility from a sense of mystic unity. One has to ask, however, whether Kant was correct in one of his positions, viz., insisting that the ethical Ideal cannot be intelligibly embodied, which means no Incarnation can serve as an ethical example. Schweitzer surmounted that by insisting that a moral “example” does not have to be perfect or the Ideal. But the claim of Incarnation, that is, of having “an immortal man” (“god/ man”) on earth supposedly as both a “Redeemer” as well as ethical Example, had left many people bewildered if not intimidated. The “two natures” Christology was of no help. Had the world therefore subconsciously become tired of hearing such impossibility still preached by the Church? Had the Incarnation as the Perfect Example finally become only a frustrating, confusing, and impossible picture to many within the Church? How could they emulate Jesus if he were God of “Son of God”? How could one answer with any confidence by simply asking “What would Jesus do?” Were there not many in the Christian fellowship who found the resolution between Redeemer and Example a form of “cheap grace” if one really took refuge in the justification side, so “ethical responsibility” was virtually eclipsed, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer later pointed out by mid-twentieth century? Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), did not refer to the problem as “cheap grace” but certainly faulted St. Paul for coming up with the idea of “redemption” which did, through Luther and others, morph into forensic justification, making ethics superfluous. Nietzsche, of course, lived prior to Schweitzer’s discovery, so his focus was simply on the traditional, even Lutheran Christian “Christ.” In his hyperbolic and brash form, he wrote “A single immortal man on earth would be enough to drive everything else on earth to universal rage for death and suicide out of satiety with him!”1 The implication was not against some insignificant, unique view of Christ of a separate denomination within Christianity; to the contrary, it was all-inclusive. Was this “satiety,” repletion, gorging, disgust, or boredom due to the repeated claim of such “an immortal man” who was presupposed as a man, yet was apotheosized to such a degree that his image had lost touch with his human nature,2 so could not in any way be thought by any serious person to be an ethical example? Despite the Docetic nature of the Church’s Christology (Docetism was officially anathematized by the Church, yet re-entered by the back door), the Church still preached such “an immortal man” as the ethical Example. The incongruity was enough to drive a serious person mad, Nietzsche asserted, even to suicide. In this way, we could say that chronologically Nietzsche preceded Schweitzer, but philosophically he succeeded Schweitzer by finding an ethic that could be valid without retaining any residue of the supranatural, not even a common “mysticism.” It would be based on instinct, autonomy,

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and honesty, as was Schweitzer’s view, but otherwise on one’s own unique reflection and perspective on the instinctual, live-affirming “will-to-power.” What would be new about that? There had been many ethical systems developed in different cultures for millennia that had nothing supranatural about them, for example, even the utilitarianism which both Schweitzer and Nietzsche opposed was not a “religious” or theological ethic in any sense. The real question, which was not yet articulated by either Schweitzer or Nietzsche, but finally by Rawls, was whether a nation in which religious pluralism existed could have an ethic underlying its system of justice which would provide enough unity and stability that it could include people with a diversity of even moral and religious opinions within it, or whether the exclusivity of religion’s ethics would make that impossible. Nietzsche was not interested in this question. But even without defining the problem this way, Nietzsche moved the discussion forward in seeing all values as strictly human and defining the primary human power as the will-to-power which is basically life-affirming, instinctual, driving to genuine and honest autonomy and consistency, accepting fate in whatever specifics life brings a person. Nietzsche’s comment about such “satiety” over the “immortal man on earth” was not prompted by some personal envy Nietzsche had toward Jesus because of the claim of Jesus’ exceptional nature. It did not derive from some sense of competition between Nietzsche and Jesus because of Nietzsche’s extravagant self-image and apparent lack of followers during his lifetime. One cannot say that this was simply Nietzsche’s egoistic problem. To the contrary, it was a cultural psychological-moral problem, one deeply embedded within Christendom, as expressed even by Nietzsche’s contemporary, Soren Kierkegaard, a psychological problem of satiety, or an overdose, a glutting of the claim and word, so everything was even labeled “Christian,” from the children to hospitals to political parties, perhaps, Kierkegaard quipped, even the higher animals and the brothels should also be called “Christian.” This was and is that satiety, exhaustion, or boredom. If it were news today that a somewhat revolutionary individual man had been accused of crimes against the state and was put to death in a gas chamber, declared dead, buried, but then shortly after three days there was a report that he was seen walking around town again, people would not be bored or glutted or overindulged. Perhaps skeptical of what went on in the gas chamber, but not bored. But if his followers then began to spread the news that he was actually Divine, and when skeptics asked to see him for themselves, the reply was that he had already ascended back to heaven, skepticism would probably intensify, but still not boredom, satiety, or exhaustion. Some might feel a bit of disgust because the claim seemed so obviously impossible, totally against modern science. What percentage of people would then believe the claims?

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But when the same message is repeated for not just a year or two, or a century or two, but a couple of millennia, the newness gradually wears off even though each new generation in that culture would perhaps naturally see novelty in the claims at first, and then grow to be skeptical. Eventually, parents might not teach their children that set of ideas very enthusiastically, even if they still took them to church where the pastor often spoke of Christ being raised from the dead. When many of these children grow up, having heard the same thing for twenty years or more, yet seeing no particular impact that such an idea has made on the world for better or worse, they might not be filled with such boredom that they were intent on murder or suicide as Nietzsche suggested, but they certainly might no longer participate in that religion. Did not the Dalai Lama estimate that probably no more than one billion of the people of the earth actively participate in any religion? Is Nietzsche right that satiety with its claims and irrelevance has taken over? The religion’s metaphysics in their absolutized forms have become problematic as the “metaphysics of infinity” rather than being oriented toward the empiricity of its subject, so the new human sciences stand firmly against it.3 Yet most religions are still quite unyielding in their claims to absoluteness. Why do humans have to feel that they have to be told how to live with each other by some Omnipotent, Omniscient eternal, and invisible Being? If the religious are asked that, they usually point to “sacred” scriptures written by humans over long periods in human language as the “revelation of God,” as the true “Dharma,” as the eternal “Torah,” but fail to see the incongruity. Some finally sense it when they learn that there are other religions espoused by reasonable people who make comparable claims about their religion, or when they hear their pastor, priests, imams, or others speak things as truth which they regard as quite false if not ludicrous. Even more begin to sense the “human” factor in religions when they find out a priest who allegedly not only knows the “truth” and “true ethics” but poses as an example of it, yet has a record of pedophilia which the church has covered up. People begin to be able to see through the religions’ claims of being invincible or infallible or the inerrant authority, when attached to human ideas or human beings, whether they claim to be interpreting sacred tradition, scripture, or even have direct access to God, and “satiety,” disillusionment, and even resentment is often reached. Yet many seem to think that the only option to religion supplying the ethic is that each individual person would be his or her own ethical authority, and certainly they can find many examples of people who manifest what a fearful prospect that could be. But they fail to see how trust and mutual autonomy could enable a society to work out an ethical agreement that could prevent the abuse they anticipate might come from a single person. With such an alleged all-powerful, all-loving God or Incarnation of God as most religions profess to have, the world should have been rid of its moral

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problems millennia ago. But they not only persist, but even the problems of “evil” which people see in nature—the tsunamis, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, floods, and so on—are still with us. If it is true that people are “religious” in order to “use” their gods in order to lay hold on “more life” or a better life, as William James said, there is little evidence that any gods have actually done that for humanity. On the contrary, we have had Crusades, the Inquisition, many forms of genocide in different countries including the horrible Holocaust, many decades of purely religious wars, and many other wars in which religion was utilized simply to strengthen obscene nationalistic purposes. If “religion” and even its ethics can be so used, it is little wonder that conservative Christian theologians such as Karl Barth have emphasized that we should not desire to be “religious,” but to be justified by Christ. But that does not escape the possible boredom, satiety, or the discovery of the limitations and exclusiveness that entails. It just digs the hole deeper, and relief more unlikely. James moved beyond such exclusiveness of metaphysical answers in his psychological understanding of people’s needs and experiences when he concluded that the “more life” which people seek does not require a “god” but simply anyone who could assist or enable the person to take the “next step” in improving his or her life. Or it might be that the assistance can be found in what James called “over-belief” or in areas of one’s consciousness which we still know little about.4 That implies that the solution to our ethical problems is more likely universally accessible in the very living creatures in our presence than in praying or sacrificing to some deity. Paul Tillich often emphasized that when we ask about the meaning of life, the answer is within the very questioning, that is, we already “stand” within the answer. But he was saying that we are asking about meaning and being, and we have beingitself or could not even ask the question. But that is too vague and offers no substantial answer to specific problems. Another real person could certainly help. In fact, the other real person is essential to our being human. What I am saying is that when we ask about specific ethical problems in our lives and world, the answer may lie within our relationships where we are seeing those very problems. That was what James was implying. That is what Schweitzer’s priority of the “will-to-live” meant. When we give our “will-to-live” and others’ similar “will-to-live” priority in our lives, we will begin to see how our relations can be improved, how we can take that “next step” in improving our lives, how we can assist each other to have a better life. We can converse, and we can actually reach agreements when it comes to improving relationships. Nietzsche’s insistence on people not being dependent upon others for guiding them did not mean he lacked personal assistance from others, but only that he sublimated some of his desires without being dishonest about it, for the sake of others.

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That means that we do not have to hunt through outer space or seemingly endless time or very remote ancient traditions to find some culture that discovered an alleged eternal being or some magic ritual or mantra or some theophany or revelation of the Ultimate Power that runs things. The answer to life is not contained only in one sacred scripture of one language of a single culture, much less in one’s special knowledge of that language which allows one to see hidden meanings in three or four special words by some special reason or spirit, much less in complex theology which relates the meanings of a single “revelation,” epistemology, ontology, phenomenology, linguistics, semiotics, psychology, anthropology, and so forth. Then the answer becomes, by our own doing, inaccessible, so not an answer at all. The chances are good that it is not that complex. We have to look to the living beings to find not simply the problems and questions of life but also the answers to the problems of living. In today’s globalization, in which most nations find a religious pluralism embraced by their citizens, and in which the growing majority have little or no religious affiliation or real participation, but still think themselves as ethical, any “answer” that is confined to a few or even a majority will only be divisive and resented by others. Our social contracts and the ethics underlying them must be voluntarily agreed on and inclusive of all involved, not coerced or built on exclusive criteria or interests or alleged theophanies or incarnations or special formulae. As Schweitzer emphasized, knowledge of our external world is almost infinite so is beyond human comprehension, but is not really mandatory to living anyway. It is not that we do not want to know anything about the universe(s) in which we live, or the inner working of the human brain, or the complex structure of certain viruses. We certainly do want to know, to discover more elements of these things. But all knowledge stands on a ladder of prioritizing, and to Schweitzer, the “first” datum of life is not even one’s thinking as Descartes posited, but rather the “will-to-live.” It is instinctual, self-created in the life-form itself as much as anything can be, and self-protective. We do not decide to have a “will-to-live,” but only whether to honor it in our thoughts and actions. Why would not that become the base for a universally accessible ethic? Why is not a universally accessible ethic the most important element in our lives? Why could people not be satisfied to work from that obvious base to decide on their other priorities in their existence? If such a primary datum could be formulated in a way to unite humanity while allowing diversity of opinions and behaviors so long as they did not negate or violate the principles established on this base which all agreed to, would it not be, in Leibniz’s words, the “best of all possible worlds”? The question must be asked, then, whether such an ethical base as “willto-live” would be acceptable or rejected by people who are either religious or

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non-religious. To answer this question, it might help to look at Nietzsche, one who called himself the great “Immoralist,” and whose talk about a “revaluation of all values” and his insistence on the necessity of destroying in order to create caused many to simplistically and incorrectly call him a “nihilist.” He saw the great inner contradiction of life, the real nihilism, in the anti-life ethics of Christianity, and considered the Church to be the “Antichrist.” But he also attempted to analyze the origins of all morality from a historical/ psychological approach, and found what he considered their weak, negative, resentful origins. Whether his analysis of these was totally correct or not, at least he was interested in looking at the whole world, not just one small, select part of it. That is, this problem for Christianity is not unique with it. Most religions have conflated historical and mythical or metaphysical claims making them impossible to verify, while ascribing to them and their ethics an incommensurable status. That does not justify their ethics built upon such metaphysics, especially not an ethic which is basically anti-life. Further, no global ethic can accommodate all the divisive and concrete different metaphysics of the various religions or of other competing absolutes or metaphysical, ideological schemas. If it is possible to build a valid ethic upon the universal “will-to-live,” it has to engage in specifics. We saw that Thomas Altizer seemed comfortable letting go of the transcendent “God” while he tried to be a Christian atheist, but even any direction ethically was vaguely only pointing to a new consciousness of nameless or anonymous totality which overturns all old conceptions, whatever they are. Even if one experiences the “otherness” or radical difference in other people vis-à-vis oneself, forfeiting the theistic God as well as the mythologically entwined apocalyptic Jesus, or even if one accepts Altizer’s coincidentia oppositorum, that provides in itself no ethical guidance whatever, nothing specific. The anonymity he discovered is evidence of the “satiety” of which Nietzsche spoke, when we have realized our usage of names has reached the point of self-contradiction and therefore boredom or disgust. It is parallel to Tillich’s discovery that, despite his emphasis of abstract expressionist art being the most existentially and religiously revealing by its shattering of forms, he finally began to realize (maybe by studying Pollock, Rothko, and others?) that perhaps some representation is needed after all in order for the artist to have some forms to shatter! Yet he remained fixed on the form of the symbol of the Cross, that it would still be religious even if it were both accepted and rejected. Perhaps he pushed too far Hegel’s schema of moving past representation. Difference remains difference unless some power or entity or relationship changes that. And if one continues to use the central figure of any religion even as the moral paradigm, there is a good chance that the old metaphysics

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will continue to reside just under the skin, a residue of a metaphysics that still makes it problematic not only for those of that religion, but quite objectionable to those outside that particular religion. We have seen this problem in the work of even the Parliament of Religions guided by Hans Küng and to a lesser degree in the ethics the Dalai Lama,5 that the religious particularity of the ethic shines through despite the effort to transcend it, so the exclusiveness and divisiveness of the religion are still present in the minds of those not within that particular religion. This suggests that new neutral symbols are needed which are not inherently attached to a single religion, which may be the only way people can be sure the principles that form the laws of their government are truly “freestanding.” To continue to derive the principles from a cross or star or empty circle is still retaining some idea of authority in that religion, which is enough to disqualify it as a primary universal base for ethics.6 Unless the “will-to-live” is experienced by people in radically different strengths, no person would be significantly more exemplary for others than any other person, but might be exemplary within certain fields of behavior and not others. Schweitzer saw the will-to-live as universal, needing no archetype or perfect example, yet he believed a reshaping of the ethics of the world could come about through individuals actually being examples of “Reverence for Life” even if not perfect. That was what he hoped for his life, not that he would be perfect. This corresponds to reality, and could have changed Kant’s mind, that an “embodiment” of ethics could be an example even if the person were not perfect, not completely the Ideal. To expect otherwise is like expecting every performance of a concert pianist, involving some of the most technically difficult compositions ever written, to be absolutely perfect. That is simply not realistic. Yet that pianist could still be a fantastic “example” to others. One has also to understand that whether something serves as an example to a person is largely determined by where that person stands on the scale of accomplishment. The more skillful a pianist is, the higher degree of skill she would require for something to be an example to her. So it is with any pursuit, whether in painting, writing, cleaning one’s house, driving a car, parenting, or any number of comportments one assumes, including ethically relating to others. The gap between what Schweitzer considered the universal, instinctual will-to-live and any reflection that transposes this into self-sacrifice for others is not totally clear, and he simply left it unresolved, even if individuals can serve as examples to others. He did say that somehow one’s own “will-tolive” is impressed by some manifoldness of the other, external “wills-to-live” and thereby driven to reflect on them.7 That manifoldness of diverse forms of “will-to-live” in the “others” may also have been what Altizer was hinting at when he said that somehow we do know of some “total presence,” even if we

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cannot articulate why, through the complete difference of those anonymous others confronting us. At least we know of difference, even if not “complete” or “total.” But that assumes that somehow one is driven past reflecting on the other as an object, but rather on its subjectivity. Even then, it is one thing to, as Buber suggested, feel the presence of a “You” in a tree’s total exclusive manifestation, and to feel the presence of a “You” that is equal to one’s “I.” Many ethicists speak of experiencing the image or cry of the “other” and “identifying” with it. But what is it that causes the experiencing of the other to be equal to one’s “I,” since even the tree and a work of art, as Buber indicated, can be sensed as a “You”? For those open to thinking of the tree as a possible “You,” what causes the “You” of the tree to remain always only a “You” but never really another “I” whereas in speaking to another person, we recognize the “You” as an “I” like myself? While one’s concern for the fantastic tree may cause one to take care of it, pruning it, fertilizing it, and watering it, few people would think one would actually talk to it or even die for a tree to live, despite recent studies that suggest some forms of communication the tree itself carries on, which we will mention later. But humans do arrive at the feeling toward other humans, a feeling that passes even mere equality, to a sense of unity that is more important than one’s own life, and drives one to sacrifice one’s life for the other—not simply because that is the kind of person I am, as Schweitzer suggested, but because that is the kind of unity we are. The relationship is everything. I suggested in examining Schweitzer that somehow the relationship needed to have some mutual understanding or agreement between the parties in order to show that kind of self-abnegation or overruling one’s own will-to-live to preserve the other’s life and his or her “will-to-live.” That type of agreement is the missing link from description to moral decision or sense of moral imperative, or from observation to action, from instinct to reflection. Schweitzer, however, emphasized one’s autonomy, that the ethical decision of when and how to respond, particularly whether to extend one’s life affirmation to the other person by some self-diminution or even self-negation or self-sacrifice was always simply one’s individual decision, nothing to be decided by others. Of course it must in that extreme a case, but the relationship still informs that decision even if the other has no actual voice in the instant decision. For this reason he also said one can never stand in judgment of another person about which way he or she decides between self-affirmation and selfnegation when confronted by the “will-to-live” in the other. In any situation involving such a choice, in any case, Schweitzer considered neither a decision for self-affirmation to be pure selfishness nor the decision for self-negation as cowardice. The autonomy and immunity from other’s judgment work only on one level; it does not work when it comes to the ethics underlying a social

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contract or structure of justice. There must be principles the interested parties have agreed to in advance which determine whether an action is right or wrong, whether it is legal or illegal, whether it is commendable or punishable by some sanction of a form of reparation. That is the agreement that we will find finally in the insights of John Rawls in chapter 7, that law often needs agreed sanctions for any violations such as for tax law. Many situations involve both honoring the individual’s decision as well as having civil controls over its scope. For example, if a third party is in no position to tell me when I should ask to be taken off life-support systems when I have an accident which leaves me in a permanent comatose state, if I have not designated by a living-will or by other means that I want to have such systems removed from me, for another person, under his or her own judgment, to remove the life-support from me would be unethical if not also illegal. Yet if I do have a “living-will” which specifies when I want to be removed from such life-support systems, even though one may not understand what subjective reasons I had for requesting to have such systems removed from me, we have to honor the patient’s wishes under certain circumstances even if we do not understand his or her reasoning. Of course, any decisions people make, just as any principles that we may call “freestanding” are never literally totally free of all influence or causal relations involving others. We do not simply arrive at all our ideas and values without any input from culture or other people. So much of the moral value of a decision will depend not simply upon my moral reflection but also upon what the other persons or living objects’ instinct or conscious reflection is, not to mention what kind of specific relation exists between us and the nature of communication between the self and others that has occurred. Although these seem minimized in Nietzsche, those relations were very present and quite instrumental in shaping his own views, even if he assumed full responsibility for his views and actions. THE QUEST FOR THE CONNECTION BETWEEN INSTINCT, REFLECTION, AND ACTUAL BEHAVIOR Albert Schweitzer wrote that Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860), who represented pessimism or world-negation and Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), who represented self-affirmation, neither one lived “in accordance with his view of life.” Schopenhauer’s view of life was negating, or denial, or pessimism, yet he was “no ascetic but a bon vivant,” and Nietzsche’s view was life-affirming but he lived “in isolation.” Schweitzer’s reading of their personal lives was true to a large degree. His conclusion was that “the ethical consists neither of life-negation nor of life-affirmation, but is a mysterious combination of the two.”8 This is a profundity that needs to be fully realized.

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I reiterate that Schweitzer saw mysticism as the stimulus to action, but he insisted that it is not a mysticism with Being, but only a mystical unity with “reality,” that is, with the few particular manifestations of being in actual beings with whom I am in contact, not some inner connection with and devotion to a Supreme Being but to beings themselves. He wrote, “in the mysticism of reality self-devotion is no longer a purely intellectual act, but one in which everything that is alive in man has its share. There is therefore dominant in it a spirituality which carries in itself in elemental form the impulse to action.”9 Schweitzer was in the position we have anticipated, of realizing the need for a global ethic, but becoming aware that it cannot be built upon any religion, even after being raised in a Christian home and being professionally trained in Christian theology. Unfortunately, the awareness of the need for such a global ethic transcending all religious ethics has seemed to be a position that people often arrive at finally only when they begin to feel personally threatened at the possibility of the influence of a foreign religion with its ethics founded on what they think is an incredible metaphysics. There is no sign that Schweitzer ever felt threatened in that way, but only that he realized such a gap between cultures once he was at Lambarene that he had to look beyond the specific religions or ideologies to find an ethical ground he and his new neighbors could hold in common.10 Certainly, to many people, their religious identity remains fundamental, unquestionable, and they would feel they were a heretic, infidel, blasphemer, or worse if they violated or let slip that identity. His Christian identity remained with him, but he realized a plurality of perspectives demands a way of mutually relating to each other that all sides can voluntarily embrace. He found the answer very easily and naturally, since he knew all cultures have their unique and particular religious understandings and symbols as well as ethical norms, and human relations which require a mutual agreement or compromise even if it is not articulated. That idea of such a “mysterious combination” of “everything that is alive in man” forming a “spirituality” which “carries in itself” an “impulse to action” is like saying the totality of one’s being, when confronted or driven by a will-to-live naturally somehow motivates one to action. Inasmuch as this implies the moral empowerment is instinctual, and was based on affirming life, Schweitzer and Nietzsche stand on the same platform, despite the accuracy of Nietzsche’s historical, psychological, sociological, and economic analysis of the origins of human morality. His pre-psychoanalytic analysis may have been the first of its kind in analyzing morality as Nietzsche thought. In fairness, I must point out that despite Nietzsche’s exaggeratedly authoritarian style, all the bluster and apparent certainty—he labels his approach in this perspectivism as “experimental” and as providing only a possible explanation or suggestions for future thinkers to consider or develop.

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A couple of other factors suggest the appropriateness of examining Nietzsche at this point. First, he, like Schweitzer, came from a very Lutheran Christian background, and his father was a pastor, but died at age thirtyseven, before Friedrich turned five years of age. In his early years in schools, he excelled in literature and religious studies, but when he was in college and thereafter, he became interested in philology, in ancient Greek culture. He also became quite disenchanted with the lack of seriousness about life that he observed in general, and his readings and experiences moved him to question Christianity and what he called its ethics of ressentiment and decadence, its slave-mentality. He found both the supranaturalism of theism and the veneration of Christ were full of contradictions, false causation, and terribly anti-scientific, so no longer credible. But rather than abandon his concern for morality, he saw more intensely the need for a universal or global ethic which required a wholesale revaluation of values. When he tried to imagine the world in which “God is dead,” however, his “madman’s” disconcerting questions spoke of a terrible disorientation. Yet he became sure that there is no “God” but only the diminishing residue of an ancient but now totally incredible idea of God as if necessary to an ethic, which, ironically is a terribly cruel, vindictive and anti-life ethic, doing no favor to the “God” it had constructed. In fact, Nietzsche was quite convinced that the picture drawn of this Christian God, especially his strange reversal of roles between the debtor and creditor11 and his apparent indiscriminate “pity,”12 shamed both the object of the pity as well as “God” himself, causing his “death” as people realized the inhumaneness of such a picture of deity. The crises of divisiveness and therefore limited usefulness of religious ethics are even more obvious in the twenty-first century due to instant global communication and radical emigration patterns, forming more competitive pluralistic situations, resentment, and acts of hatred and violence. Nietzsche’s ideas challenged the individual’s retention or institution’s retention of a particular religious identity in the face of ineffective, hypocritical, and irrelevant ethics that lie in its deepest psychological roots. While Schweitzer was correct in noting Nietzsche’s isolation, that was not entirely his choice. It was due to his extreme illnesses for most of the latter part of his adult life. His sickness greatly restricted his social life, although when he was able to be with people, they found him personable and pleasant, even as his university quickly promoted him as a brilliant philologist. He also was too independent to put himself into a position of being cared for by others as long as he could manage. This actually appears to be very consistent with his philosophy even when his body and eyes deteriorated, and eventually his mind. He ironically fit his own description of “genius” in “squandering” himself13 or burning himself out as his will-to-power “discharged its strength” in manifold written expressions of protest against a nihilistic world, even

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publishing frenetically at the end while he sensed very few people actually reading his books or understanding him. Our concern here, however, is not to compare Nietzsche with Schopenhauer but with Schweitzer. They were born thirty years apart, and Schweitzer died sixty-five years after Nietzsche. As I mentioned, both were born with Lutheran Christian pastors for a father. The excesses of the French Revolution and great optimism of the Enlightenment had created subsequent philosophies that did not buy all the easy optimism, autonomy, freedom, and absoluteness of Hegel’s historical tracing of the Absolute Spirit. Real life seemed still to contain an inner conflict, opposing forces, that did not simply create the glorious synthesis or obvious “working of God” in Germany’s superiority, as Hegel had thought. War did not disappear from European soil. The Teutonic gods that had been largely supplanted by the Jewish-Christian God, found supporters who became quite nationalistic. While Russia engaged in programs against its Jewish peasants or farmers especially in the 1880s, anti-Semitism also took a hold in other European countries despite the Jewish Emancipation that was occurring in separate countries through the nineteenth century. Nietzsche quite early on detected that Russia’s size and structural political unity dwarfed the European small states, and eventually there would be a quest for world domination rather than mere border disputes or skirmishes (BGE, p. 321). Nietzsche served as a medical orderly briefly in 1867 in the FrancoPrussian War, and contracted severe illnesses from his patients. Two years later, he joined the University of Basel even prior to finishing his dissertation, and was quickly elevated to the status of professor. Other illnesses and a fall from a horse all took a toll on him, so the last three decades of his life were plagued with debilitating illness, only occasionally momentarily remitted. During these years, he became fastidiously careful about his diet, climate, and extreme exercise such as long walks in the Alps. Several of his early relations and ideals dissolved: Wagner turned too Christian with his Parsifal, then even espousing an anti-Semitism; Schopenhauer’s focus on “Will” was gradually perceived by Nietzsche as an insufficient explanation and too pessimistic; Cosima Wagner became a close friend but had to remain only that, primarily in his imagination, since she was never available for marriage to Nietzsche nor even aware of his love for her; and Nietzsche’s sister disturbed him terribly when she married one of the leading anti-Semites in Germany, Bernhard Förster. Wagner, Schopenhauer, and Cosima all appear in Nietzsche’s writings. Unfortunately, his sister took over his writings after his mental breakdown, giving them her own peculiar cast as an anti-Semite, but she seemed incapable of understanding her brother’s philosophical thought. In his gradual decline, he did retain a few professor friends such as an older colleague at Basel, historian of Greek culture, Jacob Burkhardt.

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Thus, Nietzsche essentially experienced only two decades of lucidity within his period of intellectual brilliance, having to self-publish some of his books and re-write prefaces to most of them. Prior to losing his mind in 1889, he still felt he was not read or understood, and his writings did not sell. His sister changed all that with her control over his publications, making him a legend by the time of his death in 1900, even if she completely misrepresented his thought. In the past century-plus, his profundity has spread worldwide exponentially, even more than Schweitzer’s which grew more slowly—and both because of early false interpretations or envy of either their thought or their work. Despite Schweitzer’s fitting the situation for which we are searching, one might still ask why utilize the thought of Nietzsche in this study? After all, he did claim to be an “immoralist,” even the “great immoralist.” He claimed to give psychological interpretations of morality and religion, but he occasionally impugned the motives of psychologists14 just as he did of philosophers, and he had no formal training in psychology, which was a relatively new discipline in human science. And why honor even his idea of science, especially human science, since he belittled science in general as merely professing total “objectivity” while it was based on unproven presuppositions, or absolutes, just as he accused philosophy? (GM, p. 589) And did not Nietzsche himself boast of being a “nihilist”? Indeed he did. But he conceived himself only a nihilist of the nihilism that was so obvious in his day, a nihilism of the decadence that was so self-evident not simply in cultural and political spheres but in thought itself, and especially in morality—specifically in the predominant morality of Christianity, a Christianity formed over centuries that is even more anti-life and other-worldly that its originator, the Apostle Paul. That ethic was lifetimes separated from the Jesus or Christ that was the presupposition of the early church. To Nietzsche, the Christian church itself became the “Antichrist.”15 But he insisted many times in different ways that his sure method of “truth” was to be willing to subject everything to testing. That basic understanding he had discloses the very reason for examining his thinking in the twenty-first century. One can no longer assume a uniform theocratic culture, or even a single religion with its narrow, absolutized though ancient morality. In fact, such uniformity never was a realistic picture for the world; it only existed in the minds of people who were either ignorant of the different cultures, religions, ethics, and values of others because of geographical isolation, or refused to acknowledge them as legitimate. That is, it is a mentality possible only when people are isolated either geographically or mentally. Obviously, in ancient times, the whole “world” was not in play as it is today, and religious pluralism within a given culture was not a reality until recently, which now creates a problem never before faced.16 The ancient

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world was not intricately connected with all the parts perceived as extremely interdependent and communicating continually with each other. These old ideas of “uniformity” of one particular and exclusive metaphysics is just the most basic of the “presuppositions” or prejudices of most people still today simply because their identities include so many inherited elements over which they never had any control or felt they had any choice. But in the twenty-first century, with the ubiquitous, instant worldwide communications, even though one still inherits much of one’s identity, it is no longer possible to be ignorant of significant differences. It is also impossible to extricate oneself from the international treaties of different nations, the multinational corporations that have virtual control of nearly everyone’s supplies and services, and the interdependence of the various nations’ economic systems and controls. True information and false or intentional misinformation are instantly, effortlessly passed back and forth thousands of miles in seconds, and weapon systems capable of annihilating humanity and desolating its Earth are spread throughout Mother Earth in visible but also very secret places, at the fingertips of many different, sometimes unstable, world leaders. So the question of what to do with such differences looms large—whether to accept the reality of pluralism, globalism, international interdependence, to try to work out a sense of unity or to hunker down into isolated units to protect a certain identity with its inherited and even now misplaced or imagined uniformity, hegemony or value system, or even specific religion. How the latter choice could survive in a world inextricably bound together seems really a non-option, about as feasible as somehow with a giant knife, slicing Mother Earth in half and thinking it will continue to function properly or beneficially. Ethics are simply articulated principles and/or coherent systems of moral principles which people agree on to guide their relations with one another. They necessarily ground any laws that states or nations create or adopt. In this broad scope, certainly Nietzsche is correct in seeing the “origin” of morality, in its various forms, coming from fear of one’s neighbor or any “other,” just as the earliest ideas of assuming a sense of responsibility toward another came from the exchanging of things between people, from which the fantastic idea of being able to “promise” something to another for which one was responsible was both basic to human interactions but then began to be applied to non-economic exchanges or relations as well, finally even to religious mythology as “debt” humans owed “God,” which when not paid, had to include “punishment,” even if Christianity ended up with the absurd picture of creditor paying the debtor’s debt!17 It is hard to fault Nietzsche interpretation of these possible causes. Yet the ethics seem always to be the invisible element that is simply presupposed, that everyone knows and agrees to live by, but is itself not a subject for deciding, even if it was originally derived from non-flattering speculation

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about “God” or feelings of one’s inadequacy or fear of the other. Why is it so intimidating to ask about the ground of one’s ethics? When people elect not to abide by the understood civil or criminal laws in their relating to others, then a neutral party such as a Court must step in to decide on any necessary form of justice or enforcement of what was assumed as a contract between them. Courts or arbitrators, however, do not willingly engage in deciding cases on the basis of ethics, but only on the written law and precedent decisions. While that may be understandable to a degree, even so, much of that written law is not explicitly known to most citizens, and is so prolific that no citizen in a country knows all the laws. That is, it for the most part, remains as unknown or undiscussed as the ethics upon which it is grounded. It is as if a vague understanding of liberty and union is simply presupposed by most, and their particular ways of conceiving of these determine what people think the law is unless they hear of specific laws, which seldom carry with them any ethical justification. It is as if both the ethical foundation of the myriads of laws and the laws themselves are intuitive or universally innate within humans. Yet only the most basic elements of laws, if even they, could be thought of as known or recognized by all humans. What would be taken as such knowledge of the laws would more likely be simply the general type or apparent norms of human society and culture that have evolved over the millennia, which are absorbed in mostly subconscious ways or without many principles or laws actually being articulated.18 At the same time, allegedly no state or country allows “ignorance of the law” as an excuse for violating it. Indeed, it is a strange mixture of knowing and not-knowing, of visible words and invisible values, or of responsibility and the impossibility of being responsible. This is less than satisfactory. So in the search for a common anchor or ground by which not just a select few can live in peace and find fulfilled and satisfying lives, but something all people could agree to with regard to their relating to each other, we are inevitably led all the way back to the supposed ethics that underlie the law by which we are assumed, mutually voluntarily, to have agreed. But although morality is a common concern, and the “moral” is a common adjective for actions or behaviors, attitudes and plans, there are few institutions devoted to discussing morality or analyzing ethics. Obviously, religious institutions are among the few. Most religions carry with them an articulated system of moral or ethical principles, but even they are seldom discussed as a system in which one is allowed to see how principles are connected to each other and to some base or ground. Instead, it is often propounded, even as Nietzsche’s words, only as a command, “Thou shalt . . .!” Further, they are not usually discussed as an open inquiry, calling for the members of the group to evaluate the various principles to see whether or

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not they are credible. It is nearly always assumed they are not only credible, but eternally true, absolutely authoritative and binding, and have ultimate and certain consequences. There is little room for the believer to use his or her autonomy or own unique thoughts to challenge, replace, or negate the few ethics the religion advances. Discussions among the religious, even over specific ethical issues, seldom if ever penetrate deeper than the issue itself, assuming that some principle is sufficient to cover the problem without exploring what presuppositions lie even behind that chosen principle. At this point, if not before, the problem of difference and exclusiveness arises, perhaps out of curiosity, but more likely, from consternation over the possible challenge. Since any religious ethic is necessarily grounded on the religion’s metaphysical or mythical absolute and is exclusive if not also very heteronomous, therefore divisive, no religion can provide the ground for a global ethic. We saw that admission by the Dalai Lama earlier. Therefore, the search of this present study is to find a possible ethic that is not dependent upon any religion, an ethic which people could voluntarily or autonomously adopt for their public life, so could serve as a possible universal ethic, while leaving them to be free to continue to embrace their religion in some limited form or be non-religious in their private sphere. After introducing the problem, we have seen how Schweitzer provided us with an example of how it is possible to move from a religious ethic to a non-religious ethic in his shift from a “Christ-mysticism” to a “Reverence for Life,” from a specific apocalyptic-mystical ethic to a universal ethic of “will-to-live” which recognizes that same will-to-live not just in other human beings but in all forms of life. The question he attempted to solve was how “instinct” is related to “reason.” It is for this reason, we turned to Nietzsche’s emphasis upon “instinct” in his multi-faceted analysis, his multi-perspectival attempt to get beyond heteronomy and theism, to find a more “common” connection humans can agree to in their relations. He had perceived the sense of the loss of the “metaphysics of infinity” as Foucault termed it, and expressed hope that now that Christian morality had destroyed Christian metaphysics via Kant and others, and was destroying the morality itself, the world could re-examine the genealogy of morality and return to instinct prompting reason to make instinctually obvious advances (GM, p. 597). I will address briefly each of the motifs in the title of this chapter: (1) instinct as end, (2) the end as life-process, (3) the will to power and sublimation, and (4) operating within the process of honesty and truth. Even these few topics have all kinds of other ethical ramifications. The three themes of “revaluation of all values,” “mutual autonomy,” and the “overman” (Übermensch) are embedded within nearly every paragraph since they are so interrelated with these four topics. The one qualification has to be made that while nearly everything Nietzsche says involves autonomy, even when not

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specifically mentioned, he really never speaks of “mutual autonomy” or its equivalent, even if his system must presuppose it. Because this analysis is not one of proceeding chronologically through Nietzsche’s writings, its focus is more on the last several of his most mature works he published after he was able to “return” to himself in 1878, that is, to regain his autonomous or real self again.19 He often emphasized that what he was doing had never been done before, and one catches a glimpse of this even in his “madman” in the Gay Science who declared the “death of God” and then realized that he was far ahead of his time and therefore not understood. On many occasions, Nietzsche changed his views about certain people or ethical issues or offered in places negative criticism of something he later embraced with a positive assessment, such as the Enlightenment, Socrates, and others.20 Other sweeping negative descriptions he provides, I leave to him or others to resolve, and I will not try to outguess him. This includes his views of women, equality, education, nobility, eternal recurrence, and the “slave-morality” Hegel uncovered in Ancient Israel (which Nietzsche never outgrew, despite his later insistence that he was opposed to anti-Semitism but simply repeats the same caricature of Ancient Israel) and connected the slave-morality to Christianity. I also cannot resolve his usage of the absolute adjectives he implies with his references to “cause,” “will,” and the like, defeating even any later moderate use of the concepts. As I attempt to put things in a more common language, without the rhetorical flair, accusing style, and irony, which makes him so interesting to read, I humbly acknowledge Kaufmann’s insightful but humbling notice: “Nietzsche’s books are easier to read but harder to understand than those of almost any other thinker.”21 I believe the difficulty of feeling one has truly understood Nietzsche may be true of a great number of thinkers of the past and present, which may slightly dilute the logic of Kaufman’s assessment, but underscores a warning to anyone wanting to “explain” Nietzsche. It is even more intimidating when one recalls all of Nietzsche’s negative statements of the way he viewed people who try to “systematize”: “I mistrust all systematizers and I avoid them. The will to a system is a lack of integrity” (TI, p. 470). After reading him and lecturing on him since 1970, I can but cautiously suggest that I am trying only to elucidate briefly certain elements of his thinking that pertain to the moral issue of this specific project, but to try not to obscure, and with no claim of actually “systematizing” such an unsystematic but profound thinker. “INSTINCT” AS END? Anyone who gives some thought to ethical terms would not think that ethics was simply a matter of instinct. Nor did Nietzsche. While he saw instinct as

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an inherent human trait, so “natural” in that sense, he did not think that just everything that was “natural” in a person should be unleashed, nor that one should just spend life reacting as with “knee jerks.” To the contrary, instinct had to be restrained to fit the style one was giving to one’s character, restrained so that a human becomes “satisfied” with himself. This, he called the “One Thing is Needful” in the Gay Science.22 But I underscored “simply” since one certainly gets the impression that instinct should control the limits of reason.23 To provide instinct with such power is not only anti-Kantian, but to consider it as one’s “end” or “purpose” or “goal” or even restraint of reason is even more puzzling since that would appear to be a reversion to cruder forms of being human. It seems quite indefinite, vague, opaque, and misleading. But Nietzsche was convinced that reason has to depend not only on body, brain, and metabolism, but also genetic or inherited traits from one’s entire history and environment—all of which comprise at least a part of instinct—to do any kind of thinking (TI, pp. 492–98). This broad understanding of “instinct” is crucial and can hardly be gainsaid. He noted that he began wondering about the origin of the ideas of good and evil at age thirteen, and in exploring it, gave “honor to God” and “made him the father of evil,” which, of course, was very anti-Kantian, a new immoral, or at least unmoralistic, a priori. But he continued the search, distinguishing theological prejudice from moral prejudice, adding psychological questions to his historical and philological training (GM, pp. 452–53). He finally learned that phenomena itself contains nothing moral in itself; phenomena are judged valuable just as actions are judged moral, only as a judging from a particular perspective.24 From this he derived his conclusions that ethics or morality will not be discovered by one key word such as “Will” or “Causality.” In fact, “causality” must be understood in the very broadest terms which reach into the incalculable and unknown, which means it also needs to re-direct its focus more on the manifestations of instinct as we presently experience them, even without any suggestion thereby that we know what the “essence” of humanity is. But he also inserted a caveat: By giving such priority of place to “instinct,” did not mean giving instincts free rein. He was quite opposed to any “abandonment to one’s instincts.” He opined that in our modern times, that would be “one calamity more [since] our instincts contradict, disturb, destroy each other.” Rather, this conception of “freedom” goes too far. Instead, pressure must be exerted so that more than one of the instinct systems yields to a single one as master. In this way, control is achieved rather than self-destruction, by the “pruning” of the individual in which he or she is made whole (TI, pp. 545–46). As Nietzsche viewed the different arts, he saw the more visually oriented as utilizing instinct but in a quite controlled style, as Apollonian, and

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arts such as music, dance, lyric poetry as mere “residue” of the Dionysian frenzy. These opposites, which may be found more explicitly combined in architecture or other aesthetic areas, illustrate the need for instinct and reason to work together (TI, pp. 519–21). But this is largely Nietzsche’s stand against morality allegedly being based only on reason, which, in its opposition to that which is “natural,” ends up defying the instinctual (TI, pp. 489–90). Real life requires simply directing thinking at that which is obvious, is given, is phenomenal, even in other people’s actions and words as reflecting beings—rather than to center one’s thinking on mere imagined ideals and presuppositions as if they were eternal truths, or to focus down on one thought on unquestioned metaphysical-morality or on simply the aspects of nature which appear not to be conscious. It is also to put everything to the test. To do this, however, one must both learn to see, learn to think and learn to be skeptical or suspend decision rather than making a decision merely as a reaction to a stimulus (TI, p. 511). Nothing is exempt. Schweitzer insisted that we really need to know very little to be moral, primarily just know of our “will-to-live” which, in itself, will open up further elements of knowledge which are important. Nietzsche admitted that one cannot know everything of even one’s own history, much less the history of humanity which has become a part of one’s present material and spiritual existence, and one cannot extricate oneself from the actual movement and changes in history so as to attain some bird’s-eye perspective (or divine perspective from “outside” history) of the whole (Ibid., p. 474). That is one of many perspectives which is simply out of bounds. But to understand “morals,” one must at least explore its “genealogy” to the degree possible,, to which modern humans are totally ignorant, especially, he says of the last 2,000 years of its development.25 Does this limitation of knowledge supply all the more justification for looking more to instinct, even as Schweitzer said one must, in one’s absence of complete knowledge, look more to one’s “will-to-live”? From a quasihistorical-psycho-analytical approach, Nietzsche conjectured how instinct and other physio-psychological elements, confronted by certain environmental and societal factors, led to the idea of humans being able to contract with each other, which established motivation usually hidden at the time for the development of conscience, conceptions of justice, and reasons for punishment, all of which were later made transcendent or attached to one or more god.26 Although many people may have traditionally felt all these came from a transcendent source, there were simply many-faceted empirical causes such as inhibition, ressentiment, weakness, and others, which, over time, with instinct, were discounted, as the “gods,” “God,” or later, “reason,” were seen as the source for all ideas of morality.

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Even if one could attain a perspective of all the outer dynamics of the historical and empirical dimensions of humans relations in valuing, by being outside all history or being at its end and able to look at everything in retrospect, that would still be insufficient since one would need to see the more subjective side, the physiological and psychological dimensions in the minds of those involved, which affected their ideas, values, and motivations. He says this is reason enough to conclude that one can never really talk about absolute values of “life.”27 To those who still carry over the ancient tradition of the necessity of having some external ‟God” (or Kant’s moral equivalent as the summum bonum or causally as the ens realissimum) to command the ethics and determine the values, Nietzsche simply insists that all values are human values, originating with humans, and exist only when they are thought or communicated in human language (GM, p. 490). But all value judgments on life simply cannot have any final credibility since one is either still living, so an interested party or “bone of contention,” or one is not living, so has another reason for not being able to evaluate life.28 He emphasizes that what causes us to posit values about life is life itself (TSZ, p. 171) just as Schweitzer did the same with “life” or the “will-to-live” or even by personifying “Ethics.”29 Life itself involves instinct, so one has to ask about the status of the life engaged in the valuation. The specific valuations or perspectives will be the symptoms that reveal what kind of life the person is living, whether it is strong, ascending, courageous, or weakened, declining and weary. But such an analysis does not tell us what value life should have to us, despite Nietzsche’s various positive and negative terms such as “ascending” and “descending,” or “higher men,” “aristocrats,” and “overman” vis-à-vis “plebian” or the “herd” or “common people.” Even these physical characteristics may be more caricatures than the truth. It may often become evident that in very ironic situations the symptoms indicate almost nothing about the person’s actual valuation of life. Case in point was Nietzsche himself, so ill with migraine headaches, stomach problems, and nausea, and finally paralysis and complete mental breakdown, but he insisted that one loves life only genuinely if one could will it to repeat itself over and over, just as it has been, without removing the problems, illnesses, and crises. That was one way he viewed his idea of “eternal recurrence,” so even when in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, he ties the desire for eternal recurrence to wanting to experience joy more and more (TSZ, p. 435), that is only an unrealistic portion of real life which always contains, and must be accepted as, both joy and pain, just as creativity must also require pain or destruction, which he emphasizes at the conclusion of Twilight of the Idols.30 To desire eternal joy does not manifest that one loves real life, but only a selected part of it. He said much more about “eternal recurrence,” which, for the most part has no bearing on the question of morality which is our focus here.

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But the overwhelming aspect of Nietzsche’s argument which I already mentioned, is Nietzsche’s intensification of the task by arguing that all ethics actually bring with them the biography and thought and therefore also the whole previous history of each person trying to formulate ethics or morality, their own personal and individual bias as is true for philosophers as well. He asks where would one gain justification for presupposing his or her own narrow history and exposure and perspective could become universal. So one never escapes one’s own personal involvement and influence of one’s thinking, but one can distinguish terrible inconsistencies of principles. He believed that by taking different perspectives of humans throughout history, utilizing psychological insights, he could point in a positive direction about the actual “origin” of morality. He set up the criteria that morality must be for-life not against-life, consistently and honestly, and perhaps I say, “perhaps” from that to further elucidation of morality, one can take Zarathustra’s insight fairly valid in honoring a mutual autonomy above everything else when he said, “‘This is my way; where is yours?’—thus I answered those who asked me ‘the way.’ For the way—that does not exist.”31 Further, he insists that to think one can be “certain” of anything as Descartes and his progeny believed, or to think one could actually understand things of the world by subjecting those empirical experiences to the categories of judgment which are alleged to be completely newly discovered “faculties” completely independent of all experience or a priori as Kant did, was to Nietzsche complete nonsense (BGE, 207–17). But one must do the best one can do in subjecting all this history of oneself to one’s apparent instincts and reason to at least begin the discussion of morality or human values of relating. This meant for him not simply finding the different perspectives within one’s own history, but utilizing different scientific disciplines such as psychology, sociology, history, and so on which themselves are situated as different perspectives. He often reversed the usual or given perspective to see if it could be approached differently to get the whole picture, for example, instead of thinking of increasing one’s autonomy or strength or maturity by getting support from other sources who agree with me or seem compatible and encouraging, I should ask about what seems counter to my autonomy, strength or maturity. I should value the difference, the competition, the opposition, the challenge, even the “enemy.” And be thankful for the “enemy” and even “love the enemy” without whom one would never reach one’s maturity (TI, p. 488). This “enemy” is still needed even in one’s “spiritualization” of instinct or in one’s sublimation, where he calls it an “internal enemy.” He pushed this to the extreme of insisting that he wanted to see more “evil” from people rather than a weak-willed or thoughtless subservience to some heteronomous power or ideal or external command to do “good.” This uncovers the profundity of

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his thought that opposites are needed to stimulate a “will to power,” or at least to stir one to re-thinking, so that any creation often requires a first step of destroying, as he emphasized in his conclusion of Twilight of the Idols (TI, pp. 562–63). He was convinced that the more perspectives one can utilize, the more one will realize the actual complex relations of phenomena, as Schacht so ably describes.32 If something does not become “good” or merely by being the result of some cause, even a rational cause, it also does not become “good” simply by meeting some requirement of the actor’s intention. But Nietzsche views the methods of examining the “result” to see its “cause” or of uncovering the “intention” or maxim or underlying principle as the two most common methods or criteria throughout the history of morality (BGE, 233–34). In fact, he says the intentions are only the surface and skin, simply symptoms which must not overpower all the unintentional aspects of each action or thought (BGE, 234). The profundity of this is obvious. Certainly, in our present world, we understand that people are often motivated to decisions and actions by what we call “subconscious” rather than conscious reflections. In fact, Nietzsche goes so far as to impugn people’s misconception to think they call up their thoughts; to the contrary, ideas or thoughts come to mind on their own, by innumerable and unseen and unknown stimuli.33 A good Dionysian example might be that instinct is what stimulates sexual interest and union, whereas, if instinct is not generating the interest, no amount of even intense intellectual effort will help, and may even completely overrule the instinct.34 Further, something also cannot be judged as moral, good or “right” just because it makes the person happy, or even makes the greatest number of people happy.35 Nor is any person moral simply because he obeys another (heteronomy) or himself (autonomy). “Will” only affects other “wills,” not the nerves, but the nerves and many other physical elements can affect the will, so lie in a more powerful position in one’s life. He is convinced that the “instinctive life” actually functions in an integrated fashion with equilibrium, so long as “all organic functions are still synthetically intertwined along with self-regulation, assimilation, nourishment, excretion, and metabolism” (BGE, 238). The “genealogy of morals” shows the primary criteria to be some kind of “self-overcoming.” Yet this in itself, as Kaufmann noted, may pose a real problem if the primary power of life is defined by Nietzsche within his monistic system as the fundamental “will to power” or “discharge of one’s strength.” It cannot be self-affirming and self-negating at the same time if it is only one force,36 although we saw this difficulty before in Schweitzer, but he believed the self-affirmation of one’s “will-to-live” may motivate one to deny oneself or engage in some self-negation as one’s own “will-to-live” or Reverence for Life discovers the same “will-to-live” in all other living

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beings.37 Nietzsche, however, objects even more strongly that his “will to power” is not simply a mere “will-to-live,” since he insists that they are already living so have no need to desire what they already have, and those who are not alive have no will at all. But this is to confuse the issue which, put more in the words of William James, was people’s desire for “MORE life,” in both quantity and quality. Both Nietzsche and Schweitzer were opposed to justifying the “good” as being a natural altruism that is instinctual. The altruism, if natural or universally instinctual, would lead to consistent relinquishing of one’s rights, and diminishing of one’s life in favor of others’ needs, in a prodigal or indiscriminate way. Rather, the move from self-affirmation to any self-negation in favor of the other person comes only in situations in which the other’s willto-live or will-to-power is subject to one’s intense reflection of the instinct of competing parties who possess only an instinctual will-to-live. But still, self-preservation is certainly instinctual, but is only one of the possible ways in which the will-to-power expresses itself or is applied through spiritual reflection. He demands [p]hysiologists should think before putting down the instinct of self-preservation as the cardinal instinct of an organic being. A living thing seeks above all to discharge its strength—life itself is will to power, self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent results. (BGE, p. 211)

Certainly he saw the “will-to-power” as meaning a “self-overcoming” (also called a “going under”) as he used the latter term dozens of times in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, as the goal or end (purpose in the process) of the Übermensch, who thereby is distinguished from (mere) “man” who is driven by the “herd-mentality” or “herd-morality” which is just a following-theleader, even if into a blizzard or sure death. Nietzsche thought the self-contradiction of one following any ethics that was basically anti-life or logically life-suppressing should be obvious to the person, that one’s simple instinct would wave a flag in front of one’s reason or set up a danger sign, except that the long history of diverse moralities, especially all those which manifest a “slave” mentality seem to be oblivious to that contradiction by their sheer longevity of unchallenged heteronomy. Nietzsche explained that humans have been conditioned over the centuries to be “commanded.” Without seeing themselves as the one who commands as well as the one who is commanded, they simply develop ressentiment, a spirit of vengeance, an obsession to stand in judgment over others to distinguish themselves, and a desire to punish the one who commands, even if they fail to recognize this.38 Quite often, the one who commands is instead consciously venerated while unconsciously resented and hated, yet a “reversal” takes

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place within the mentality of the commanded, as they develop a self-justification by turning the “good” or the “moral” into the submissive qualities that have been demanded of them—the “good” is now weakness, self-abnegation, or self-denial—and they have been forced to project their ultimate hope of a better life not in this world but in another post-death world in which they will be rewarded for such ethics of self-hatred or self-negation. This was the slave-morality that Hegel had uncovered in Ancient Israel, which was taken over by Christianity, and which made Christianity the “Antichrist” as Nietzsche judged it.39 The “punishment” was “death,” the Crucifixion of Jesus (as God’s “Son” or the Incarnation of God), and Hegel had assured fellow-Christians that thereby death was transformed into a totally spiritual thing which is repeated but is also always overcome by a spiritual resurrection as one participates in Absolute Spirit, realizing itself, uniting reality and idea in the universal consciousness.40 Nietzsche’s was the needful nihilism, as he viewed it, the true negative, to annihilate the present nihilism so prevalent in the European Christianized culture. Although he thought Jesus did preach “good news” of people’s actual present enjoyment in the “kingdom,” and he saw Jesus as commendable in his ability to accept his fate, to cooperate with his enemies to assure his own crucifixion, even to love them rather than build up ressentiment toward them, he was convinced that the church quickly substituted an image of “Christ” built upon “redemption” which served as an “escape” from their inability to deal with their sin, a “slave-mentality” they inherited from Judaism which they intensified, as well as a “hatred” for the enemies, which was then a hatred they transferred upon established Judaism. Nietzsche, in saying Christianity simply adopted the idea of its “God” from Judaism, and thereby reduced all sin to only a dishonoring of God, rather than an offense against other humans, faulted both.41 He thought the church’s reversal of the position of the actual Jesus finally culminated in the morality of the church which stood Jesus on his head with tremendous ressentiment, heteronomy, and “bad news” rather than good news. Paul became the “first Christian” by virtue of his opposition to a law which he himself could not keep so therefore devised as the chief problem. His answer of “justification by faith” was a cop-out, since it was the life Jesus lived that was important, for which a mere belief (without living in a similar way) was merely an “escape.”42 To try to convince anyone who is motivated from such a slave-morality— especially Christians and their speculative idealists—that their “instinct,” their senses, their body, their metabolism, is more trustworthy in guiding them into correct human relations, is next to impossible. They would judge one as “immoral” in such a refocusing of the nature of morality. So let it be: Nietzsche will style himself an “immoralist,” and write of that life which is

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“beyond” these moral ideas that are so prevalent and anti-life. He will exalt the opposites—the “evil” with its manifold names and rules—as the necessary “enemy” of these people, an “enemy” they rightfully should love, since their awakening and maturing beyond such a slave-morality depends upon their being challenged by all the other perspectives which disagree with their anti-life morality, their morality that besmirches the very sexual instinct upon which all life depends, a morality of “castratism” which blames the senses for deceiving, blames the mind for desiring, blames the body for “becoming” rather than simply being—indeed, this terrible “body”—“and above all, away with the body, this wretched idée fixe of the senses, disfigured by all the fallacies of logic, refuted, even impossible, although it is impudent enough to behave as if it were real” (TI, p. 480). But they are unyielding since they have been taught that their morality “improves” mankind (TI, pp. 501–5). Nietzsche argued that “instinct” is never wrong; what is wrong is when we ignore instinct by chimeric and self-destructive values, or by thinking that “will” by itself is sufficient to point to that which is moral, or when humans think their values must be absolute or unchanging, and when they are sure that humans have not and cannot themselves create their own values (TI, pp. 479, 489, 494, 517). People in the typical present-day culture simply venerate values of the past and do not see any necessity of re-thinking or re-valuing those values. Because of that, he cautioned, “To assume the right to new values—that is the most terrifying assumption for a reverent spirit” (TSZ, p. 139). It is more comfortable to suppress all questions, to simply follow as the “herd.” But Nietzsche insisted that one has to use reason even to honor what is instinctual. In Nietzsche’s terms, if the basic force or instinct is will to power with its life affirmation, how does it create self-overcoming which then paradoxically becomes a self-affirmation or how does the instinctual “No” produce a “Yes” or vice-versa? This returns us to the same problem Schweitzer noted that ethics seems always to face, how to connect instinct with reason, which in both Schweitzer and Nietzsche was seen as the problem of connecting life affirmation with life negation. Kaufmann saw Nietzsche’s problem in his monism, that is, if will-to-power is the only force existing, how does one arrive at self-overcoming? Does that not require dualism instead? If one understands his monism and his idea of the “death of God” which we mentioned earlier, then his explanation of the relation between these and the connection between “instinct” and reflection may make sense. To start with, Nietzsche insists, I do not by any means know atheism as a result; even less as an event; it is a matter of course with me, from instinct, I am too inquisitive, too questionable, too exuberant to stand for any gross answer. God is a gross answer, an indelicacy

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against us thinkers—at bottom merely a gross prohibition for us: you shall not think!” (EH, pp. 692–93)

Even more to the point than a theistic problem of having to make room for “God,” Nietzsche often insists there is only the “Whole” ultimately (TI, pp. 500–501). Yet if that were the case, how would the whole be divided, and how could any parts of it be misdirected and judged so severely by Nietzsche? Is he adopting two different levels of speech as Buddhism sometimes elaborates: (1) the most true or ultimate perspective of only the Whole, the Undivided, or even both being and nothing as well as neither being nor nothing, and (2) the conventional perspective for everyday activity in which we refer to discreet “parts” of the whole.43 Kaufmann had rightly pointed out that true life and real morality for Nietzsche was in “self-overcoming.” This sounds as strange as Nietzsche’s description of Descartes’s error in separating “ego” as the cause over something else. The problem seems to rest in the words themselves, as if when one speaks of a “whole,” “totality,” or similar expression, it implies something that does not have any “parts” within it, so would be monistic. But most things called “whole” consist of many parts, and often do not function properly if any of the parts fail. An automobile has many parts, but we can think of it as a “whole” or “totality.” But we do not attribute to any single part of it the same word. The windshield is not the “whole” nor is the drive-shaft nor is the steering wheel. So there are many “forces” within the whole, such as electrical and gas, and they can work together or they can quit functioning. The human body can also be conceived as having different “forces” within itself, as Kaufman uses the term. Instinct is clearly one; reflection is another. But even these are indistinct in our modern age in which we have discovered the human genome, DNA, different functions of various lobes of the human brain, not to mention the interdependency of so many different “systems” within the human organism which utilize external elements such as oxygen and nutrients in order to function. Beyond this, there is the sociological complexity of all human relating which does not come as a blank canvas or without motivating power itself. We will discuss some elements of this toward the close of this chapter. In any case, in the scenario I’ve suggested above, if the moral thinking, decision and action require a real other or concrete other whose particular situation presents itself to me, then the source of my moral concern is not simply all self-generated, either from my instinct, my will, or my sense of altruism. The social or ethical decision, however, also requires the other for me to “act” upon, and is not something that can be done in abstraction. Therein is the existential truth of morality. In the process, my concern with myself, or even pre-occupation with myself, can be “overcome” to a degree

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just as and because my concern for others becomes more inclusive, deeper, or more sensitive, as Richard Rorty suggests.44 But why do I become more sensitive to the other? If Nietzsche often spoke as if this “self-overcoming” could all be performed by simply a lone individual, we know that was not his whole picture, since he often spoke of needing opposition or even an “enemy” in order to mature and grow strong (TI, p. 488). It may be that all certain others are able to do with regard to assisting me to realize myself is in their being strictly opposition, and I later think nothing positive came from it, but that is seldom true. Even when Zarathustra sent his followers away at the end of the story, although he had no more “pity” for them, and he had realized the “pity” as a temptation to which he must not yield, as well as the fact that each person must find his or her own way, for the most part, on their own, there is still no indication that he thought all that interaction was a waste of time or had no influence on him. Quite to the contrary! He does not lay down in his cave in solitude because he cannot identify with anything in the outside world,45 but to rest and sleep, and when he awakens, refreshed the next morning, he arises even more “hardened” but still obsessed with his “work” of relating to others. This is not mere futility as depicted by the Myth of Sisyphus, but generated from instinct and reflection, thus genuine hope and openness to the other. This confirms the “social” nature of the human being, though Nietzsche’s style of writing was often unnecessarily offensive and seemed elitist. But that too he hoped would cause others to mature even as they assisted him in maturing. Further, the “social” nature of the moral concern is not limited to humans since many living beings have an attachment to others, even if they are outside their species. We still assign the empathic actions or care shown by animals to “instinct” simply because we have no idea of the depth of consciousness or reflection that they have, although we realize that some like chimpanzees are quite capable of reflection related to their most powerful drives. But Zarathustra’s close relationship to his “animals” matches Schweitzer’s concern for all forms of life, no matter how irrational it may seem to a few people.46 In the response to the real other, one’s “drive” or “force” for “discharging its strength,” which is Nietzsche’s definition of the “will-to-power,” is blunted in its egoistic or indifferent dimension, even its potential destructive nature. While it remains protective of self, it cannot afford to ignore the “other,” but cautiously and gratefully learns from the other.47 In humans, the “claim” of this unique other’s presence on me, especially if it is suffering, can turn my personal drive into a quite altruistic response from me, altering what might even have appeared as a possibly “evil” or sinister attraction into a very other-affirming and moral act. But how much “self-overcoming” occurs depends upon the affecting element which awakens one’s instinct,

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and even whether one is a “genius” or not, since he is convinced that the genius, in his work and deed, is a “squanderer” which is his greatness. He writes, The instinct of self-preservation is suspended, as it were; the overpowering pressure of outflowing forces forbids him any such care or caution. People call this “self-sacrifice” and praise his “heroism,” his indifference to his own wellbeing, his devotion to an idea, a great cause, a fatherland: without exception, misunderstandings. He flows out, he overflows, he uses himself up, he does not spare himself—and this is a calamitous involuntary fatality, no less than a river’s flooding the land. Yet, because much is owed to such explosives, much has also been given them in return: for example, a kind of higher morality. After all, that is the way of human gratitude: it misunderstands its benefactors. (TI, p. 548)

Even if the “genius” does not completely use himself up, and even if most people are not genius, nevertheless, the effect of the other upon a person which goes through the instinct and emotions and touches the reflective ability produces a reshaping of the “drive” or “force” which can favor the “other,” and even reflection about the self’s response to the other comes in the form of “sublimation”—“sublimation” which was extremely important in Nietzsche’s schema, as a method of the “self-overcoming.” Where do we see this in Nietzsche? In various places throughout his writings, but especially in his depiction of Zarathustra’s (1) sensitivity to others who were so radically unlike him, and allowing them to influence his thinking and activity, even inviting them to go to his cave; (2) awareness of the specific problems each other person had as well as their own attitudes and worldview, no matter how different they were; (3) the reflection he engaged in when he realized that he really did not want them to merely copy and venerate him, but rather be themselves, which requires separating from them; and (4) his personal relation with his animals whom he sensed were closer to him than even these “higher men,” but nevertheless, his final emergence from his cave to continue the process of hunting for more people to “teach.” From the actual different factors in different relations, one comes to reflect on whether one wants to carry on a relationship with them or break it off, whether one desires them or fears them, and the survival instinct as part of the “will-topower” works with one’s reflection over these factors, and finally, for any relationships one decides to continue, there must be a reasonable agreement or even unarticulated understanding between them. Both I and every other have “needs,” and this becomes very apparent when Zarathustra asks the sun what would be its happiness if it had no others on which to shine (TSZ, p. 436). This mutual dependence and mutual autonomy is crucial, and the “willto-power” does not negate it.

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It will not do that one is envious of the other so desires “equality,” or one feels superior to others so desires to be rid of those people or take advantage of the others. Not every person will mature to Nietzsche’s Übermensch, but all can nevertheless exercise their will-to-power and realize more Yea-saying to life in that process. One cannot pretend or be dishonest with oneself about certain relationships or certain untrustworthy people. One must listen to one’s instinct here, not to one’s chimeric ambitions or peer-influenced values which are invalid if one has not discovered their truth oneself. Zarathustra would continue to hunt for other humans to relate to with the possibility of everyone maturing more in the process. The “instinct” was not an “end” in and by itself, but it was a part of the “end” if we see “end” as “goal” or “purpose” within the continual process of relating to other living beings, a form of “self-overcoming” or “going under” in which one is also becoming more one’s own being, discovering more one’s true and unique self, without any illusions of finding some absolute or unambiguous moral self or any end to the process other than death. Yet in all the frustration of identifying with others’ problems and trying to help, one discovers real life and loves it in all of its ambiguity and relativity, as life is simply process whose meaning must be available within it rather than some chimeric causes, perspectives, or anti-life postures or secret imagined perspective somehow beyond the process. THE END AS LIFE-PROCESS? Are not “end” and “process” opposites? Yes, unless “end” means the “purpose” or “goal” and the goal, as life, can be more appropriately conceived as a process than static state, for example as saying that the “end” of learning to walk is to be able to walk. So the “end” of life for Nietzsche certainly seemed to be to “live” which meant by learning that one’s “will-to-power” was the proper way to live since it is the primary power or force of life. That, of course, would imply that it is instinctually “proper” to actual life, which surely would suggest also that it could be called “moral” or “ethical” unless it is appropriate or proper to ignore, hurt, or destroy other living beings. While he thinks reflection must be directed by instinct correctly, he nevertheless insists that the greater part of conscious thinking must still be included among instinctive activities, and that goes even for philosophical thinking. . . . Behind all logic and its seeming sovereignty of movement, too, there stand valuations or, more clearly physiological demands for the preservation of a certain type of life. (BGE, p. 201, italics added)

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But it is a bit more complicated with all the typical factors or forces of influence in one’s own being as well as one’s environment and world. Therefore, it is easier for Nietzsche to describe what is wrong with humanity than what is right, so he gives very few glimpses as to what he thinks a more appropriate humanity might look like. But we do get a glimpse in his “Future Humanity” in the Gay Science (or Joyful Wisdom) when he conceived of a person who had developed a sense for history so keenly that he had discovered the whole history of humanity and owned it all as an “immense generalization” of all the grief, disasters as well as conquests, that is, formed all this into a single feeling of the whole—as his own personal history, and continued on—that he would experience a happiness that could be equated with “God’s happiness” (JW, pp. 263–64). This appears to say the same thing as his idea of his “key” to life as amor fati, which is not reaching a static state but an “acceptance of whatever life brings:” “My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati (love of fate); that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it—all idealism is mendaciousness in the face of what is necessary—but love it” (EH, p. 714). So it seems that despite his objection that the “will to power” is not to be equated with the “will-to-live,” at a deeper level it actually is, since one accepts whatever life deals to one with all of its problems, even deficits. One does not consider “life” to be only the few select moments of “joy” or ecstasy; instead, real life must include also all the pain and suffering that people typically experience. Nor does he think one should try to eliminate desire as he saw in Buddhism, since “desire” itself is a vital part of life, without which life would not even exist.48 As he concludes his Twilight of the Idols subtitled “How One Philosophizes with a Hammer,” even though it is possible that he had in mind not a literal “hammer” but a “tuning fork,” he also emphasized throughout a “shattering” of the idols of idealism, which, he insisted requires one being “hard,” a term he uses over and over in his writings. That “hardness” is in part the resoluteness of being willing to accept whatever “fate” brings one rather than deny it, complain about it or commit suicide. Unfortunately, he commends this hardness also for the aristocracy who by their strong will-to-power must exploit the weak, helpless, deprived, and marginalized in his Genealogy of Morals. Therefore, in the conclusion to his Twilight of the Idols, in opposition to the understanding of “tragic feeling” in Hellenistic poets as well as Schopenhauer, he reiterates not only the “hardness” of one’s determination (which is ironically supposed to provide ease and joy enough to propel one into dancing!), he insightfully seems to substitute “will to life” for the usual “will to power”: Saying Yes to life even in its strangest and hardest problems, the will to life rejoicing over its own inexhaustibility even in the very sacrifice of its highest

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types—that is what I called Dionysian, that is what I guess to be the bridge to the psychology of the tragic poet. Not in order to be liberated from terror and pity, not in order to purge oneself of a dangerous affect by its vehement discharge—Aristotle understood it that way—but in order to be oneself the eternal joy of becoming, beyond all terror and pity—that joy which included even joy in destroying. (TI, pp. 562–63)

Note how the “end” or purpose of it all is “to be oneself the eternal joy of becoming, beyond all terror and pity—that joy which included even joy in destroying.” Some may read this emphasis on destroying as only Nietzsche’s “nihilism,” but it is only his “nihilism” of the prevalent “nihilism” of false causality, empty values, metaphysical lies, and decadent morality based on the “unegoistic” or “selflessness” as the great value. This kind of “destroying” meant a “re-valuation of all values,” which Nietzsche says in Ecce Homo he began in the most gentle way in writing Dawn, which he published seven years earlier, in which “morality is not attacked; it is merely no longer in the picture.” He had in the meantime seen that the “origin” of morality was the question of “first rank because it is crucial for the future of humanity” (EH, pp. 746–47). But any creation required destroying, as he concludes in Twilight of the Idols (TI, pp. 562–63). The “end” as the “life-process” is also underlying his criticism of the modern philosophy of his day and its obsession with “being” and its anathematizing of any form of “becoming.” It is what he calls an “idiosyncrasy” of philosophy, that is, [t]heir lack of historical sense, their hatred of the very idea of becoming, their Egypticism. They think that they show their respect for a subject when they de-historicize it, sub specie aeterni—when they turn it into a mummy. . . . Death, change, old age, as well as procreation and growth, are to their minds objections—even refutations. Whatever has being does not become; whatever becomes does not have being. Now they all believe, desperately even, in what has being. But since they never grasp it, they seek for reasons why it is kept from them. (TI, pp. 479–80)

They blame the senses, decide that only whatever is of least significance must be of the most significance or first rank, the self-caused, and thereby “arrive at their stupendous concept, ‘God.’ That which is last, thinnest and emptiest is put first, as the cause, as ens realissimum” (TI, p. 482). Here, to be sure, Nietzsche was not receptive to just any kind of process or becoming, so although he could applaud certain features of the German culture, by the time he wrote The Twilight of the Idols, he was beginning to worry that he was looking at the end of German philosophy and poetry, the

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mediocrity of German culture, and especially the Deutschland, Deutschland, uber alles! (TI, 506). Thus, while he belittled those who think they are “improving mankind” with their “breeding” and “taming” ideas (TI, pp. 501–5), much of this stupidity he is sure came from their inconsistent “hatred of becoming.” Sometimes instead of belittling the honoring of being over becoming, he blamed Schopenhauer’s focus on “will,”49 but Nietzsche explained this similarly to the Buddhist “chain of causation” as a mere reification. His reply was that today we know it (whether “being,” “will,” or “cause”) “only as a word” (TI, p. 483). He sounded very Feuerbachian in summarizing the “error of false causality” as “projection” in the following words: It was out of himself that man projected his three “inner facts”—that in which he believed most firmly, the will, the spirit, the ego. He even took the concept of being from the concept of the ego, he posited “things” as “being.” in his image, in accordance with his concept of the ego as a cause. Small wonder that later he always found in things only that which he had put into them. (TI, pp. 493, 483)

So it was that he belittled Kant for his Ding-an-sich (“thing-in-itself”) which, he claimed, was what Kant did to “God,” seeing him as the unknowable Ding-an-sich (TI, p. 495). Further, he wrote of the “most sarcastic of all fishermen” waiting to pull up his line out of the water with all of his “in and for me in all things” [i.e., “being-in” and “being-for”] as the prize catch, which is obviously a mockery of Hegel, in his distinctions of “being”—all set within a ludicrous picture of Zarathustra fishing from on top of a mountain, and instructing people, in contrast, simply to “Become what you are” (TSZ, pp. 349–52, quote from 351) (italics added). What he considered an obsession of the philosophers and theologians with “being” rather than the process of “becoming” goes back through Augustine to Plato, and remained even in the twentieth century a key of much of philosophy and theology, even in Tillich’s concern to see the concept of being-itself as the correlate to the symbol “God,” and Scharlemann, the latter of whom asks even what is “the being of God when God is not being God?”50 Nietzsche said he feared “we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar,” that is, because of our “crude fetishism” that engages in reification (TI, pp. 482–83). He seems to have read future history right to a degree because of the priority much theology continues to give to “being” or “being-itself” vis-à-vis “nothing” or “non-being” or “becoming.”51 “Becoming” in theology has been torn between trying to make Hegel still relevant, as Pannenberg attempted, and doing a theology from the “process” thought of Alfred North Whitehead as seen in thinkers such as John B. Cobb. But “becoming” or “change” remains an “objection” of many religions, whether one thinks of

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their conceptions of the Ultimate Power or of their own imagined Ultimate experience of Heaven or Paradise.52 Nietzsche saw life’s “end” neither in some other-worldly existence which is wholly fictitious and unscientific, nor in some static, dead identity. Nor is it some “purpose” another being or power gave it. He could not state it more plainly: “Man is not the effect of some special purpose of a will, and end; nor is he the object of an attempt to attain an ‘ideal of humanity’ or an ‘ideal of happiness’ or an ‘ideal of morality.’ It is absurd to wish to devolve one’s essence on some end or other. We have invented the concept of ‘end’; in reality there is no end” (TI, p. 500). He is saying humans are the ones who invented both “ends” as well as all “values” and “purpose.” He continues by saying that one is only a part of a whole, and there is nothing other than the “whole,” nothing outside or separate from the whole from which one can “judge” the whole, and it is fruitless to search for a “first cause” or seek to blame someone or something. He seems to distinguish the “whole” from a mere “unity,” since “unity” implies different parts which need to be brought together by some other power or even by one’s conception. Kaufmann describes the cosmology of Nietzsche as a “dialectical monist” position, so he poses the problem that if the moral life as process is about self-overcoming, yet the will-to-power is the only power, that sounds contradictory. But he counters this by suggesting that the very act of “overcoming” in Nietzsche is parallel to Hegel’s idea of the “sublating” that occurs in the aufheben, in which there is a “simultaneous preserving, canceling, and lifting up” so the duality appears in that the synthesis is both that which overcomes as well as that which is overcome. But the duality was also in the preceding antithesis. Perhaps just as importantly, this single power, either “spirit” in Hegel or “will to power” in Nietzsche, is not inert or stable, but living, containing tension, is creative, or is always in process of manifesting “itself in diverse ways and to create multiplicity—not ex nihilo, but out of itself.”53 But it is simply a “whole,” an inextricable Whole,54 a “fatefulness” that one either accepts or rejects. It is not an “end” but a “process,” whole in its unique and particular makeup but not all-inclusive or a whole temporally. Unlike Hegel’s view of Absolute Spirit which was based on a metaphysical Trinity, Nietzsche’s “will-to-power” and its sublimation is all an earthly process with no separable or even immanent “God” to redeem it or judge it or to be responsible for it. In contrast with Hegel, the whole is very material, not just Spirit spiriting Spirit. Nietzsche insists that the only “redemption” is the redemption of the whole from the imagined estrangement humans concocted for it vis-àvis “God;” so in denying “God,” “we redeem the world” (TI, pp. 500–501). But of course to say “we” redeem “it” sounds more like separate entities that can possibly be united, but both the estrangement and uniting are probably both imaginary or simply metaphors of humans’ changing their partial

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conceptions about that which is the reality—the whole. Or could it not be that even Friedrich Schleiermacher was right in seeing a primary consciousness of the Whole which is prior to but can always exist beside and even affect the later consciousness of discreet parts?55 So one does not have to say “reality” is simply one or the other, but can be viewed from either perspective,56 though with different results? In any case, life itself is continuous creativity which is the primary thrust of the will-to-power. When he said life’s purpose is not merely to create the moral Ideal that reinforces what I said earlier about moral examples. They can be exemplary so long as they are not perfect, the Ideal, since that is unrealistic. That is part of the problem with any religion speaking of a deity as being exemplary, even if it is an Incarnation. It cannot be exemplary in the sense of perfection. But even life’s setbacks, tragedies, illnesses, and so forth do not have to be judged as unambiguous evils, since the negative experiences can draw out the very best in human beings. Life simply is what it is which is why his personal key to it was amore fati, and the reason he could put the question to himself of how much he actually loved life by asking whether he could will it to repeat itself over and over, not purged of undesirables and negatives, but just as one lived it earlier, without any changes, with all the good and bad. His understanding of “will” points to the life-force of both animate and inanimate entities,57 but as viewed within the true reality of the Whole rather than as individually discreet and independently sustainable lives or entities, a view he seems to have derived and adapted from Schopenhauer.58 Real life for Nietzsche is ultimately found only within this chaotic, finite “Whole,”59 as he would say, since that is all there is, within the discovery of the self after one overcomes one’s self. But it is best to remember the Whole as a Unity of separable parts, even if they can function only when within the Whole. He knew this or he could not have spoken of such a thing as an Übermensch. Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which Nietzsche considered the best of his writings, was an extended exploration of many of his more pertinent concerns, but especially including the issue of becoming in the “process of life,” or the “end” or purpose being the very “process of life,” or, in his terms, the concepts of the “will-to-power” and of “eternal recurrence” (EH, p. 739). Even more specifically, he noted that his linking Zarathustra with Dionysus, in his loosely bound linear description of Zarathustra’s calling or concern and attempts to teach others, required a “Dionysian nature.” That is, Zarathustra was trying to “create and carry together into One what is fragment and riddle and dreadful accident,” to “redeem those who lived in the past and to turn every ‘it was’ into a ‘thus I willed it’—that alone should I call redemption” (TSZ, pp. 201–3). The Dionsyian nature in Zarathustra’s will to power compelled him—even though he was weary with the concern of both willing and

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esteeming—to continue it since his only joy is in begetting or creating and becoming (EH, p. 765; TI, pp. 562–63). But this requires a hardness, a “hardness of the hammer, the joy even in destroying.” That this was Nietzsche’s own self-image and struggle is pretty obvious,60 one who wanted to teach, to assist others, but was hardly understood or appreciated in any depth, and few people were even buying his books as he resorted to self-publishing. The “destroying” was all the “Nay-saying” or dislodging or completely groundless presuppositions people held as well as the common anti-life morality that was the ideal of the Christian culture. Any “Yes-saying” could come only after the floor had been swept clean. This also parallels Schweitzer’s later discovery that to get to “life affirmation,” one has to be motivated either by some world-negation prior to that or one has to be so overwhelmed with others’ “will-to-live” that one can engage in life-negation to assist. Although Nietzsche does not usually speak of “giving” himself for others, he did, as I suggested earlier, show the “genius” whose expenditure or prodigality of spending himself for others, that he depletes himself, yet in that “going under” discovers the “going over” or touches the hem of the garment of the Übermensch. In neither case is there the suggestion that this is instinctual altruism nor a response to a heteronomous or categorical moral demand, but only that it is a voluntary decision involving one’s “will-to-live” or “will-to-power” as conditioned by reflection. Although Schweitzer still retained an idea of an “end” or “purpose” in this process, it was simply the fulfillment of who one knows oneself to be, a confirmation of the authentic self, and this is true also of Nietzsche. In that sense, I think both underestimated the givenness of the “others” whose presence is necessary to elicit the awareness or direct the possibility of the “wills” and “instinct” of both, that the “opportunity” for being a real person or ethical being depends not simply on oneself but upon having the other with whom one can relate and reach an agreement. There is no need to argue against Nietzsche’s assertion that humans are the ones who decide on values. But this in itself, if life is really a continuing process, does not provide the basis for many of Nietzsche’s presumed values which he uses as absolutes, such as the “higher men,” “nobility,” and others, especially when he is posing to be giving a genealogy of morals. For example, he can make a blanket statement such as his discovery as to how “every higher culture on earth so far has begun,” or [e]very enhancement of the type “man” has so far been the work of an aristocratic society—and it will be so again and again—a society that believes in the long ladder of an order of rank and differences in value between man and man, and that needs slavery in some sense or other. (BGE, p. 391)

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Of course, the aristocratic society comes only from the strong-willed, noble class, in whom their “will-to-power” guides their individual maturity as well as the maturity of the whole society, supposedly, as they find or make “slaves” out of those who are weaker. He insists that although there may be some mutual refraining of injury, violence, and so on between the classes, that is only a side-benefit (if at all) but must not become a fundamental principle of society. Rather “life itself is essentially appropriation, injury, overpowering of what is alien and weaker, suppression, hardness, imposition of one’s own forms incorporation and at least, at its mildest, exploitation” (BGE, pp. 391–92). He attempts to redeem the negative connotation of such words as “exploitation,” but unsuccessfully, since this is known in the twenty-first century as a violation of basic rights of other humans, humans, who even if they are no longer considered as merely “animals” by those who have power over them, nevertheless remain weaker, poorer, or have less opportunities to advance by sheer fate and exploitation by others. He thinks it quite justified to say “[i]n the beginning, the noble caste was always the barbarian caste,” but then tries to justify that by qualifying it with the words that “their predominance did not lie mainly in physical strength but in strength of the soul—they were more whole humans (which also means, at every level, ‘more whole beasts.’” So he redefines also “corruption” as the aristocracy (e.g., in the French Revolution) throwing away its “privileges” and “sacrificing itself to an extravagance of its own moral feelings, that is, its decadent moral judgment, its ignoring of its own nobility. He insists in order to have a healthy society, by which he means a healthy aristocracy, it must be a “living body,” which means the living, incarnate “will-to-power” must be allowed to strive to grow, spread, seize, become predominant—not from any morality or immorality but because it is living and because life simply is will to power. But there is no point on which the ordinary consciousness of Europeans resists instruction as on this: everywhere people are now raving, even under scientific disguises, about coming conditions of society in which “the exploitive aspect” will be removed—which sounds to me as if they promised to invent a way of life would dispense with all organic functions. “Exploitation” does not belong to a corrupt or imperfect or primitive society; it belongs to the essence of what lives, as a basic organic function; it is a consequence of the will to power, which is after all the will of life. (BGE, p. 393, italics added)

To this he adds, “If this should be an innovation as a theory—as a reality it is the primordial fact of all history: people ought to be honest with themselves at least that far” (BGE, p. 394). This is the point at which his “will-to-power” and is not a “will-to-live” except inasmuch as it applies only to the people in

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power. Here is precisely the point at which his life of privilege was closed to equality, even equality of “will-to-power.” So Nietzsche himself would not at all mind being “exploited” or demoted to the position of a slave, since he is too ill to hold many jobs? Perhaps, since he loved to write, he could write eight hours a day for some employer, but only the things the employer’s business needs, nothing of his own interests? Is his not the voice of “privilege” speaking, as if the world is somehow indebted to retain the status quo which will give him the time to write what he wants, even if it does not sell, so he finances it himself? Why would he want “equality” and why would he not think he belonged to the “nobility”? But how such “will-to-power” by which the aristocrats or even some “higher” men were justified in attaining their positions or powers and privileges over others can suddenly lose all of its own power, he fails to answer. If it is inherent, what condition crippled it within certain people and not all people? Did the “will-to-live” prevail over the “will-to-exploit” others, or the others simply lack that instinct, or did factors that are “absurd” or “non-rational” or sheer “happenstance” create conditions which vested in certain people such as Nietzsche, preventing him from any hypothetical divestment to see where he would then stand? That is, where is the new or different “perspective” of himself in all this analysis? This opens up the need for the insight of John Rawls. Interestingly, he ends the assertion by equating the will-to-power with the will of life, which returns us to Schweitzer, except for Nietzsche’s qualified contribution on “instinct” and his “perspectival” approach. The most negative thing in his process of analyzing is that he actually thought he could read origins, motivations, and so forth from a psychological interpretation on the slim historical records available, and to close off the actual “process” of this “will-to-power” so as to be beyond challenge. In this sense he is not engaging in an experiment, but an ignoring of actual relations between real people, and to that degree Rorty’s criticism of him wanting to have the last word appears quite valid, even in his blindness to his own privileged position, even if the main privilege was his genius which came to him through his parents’ genes. Foucault was partially correct in seeing a contribution of Nietzsche’s the fact that he asked the question about who is doing the speaking, and this led him to an examination of himself in Ecce Homo.61 But the self-examination was not present in his earlier Genealogy of Morals. To be more consistent with the process he has discussed, his own analyses should accept criticism, qualification, or at times dismissal, since life goes on as real life. Exploitation is not a positive human value, any more than is war. One may believe that the meaning of life is within its process, just as it is in music, but the music is still playing, and Nietzsche should have remembered when doing these absolute descriptions that he is on the same frail or shaky

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ground as were many of Hegel’s historical descriptions of which he was critical, descriptions or valuations made from within the changing process of history as if one were outside that process or it had stopped. In Hegel’s historical analyses, he often took sheer gossip or “folk-tales” which painted a culture in the worst possible light, which sometimes seem to be highly imaginative if not made up out of whole cloth from a subconscious desire to reaffirm his already articulated position, that is, to “find” what one thinks one already knew. Nietzsche himself once bragged about not needing to read, that nobody can get more out of things, including books, than he already knows. For what one lacks access to from experience one will have no ear. . .simply nothing will be heard, but there will be the acoustic illusion that where nothing is heard, nothing is there. (EH, p. 717)

Yet, here, in his exalting exploitation of other humans, he thinks what is really there is what he thought it was before he saw the evidence. So this is the limitation, his stereotyping of people and cultures and relations, and perhaps even his strange idea of classes, “ranks,” levels, stages of maturation, including himself. This confirms the way in which Rorty is correct in saying Nietzsche was intent to have the “last word” causing Rorty to label him as an “irony theorist” in the same group as Hegel and Heidegger.62 That brings up the fascinating description of Thus Spoke Zarathustra he gave of the very life-process of maturation of the human being, a state of the realization of autonomy which I believe is a more positive way of seeing life and its purpose as process, without all the stereotypes and extreme generalities. Yet this autonomy in Thus Spoke Zarathustra begins and ends (TSZ, pp. 121, 436) with his asking the sun the great question of how it could have any happiness had it no other on whom to shine. So while it is autonomy, one’s happiness depends upon having an “other” upon or for whom to discharge its strength or exercise its will to power. But each of these three stages is given only bare characteristics which means each stage is experienced in much more detail by each individual, and the individual is always Nietzsche’s primary concern despite his and Zarathustra’s desire to be an educator. In any case, we should then probably re-qualify this “end of life-process,” or purpose of life as its very process, as the individual’s own self-imposed purpose or value of the life-process—as it is articulated in the Thus Spoke Zarathustra in the section entitled “On the Three Metamorphoses” (TSZ, pp. 137–40). He defines this more specifically as the metamorphoses of one’s “spirit,” and these transformations—as the life of Zarathustra or the Übermensch or “overman”—require a “hardness” or tenacity to experience and pass through successfully. They are obviously stages toward autonomy or becoming self-directed, but also, therefore, as the

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route of “self-overcoming” in the sense that one has to realize oneself by getting rid of the self that is not authentic but is rather created by culture. The three stages are called “camel,” “lion,” and “child.” As “metamorphoses of the spirit,” Nietzsche is not speaking in Hegelian terms of some evolving of the Divine nature within humans, as a speculative-idealistic development of Spirit to the point of its becoming “Absolute” within either an individual or culture. It is no self-actualization of God via the consciousness of God being united with the consciousness of humanity, even in mystical union. “Spirit” for Nietzsche is simply the animating power of any life-form,63 which would be found in its strongest form in the “frenzy” of the Dionysian festivals or sexual activity, but also in dance, music, art, and so forth. It is the life-generating or life-spreading force of one’s “will to power” or “dispersal of strength.” As the animating force, “spirit” is tied therefore to one’s instinct as well as reason, even to one’s metabolism and diet. So he can ridicule the Germans for lack of attention to the “spirit,” and use the term in a double sense of both this vital animating power but also of alcoholic drinks in belittling David F. Strauss who seemed to lack the “first instinct of spirituality, the spirit’s instinct of selfpreservation— and “made his vow to the ‘fair brunette’ in verse—loyalty unto death” despite the degenerating qualities beer produces in the spirit.64 But spirit belongs to oneself and all of the instinct and reason of the self, all the challenges, joys, and successes of the self, all the continual struggle of the self to be what it is, not to be something imagined as what it “ought” to be. Nietzsche ridicules the naiveté of one’s telling someone else that he or she “ought to be such and such!” But he argues that reality reveals an abundance of different types of lives, so it is only some “wretched loafer of a moralist” who argues, “‘No. Man ought to be different.’ He even knows what man should be like, this wretched bigot and prig: he paints himself on the wall and comments, ‘Ecce homo!’” (TI, p. 491). The irony is not lost of his saying this while he is insisting that one “ought” not to think in terms of “ought,” and while he penned his description of himself in Ecce Homo! Nevertheless, there are some positive insights in the “three metamorphoses of the spirit” for understanding the life-process of maturing toward autonomy. The first stage, the “camel” is the beast of burden, with the determination to bear the maximum burden one can bear until one realizes that it is inconsistent, stupid, and self-defeating to be willing to bear much just to reveal one’s strength. He asks if this loading up the maximum burden in such a way is not as unreasonable and/or difficult as parting from our cause when it triumphs? Climbing high mountains to tempt the tempter?

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Or is it this: feeding on the acorns and grass of knowledge and, for the sake of the truth, suffering hunger in one’s soul? Or is it this: being sick and sending home the comforters and making friends with the deaf, who never hear what you want? Or is it this: stepping into filthy waters when they are waters of truth, and nor repulsing cold frogs and hot toads? Or is it this: loving those who despise us and offering a hand to the ghost that would frighten us? All these most difficult things the spirit that would bear much takes upon himself: like the camel that, burdened, speeds into the desert, the spirit speeds into its desert. (TSZ, p. 138)

But then, after dumping its load or burdens, the camel experiences its metamorphosis into a “lion who would conquer his freedom and be master of his own desert.” Here he confronts his “last master and his god,” the “great dragon, who stands in his way, the dragon whom the spirit will no longer call lord and god.” The dragon’s name is “Thou shalt!” but the lion is “I will.” The dragon’s body glistens with golden scales of “Thou shalt” which contain values from thousands of years prior, and the dragon reminds the lion that all questions of values have been settled long ago, so there shall be no more “I will.” No, one dare not in any way question the ancient and sacred values and morality. Thus the battle is one to the death. If the question is asked about why this metamorphosis, the answer is that new values must be created, but before they can be, the old heteronomous values must be completely defeated. The “lion” cannot create the new values, but it can perform the “destroying” part we noted earlier. By destroying the dragon of “Thou shalt!” the lion can make room for the freedom to create new values; he can even say a sacred No! to Kant’s “duty.” Yet even to “assume the right to new values—that is the most terrifying assumption for a reverent spirit that would bear much.” Those old moral demands, if not even the idea of being commanded, was appreciated or even loved (while resented) as “most sacred,” but now “he must find illusion and caprice even in the most sacred” (TSZ, p. 139). This is a crucial stage since one is no longer simply bearing burdens and hoping that one has strength to withstand, but is now challenging why one has the burden in the first place, which refocuses the issue on how one can think one is human if one is forbidden to think for oneself, even when it comes to one’s relation to others, that is, to thinking ethically? It takes tremendous courage to admit that the “sacred” commands are actually a dehumanizing heteronomy, and have no more divine origin than one’s commands to oneself. So there must be a destroying of the old to make room for new values.

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The final metamorphosis of the spirit is the form of a child, to create the new values. The “child” represents innocence and forgetting, a new beginning, a game, a self-propelled wheel, a first movement, a sacred “Yes.” For the game of creation, my brothers, a sacred ‘Yes’ is needed: the spirit now wills his own will, and he who had been lost to the world now conquers his own world. (Ibid.)

Of course, these are all symbols or metaphors, because no one wants literally to become a child once again. But he repeats himself in Beyond Good and Evil saying, “A man’s maturity—consists in having found again the seriousness one had as a child, at play” (BGE, p. 273). The approach to the innocence and unpresumptuousness found in children was also allegedly mentioned by Jesus as he witnessed his disciples preventing the children from bothering him, and in the Christian Gospels the whole image of innocence was associated with being a child who should not be misguided by offensive adults, or an innocence being experienced through some ritual of being “re-born.” Nietzsche is not hereby providing his ethic to supersede the heteronomous “Thou shalt” one has to defeat. That would be simply to exchange one heteronomy for another. But, as Kaufmann admitted, it really is not a picture of Nietzsche providing a bunch of contradictory or radically new ethical principles or values, since most of the principles the people were familiar with are not abandoned in Nietzsche, but simply turned right-side up by him through paradox.65 In that sense only are they “new,” new to the person and his times since past history reveals a different, more decadent set of values or ethics. Nietzsche opposed the presuppositions, the false authority, the antilife elements, the self-negating altruistic flavor, the ressentiment, and even hatred which he saw as basically underlying the prevalent ethic which made it totally insincere and self-defeating.66 He certainly did not fit the picture that one might have of an “immoralist” which he used to call himself, primarily for shock value (EH, pp. 784–87). His continual focus on morality, its systems, principles, actual results and so forth, did lead him to belittle the predominant utilitarianism (as did Schweitzer and as will Rawls in chapter 7), alongside ethical idealism, as well as the religiously pietistic (particularly the Christian) self-abasement with its misguided pity and rejection of the value of the real world and its obliviousness as to its essential and real motives of resentment, envy, hatred, and desire to punish. This is all of his “physio-psychological” analysis of the situation, an understanding of “a doctrine of the derivation of all good impulses from wicked ones” such as hatred, envy, covetousness, and lust and that the effects of these must be present—an understanding which is perhaps too revolutionary and paradoxical so that it appears self-contradictory and shocking to most

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people (BGE, p. 221). If one can avoid being entrapped by some “delusion of morality,” one might without really meaning to do so, have opened his eyes to the opposite ideal: the ideal of the most high-spirited, alive, and world-affirming human being who has not only come to terms and learned to get along with whatever was and is, but who wants to have what was and is repeated into all eternity, shouting insatiably da capo.67 (BGE, p. 258)

This idea of the derivation of the good impulses from the wicked one is probably the most novel element “created” in the “child” stage in Nietzsche’s position. To this degree, he remains under the influence of the Hegelian dialectic even if he belittled dialectic as being the resort of those who lacked any really substantial argument or substance in their positions.68 That opposition he gave to dialectic was aimed more at Socrates or Plato and progeny than to Hegel. Notably, he did not elaborate on how these different stages occur, whether the arrival of one stage involves one’s entire being or whether one could be straddling between two or more stages on different ethical issues or ethical consistency and maturity. If the most important distinction he drew between moral systems was the contrast of the life-affirming and the life-negating, this was fundamental, and tied in to his view of Dionysus, which meant the perpetuating of life, the emphasis upon continual movement rather than merely some imagined or even projected end. In dance, it is the actual movements, the rationally restrained instinctual excitement or frenzy or ecstasy and their relations to each other that provide its meaning and beauty, not just the final landing of the dancer, or orgasm. So in music, he saw the place of rhythm as being a primal or instinctual connection, the movement, and even within the actual tones, there is relational movement that provides the increasing of excitement or tension and of its resolution, but the final state of mere resolution or satisfaction of tension is not the point. Rather, the meaning and joy are in the movement (though he often referred to the power behind it as a perfection-seeking power), in the increasing of tension or anticipation in which real life is found69 instead of just “possession” of the power. He emphasized, I know no higher symbolism than this Greek symbolism of the Dionysian festivals. Here the most profound instinct of life, that directed toward the future of life, the eternity of life, is experienced religiously—and the way to life, procreation, as the holy way. It was Christianity, with its ressentiment against life at the bottom of its heart, which first made something unclean of sexuality: it threw filth on the origin, on the presupposition of our life.70

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The movement’s “perfection” or “goal” or “end” is apparently the continuation of living, basically a “recurrence” of life even if not of the same life. But he eventually arrived at the idea of an “eternal recurrence” of the very same life, not simply as a theoretical test to see whether one loves real life, but as the only possible expectation of recurring life still being “actual” with all of its specific negatives and positives. Nietzsche emphasized that amor fati was his key for life, and he challenged those who claim to love life as to whether they could will it to repeat itself all over again and again exactly the same as it was, with all of its joy but also problems and difficulties (EH, p. 714). Though he mentioned the idea of life repeating itself like this throughout his writings, and sometimes mentioned how it was embraced by early science, his emphasis seems to be that if one has ever experienced joy, then he or she wants it again and again, over and over. However, he was also realistic, that joy was not the only element in real life, so he said we would love life only if we willed it to repeat itself over and over just exactly as before, which means also with all the pains, sickness, adverse experiences, depression, and so forth.71 Whichever way one would respond if told that his life would be repeated over and over exactly the same, whether he accused the informer of being a “demon” or was thrilled with the prospect of the recurrence that he thanked the messenger, calling him “God,” one thing is sure to Nietzsche: it would be the “heaviest burden” conceivable and would “transform” the person one way or another (JW, pp. 270–71). If so, and only if the person could relish the idea of its repeating exactly as before, did he or she really love life, but this means that one has to live realistically rather than in some dream-world or resenting life’s negative elements. One has to reach the point of realizing that no matter how awful things may be even throughout one’s life, life is still worth living. Real life cannot be separated, either those things we judge as making us happy or sad, or even actions which we tend to judge as morally “good” and “evil” (or “good” and “bad”). One cannot desire to will that things that happened in the past had not, since that would will that the people making those decisions could be willed not to have autonomy, something one cannot will, a blatant contradiction in one’s very willing. But to remove any thing from the past necessarily means a reshaping or influence on the present which cannot even be estimated. Further, any desired recurrence of life cannot be separated from the continuation of life “through procreation, through the mysteries of sexuality” (TI, p. 561). So the recurrence he has in mind is not a reincarnation of some invisible, eternal soul going around time after time as in Plato or Samsara in Hindu and Buddhist thought, but a continuation of life in the normal sense of material procreation, which always involves new material not the old, yet somehow one wants only the same life that had occurred some distant time earlier?

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Surely Nietzsche was not talking like some twentieth-century theologians and was only indicating some kind of symbolical transcending, that having an experience that somehow contained an eternal dimension being encountered in each moment, whatever that could mean? But even that is not a recurrence. Further, procreation (which Nietzsche connects to the recurrence), produces new life; procreation is never a repeating of an earlier life, since it involves a new combination of genes and creates new cells and becomes immediately subject to entropy. This being, in every moment, is always slightly different by the process of entropy, but it is never a repetition within the same situation in time and space. If Nietzsche’s theory was not scientific, it also seems to miss the significance of other people, for example, of one’s “living” on, so to speak, in the memory as well as genes of his or her progeny or survivors. It also ultimately devalues any uniqueness of an individual since after so many repetitions, there is nothing at all unique to it unless no recurrence is ever known by anyone. This is a sad element of Nietzsche’s loneliness even though he says he never complained but relished his solitude. In any case, Nietzsche sees the “purpose” of life as the very process of living, which is largely instinctual but in various ways tailored by reason, however long one lives. In this living, “greatness” is defined by Nietzsche as being noble, wanting to be by oneself, being able to be different, standing alone and having to live independently. And the philosopher will betray something of his own idea when he posits: “He shall be greatest who can be loneliest, the most concealed, the most deviant, the human being beyond good and evil, the master of his virtues, he that is overrich in will.” (BGE, p. 329)

But all this seems to point only to the instinct of mere individual existence, of only the effects of one’s will to power on oneself. There is not any element that includes others, but only separates one as different from others, even “deviant” and “concealed” to others. Even when two people who are thrust together in life, are both “great” in this sense, there is still no hint at all what their relationship would be like, or if any significant relationship could actually exist between such loners. How much of this is simply Nietzsche’s ascription of greatness to himself within his confined life due to his sickness, which was not intentionally planned by him, is hard to say. But real human relations between such “great” people seem out of the question. It would be no more real that the imagination by which he later saw himself as “Dionysus” who marries Ariadne, whom he identified with Cosima Wagner,72 whom he found fascinating, and whom he thought he loved, but could never tell her, but only turn his Oedipal hatred toward her husband, ironically probably Nietzsche’s own “father-substitute,” composer Richard Wagner.

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This imagination helped destroy his relation with the composer, while Nietzsche’s imagined romantic figures were carried with him to the asylum where he told the people in Jena that his wife, Cosima Wagner, had brought him there. Likewise, this kind of base for morality could never lead to any political organization, and Nietzsche shows little interest in the latter except in pointing out the faults of the Enlightenment, egalitarianism, free will, nationalism, the Reich, and so forth. He does not engage in political analysis or theory, and has only contempt for political “parties.” While he is rightly correcting certain elements in the predominant morality, at least it usually served as a basis for a social contract, something his emphasis on the individual makes quite impossible. Nevertheless, Nietzsche’s idea of life as “becoming,” as “impermanent” and therein having value rather than losing value, is a worthy point. The irony is that this idea is derived more from Buddhism than Nietzsche’s own culture, and it is tied inextricably in Buddhism to avoiding suffering by eliminating all desire, an idea Nietzsche hated. On the impermanence of everything, he insisted that to deny such obvious truth or to try to eliminate that truth is to be quite misanthropic and evil. “It is of time and becoming that the best parables should speak; let them be a praise and justification of all impermanence” (TSZ, pp. 198–99). THE WILL TO POWER AND SUBLIMATION In both Nietzsche’s “will to power” and Schweitzer’s “will to live,” both thinkers insisted that their particular formula is the primary power of human life, if not all life and/or existence, but both also realized that there are both positive and negative elements in each, that they can be as life-negating as life-affirming. Whether it negates or affirms life depends not simply upon the one exerting such power, but those toward whom it is exerted, and concerns both quantity as well as quality of power held by each. For Nietzsche, the one who lives by the “will-to-power” has to “overcome the self.” He often spoke of this process of as “overcoming” a “going under” of a man, in which he can become the “overman” (Übermensch). Zarathustra, in fact, claimed he had been called to teach men the meaning of their existence— the “overman” (TSZ, p. 132). This overcoming of self means eliminating heteronomous values that have been pushed onto oneself by culture, but it also means exerting a certain control of instinct so the latter does not get free rein which leads only to chaos and self-contradiction. Rather certain instincts must assume a subservient role to a single instinct to give order, and this single instinct is usually the “will-to-live” or life-affirming instinct (TI, pp. 511–12; 545–46).

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Early on, Nietzsche was disapproving of people whose will-to-power was unrestrained, who sought power for power-sake, for worldly purposes or selfish means. The question is whether one has any ground to judge any action by humans that involve other humans without knowing what it is they desire or value. Nietzsche intended to have his reader assume that his judgments were empirically based since he referred to the proper analysis as a physiopsychological-historical one, but that means he could only try to infer from one’s actions whether one was “weak” or “strong,” and whether the will-topower in that person was “ascending” or “descending” in strength. If he saw possible hurt to the other person by one’s exercise of one’s “will-to-power,” he finally distinguished between whether one had intended that hurt or not. If one intended to hurt others by his exercise of power, then it was not good, but if one did not intend to do so, but nevertheless did hurt others, that was acceptable.73 But what justified this? Its unforeseeable nature, or was it carelessness or negligence which the actor should have overcome by more examination of the situation? Or was it, in our present-day terms, mere “collateral damage” that one expects when one exerts pressure or weapons? This returns us to the very thing Nietzsche had belittled in the development of moral theology, the criterion of the actor’s intention, which had replaced “result” in many people’s minds, including Kant’s. But Nietzsche’s distinction of unintended and intended hurt to the other suggests that instinct does not itself rule alone (BGE, p. 234), but reason confronts difficulties as far as any judging between good or bad actions, that is, in having to resort to the nebulousness of uncovering and assigning motivation or intention which Nietzsche said lies back in anyone’s history in innumerable and often unknowable causes. But Nietzsche avoided having to ascertain such impossible data by a sole focus on the person acting, no matter the paucity of actual data he had on those particular people, but nothing in the character, reason, intentions, and so on of the one acted upon had any significance to Nietzsche. Is this the reason he finally defined the “will-to-power” only as a “self-overcoming”? Yet throughout his writings, he issued a judgment against the Reich (e.g. TI, pp. 505–13) and its abuse of power, a judgment that cannot come merely from one’s own self-overcoming or an examination of just one’s own instinct and reason. It can come only from weighing the actual results or effects of certain actions that are attempting to be justified by the mutual values, motivations, and expectations of those comprising the society under such Reich in light of the government’s laws or the social contract they all recognized. But how does one determine that the nationalism he disliked was intending to hurt others, or might the hurt incurred have been simply accidental or unintended? Inasmuch as the will-to-power was to Nietzsche the best way of describing the propelling or attracting force that was necessary to the continuation of life, this overpowered the minor negative manifestations of it. But

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how was it a “self-overcoming” in its Dionysian form, except in the fact that Nietzsche glorified the pain of the birth-mother because of the end result, the child that was born? (TI, pp. 560–61). This idea of suffering or even destruction as a necessary prerequisite to achieving joy or victory or life was continued and emphasized by Nietzsche all the way through his final writings such as The Twilight of the Idols. But now the value has shifted from a universal power, to the intention, to the result, the progeny, thus the continuation of life, with no clear resolution. That is, would any exercise of power, even extreme violence, be justified to continue somehow to keep some person alive? Or is it not more complex? If the unintended pain to the mother was overcome by the joy in the resulting baby, then what sorts of results of nationalism can overrule or mitigate the negatives of those who are unintentionally hurt in the process. It was this very question that caused Rabbi Richard Rubenstein to judge Hegel’s idea of the Aufhebung superficial, which did not deal with large “hurt” such as Hitler’s intention to annihilate all Jews in the death camps.74 Whatever the possible result and its projected benefit, it could not outweigh the hurt. Even if one knows that the Nazi appropriation of Nietzsche was incorrect and unfair to him, the “will-to-power” did not seem to have an answer for such later historical tragedies. If the leader could say his accidental elimination of certain people was both unintended but also that his decision satisfied the utilitarian criterion, to do it was in the “best interests” of the nation, could that really justify the Holocaust, or any criminal act by the leader? This may suggest that the criterion for one’s maximization of one’s inner life and private life may not be adaptable per se willy-nilly to any social or political situations. That, of course, borders now on two elements of moral justification which Nietzsche himself adamantly rejected: not just intentionality but also the calculations of utilitarianism. On the other hand, despite Nietzsche’s opposition to any idea of or program of “improving” humanity and to “breeding” and similar ideas (TI, pp. 503–4), he did often talk of the individual’s decision to opt for the will to power as benefiting “humanity” itself, which is difficult to separate from the utilitarian concern for the majority over the individual or the benefit going to the greatest number of people. He also did not believe actions to be moral if they were totally unintentional or mere accidents, but only to the degree that instinct or a life-affirming conviction and reflection was merged with instinct. Nature itself does not drive toward the moral; rather, the psychologist leaves it to his instinct, to his camera obscura, to sift through and express the “case” “nature,” that which is “experienced.” He is conscious only of what is general, of the conclusion, the result: he does not know arbitrary abstractions from an individual case. (TI, p. 517)

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If “intention” is back into the picture, though only if it includes instinct and one’s whole empirical being, not just one’s reflective ability, Nietzsche seems to endorse it. Certainly Zarathustra was not an unreflective being who just acted from natural or physical instincts, but more of a “genius” who extravagantly spent himself in trying to help others. Part Four of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which was written later and added to the earlier three parts, begins with many years having passed. Zarathustra has white hair, and the whole tenor of the importance of his laughter and his passing beyond desiring happiness shows calmness. His animals surround him outside his cave, noticing that he is watching the ocean, and they inquire if he is looking for his happiness. “What matters happiness?” he replies, “I have long ceased to be concerned with happiness. I am concerned with my work” (TSZ, p. 349). He soon encounters several men, including the “ugliest man” who is the murderer of God, and the “last pope,” and invites them with others to his cave. After he celebrates the Supper with all these supposed followers at the cave, he leaves, but then later returns to find them engaging in the “Ass Festival” in which they are worshiping their misunderstood image of him and his teachings. He indignantly realizes that they have found neither themselves nor him. Zarathustra, who has anticipated the “noon” or “high noon,” now speaks of encountering the midnight revelation of the paradoxical connections as the Whole or the redemption of the world. Ripeness brings death, death brings happiness, of the “drunken happiness of dying at midnight that sings: the world is deep, deeper than day had been aware” (TSZ, p. 433). But the question was what does Zarathustra really want or intend? He understood the contrast between woe and joy, and concluded that woe does not want itself but rather wants children or heirs, whereas joy does not want children or heirs but rather wants itself. One who experiences joy wants it eternally, “wants recurrence, wants everything eternally the same” (TSZ, p. 434). He wants perfection, but everything that ripens to perfection wants to die. Is this what the symbol of midnight is about, reaching perfection and death, which paradoxically brings eternal joy? He implores the higher men to learn that joy wants eternity, and asks them to sing his ode to joy. The following morning, he emerges from his cave, “glowing and strong as the morning sun.” He rhetorically asks the sun what would be its happiness if it had no one for whom to shine. This is an appropriate question for Zarathustra, and if for him, then also for Nietzsche himself. Nietzsche insists that Zarathustra must speak (or write), must have an audience or companions. Whether that audience would be others who would tolerate his message, or only himself, remained to be seen, as the title of the book suggests, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None.75 Uniquely it does not say “for all or a few” but “for all and none,” thereby eliminating the alternatives implied by either the “or” or the “few.”

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This is a crucial question pointing ahead but also pointing back to the beginning of Book Four where he had the same question to ask the sun or star as a leitmotif. He then finds the “higher men” still sleeping, people who do not understand him. His eagle above him lets out a sharp cry, which Zarathustra takes to be his praise to the sun, and he realizes that these animals are his “children,” but that he still lacks the “right men.” The birds flutter around him when he sits down on a stone, and he feels something strange happening to him. As he touches the mane of his lion, it roars, and he responds that “A sign is at hand!” as “a change” comes over his heart. He again proclaims these are his children as the doves flutter about and land on his shoulder. The lion embraces him like a pet dog and licks Zarathustra’s tears off his hands (TSZ, pp. 437–38). When the “higher men” finally awaken and try to join Zarathustra, the lion roars again and they flee. As much as Zarathustra had wearied of his concern and pity for the “higher men,” he finally realized that both his concern for them as well as his concern for happiness had been transcended by him in that experience that was beyond time, as it is described: “All this lasted a long time, or a short time; for properly speaking, there is no time on earth for such things” (TSZ, p. 438). Now, since he had witnessed the perfection in death, that midnight is also noon, that pain is also joy, that destroying is also creating—with his children in his company—he realized that he himself had “ripened.” So he rejoices “my hour has come, this is my morning, my day is breaking: rise now, rise, thou great noon!” As he describes what has transformed inside him, his transcending pity76 for the higher men and his earlier concern for happiness, he now answers only that “I am concerned with my work.” “Thus spoke Zarathustra, and he left his cave, glowing and strong as a morning sun that comes out of dark mountains” (TSZ, p. 439). This sounds amazingly like the writer of Ecclesiastes in Judaism’s scriptures, as the author deplored the “absurdity” or “vanity” of life, that all of one’s accomplishments may be canceled out, one’s fame ignored or forgotten, one’s wisdom never recognized, and one definitely someday being no higher than the animals because, just like them, one will die. To some people this appears to negate any real purpose in life, yet both Nietzsche and the author of Ecclesiastes, purpose is found in living, not in the length of one’s life. One can still find meaning in one’s work and relations, even against all odds and opposition. That sense of direction of the Koheleth is not pessimism, and neither is it in Nietzsche’s Zarathustra. Meaning can be found even within a life of impermanence?77 Neither is it meaningless relativism nor some kind of divine morality. Life or existence is replete with things beyond human control, oppositions of living beings, terrible accidents, self-cancelling advances, and vicious cycles, neither predictable, nor able to be ignored, nor as planned by some deity or

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problems that deity will resolve. It is simply life in which the “race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to the skillful, but time and chance happen to them all” (Ecc. 9:11). Or, as Richard Rorty said, things “just happen.”78 So despite all of life’s utter irrationalities, life still is never not worth living. Any “purpose” will be that which each person supplies to his or her unique life, but much of that comes from one’s relationships with other persons, like Zarathustra asked the sun rhetorically, whether it would find any meaning or any joy if there were no others upon which it could shine. Would there be any meaning or joy for any human if there were no “others” with whom one can relate and help? Even as egoistic as “will-to-power” sounds, it becomes obvious that to Nietzsche that “will-to-power” without relationships was meaningless. If the will-to-power is seen as a force or desire to “disperse one’s strength” which can be life-negating just as it can be life-affirming, or else it is not universal or basic, then it has no unambiguous value other than its power. Rather the value beyond its ambiguous power is assigned to it by human reason in each activity stimulated by instinctual will to power or will to live. To deny that by concluding that we cannot talk of values, as Nietzsche does, is to contradict oneself since all of his talk in his writings is precisely of values, whether he calls it “good” and “evil” or “a” and “b.” In fact, his works are all his personal “judgments” within the very process of life, which does not disqualify them as his emphasis upon one still being within that process seems to suggest. They might disqualify him, however, if he intended, as Rorty suggested, to have the “last word,” that new forms of judgment will not and cannot supersede him.79 Even for him to have Zarathustra tell his followers to find their own “way” since there is “no way,” contradicts the very instruction or insight, like insisting that “there is no truth” while exempting that very assertion. But is not Zarathustra’s speech itself a continual trial and error process, depending upon how others receive it, as he suggests, when he replies that many are not ready to hear or understand what he is saying: they lack “ears” for it? (TSZ, p. 437). Why would Zarathustra be looking for “objective” truth rather than “existential” truth? Although he tries different approaches on people, they still do not understand, but he separates from them and keeps moving. Why would not the “objective” fact of these prospective followers leaving him have been sufficient to reshape Zarathustra’s mission? But it does not affect him that way, unless the reader concludes that he is just too obsessed or neurotic. So the “good” or “valuable” or whatever Nietzsche wanted as an answer to the problem he is addressing is not some universal instinct by itself or sole force as a monism, since that would create a uniformity at least if not an

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undifferentiated Whole. It is more a question of trying to see how the parts of the Whole, which are living parts, have to work together interdependently and symbiotically for the Whole to be a meaningful unit. Any moral question or judgment involves more than the individual or it is not a moral concern. But he knew all this. So is Nietzsche plainly interested only in the individual, not the collective, political life, despite his belittling of the Reich? This is an object of his scorn primarily because of its suppression of the individual and its emphasis on nationalism which is simply another form of the herdmentality to Nietzsche. If there is an other involved, then the question is one of the relation between them, not simply a matter of one’s dispersal of his or her own unique strength or will-to-power. It is a two-way street, often of conflicting perspectives. When confronting the other who is also operating from this universal will-to-power, how is resolution of one’s individual interests to be resolved? This quickly points to an equilibrium that has to be reached, a form of agreement or understanding between interested parties. One cannot simply charge that the other is “decadent” or defying basic instinct. This is the reason our analysis has to weave Rawls into the discussion in chapter 7. To one who is intrigued by diverse perspectives, as Nietzsche was, the “good” or whatever is deemed the solution to their relational problem has to be negotiated or “contracted” by all interested parties rather than a mere decision of one person. It will not emerge just because one party takes pride in having a will-to-power or has rid himself of all traces of religious influence or other ideological heteronomies, certainly not by being such a “master” of oneself that one cannot tolerate any weakness, illness, passivity, inconsistencies, or even compassion in the character of the other, or by feeling that one is of the “supreme” type, “genius” or “heroic” type of “noble” being (EH, p. 761). This is precisely the element that misses a real ethic in Nietzsche’s theoretical approach but may have not been so missing in his personal relationships with others. It appears that his personal relationships were not simply a display of only his own unique “will-to-power” but were very genuine, amiable, agreeable relationships for the most part, that his writing manifested a considerably more bravado or ego-centeredness than he did in person. On the subject of the individual, it is obvious that Nietzsche was not suggesting that one allows instinct to run unrestrained because of the chaos and the way it distorts any coherence or integrated character of oneself (TI, pp. 545–46), but he also opposed extirpation of such passions or instincts as an answer. The best way of dealing with instincts or passions that could easily get out of control, he thought, was through a reasonable spiritualization of the instinct or passion, a form of “sublimation.” He uses the word “spiritualize” or “spiritualization”80 of instinct to describe a sublimation of the primary

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object of the instinct or the literal object through which it would normally express itself to reach its goal. Kaufmann ingeniously saw the parallel between Hegel’s Aufheben and Nietzsche’s sublimieren as being a dialectical process of preservation, canceling and lifting up, so to speak.81 The “essential” objective (life) of the basic force (will to power) remains or is preserved, although the dialectic of reflection drives one to pass by or cancel what was the “immediate” objective, from which a greater power is thereby attained. For example, what is apparent “cruelty” to self, in a controlled or “spiritualized” form, is not a mere violence to the self but rather a form of self-discipline known by most artists, poets, philosophers, and others seeking knowledge or self-perfection (BGE, pp. 348–49). It is one thing to impose self-discipline on oneself to achieve some worthy end in one’s creativity, but the question is whether such is really justified as mere “discipline” or rather “cruelty” if one imposes it on another for which the other has not volunteered. Such “cruelty” Rorty judges as the greatest violation of liberalism,82 but then Nietzsche belittles the latter as well. Here the real issue becomes the question of autonomy, of whether the one wanting autonomy so badly wills the same for everyone else as well? Nietzsche’s view of the past history, for which one has no choice but to say “I will it” seems to point to his refusal to eliminate or discount others’ autonomy even when he thinks they made the incorrect choices in their particular decisions. Further, Nietzsche speaks of the “passions” as having a “phase” in which they “drag down their victim with the weight of stupidity—and a later, very much later phase when they wed the spirit, when they ‘spiritualize’ themselves” (TI, p. 486). How does one avoid the stupid phase or what causes them to “spiritualize” themselves? Or does he mean people spiritualize the passions? In a long tirade, the logic of his attack is weakened. History is unmistakable in its revelation that the Christian church over time has made sexual activity a (necessary) evil, especially from Augustine and forward. But Nietzsche singles out the “Sermon on the Mount” and specifically the injunction, “If thy eye offend thee, pluck it out.” To his way of thinking that was simply compounding the first stupidity with another one. Extirpation, castration, and the like, he insists, is only for the “weak-willed,” the “degenerate” who are incapable of “imposing moderation on themselves” or restraining themselves from any stimulus, that is, incapable of sublimation. So the Church erected this “cleft” separating the weak-willed from the results of their passion. But if the stimulus is one’s instinct, which is quite natural and most to be favored as the primary power of life, why and how could it be restrained, and would not any such be simply antinatural, anti-life? Even more of a problem, however, is Nietzsche’s inability to read other writers or speakers having any legitimacy in speaking in hyperbolic terms such as “plucking” out one’s eye, even though hyperbole, paradox, and parody were his usual fare when he wrote.

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This is not to say that ideals cannot be produced through suffering, that the truly moral may be found only through self-discipline, or that Nietzsche’s physio-historical-psychological explanations are totally mistaken. But they are no more factual than much of Freud’s later tracing of psychological origins of religion. “Fear” certainly seems a legitimate source of religious belief which both posited, fear of death, fear of Nature, and fear of other humans, as Freud called it. But Nietzsche’s wholesale adoption of Hegel’s idea of a “slave-morality” in Ancient Israel which was intensified by Christianity by decadents who were weak-willed with neither the courage nor intelligence to find ways of sublimating their instinct or passions, is an unjustified and unconvincing caricature derived from an uncritical reading of the Bible. This is not to suggest that the ethics of human sexuality in the New Testament are still acceptable and have no misogynistic elements, or that women were not seen as possessions and not equal to men, or that St. Paul’s diatribe against non-heterosexual activity is divinely inspired and eternal. But the rise of “romantic love” out of the sex drive was itself not an unmixed blessing of sublimation even if Nietzsche wants to see it as “paradox” because of the Christian culture from which it sprang (BGE, p. 292). Nor can one ignore the strongly apocalyptic element of all the ethics of the New Testament, something Nietzsche completely missed, but which would have removed much of his objections to the language used in the New Testament. In any case, Nietzsche is attempting to be the “Yea-sayer” through his “Nay-saying,” his annihilation of nihilism, his attempt to find the positive in the negative even by sublimation. Frenzy is a good example. Only this kind of affirmation can remedy the cruel tragedy inherent in life and particularly within human affairs. He says it can do so primarily through art which induces frenzy which is the creative overflowing of life within a person. Even if the music or wine or sex appears to threaten with disorder or chaos, the actual breaking of the structured boundaries or incursions of discreet entities into others is a necessity for people to realize that the meaning of life is found in passion, strength, movement, relations—and in the Moment—that which is always temporary, never permanent. It is not found in passivity, stasis, or shame of one’s thoughts. For him, the art or creativity that most effectively induces this frenzy or overflowing of power or life is music (especially rhythm), which, even more than visual art, affects one’s entire being. All life is lived within the tension of the Dionysian creativity and the Apollonian structuring or ordering, but at Nietzsche’s juncture in Western culture, the Dionysian frenzy and lack of restraint needed to be restored to its place of primacy, for without creativity which requires frenzy, there is nothing to order (TI, pp. 518, 529).

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HONESTY, TRUTH, AND TRUST Nietzsche was adamant about honesty. In the Ecce Homo, as a summary of his thought and brief defensive description of himself, he begins by impugning idealism as one of the most obvious “idols” he was attempting to overthrow not simply in Twilight of the Idols, but all of his publications. He writes that idealism has deprived reality of its value, its meaning, its truthfulness, to precisely the extent to which one has mendaciously invented an ideal world. The “true world” and the “apparent world”—that means: the mendaciously invented world and reality. The lie of the ideal has so far been the curse on reality; on account of it, mankind itself has become mendacious and false down to its most fundamental instincts—to the point of worshipping the opposite values of those which alone would guarantee its health, its future, the lofty right to its future. (EH, p. 674)

This is followed up later by his describing how he voluntarily sought to live “among ice and high mountains” in which he sought out everything that was banned by the prevalent morality. He subjected it all to a different approach: “the hidden history of the philosophers, the psychology of the great names,” and the light dawned for him. He clarifies his method and position with the following: How much truth does a spirit endure, how much truth does it dare? More and more that became for me the real measure of value. Error (faith in the ideal) is not blindness; error is cowardice. Every attainment, every step forward in knowledge, follows from courage, from hardness against oneself, from cleanliness in relation to oneself. I do not refute ideals, I merely put on gloves before them. Nitimur in vetitum [We strive for the forbidden] in this sign my philosophy will triumph one day for what one has forbidden so far as a matter of principle has always been—truth alone. (EH, pp. 674–75)

While Nietzsche labeled Kant and Leibniz as the “two greatest brake shoes of intellectual integrity in Europe” in the supposed “reconciliation of truth and ‘ideal’” which he interpreted as their “right to repudiate science, a right to lie,” he also extended the list of “liars” or “counterfeiters” to include most of the famous German idealists of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries— Fichte, Schelling, Schopenhauer, Hegel, and Schleiermacher—even making a play on Schleiermacher’s name as “veil maker” (EH, p. 777). These thinkers

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all assisted in perpetuating what Nietzsche thought was the most pernicious lie, the “lie involved in belief in God” (GM, p. 596). They have reinforced for many the feeling that they can enjoy life only as they falsify or accept the falsification of life’s image, thinning it down, forcing it to be “transcendentalized,” even deified, and they appear to operate with a fear that they “might get a hold of the truth too soon.” “Pity” and “life in God” are signs of this “fear of truth” (BGE, p. 261). But these idealists have gone further, aspiring “great things” beyond their capacity, but thereby proving themselves to have created in others a mistrust of great things. These “subtle counterfeiters and actors”—“Actors” being among the worst, such as Wagner—end up becoming false to themselves, “squinters, whited worm-eaten decay, cloaked with strong words, with display-virtues, with splendid false deeds.” Zarathustra admonishes his hearers to be careful, insisting that “nothing today is more precious to me and rarer than honesty” (TSZ, p. 401). He rhetorically continues, “Is this today not the mob’s? But the mob does not know what is great, what is small, what is straight and honest: it is innocently crooked, it always lies” (TSZ, p. 402). In his Preface to The Antichrist, which he intended to become the first part of his Revaluation of All Values, Nietzsche describes what he requires of any of his readers. One must be honest in matters of the spirit to the point of hardness before one can even endure my seriousness and my passion. One must be skilled in living on mountains—seeing the wretched ephemeral babble of politics and national self-seeking beneath oneself. One must have become indifferent; one must never ask if the truth is useful or if it may prove our undoing. (A, p. 568)

When he mentioned people becoming false to themselves, or deceiving themselves, that stands as the most pernicious problem. Zarathustra admits that few people are able to be true, but he says the “good” people “never speak the truth.” This could be hyperbole, but his point is that if their goodness is derived from obeying commands, they have destroyed their autonomy so are untrue to themselves (TSZ, p. 312). That connects with the second stage of the metamorphoses of spirit in which one has to be a “lion” to destroy every “Thou shalt.” Goodness does not come from obeying and thereby relinquishing one’s true self or autonomy; it simply results in a big lie to oneself. Yet as we noted earlier, to wage war on this great dragon, every “Thou shalt” which one opposes means one is undermining the values which one has cherished as sacred, so is terribly difficult. But is it better to deceive oneself with the phony enticement to self-awarded “goodness”? It is even easier to lie to others than to self.83 People deceive especially in their representations of themselves to others. For example, while pretending

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to “be good neighbors,” they “lie around lurking and spy around smirking” rather than admit they really want to be “master” over other people (TSZ, p. 322). Not only do the philosophers lie, but especially the poets, Nietzsche insists (TSZ, pp. 238–41). When one of Zarathustra’s followers heard him assert that since he knows the body so well, he knows the spirit is only “quasi-spirit,” the disciple acknowledges that he heard Zarathustra say that before, but what he also once heard him say was that the poets are liars. So he presses Zarathustra as to why he said that? After Zarathustra reprimands him for asking a “why” question, explaining that he knows so many things, there is no possibility that he could also remember all the “why’s” of everything he knew or believed to be true, Zarathustra confirms that all poets are liars, and he himself is a poet, so knows that firsthand, and, further, he asserts that “we” poets have to prevaricate because we “know too little, and are bad learners.” He goes further in faulting poets as he had philosophers, with creating a false other world and belief in divine beings, and here he includes even the “overmen” (Übermenschen). Their imagination goes even above the heavens “for all gods are poets’ parables, poets’ prevarications.” In the realm of the clouds we poets “place our motley bastards and call them gods and overmen. For they are just light enough for these chairs—all these gods and overmen” (TSZ, p. 240). Truthfulness and honesty, of course, apply to every idea about this world, so Nietzsche is saying one has to be honest about the role of instinct in causation and moral disposition, honest about growth and maturity which require having to deal with barriers, enemies, or opposition, honest about the limitations of reason and the multiplicity of perspectives, honest about the motivations behind our actions as well as our moral formulations, and honest about what supports life and what denies or negates life. It is one thing to seek truth as an objective scholar, attempting to remain always at a distance, totally detached, completely uninvolved with the sources one is weighing. That can easily promote a self-deceit. It is quite another to have an existential awakening to truth or honesty, especially in the form of an admission of self-deceit. This is what Nietzsche wrote in Ecce Home in 1888 that he experienced as he finished and published Human, All-Too-Human in 1878.84 One has to recall that during 1888 he also wrote The Twilight of the Idols, The Antichrist, and Nietzsche Contra Wagner, as he was planning his Will to Power. But he collapsed, insane, in a street in Turin in January 1889, only a few weeks after finishing his Ecce Homo in which he described the conditions under which he wrote Human, All-Too-Human, in 1878, some ten years after meeting Wagner in 1868 and becoming a professor of philology at the University of Basel in 1869. In retrospect, he said his awakening was not precipitated as a break with either Wagner or the University per se, but really that he was “overcome by

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impatience” with himself. He had wasted ten years of his life, learning nothing new that was useful. I had forgotten an absurd amount for the sake of dusty scholarly gewgaws. Crawling scrupulously with bad eyes through ancient metrists—that’s what I had come to!—It stirred my compassion to see myself utterly emaciated, utterly starved: my knowledge simply failed to include realities, and my “idealities” were not worth a damn. (EH, p. 742)

He writes that he realized he had selected a vocation and life “in defiance” of his instincts, which means a dishonesty with himself, the most basic and destructive of all lies. He thinks many a young person at that time did the same and turned in their need to Wagner as an “opiate.” Looking back on those former years, he writes, It was then that my instinct made its inexorable decision against any longer yielding, going along, and confounding myself. Any kind of life, the most unfavorable conditions, sickness, poverty—anything seemed preferable to that unseemly “selflessness” into which I had got myself originally in ignorance and youth and in which I had got stuck later on from inertia and so-called “sense of duty.” (EH, p. 743)

The revaluation of values includes one’s being willing to become “unstuck” even as he did when he recovered himself in 1878 in renouncing idealism and rediscovering his instinctual self, “unstuck” from a person, fatherland, pity, science, detachment, one’s virtues. The tendency of many superior souls is to “spend themselves lavishly, almost indifferently,” turning the virtue of “generosity into a vice.” He insists on the contrary that “One must know how to conserve oneself: the hardest test of independence” (BGE, p. 242). He finally describes himself under the peculiar idea of one who “turned out well”: That a well turned-out person pleases our senses, that he is carved from wood that is hard, delicate, and at the same time smells good. He has a taste only for what is good for him; his pleasure, his delight ceases where the measure of what is good for him is transgressed. He guesses what remedies avail against what is harmful; he exploits bad accidents to his advantage; what does not kill him makes him stronger. Instinctively, he collects from everything he sees, hears, lives through, his sum: he is a principle of selection, he discards much. He is always in his own company, whether he associates with books, human beings, or landscapes; he honors by choosing, by admitting, by trusting. He reacts slowly to all kinds of stimuli, with that slowness which long caution and deliberate pride have bred in him: he examines the stimulus that approaches him, he is

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far from meeting it halfway. He believes neither in “misfortune” nor in “guilt;” he comes to terms with himself, with others; he knows how to forget,—he is strong enough; hence everything must turn out for his best. Well then, I am the opposite of a decadent, for I have just described myself. (EH, pp. 680–81)

While honesty is essential to human relationships, it is so primarily because humans have a need to be able to trust each other, although Nietzsche never speaks in these terms. But there is little doubt that he felt Wagner had betrayed his trust, no matter how much he had helped Nietzsche in their early years of friendship, and it burned in Nietzsche for the remainder of his life. No relationships exist without trust, and no relationships can continue to exist in a state of distrust. But neither Schweitzer nor Nietzsche explicitly explored this ethical concept, as if the communication between people inherently carries this trust, which we know is simply not true. Communication can be misleading, either intentionally or unintentionally. Doubt and distrust are so basic to any living creature that even animals learn when and whom to trust, and they learn it very easily without all the reflective equipment in their brains that humans have. It is certainly instinctual at first in one’s earliest years, but gradually becomes reasonable as the child learns to reflect, yet even in the most sophisticated reflection, there always remains the element of possible doubt or distrust since the other is always other, a definite subjectivity, a relatively free being, as Sartre emphasized, one whose complex understandings and experiences I can never fully explore, so must always remain open to possible doubt even when trust is verbalized. Nietzsche “Three Metamorphoses of the Spirit” in Thus Spoke Zarathustra show the development toward autonomy which is the need for trust, since trust cannot be simply assumed or commanded in a relationship. Trust is voluntary on the part of each person which points to the autonomy of each. Where does one find “trust” conspicuous in Zarathustra, especially if he represents Nietzsche himself? Perhaps the most graphic picture is in the litany that preceded the “Ass Festival.” The content of the litany recited by the “ugliest man” as well as the “Yes” replies from the Ass is precisely Nietzsche’s thought or impression on others, treated now as objects, now drawn to their apparently logical consequences, and placed within traditional Christian language reminiscent of the throne scenes in the Book of Revelation. This shows more what cannot be trusted or reasonably expected, for example, that others will understand what one says, or that others will be consistent in their espoused values, or that one can speak unequivocally so as to avoid blame if others totally misunderstand. Zarathustra’s followers engage in this “strange litany to glorify the adored and censed ass,” a long profound passage with all kinds of subtle and equivocal meanings. But Zarathustra gets

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the point quickly, and is so upset by this that he jumps right into the middle of them, accusing them of sheer madness, and he himself shouts even more loudly than the Ass the same “Yea-Yuh!” As he proceeds to reprimand each of the participants, each in his own turn points out to Zarathustra that this worship was only logical! After all, it all came from him—Zarathustra— because he was right! Zarathustra then realizes the self-contradiction, as his trust in others and in himself presented a rational but also existential shock.85 He feels compelled to teach, but realizes that it may be that no disciples or students ever really understand. In fact, how could they, since each person has a different perspective? Nevertheless, the poem ends with him searching for more people to teach. So he says each person must find his or her own “way” since there is no “the way,” and any judgments or even redemption must concern the whole since that is all there is. This relativizes human thinking and speech at the same time it makes universal connections in space and time, not far removed from the profound Reason of Following of Robert P. Scharlemann, who passed away in 2013, though from a completely different metaphysical position, which only reinforces what they were saying. This further clarifies Richard Rorty’s insistence that “truth” is not “out there,” whether one is thinking of some intrinsic truth of the self or reality. Nor does language actually “find” that intrinsic truth of either self or reality out there, whether one is looking for language to serve as a medium either to express or represent. Instead, language is simply a contingent “alternative tool,” serving as a “flag” which signals the desirability of using a certain vocabulary when trying to cope with certain kinds of organisms, the noises and inscriptions or marks it makes, from which one may gain a “useful tactic in predicting” one’s future behavior.86 The “truth” would be precisely in the trust that one feels when comparing his or her own expectations based on those noises and marks of the other with what happened as a result of them. Davidson called this his “passing theory” of language which Rorty largely endorsed and it seemed also to fit Nietzsche extremely well, a learning from a form of predictability. But even here Nietzsche is utterly surprised at the failure of his words to be interpreted as he intended them, surprised at their evident equivocity or the radically different perspectives of the hearers. So there is no such thing as the way? Rorty’s thesis is that Nietzsche and Davidson help us realize that language is contingent, accidental, with no overriding or transcendental purpose, and this leads to a contingency of conscience as well, and the recognition of this can “lead to a picture of intellectual and moral progress as a history of increasingly useful metaphors rather than of increasing understanding of how things really are.”87 Rorty calls this the “unparaphrasability” of metaphors within a living language.88

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If human communication requires some convergence in expectations of both parties derived from speech, enabling each to be able to guess or predict to some degree the future words or behavior of each other, that is basically the communicative feature of creating trust. So the words create a function rather than provide a certain substantial knowledge. That insight provided by Nietzsche via Davidson via Rorty is extremely vital in projecting the ethics into the sphere of social contract with Rawls in chapter 7. CONCLUSION In sum, Nietzsche has supplied positively a new multi-perspective form of reading history and of trying to understand humans, in which instinct or the “will-to-power” which is basically like Schweitzer’s “will-to-live” plays the vital ethical role of self-overcoming. The autonomy he emphasized, necessarily in any relationship, from the most intimate to a social contract of government structures would have to be a mutual autonomy, which implies equality of voice, despite Nietzsche’s antagonism toward the new cultural egalitarian emphasis. The equality is elicited not from a posture of weakness but of the realization of the necessity of a social agreement between all parties involved. Trust is at the heart of this kind of an agreement to live to maximize the “will-to-live.” “Reason” or Geist in Nietzsche is only a part of one’s physical being, not some divine empowering as it was for Hegel, so was certainly more compatible than the speculative-idealistic ideas of Spirit. His insistence on ethics being “life-affirming,” even within the greatest hardships, tragedies, and illness, moved far from the utilitarian single-dimensional approach of pleasure and pain. Like Feuerbach, who we will briefly analyze in chapter 6, he saw all values as being human values, and a transcendent “God” was neither necessary nor credible, despite Feuerbach’s reversal and attempt to rename the human species as “God.” To Nietzsche, the most flagrant example of a selfcontradictory ethic is one that degrades human sexuality such as the Christian Ideal of celibacy and abstinence which, if actually taken seriously, would put an end to the human species. He blamed that ethic for trying to create a wholly artificial world beyond all instinct, beyond all real life. If “trust” is not a major theme of his, he certainly “distrusted” any ethic that is anti-life, heteronomous, inconsistent, or other-worldly. It is difficult to know at what point one’s will-to-power must be controlled lest instinctual frenzy destroys all order of one’s art, style, or character, which is parallel to Schweitzer’s rather nebulous answer that somehow one’s “will-to-live” would recognize the other’s “will-to-live” and stimulate one to the correct reasonable action, even if it required one’s

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self-negation. The primary difficulty in Nietzsche’s ethic is its obsessive focus on the individual, and little thought given to what creates actual positive relationships between two or more people or between groups who have competing or conflicting needs. This is the case, despite the fact that he faulted the morality of his day of speaking only of “sin” as sin against God and left out of the picture the way humans alienate themselves from other humans. This is where we have come, after looking at Schweitzer and Nietzsche. But they did not discuss anything about the necessity of agreements. Their ethic was aimed at a general humanity, not assuming any particular political type of government. Yet by the stress on a life-affirming ethic as instinctual, tailored by reason, but determined by this instinctual “will-to-live” which is autonomous, yet in any relation with others is necessarily mutual autonomy, Schweitzer at least implied the equality of voice typical of a democratic society. It was not considered as a position of giving in to the other, nor a posture of weakness, subservience, or ressentiment as Nietzsche thought, but a position of a unity which is strong enough to tolerate individuality, uniqueness, and significant difference. Nietzsche’s emphasis of the “whole” being all there is, should feed into this. That is the basic thrust of the “theory of justice” and “political liberalism” that Rawls articulates, which we will analyze in chapter 7. Because especially Rawls’s analysis of “political liberalism” restricts itself to a democratic society or structure, he does not muddy the water by trying to relate all of the aspects of that political justice to some global view of international justice or a global ethic which would include types of autocracy or even fascism in which there is no tolerance of difference and no real sense of an equality of all citizens. I am convinced that the ethics implied or made explicit by the three philosophers is basically appropriate for any relationships, so I am therefore implicitly suggesting that in a non-democratic setting, there is less than a humane ethic by virtue of the eclipsing of a universal mutual autonomy. But the same eclipsing of autonomy has been standard procedure for all religions for millennia, which is the primary reason they are not any desirable or relevant basis for a universal or even national ethic, whether democracy or autocracy. Of course, the problem of space to consider such different perspectives between an autocracy and a democracy is just as much a limitation for the present study as it was for Rawls’s separate books. So, just as I had to narrow the analysis of religion down to a single one, Christianity, and hope that much of it would be relevant to any religion, I do the same for the ethic. So, even though the Parliament of World Religion and the Dalai Lama were seeking what they thought to be a global ethic, I am restricting the study by chapter 7 to the democratic societies to keep Rawls’s own separation of the two

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different scopes in mind. To extend it further, would be incorporating even Rawls’s later Law of Peoples for an international scope, and would make the project terribly confusing and too lengthy. It is to these actual relationships, and even ethical principles, not just the question of the ethical ground, that we must turn. But there is still one more fundamental religious presupposition we need first to examine lest it should become our Trojan horse.

NOTES 1. Daybreak, tr. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge, England: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1982), sec. 211, p. 133; and Beyond Good and Evil, p. 211. Hereafter in text “BGE.” 2. This can be seen in the leading nineteenth- and twentieth-century Christologies of Schleiermacher, Hegel, and Tillich, in which Jesus was, by his exceptional consciousness of God, released from all significant antitheses, estrangement or sin, even though “God-forgetfulness” or “estrangement” was considered a universal human condition with no exceptions . . . except Jesus. See my Ethics and the Future of Religion: Redefining the Absolute. 3. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), ch. 7. 4. William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (New York: University Books, 1963), pp. 510–27. 5. The most obvious element of particularity of Buddhism is the concentration on “compassion,” but even other uniquely Buddhist doctrines such as “no-soul” or anatta, are utilized by His Holiness. 6. Supreme Court decisions seem to reveal among the Justices a progressivelygrowing ignorance of the particular religious nature of religious symbols such as the Decalogue, or the Cross, respectively in the following six cases: Braunfeld v. Brown, 306 U.S. 599 (1961)(Sabbath); Marsh v. Chambers, 463 U.S. 783 (1983) (Prayer); Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668 (1984)(Nativity Scene); Allegheny County v. Pittsburg ACLU, 492 U.S. 573 (1989)(Menorah);Van Orden v. Perry, 545 U.S. U.S. 677 (2005)(Decalogue); Capitol Square Review and Advisory Board v. Pinette, 525 U.S. 753 (1995), and American Legion et al., v. American Humanist Assn, et al., 588 U.S. ___, 139 S. Ct. 2067 (2019)(Cross). 7. Albert Schweitzer, The Philosophy of Civilization, tr. C. T. Campion (New York: Macmillan Company, 1960), pp. 282–85; 290–92. 8. Ibid., p. 246. 9. Ibid., p. 305. 10. As a child, Schweitzer experienced his father allowing the local Catholic church to meet in their Protestant building, just in a different place and time than the Protestant worship services, which, in itself placed his thinking far ahead of the typical exclusivism.

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11. Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, tr. Walter Kaufmann (New York: The Modern Library, 1968), pp. 527–28. Hereafter in text “GM.” 12. The self- and other-destroying power of “pity” is a major theme especially of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Hereafter designated as “TSZ.” 13. Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, p. 548. Hereafter designated as “TI.” 14. Nietzsche, TI, p. 523, where he suggests there are many psychologists who choose that profession so as to be despisers of other humans, to “look down on them and no longer to mistake themselves for one of them.” That is not the way he used “psychology” in hunting for morality’s “origins.” 15. Nietzsche, The Antichrist, in The Portable Nietzsche, tr. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Viking Books, 1954), pp. 611–19; 650; 654. Hereafter designated in text by “A.” By Paul’s initiative, Christianity’s morality as “chandala morality” of “ressentiment and impotent vengefulness” was brought to light (625). That idea of the “Antichrist” could have been articulated by most Protestants if they were speaking of the Catholic Church, but Nietzsche is not confining his judgment to Catholicism but includes especially Protestantism in his disgust with both Paul and Luther. It was obviously the Lutheran posture he had in mind in that last paragraph of this chapter in which we note his disgust that “sin” was defined only in terms of “sin” against God, with no consideration of alienation of other humans. I have shown this is still true in Tillich’s Systematic Theology, in my book The Future of Ethics and Religion: Redefining the Absolute. Nietzsche contrasts the “most spiritual men’s” attributes with the degeneracy of the Christian ideal, as he calls Christianity the “immortal blemish of mankind” (645, 656). 16. John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), pp. xviii–xxvi. 17. Nietzsche, GM, pp. 500–29. This is a process of “internalizing” of physical causes and results, by which he explores the origin of such things not only of responsibility, but of bad conscience, guilt, punishment, and the like, which seized easily on an imagined supranatural world as the wholly-other, ultimate Power. 18. The modern media, however, do present episodes and entire drama series which involve “law and order” in some fashion, just as for decades, “movies” have reflected the current morality of the people (at least as conceived by the writers and producers). 19. This “return” involved his “impatience” with himself, so a break from the unreal “idealist” life that had influenced him, now including a resignation from his University post as well as a break with Wagner, two former commitments that had virtually controlled his life. This “return” was certainly a return to autonomy and his individuality and “genius of heart.” See Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, tr. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Modern Library, 1968), pp. 742–44. Hereafter “EH.” 20. For example, in his early works, he deplores the mixing of races within nations since that seems only to produce more unnecessary chaotic conflict with each race having its own inflexible, ancient identities and values that it finds repugnant to think of challenging. But in his later works, he is totally for this mixing as an owning up

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to the uniqueness and different perspectives of people. The latter stance is nevertheless more consonant with his position in his early Thus Spoke Zarathustra in which Zarathustra demanded that there is no “the way” but only one’s own way (p. 307). Another example can be found in his opposition to “slave-morality” which he knew Hegel elaborated and saw it being adapted by the early Christians as well. Nietzsche did not abandon his contention that Christianity was a form of slave-morality or slave-mentality, but he eventually distinguished it from Judaism (by seeing Judaism’s own negative judgment of non-Jews utilized by Christians upon Jews, which resulted in “the most disastrous kind of megalomania that has yet existed on earth” (in A, p. 622). Or at least insisted that he was not anti-Semitic, and he denounced Wagner, “breeding,” and the like, while he emotionally charged that “All anti-Semites should be shot.” His opposition to anti-Semitism became even more adamant after his sister married a leading anti-Semite, Bernard Förster, in 1885. Had he lived longer, he might have seen that his judgments about egalitarianism, women, and many other ideas and specific people were caricatures. 21. Walter Kaufmann, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist (New York: Meridian Books, 1950), p. 60. 22. See Nietzsche, Joyful Wisdom, #290, “One Thing is Needful,” pp. 223–25. (A better title is Gay Science, but hereafter “JW.”) 23. Nietzsche, BGE, pp. 201, 293; and EH, p. 727. Of course, nothing could be more squarely anti-Kantian since Kant had developed a conception of the “good” based completely on “will,” not any inclinations or instinct. 24. Nietzsche insists phenomena are not moral. That is a trait only of judgments about phenomena. 25. He definitely dates the misunderstanding of the “good” back to the origin of Christianity, yet he also belittles it for its possibility thereby of becoming a nihilism like Buddhism. More specifically, the Christian reversal of values into favoring the weak, poor, unsuccessful, “common” or the “herd,” was finally taken up into the spirit of the Enlightenment, and the final break-through of it into the explicit form of the ethics of ressentement and emphasis upon equality, versus the aristocratic values, came by the Thirty Years War. See Nietzsche, GM, “First Essay, ‘Good and Evil,’ ‘Good and Bad.’” Ultimately, “instinct” began to be used in a double sense, so can be the true “good” or the aristocratic instinct of the superior people, or it can be the “herd-instinct” of the common people who finally got their voice into the mix when the aristocratic voice weakened. But this introduces a dualism into the most basic power of which Nietzsche speaks, which seems to lack any control, unless he glorifies what he would consider the lack of aristocratic instinct in the “herd” to be the real and only evil. If instinct is really the primary power of life, why is it so easily distorted or divided, even against what Nietzsche thinks is real life? Is the valuable attained only through conflict or opposition, as Nietzsche contends, which would defy his negative caricature of the plebian cause, the emphasis upon disinterest in the moral good, the “pity”? Is this what he thought was his gaining the “dialectician’s clarity par excellence” which he found in his terrible sickness which directed his mind to its opposite, that of genuine health? See EH, “Why I am So Wise,” pp. 678–79.

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26. Nietzsche, GM, “Second Essay: ‘Guilt’ ‘Bad Conscience,’ and the Like,” pp. 493–532. 27. Ibid., pp. 490, 474, 500. For example, in Kant’s schema, his assurance that the moral act can come only from the actor’s “good will,” which he takes to be a will which consciously universalizes its maxim, cannot be proven, since humans are still incapable of reading one another’s minds. Kant says the will would be more likely judged good if the outcome or result was to his or her disadvantage. But what of the case in which one so elects the response that would be to his or her disadvantage, but has an extreme resentment about doing so? Again, how does one ever determine precise motives? 28. Despite Nietzsche’s style, he refers to the “experimental” nature of his theories, by which Rorty may have exaggerated a bit Nietzsche’s need to “have the last word.” See Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, esp. ch. 5. 29. For example, he wrote “Ethics feel that if it were not thus possible for one’s will-to-live to produce through its manifestations effects on another will-to-live, they would have no reason for existing.” So “Ethics” is a plural personality? That’s a very strong connection, when one might have expected him to say “the ethical person feels . . .” But he carefully personified “ethics” as he did the “will-to-live” in the same sentence as the “will-to-live” “produces. . .effects” in the other “will-to-live” (notably, also not “person”). See Schweitzer, The Philosophy of Civilization, p. 290. He also states, “The ethic of ethical personality is personal, incapable of regulation, and absolute; the system established by society for its prosperous existence is suprapersonal, regulated and relative” (p. 292). The difficult question is why there is this difference? Are not both totally relative, and the latter is designed by social contract as regulating, so that the individual or private ethic cannot flout it with impunity? Is there really any reason one has to see something here as “absolute” rather than simply universal? 30. Nietzsche, TI, pp. 561–63. He compares the inevitable nature of pain and suffering in creating something new to the birth pangs a mother endures. He suggests that as painful as it is, there is “joy” in enduring it in order to recreate. In cases in which it is not a suffering of one’s body but a suffering of an ideology, Nietzsche is going so far as saying one finds “joy in destroying” (563). 31. Nietzsche, TSZ, p. 307. He also admonished one’s uniqueness and autonomy in many other places, for example (1) as he concluded Thus Spoke Zarathustra with Zarathustra separating from his followers so they could find themselves, while he renewed his attachment to his animals, then emerged later from his cave to continue his own work, having finally overcome his pity for the “higher men”(428–39); (2) in his earlier warning against getting too concerned over the problems of the world, but rather insisting that they go their own ways (321); (3) where he reduced one’s moral obligation to one’s “neighbor” as being an obligation to oneself instead: “Your work, your will, that is your “neighbor”; do not let yourselves be gulled with false values!” (403); and (4) especially in his revulsion at his followers in the “Enlightenment” and “Ass Festival” in which they come to venerate him or his teachings (or least to make him think they do so) without understanding him (425–29).

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32. Richard Schacht, “Nietzsche’s Kind of Philosophy,” The Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche, ed. Bernd Magnus and Kathleen M. Higgins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 164: “For we can gain insight into the relationally constituted natures of phenomena only by learning to look at them from perspectives attuned to these relations, with eyes become sensitive to them.” 33. See his scathing analysis of Descartes’ cogito. BGE, #17, p. 214: “[A] thought comes when ‘it’ wishes, and not when ‘I’ wish, so that it is a falsification of the facts of the case to say that the subject ‘I’ is the condition of the predicate ‘think.’” 34. Nietzsche’s understanding of the Christian church “besmirching” or “throwing filth” on sex is certainly seen in St. Augustine’s City of God in which the primal sin was sexual, initiated by the deceived woman but not the man, which, to Augustine showed her greater interest in sex, but women’s inability to restrain the sexual instinct since she was less reasonable than the man. St. Augustine, Concerning the City of God Against the Pagans, tr. Henry Bettenson, pp. 522, 570–92. See how he ties concupiscence, pudenda, lust and the first sin to Eve rather than Adam. 35. He opposed the common utilitarian ethic in many ways, including its mistaken emphasis of trying to give equality even to those he called “unequal” (TI, p. 553). He blamed the French Revolution and the Enlightenment and especially Rousseau for this idea of leveling everybody, which means mistreating those who are superior or “higher.” This is one of his most “privileged” positions that remain questionable, since he could never prove how some people have more “noble” instincts than others. He simply referred to others as being part of a “herd” in their animality and lack of thinking. Yet if “instinct” was more important than reason, why the distinction of those supposedly more intellectual as the elite or “higher” men? He says it all comes down to only lesser or greater degrees of instinct, but if instinct is not created by one’s will, why blame those who seem to have less of it? A confusion arises when he speaks of an “instinct for causality” or other things that he mocks, since his very search for the “origins” of morality is at best an “instinct for causality.” And his insistence on searching for “origins,” he violates one of his “Maxims and Arrows” in TI: “By searching out origins, one becomes a crab. The historian looks backward; eventually he also believes backward” (TI, p. 470). Is he the only exception to this? Nevertheless, he is profound. 36. Kaufman, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist, pp. 182–84. 37. The “Reverence for Life” is the “will-to-live” which one has spent time reflecting on, probing deeper and deeper into its meaning and implications, whereas the “will-to-power” seems to be only the animating force or what Nietzsche is calling “instinct.” 38. Nietzsche, BGE, pp. 300–301. The longevity of the history of there being “rulers” or “commanders” created the presumption or even instinct of being commanded by the majority of the people, but also created a “moral hypocrisy” for the commanders, torn between that instinct and just feigning that they have it so also feel commanded. This makes the condition ripe for the “strong” commanders, who, we would say, see themselves above the law, But this in turn creates deep resentment among the masses of those commanded, feeling the “Thou shalt!” Rabbi Richard L. Rubenstein gave an example of how this works psychologically on religious people,

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how the cathartic verbal re-enactment of killing the sacrificial lamb in the ritual of the Jewish Day of Atonement, sufficed to provide not only the sense of forgiveness for not living up to the Torah, but also allowed the aggression of the person against the Commander to be subconsciously admitted. It is a profound article on the “Day of Atonement.” See Richard L. Rubenstein, After Auschwitz, 1st ed. (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1966). 39. G. W. F. Hegel, The Positivity of the Christian Religion and The Spirit of Christianity, in T. M. Knox, ed. Hegel’s Early Christian Writings (1975). 40. G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Mind, tr. J. B. Baillie (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1967), p. 780. Obviously, what one would never think was the meaning of an actual crucifixion, Hegel has determined as the meaning of the “symbol” of idea of the Crucifixion. But the uniting of idea and symbol (which is another idea, less abstract) is simply not the equivalent of idea and reality. 41. Nietzsche, JW, pp. 174–75. This is more his Lutheran understanding of Christian ethics rather than even the ethics found in the writings of the Apostle Paul, an understanding that is found in most potent form in the Lutheran-influenced theology of Paul Tillich who insists there is only “one sin,” namely, one’s estrangement from God. So human alienation, offense, or violation seems of no consequence. Tillich, Systematic Theology, Vol. II: p. 57. Nietzsche’s judgment is correct even if he blames the wrong primary source which was Luther. 42. Most of this is found in his The Antichrist, although he comments in various places about Jesus, Christ, and Christianity, even of Christendom. 43. Masao Abe, “A Rejoinder: Sunyata and Ethics,” in The Emptying God: A Buddhist-Jewish-Christian Conversation, ed. John B. Cobb, Jr., Christopher Ives (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1990), pp. 173–77. 44. Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, xvi, and chapter 9, “Solidarity.” Especially on p. 192, he summarizes, “The view I am offering says that there is such a thing as moral progress, and that this progress is indeed in the direction of greater human solidarity. But that solidarity is not thought of as recognition of a core self, the human essence, in all human beings. Rather, it is thought of as the ability to see more and more traditional differences (of tribe, religion, race, customs, and the like) as unimportant when compared with similarities with respect to pain and humiliation-the ability to think of people wildly different from ourselves as included in the range of ‘us.’ That is why I said, in Chapter 4, that detailed descriptions of particular varieties of pain and humiliation (in, e.g., novels or ethnographies), rather than philosophical or religious treatises, were the modern intellectual’s principal contributions to moral progress.” 45. Thomas J. J. Altizer, Total Presence, eds. Thomas J. J. Altizer and William Hamilton (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1966), pp. 104–6. 46. See Andrew Linzey, Animal Theology (London: SCM Press, 1994). The thesis is that the more vulnerable the life-form, the greater the human’s obligation to protect it. 47. Nietzsche, EH, pp. 680–81: “Instinctively, he collects from everything he sees, hears, lives through, his sum: he is a principle of selection, he discards much. He is always in his own company, whether he associates with books, human beings,

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or landscapes; he honors by choosing, by admitting, by trusting. He reacts slowly to all kinds of stimuli, with that slowness which long caution and deliberate pride have bred in him: he examines the stimulus that approaches him, he is far from meeting it halfway.” 48. This is the self-contradiction Nietzsche sees in both Buddhism and Christianity in thinking one must eliminate sexual attraction, that only excision of desire is the answer. He says this means in “the fight against craving—castration, extirpation—is instinctively chosen by those who are too weak-willed, too degenerate, to be able to impose moderation on themselves.” Later, he argues that the demand that one ought to change himself is absurdly “to demand that everything be changed, even retroactively” (TI, 487, 491), an insight which is hard to contradict because of our inherited genetic code. 49. He says the “disagreeable” feelings one has (and one can “always finds reasons for being dissatisfied with oneself”) are attributed to being caused as punishment by either demons or hysteria misunderstood as “witches,” which simply was reinforced by Schopenhauer’s view expressed in the following words: “Every great pain, whether physical or spiritual, declares what we deserve; for it could not come to us if we did not deserve it.” He here quotes from Schopenhauer’s World as Will and Representation, II, 666 (TI, 498). What Nietzsche insists is that one’s selection of certain ideas, concepts or “causes” depends itself on one’s frame of mind which is itself affected by one’s body in its totality, even certainly one’s metabolism and one’s digestive system (p. 499). Compare EH, pp. 679, 693–700. 50. Scharlemann, The Being of God, which emphasizes when God is but “not being God.” 51. In fact, in Tillich’s Christology, the key he supplied to overcome the lack of historical proof about Jesus was the way the image of New Being in the picture of Jesus the Christ “transformed” the believer, but in reality no transformation is ever shown by Tillich, and he settles to say that it is only grace or forensic justification since the believer will always remain both saint and sinner. See my analysis in The Future of Ethics and Religion: Redefining the Absolute, ch. 5. Abe faulted Tillich’s system for its asymmetrical valuation, in give priority to being over nothing. See Masao Abe, “Double Negation as an Essential for Attaining the Ultimate Reality: Comparing Tillich and Buddhism,” in Buddhism and Interfaith Dialogue, ed. Steven Heine (Honolulu: Univ. of Hawaii Press, 1995), pp. 104–11. 52. In certain Buddhist understandings, the idea of impermanence and of no-soul as well as Nirvana is an exception to this, especially as they finally equate Nirvana with Samsara in all of its understanding of Sunyata. 53. Kaufmann, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist, pp. 205–9. Kaufman, however, does describe it as both a “whole” and “unity” even within the same sentence. The resolution of the seeming monistic problem is that it is not monistic, that the other is real, separable and influential, and that affects one’s own “will-topower” even as the “will-to-power” can be seen as universal. When individuals meet, the “will-to-power” faces itself in another form, so something has to change through mutual agreement.

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54. Nietzsche’s own interpretation of Zarathustra in Ecce Homo is that he is the ultimate embodiment of the “Dionysian” approach to life—in fact, the “Dionysian here became supreme deed, “something beyond not only the Vedic priests of old, but even Goethe and Dante. In every word he contradicts, this most Yes-saying of all spirits; in him all opposites are blended into a new unity.” He “descends” to the common people and the most everyday language to speak and create the most profound reality, though with the heaviest of projects and greatest of burdens, he nevertheless does it with light, dancing feet. His comprehension and creative ability are unfathomable, and in his work, the “overman” is realized as man in the normal sense though one in whom the old revalued or reversed values have been overcome. Even though he “says No and does No to an unheard-of degree, to everything to which one has so far said Yes,” in that very nihilism of the distortedly nihilistic values of his culture, his “Yes” is created out of his “No.” (pp. 761–62). Heidegger is correct in seeing that Nietzsche’s concern with “life” is always with the Whole. Heidegger, Nietzsche, tr. David F. Krell (New York: Harper San Francisco, 1991), Vol. II, e.g. pp. 57–59, 77–79. Unity is identity of opposites discovered by the overman such as seen in Zarathustra’s discovery that his greatest joy was his greatest suffering. This and his idea that “everything flows” probably comes more from Buddhism than from Heraclitus. (See Heidegger, Vol. 2, p. 78.) 55. Friedrich Schleiermacher, On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers, and The Christian Faith. 56. Would not Schacht’s awareness of the different “perspectives” advocated by Nietzsche include this kind of polarity as well as the different intellectual disciplines of the human sciences? Richard Schacht, “Nietzsche’s Kind of Philosophy,” pp. 151–79. 57. So Whitehead’s word “prehension” is perhaps better than “will,” in order to include all actual entities, not merely human or even all conscious or live entities. 58. See Kathleen M. Higgins, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra (Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press, 1986), pp. 21–28. 59. The Whole is to Nietzsche only finite. Although he can speak of it as if it were “infinite,” he does not mean that to be taken literally. He means that it is merely apparently beyond human comprehension. See esp. Heidegger, Nietzsche, Vol. 2, pp. 87–88. 60. In fact, in his description of his Thus Spoke Zarathustra in his Ecce Homo, he ties Dionysus and Ariadne together as a “riddle” that was not perceptible to others, yet in one of his last letters to Cosima (Liszt) Wagner, he identified her as Ariadne and himself as Dionysus, which was perhaps a little less cryptic than the way he ended Ecce Homo, considering its title’s origin (“Behold, the man!”) as he wrote “Have I been understood?—Dionysus versus the Crucified—?” (EH, 791). 61. Foucault, The Order of Things, pp. 305–6. 62. Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, pp. 96–113. 63. This is probably interchangeable with his prolific use of “soul,” even after he mocked “soul” as being a ridiculous ancient idea that we moved beyond. But why use the words?

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64. TI, 507. This “alcoholism of the young scholars” of Germany appalled Nietzsche, who found many foods and even coffee detrimental to clear thinking. So he mocked the German people for “deliberately” making themselves stupid through addiction to alcohol, to Christianity, to Wagner’s music, and to pastries as heavy as paper-weights. 65. Kaufman, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist, pp. 92–95. 66. Within Nietzsche’s culture, “overcoming the self” was the self shaped by these contorted, anti-life values of ressentiment, the values of the past, and thereby finding one’s own values or becoming autonomous, the progression from the camel to lion to creative child. Rorty suggests Nietzsche’s converting of all the “it was” of the past into “Thus I willed it” is Nietzsche’s concern not to move beyond time to find some eternal truth but rather to “redeem” the past by redescribing oneself and thereby transcending one’s self that the past had formed. This is to “redescribe the past which the past never knew,” and thereby to find one’s self which one’s precursors never knew was possible. See Nietzsche, TSZ, p. 310, and Rorty, p. 29. But any present descriptions of the past are from such a different perspective, they are always “the past which the past never knew.” I see this as true, but also see Nietzsche insisting one cannot change anything about the past, but through redescription might be able to shape a little different future. But one’s choice about the past is either accept it as is, or live in unreality. Events will not be undone now by redescribing. Instead, to say “Thus I will it” or “will it again” is similar to Nietzsche’s emphasis that his key to life was amor fati, which enabled him to will even the same life with all its sufferings over and over, that this is how much he loved life. So one may not will human cruelty, but one can never will to eliminate the autonomy of others in order to accomplish that. That necessitates an agreement in every present. Even the “child” stage needed language to play the games with others, contrary to what Rorty thought, which shows where Rawls enables the private to assist the public sphere. 67. Notice the difference from the quotation beginning this chapter, that this one never gets over-filled, gorged, too much of what he discovers in himself, as “the most high-spirited, alive, and world-affirming human being who has not only come to terms and learned to get along with whatever was and is, but who wants to have what was and is repeated into all eternity, shouting insatiably da capo.” There is no disgust or boredom here, but rather a desire to have it all again da capo, the music term “from the head” or “from the beginning.” This is more of the love for real life with whatever it brings. 68. Nietzsche, TI, 475–76. He says people use dialectic when they have no other means, even though it creates distrust and is not very persuasive. He sees it as a form of “plebian ressentiment,” of “knife-thrusts” by which one takes revenge on someone else. 69. Daniel Levitin, in his book This is Your Brain on Music, proposed that music is more hard-wired into the brain or more primal than even language. See Levitin, This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession (New York: Dutton, 2006).

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70. TSZ. 562. It is interesting that the Christian church placed the validity of sex only upon the result, of procreating, which would have been as illegitimate as judging what is moral only by the result, which itself points neither to reason, intention or instinct. 71. I realize his references to “eternal recurrence” have been interpreted in many ways, but three factors must be considered (in addition to his hyperbolic and flamboyant “style”): (1) his familiarity with Darwinism and the process of evolution which cannot be squared with a literal eternal recurrence of anything; (2) his insistence in using this to define what it is to really love actual life rather than some imaginary life in another world in the future; and (3) his passage in Twilight of the Idols in which he defines the “eternal return of life” as the “overall continuation of life through procreation, through the mysteries of sexuality” (p. 561). Although he in places spoke in quasi-scientific terms, he nevertheless complained of science’s obsession with “objectivity,” and his emphasis continues not on some metaphysical or cosmic eternal recurrence but on human sexuality as he emphasizes the necessity of the woman’s pain in creating new life, pain of the woman which “hallows all pain, all becoming and growing—all that guarantees a future—involves pain. That there may be the eternal joy of creating, that the will to life may eternally affirm itself, the agony of the woman giving birth must also be there eternally.” This is “recurrence” or continuation of life through procreation by sex, not some “soul” (which he disdained) being reincarnated. 72. Walter Kaufman, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychiatrist, Antichrist (New York: Meridian Books, 1956), pp. 38–41, and ftnt #37, p. 371. 73. In the Dawn, Kaufmann sees Nietzsche creating a long ladder of degrees of cruelty or hurt, from the lowest level of the barbarian hurting others to the top rung of the ascetic who is cruel only to himself. Kaufmann, Nietzsche, pp. 164–70. 74. Richard L. Rubenstein, After Auschwitz: History, Theology, and Contemporary Judaism, 2nd ed. (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1992), p. 158. 75. It is an irony that his first audience responds to him ignorant of what he means by Übermensch, and thinks he is only introducing the tight-rope walker who is above them. So they stop listening to him to watch the acrobat. Even in the conclusion of Zarathustra, as he sees what a failure his teaching has been with his “disciples,” after separating from them, he ultimately leaves his cave to continue to try to find an audience for his words. 76. Nietzsche’s first exposure to Schopenhauer fascinated him and he read the latter’s huge volumes immediately. Wagner was perhaps Schopenhauer’s most devoted disciple. Nietzsche was similarly overwhelmed with the genius of Richard Wagner and his music, and later says he could not have survived his youthful years without Wagner’s music. Yet Nietzsche broke off with both. In Wagner’s case, it was due to his reversion to embrace Christianity in Parsifal, and probably also because Nietzsche was in love with Wagner’s wife, Cosima, even though it was never even disclosed to her. In Bayreuth, one leaves behind honesty with self and others, independent thinking, and so forth, for with Wagner everything is “acting” for to Wagner the theater is everything; “one is people, public, herd, woman, Pharisee, voting animal, democrat, neighbor and fellow-creature—there even the most personal conscience succumbs

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to the leveling charm of the ‘great multitude; there stupidity operates as wantonness and contagion; there the neighbor rules, one becomes a neighbor’” (JW, 328–30). With Schopenhauer, despite all Nietzsche’s criticism of “Will” as the primary power of life by which he “set a primitive mythology on the throne” (JW, 170), it seems Schopenhauer’s focus on “pity” may have been the straw that broke the camel’s back, since pity was what killed God and pity was the last temptation of Zarathustra. 77. Ibid., p. 316. But how did Nietzsche misread Ecclesiastes, when in Book 3 of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, he belittled that author of Ecclesiastes’ declaration of “vanity” as unwarranted pessimism and blasphemy of life? 78. Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1989), pp. 183–85. 79. Ibid., p. 111. In Rorty reminds us of Heidegger’s words that Nietzsche is an “inverted” Platonist. Rorty distinguishes the ironist novelist from the ironist theorist and metaphysician by virtue of the “why” that he perceives. According to Rorty, the novelist such as Nabokov was writing basically for himself and couldn’t care less if anyone was influenced by what he wrote; as a novelist he was concerned with small details, certainly not with larger things such as “humanity,” “world,” “will to power,” “universe” or “God.” He judged Nietzsche as an ironist interested in that which is larger than self, and understood Heidegger’s calling him an “inverted Platonist” if one sees Nietzsche substituting “becoming” for the formerly-universalized “being.” But “becoming” and “being” are not parallel. 80. He defines “spirit” as “care, patience, cunning, simulation, great self-control, and everything that is mimicry (the latter includes a great deal of so-called virtue)” (TI, 523). 81. Kaufmann, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist, pp. 204–10. 82. Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, p. 68. 83. Kant knew this, and for this reason he warned that one’s real judge is not some Other but one’s own conscience. Kant, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, tr. Theodore M. Greene and Hoyt H. Hudson (New York: Harper Torchbook, 1960), pp. 71–72. 84. It was not, however, until twenty years later, 1908, that Ecce Homo was actually published. 85. At the very end of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Zarathustra was alone again with two of his animals which Heidegger thought perhaps symbolize pride (the eagle) and discernment (the snake). He emphasized that this pride is “assurance of one who no longer confuses himself with anyone else.” Discernment, he suggested, is knowing when to utilize or conceal one’s knowledge, when to metamorphose or disguise oneself, not as deceit yet as “power over the play of Being and semblance.” Heidegger, Nietzsche, Vol. II: 46–47. It could perhaps be, instead, simply Nietzsche’s dialectical style of arguing opposites. 86. Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, pp. 9–20. 87. Ibid. 88. Ibid., pp. 17–18.

Chapter 6

The “Best (or ‘Worst’) of All Possible Worlds”? Perspectives or Attitude?

Our search here is for an ethic that can stand on a base of principles that are completely “freestanding” which might serve as a beginning point from which we humans could work out an ethic that would be voluntarily agreed to nation-wide, regardless of peoples’ religious or non-religious identities, and regardless of whether or not they have any more comprehensive moral schema that makes general claims on the whole of their lives. Since people are quite reluctant to live in a society whose morality which shapes the laws is based exclusively on a single religion or any other comprehensive view to which they do not subscribe or which they find unreasonable, all that would be accomplished in attempting to install such particular ethics as the ground for the nation’s laws is to antagonize and create hostilities that could destroy the unity of the country. Yet most religious people or others who espouse a comprehensive moral schema, cannot conceive of their ethics as having any authority if they are extracted from the comprehensive schema or even metaphysical claims grounding them, in order to be “freestanding.” They are often viewed as absolute, and to think of separating their metaphysical and comprehensive schema off to form an ethic that can be adopted by all people seems compromising, presumptuous, shameful, perhaps even blasphemous especially if it is given priority over a religious ethic by mere human authority. This is because religions’ ideas of the primary source or motivation for ethical living professes not to come either from human nature or instinct, but from some transcendent power such as a “God” or “Eternal Principles” or “Torah” or the “Dharma” or “Absolute Spirit” or the “categorical imperative” or the equivalent. The questions then arise: What is it about being human that spawns an ethical interest? And what influences humans to think they must depend upon some transcendent or divine help in order to know what is moral and to be able to do it? That is, what do humans “lack” that causes them to 273

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look outside themselves, to something invisible, to be ethical when ethics concerns something inside them relating to visible beings? More bluntly: Must humans suffer interminably from creating ideals that are unrealistic? Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716), philosopher, jurist, and mathematician, one of the best-known optimistic rationalist philosophers of the seventeenth century, and often thought of as the father of modern calculus, was convinced that such an understanding of the world and even human nature is neither necessary nor accurate. He insisted we live in “best of all possible worlds.” He did not mean the “best” by understanding “world” as merely the mental construct of humans vis-à-vis the physical environment in which they live.1 Leibniz was including the natural world or environment as well as the mental world. Such a view was possible only because of his unique view of “God,” which, similarly to Descartes, saw “God” as the Creator of the world, human rationality, even the senses, and One who does not lie. But he went beyond Descartes in emphasizing that if “God” was Creator of the “world,” and if the world could be better than it is, then “God” would surely have made it that much better. But it is made, and we see what it is like, so our world must be the best of all “possible” worlds. His optimistic view of even nature being part of the “best of all possible worlds” was because he conceived of “monads,” the simplest of subjects,2 but consisting of no separable parts and having “no windows.” That is, they were impervious to being influenced by external stimuli. How they related to each other was therefore in a “pre-established harmony” which could not be improved since nothing could be altered as long as the “world” was conceived as consisting only of such “monads.” That “harmony” made it the “best of all possible worlds.” Samuel Clarke (1675–1729), a significant British rationalist, debated Leibniz on the subject of “miracles,”3 which raised multiple issues between them such as the idea of the perfection of God as well as the sufficiency of reason. Clarke’s view of miracles was that they were only that by human perspective since he believed that everything in the universe is actively maintained by the present power of God. These discussions were still based on a “natural religion” and connected to the medieval “right reason” which needed to be supplemented by “revelation,” and were in only the very beginning stages of weighing the consequences of “atoms” in Newton’s theories. Both Leibniz and Clarke felt the need to have a particular form of “God” as the Source, Brains, and Power of the Universe and all Human Thinking. Modern understanding does not include such literal views of a choice of either a personal “God” having done the “best” he could do in creating the world (Leibniz), or a perfect “God” who is actively involved in sustaining everything including maintaining the planets in their exact orbits and using intermediaries to create what we today call “gravity” (Clarke). It also

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has moved far beyond Leibniz’s idea of “monads” as the most elemental substance which are totally closed to anything external to them, but rather accepts the idea of that most elemental thing of the universe being “atoms” which do have parts which can relate to other parts which are “external” to them. It is hard to say whether Leibniz would still have held to such an optimistic view of the natural world had he lived even until 1755 and experienced the Lisbon Earthquake which is now rated by modern measurements as having been between an 8.5 and 9.0 magnitude quake. Or, he might not have had the same optimism had he lived in Kant’s day, and seen the positive and negative effects of people’s belief in freedom, even if it was only a postulate for morality. Of course, we know that Leibniz was also involved in formulating a theodicy. So he might not have wavered from his optimism at all. If it were a choice of attitude between viewing the glass either half-empty or half-full, his selection was obvious and stable. To have conceived that the analogy of a half-filled glass was inappropriate because it violated human conceptions of “good” and “evil,” not mere measurements of the quantity of a neutral element, so it seemed not to be in the picture, despite their consciousness of moral choice based on “right reason.” Yet Leibniz’s term “best” does appear to imply a moral judgment in some way, and by his father’s library, he certainly had exposure to moral philosophy from his youth up. Why did Leibniz think that the “world” and/or “God” needed to be defended by his theodicy? EARLY CHRISTIAN CONCEPTIONS OF UNIVERSAL “GUILT” AND AN “EVIL WORLD” One does not have to be certain that religions began from some primordial murder of the father, for which the sons tried to compensate by prohibiting others from doing the same. Nor does one have to decide that religions and ethics came from weak, ignorant, resentful people who had become used to being commanded, and when they finally could, they ironically created a system of commands for all the people to live by. Nor does one have to think that some “God,” after creating humans and world, decided that humans had to be told how to live with each other, especially since they could not even obey a divine command that was so easy to keep as not eating fruit from a certain tree. These explanations from Freud, Nietzsche, and St. Augustine are all speculative, a matter of deciding what one is looking for in past history and then being lucky enough to just find that very thing. On the other hand, there is little doubt that most religions have had a history of finding deep fault in humans and often in the “world” and they have often discovered that if they would preach such inevitable suffering and guilt

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upon their audience, then their offering a solution to the horrible problem made many converts for them.4 In fact, many ancient religions’ creation narratives recite stories of conflict between the gods or often conflicts caused by the newly created humans who were frequently depicted as trouble-makers, selfish, and uncooperative, if not murderers of animals in their peculiar apparent bent on destroying life. Guilt in various cultures was widespread, and largely controlled by the priests of the religions. In ancient Egypt, for those who died, there were lengthy protestations of innocence in many different specific areas which the deceased was to articulate to escape terrible punishment in the underworld. All ancient religions, large and small, developed their norms and standards of behavior which each person was expected to observe. Serious infractions could lead to exile from the community itself or even to death. But the longer the group existed and the larger it grew, so did its law code or moral norms, and to keep everything orderly could be tasking and time-consuming. If we confine our scope to just the Christian religion, into a scene such as this stepped the “Apostle Paul,” as he called himself, who just happened to find a solution to the profuse legal-ethical system within his own religion’s history and scriptures. After his “conversion” on the road to Damascus, Syria, he was certain that he was commissioned to spread the word of the same “risen Christ” to others. But his reputation up to that point had been as a persecutor of the new Jesus movement. However, within a few years of trying to fit into the Christian group, after traveling many miles in Asia Minor to win converts and being fairly successful, he began writing letters to these churches to assist them, which also meant articulating his developing theological and moral views, which included viewing the present as “this present evil age” (Gal. 1:4). Since the opposition to him as a missionary had been that he was working among Gentiles and not requiring them to respect and follow the Jewish Torah, he just happened to find appropriate passages in their very scriptures which built his theology of grace (and universal sin). Of course, grace was only a beginning point,5 the grace of experiencing the “risen Christ” en route to Damascus, as totally unexpected. Similarly, it was only the beginning point such as Israel’s escape from Egypt and its adoption by God at Mt. Sinai, which was attributed to His grace, as was also their inheriting the already occupied land of the Canaanites. But at that occasion at Sinai, God also presented His law to them, and this was expanded and reiterated over the generations by the Deuteronomist and other editors of the tradition, who emphasized the connection between grace and law, deliverance and obligation, even eventually, as Neusner said, “exile and return.” It was never true that the religion of Ancient Israel and later Judaism, was only a religion of law. The Torah was viewed as God’s law for the people, but they

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did not view it as coming from their initiative or even desert, but from God’s desire to have them as His people (Deut. chs. 6–9). For those following Jesus, another beginning point of “grace” was found in the Crucifixion and a person’s opportunity to die with Christ to the world in baptism in order to be raised to a new life for Christ and others. By itself, the Crucifixion certainly was not a symbol of “grace” but of death and defeat. But the earliest disciples soon became convinced of Jesus’ “resurrection” which therefore placed the Crucifixion in a totally new light, not just another tragedy. But neither the Crucifixion nor the faith these disciples had in it nullified the law (Rom. 3:31), or even stand independent of it any more than did God’s adoption of the people at Sinai, even if Paul occasionally said it did, nor did baptism. Rather, Paul saw the law as “fulfilled” in the Spirit of holiness, the same Spirit which proclaimed Jesus as God’s son by the Resurrection (Rom. 1:1–4) and was given to stimulate the disciples’ morality who had no Torah, and even for those who did (Gal. 5:16–26). This Spiritual power was the mystical unity the disciples found by being “in Christ” or having “Christ in” them. Grace and law were both operative at Sinai just as they were in the mystical unity achieved in one’s Christian baptism, or by one’s Spirit-motivated love which fulfills the law (Rom. 13:10). “Faith” in both cases, as Habakkuk used the term, is a “faithfulness” to God by the way one lives, which marks one as “righteous” (Hab. 2:4) by one’s ethical demeanor, certainly not merely by hoping God will count one as righteous even though one is not.6 As Schweitzer insisted, one’s union with Christ, as one’s faithfulness to God, means one’s suffering with and for Christ, being, as Paul said, “in the world, but not of the world.” This was his unique contribution or how he saw his role as the “apostle to the Gentiles” which enacted God’s purpose “hidden” in past ages, but now being made manifest, God’s making a single new humanity7 in which He would deliver them from this “present evil age” (Gal. 1:4), reconciling them, making everything new (II Cor. 5), even as he conceived the entire creation groaning in labor pains, awaiting its “redemption” by God (Rom. 8). One senses in his reference to this “evil age” not simply possible cosmic, historical, even political problems, but even a possible universal problem of humanity at large. This much may hold together in Paul’s thought. But, if it is clear that the “evil” from which Ancient Israel’s ancestors escaped was in their minds their enslaved role in Egypt, one must ask what “evil” did Paul escape from and all the people who “converted” to follow this Jesus or Christ?8 Since Paul had the “answer,” the first rung on the ladder to be established was the specific “problem” or issue, and for this, he found the idea of universal guilt, not just his own guilt or the guilt of Gentiles as a typical Jew might have thought, but of literally everybody, “Jews and Greeks” (Rom 3:9) alike. For this view that he expressed in his letter to the Romans, he engaged in a most novel

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misappropriation and misconstruing of the sense of many of the Psalms, combined with Isa. 59:7–8. By cherry-picking verses out of their contexts and Sitz-im-Leben in Ancient Israel, he was able to read a picture of total universal human degeneracy.9 It was a “lack” or deficiency like no other, yet any human “guilt” seemed poorly established since he spoke of God as the master potter of the clay, and, at the end of that chapter, even said that God had shut all people into disobedience so He might have mercy on them (Rom. 11:25–26). Further, when the “gospels” finally took written and canonical form, it became obvious that Paul’s idea of universal guilt was a hyperbolicethical-theological element hardly remembered, if at all, by Jesus’ closest disciples or any editors of the gospel materials, as those eventual gospels professed to describe Jesus’ alleged encounters with people. If many historians of the gospels today see Jesus as primarily a subversive wisdom teacher, opposing the systemic evil of the exploitation of the peasants by Caesar, it may be factual to a degree, although the actual texts substantiating this are extremely minimal and more dependent on the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas than seems warranted.10 This is not to minimize the problem the Roman Empire posed to early Christianity,11 in fact, even to the early fourth century. If both Jesus and Paul espoused an imminent eschatology, the inherent negative assessment of the present world as “evil” was at least a part of the presuppositions of the “good news” that both of them preached of the imminent coming Kingdom or the Parousia. Nevertheless, Jesus is not remembered for collecting a list of Psalms and other prophetic passages to try to expound a universal sinfulness or estrangement. Paul’s absolute and universalistic derogation of the species as totally corrupt and powerless to save themselves enabled him to fight against what he perhaps considered his own futile attempts to perfectly obey the Torah, or had room within it to include the pro-Empire non-Judeans in the Roman church who were feeling superior to the Judeans who had recently been readmitted to Rome and therefore back into the synagogue there.12 But when hard-pressed over the question of law or no law, he claimed he became as one under the law to try to win those under the law, and became as one outside the law to try to win those outside the law (I Cor. 9:19–23). which reinforces his rather puny conclusion in Galatians, that after searing and even anathematizing those who preached a different gospel than he (meaning they were preaching that Gentiles needed to be circumcised), he ends by saying “For neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything; but a new creation is everything! As for those who follow this rule—peace be upon them, and upon the Israel of God” (Gal. 6:16). This sinful disposition which Paul speculated began with the “first man” became even more exaggerated and misogynistic as universal moral

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depravity by St. Augustine who traced the “lack” or “sinfulness” not all the way back to the Garden of Eden story as had Paul, not simply comparing Christ to Adam as he had, but now inserting Eve as the real culprit, by her lack of rational restraint of her sexual desire, the “pudendum” which made every sexual act shameful and sinful. He even went so far as to say that such a “lack” or sinfulness was explicable only because humans were created from “nothing.”13 Does that mean humans are guilty for lacking divinity, that is, for not themselves being self-creating gods? If the “world” in St. Paul had still been waiting for its final “redemption,” by Augustine’s time, the “City of God” ran parallel to the “city of man,” but they were separated and would never be eventually merged since one was created from nothing and everything was determined or pre-determined by God. The same personal lack of capacity for doing the good was the driving force in Luther’s break with Rome in the early sixteenth century, as he hunted within a culture that was neck-deep in a choking sin-consciousness, for an answer for his “unrighteousness” and became convinced that the Catholic Church did not have the answer. He found what comforted him in Paul. Calvin provided even more emphasis by seeing the lack not only as universal, but a total depravity passed along from generation to generation, an inevitable inheritance of universal damnable proportions before which all humans stood helpless. If that view of depravity did not exactly enhance people’s problems with their self-image, at least it formed civil law that made Geneva a bit cleaner city over the years. The Roman Catholic tradition had allowed for there being a sort of “natural religion” and even a “natural-law-ethics” or “right-reason” ethics in the Middle Ages (which, as noted above, made its way into Protestant theology as well), but a theology and ethic that the Church insisted had to be quite inferior to the revealed theology and ethics through Christ. The “natural” religion and ethics also continued through the Enlightenment, amid certain protests of human innocence or a rejection of “original sin” even in thinkers such as John Locke.14 But the negative assessment of what humans lacked was too firmly rooted in the Christology of the Church. Without that doctrine of inevitable, universal sinfulness which produces helplessness and hopelessness, it might be possible to conceive of some humans who might never stand in need of being “saved” by Christ. But that had to be unthinkable in an exclusive religion which was sure of its superiority. So the horse remained behind the cart (not “in front”); the answer (in the cart) required the universal problem (the horse), or humanity might end up generally claiming enough innocence or at least neutrality to bring the religion to a grinding halt. But quite obviously the “horse” was drug along by the “cart”?

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INEVITABLE HUMAN DEPRAVITY AND THE DEHUMANIZING OF JESUS THE CHRIST This universality of sin, with its great “lack,” had early on also ironically placed even greater pressure on the theologians to explain how Jesus as the Christ could possibly have been really fully human as well as fully divine, as the fourth- and fifth-century creeds had emphasized by the “two natures” or communicato idiomatum. The Church answered through its Christology that denied that Jesus ever had any such “lack.” So the Church opted for a Docetic view of that Jesus15 (that he only “seemed” or “appeared” to be human and to die) who was claimed as the Christ, while ironically explicitly formally continuing to anathematize Docetism as a heresy. Notwithstanding the “kenotic Christology” in the quasi-Pauline letter to the church in Philippi (ch. 2), “Jesus as Lord” was really totally exempted from the most serious and typical human trait: he never sinned, unlike everybody else—everybody! Despite the optimism of Leibniz, and the egalitarian thrust of the Enlightenment, the same idea of human “lack” or hopeless degeneracy was embraced also through the period of critical and absolute idealism in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Kant, Schleiermacher, and Hegel. Kant was comfortable with seeing sin or evil as a powerful predisposition of humans, that is, one’s principle of life being a maxim that was too egoistic to be universalized, yet this was fairly balanced by a predisposition toward the good.16 To answer the standoff, Kant spoke of the moral Ideal, even though it could not be understood as actually embodied in anybody, including Jesus. However, that Ideal, as long as it remained apparently inaccessible to humans, could be metaphorically thought of as “coming down” to humanity (as if descending from the heavens).17 But the lack was strictly moral which could be cured by getting the universalizable maxim back in a place of priority, not by some supranatural means. Even so, Kant knew it could not be embodied as intelligible in a human being, so his “Christology” stood outside history. Schleiermacher saw the “antithesis” between the objective consciousness and “feeling” (or the “immediate self-consciousness” or “God-consciousness”) as universal and inevitable, as a state of helpless “God-forgetfulness.” Yet, when he formulated his Christology, Jesus escaped it by the Wünderbare Erscheinung (“marvelous or miraculous appearance”) of being born with an “absolutely-potent God-consciousness”—the only exception to the universal sinfulness in all of history.18 There remained the Docetic Christ. And all Schleiermacher could do was then to minimize that “antithesis” as not an essential part of human nature but a mere “disturbance” of nature, which stood miles disconnected from his description of it for all other humans. For Hegel, the problem of universal depravity was reduced to a symbol of one’s

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rational immaturity, evidently depicting one who was not a philosopher so could not see or know the absolute truth by reflecting only on ideas or concepts themselves. Similarly, its “answer” was also shorn of all historical details as a symbol of reason which could at least be known to Hegel, and then, incongruously seen by him in the final stages of Spirit’s self-realization in Germany. Was it any wonder Kierkegaard battled against Hegel’s priority of “speculative reason,” and felt he had to go to the opposite extreme of seeing the “infinite qualitative gap” between humans and God? If Schleiermacher annihilated any argument for “natural religion” or “natural theology” by his Addresses,19 he retained natural-law-ethics to a degree in other non-religious writings, perhaps because of Kant’s influence on him through insisting on “postulating” “God” as the source of the moral concern that the moral command had to have the absoluteness “as if” it were a command by God. If one could not “prove” “God” after Kant, one could still experience the divine aspect of “God,” the Infinity of God, either by the “categorical imperative” (Kant),20 “feeling” (Schleiermacher), or through “Spirit” or “reason” (Hegel). Idealism was confident that just some quality in humans bore the stamp of degeneracy, but humans somehow also bore or were receptive to the divine stamp, imprint, or power universally, even if it had to be “postulated” per Kant, and even if it had to include those outside the Christian religion, and even if the failure to embrace the Christian remedy for it made the “outsiders” appear doubly culpable. Both Schleiermacher and Hegel viewed Nature as something that needed to be controlled by universal Reason or Spirit, either with or without Feeling. This was because neither “feeling” nor “reason” was conceived as being a part of Nature, but was rather one’s inner connection with “God,” a “given” or immediate or intuitive faculty, even if a bit on the mystical side.21 It was a dualistic world, a world of the Infinite and finite, body and mind, substance and reflection, idea and reality, but in which the Christian tradition had to have the last word, so the infinite, intangible (idea or Begriff) was to take over and control the tangible. If there were elements of Nature they conceived of them as having no feeling or reason, so those creatures that did have reason (Geist) would have to control the former, to shape them, or where they could not shape them, simply mitigate their negative power. But even Schleiermacher’s and Hegel’s non-religious ethics were left in the lurch when they both opted for the superiority of the Christian “answer” of “reconciliation” (Hegel) or “redemption” and “sanctification” (Schleiermacher). Christian ethics was therefore the ultimate answer, and it was to Schleiermacher only a description of that Divine Process, not any prescription or imperative.22 Any uniting of the Infinite with the finite or controlling of Nature by Spirit (or reason or feeling) was really all “God’s” doing; as Schleiermacher emphasized, nothing significant was

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even “contributed” by humans.23 So God was in control in every way about everything, yet the problem remained of Christology having always presupposed a state of helpless depravity as the universal picture in absolute need of Christ. So if the “world” could thereby be considered as the “best” of all possible worlds, that would be so only for those who were Christians; for all others, such was not the case—the lack, the inability, the basic degeneracy was thought by Christians to dominate, so for them it would have been the worst of all possible worlds—at least by the Christian account. The question is whether this kind of bifurcation is either realistic or justified. If the world was the “best” because the scholar decided that “God” was the “best” or “most perfect,” what would the picture of the whole world propose for the picture of God, that is, if the “world” is not simply those who are “Christian” and have been “saved” from the evil of the “world”? The question of what kind of “God” raises the question of congruity and justice. So the dualism was not a true dualism, just as the polarity of “good” and “evil” was not symmetrical. The “good” had priority just as did “reason” or “feeling” and would eventually win out—at least with and for those who became Christian—perhaps revealing even as Augustine emphasized that “evil” never had any ontological standing anyway, but was simply a “lack” or absence of the “good.” As if that solves the problem?! So the “lack” of the “good” is sufficient for an answer about humanity’s just desert or fate? If it really has no ontological standing, does that get “God” off the hook of people thinking “God” must have created things that way? If this was all “God’s” answer and power, which Christian theology claims, then it must be the solution: the physical world is still only “appearances” or at least not very real since the invisible directs everything. By Hegel’s “speculative idealism,” even visible historical events or historical persons were now not important because of their actual or factual qualities but only from their symbolic function which somehow gave their concreteness universality.24 On the other hand, religious ethics was losing influence on the culture as utilitarianism became the dominant ethics of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a teleological system opposed by Kantian deontology because utilitarianism seemed quite adaptable to the new capitalism, industrialization, new economic theories as well as to egalitarian structures: the calculated interests of the “majority.” It did not have to presuppose a universal depravity, and then dismiss it when it sketched the “answer” to it as a real human; rather, it could be credible by speaking in terms of real pleasure and pain as commonly experienced, and showing how we classify things in these categories.

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THE METAPHYSICS OF INFINITY’S PERSISTENCE THROUGH PRIORITIZING BEING OVER BECOMING The religious focus on the “lack” of ethical-being within humans was all a part of the asymmetrical diagram in theologians’ minds of a preference of “being” over “becoming,” for which Nietzsche belittled them.25 He was not wrong. That preference for “being” (idealism or essentialism) over “becoming” had not died with Copernicus, nor did it die with Kant’s “Copernican” revolution in epistemology. Nor did it terminate or even get qualified with the rise of Darwinism and the general acceptance of evolution in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. “Being” still dominated much of the philosophy and theology of the twentieth century such as Heidegger’s and Tillich’s ontological systems. Richard Rorty accused Nietzsche of being an “inverted Platonist” by making “becoming” the Absolute rather than “being.”26 But a closer reading of Nietzsche may raise questions of such a caricature of Nietzsche by Rorty, despite Nietzsche’s hyperbolic tirade against the preference for Being. Nietzsche saw “being” as only a word which added nothing to a sentence, a presumptuous word such as “essence,” which presupposed incorrectly that the speaker had some divine perspective beyond contingency from which the decision could be made as to the validity of the use of such words. Nietzsche was clearly opposed to such “final language” or any Absolute, and this perhaps accounts for his continually changing the focus as he constructed his arguments.27 On the other hand, the “lack” so prevalent in the old metaphysics continued even within the alleged non-metaphysical ontology of Heidegger. If it began in his selection to designate or call humans by the word Dasein, that was allegedly a step removed and inferior to Sein, whether he wanted the latter to be totally contingent or not. There was the “lack.” He proceeded to describe the “fallenness” of Dasein as well as Dasein’s “guilt” over its “thrownness” into a world or existence which it did not create, a fact which shows its indebtedness to its predecessors and justifies its “guilt.”28 As he describes Dasein’s “falling,” exemplified and disclosed in its manner of Being-in-theworld especially as “idle talk,” “curiosity,” and “ambiguity,” this falling was “into” or “against” the “world.” Notably, he himself connects the “floating” or “being everywhere but nowhere” in his descriptions to “inauthentic” being. Yet he insists he is only giving an ontological analysis, not judging these states or disclosures negatively, as if he were implying some state of sin or corruption.29 But inasmuch as “authentic” being is one’s goal, these elements which characterize “inauthentic” being thereby received Heidegger’s implicit negative judgment, no matter what he said, unless they are all necessary or

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inevitable methods of attaining to that “authentic” being, which it seems they are not. One also cannot miss Heidegger’s continual insistence that one did not choose this state of limited potential but was “thrown” into it, that is, one “has been delivered over” to it.30 That seems a strangely negative way of describing one’s life. In any case, the non-metaphysical or “existential” ontology of Heidegger formed the philosophical background for Tillich’s Lutheran Christian inheritance of “original sin,” and the self-contradictory “lack” of humans continued in Tillich’s Systematic Theology. All humans, by simply exercising their choice or freedom, estrange themselves from God, which is the only estrangement that counts, and that is due to the polarity of destiny and freedom, a polarity which humans evidently simply allow to get out of balance. He insists this estrangement is universal, but is not a logical or ontological necessity, but just a universal co-incidence with humanity.31 What he does not answer is whether there is actually any possibility of any humans not estranging themselves from God. This is the real test. His answer becomes obvious when he insists that to have saving faith in Jesus as the Christ involves the “paradox”32 of “final revelation,” which is like saying the whole matter is simply beyond or “above reason,” a rather strange reversion to John Locke’s “above reason” defense of the central claim of Christianity some three centuries before, a position which has seemed to many to be begging the point. When Tillich spoke of the “answer” to the “lack” or the “estrangement” as the “Spiritual Presence,” Tillich still failed even to acknowledge the material source of thought as the human brain.33 He continued to speak of “Spiritual Presence” as if it were an external or supernatural power, though he explicitly denied it being external, yet spoke of it as “vertical” or “depth” or a “symbol” experienced only through ecstasy and paradox, rather than something literal. “Ecstasy” he defined as being outside one’s normal subject/object frame of mind, and “paradox” was not contradiction but simply something one did not expect from one’s prior experiences. This was his only answer to the terrible “sin” or “estrangement” of humans from God that was apparently built into the human system by God, as a human force to alienate one’s existence from one’s essence, to take over and pollute the person from the very first moment the person exercised his or her freedom, an alienation from essence, from Being,34 which Tillich had found to a degree even in Martin Heidegger’s non-religious philosophy, in the latter’s description of the “fallenness” of Dasein.35 As a result of the way both Heidegger and Tillich saw the human “fall” or “lack,” their idea of “conscience” and “morality” was that it was simply the call of oneself, the call of “existence” of oneself, even the “depth” of one’s being, but not a call from specific others. The call of conscience offered no

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positive or negative ideas about action to which one would commit. Rather, it was a call in Heidegger to “exist” and to “care” about existing authentically, or not simply in the “everyday” way with its superficial understandings of life. The difference between understanding conscience ontologically and thinking of it in ordinary or everyday terms is that the latter does not address any decision to exist in its own potentiality, but only primarily positive or negative directions as if they depend upon particular, contingent others. But, Heidegger argued, they could even contradict one’s existence if one does not know what is entailed ontologically in existing. The call to “exist” is thereby for Heidegger a more important call than any positive directions or concerns. But who would ever have argued against that? Does this mean “authentic” life is reduced to mere “existence”? This is parallel in many ways to Tillich’s idea that the unconditional aspect of the moral concern is being-itself which is “beyond morality”36 in the sense that it is a call to “New Being” but not to positive or negative directions. Tillich is sure that to think of conscience in this typical “everyday” sense of merely positive or negative imperatives leads one to a futile attempt at “self-salvation.” Rather, one’s true existence is available only through the Spiritual Presence which enables one to experience “New Being” in a forensic justification of being counted for what one is not (yet, if ever), and one “accepts” that “acceptance” from “God” or being-itself. The primary difference is simply that Tillich’s schema is placed more in a traditional, theological vocabulary. To both Heidegger and Tillich, the effect of one’s becoming “authentic” or “being saved” has nothing to do with living after death, nor even being a morally better person during one’s life, but simply being “concerned,” even ultimately concerned about one’s existence. Other people or living beings have nothing to do with the “call” of conscience, nor one’s “care.” On the other hand, Heidegger goes to great length to analyze the significance of speech or discourse through analyzing the significance of “hearing” which does bring in the other person, though it is not clear how one’s speaking to the other is related to one’s conscience or ethical responsibility, if at all, unless the possible “understanding” the hearer is to achieve has nothing to do with his or her relation to the speaker. Similarly, Tillich does mention other people, but, as Schweitzer said about Kant, no real principles for action or behavior are provided, and with Tillich it is because estrangement with God is the only real estrangement, and God has already accepted one through Christ. If this is an improvement over “everyday” or ordinary conceptions of trying to figure out how humans need to relate to other humans and living creatures, then it is a concern only for a very few philosophers and theologians.37 One would tend to agree with Nietzsche’s negative assessments of those “improvers of mankind.”38

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On the other hand, even among the Christian ranks, there were many thinkers whose insights provided the religions opportunity and motivation to re-read or re-phrase the human capacity. But Christology dictated, a strong Docetic Christology despite the Church’s declaration that Docetism was heretical. The human species could have viewed itself as not deficient but rather full of potential, unexplored but fantastic potential, and we need to view possible answers to this “lack” that have been provided the religion even during the past two centuries, insights that were basically ignored by the most significant theologians of the period. ON REALIZING THAT COMMUNITY OR THE SPECIES HAS MORE POTENTIAL THAN SELF Perhaps this means that the presumed “lack” which humans have needs to be approached differently, no longer as a defect of humans but an indication of their potentiality, which seems to be possible by the “anthropological” shift in Ludwig Feuerbach or by the psychoanalytical approach by Sigmund Freud or by “existentialist” understanding of Sartre, or any number of ways. The most telling critique of the nineteenth-century absolute idealism was David F. Strauss’s correction of the prominent Christologies, which cost him his professorship. In his The Life of Jesus Critically Examined, after he offered a solution to the warring sides of the supranaturalist and rationalist interpretations of the Gospels with his “mythical” explanation, he concluded his treatise by analyzing the “dogmatic import of Christology.” It asserted that despite Schleiermacher’s and Hegel’s monumental efforts, their mistake was in thinking that the divine-human unity could be and was found in one person. Here they offended both the Church and science.39 That required a reinterpretation of the person of Christ by Schleiermacher and Hegel that was a terrible disappointment to the Church because it ignored historical details in its preference for mere meaning of symbols, even nullifying the “two natures” Christological understanding. Then they defied the common sense within science which does not admit the full species potential of any species to be completely realized in a single specimen while all the other specimens are vastly lacking. There is the problem of “lack” again, the nagging idea that humans are universally deficient, whether that be put only in moral terms or in saying they are not fully divine, in fact, quite human, “all too human.” But such a universal stereotype, as Schleiermacher had seen, really precludes any possibility of Jesus the Christ having both a complete divine nature as well as complete human nature as the Church’s creeds had asserted. And, in fact, Schleiermacher himself had seen the terrible problem of this “two natures” Christology in his The Christian Faith.40 The single specimen

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of course does not embody the Ideal, even as Kant had emphasized; perhaps even the whole species cannot embody the Ideal except in a theoretical sense. But Strauss was still convinced that the divine-human unity was intact and intelligible, but only within the whole of the human species. Thus, he too was following in the steps of Hegel in searching for meaning within the symbols, though more realistically than Hegel. Ludwig Feuerbach, whose response to the evolving ideas about “God” we noted in an earlier chapter, saw religion justified, but only as the veneration of the true object that possessed those unlimited traits of Omnipotence, Omniscience, and Providence, that is, the human species which was subconsciously projected as a whole. The “lack” or difference which religions work with is the contrast between the individual and the whole of the human species, the latter of which is the possessor of those unrestricted, indefinite, or perhaps “infinite” attributes. He saw the confusion as an innocent or naïve mistake on the part of lay religious people, a mistake of the childhood of humanity millennia in our past, in which religion is their first discovery of the human self. But Feuerbach was confident that present theologians knew better; they knew that theology is basically anthropology. He says, “In the perception of the senses consciousness of the object is distinguishable from consciousness of the self; but in religion, consciousness of the object and self-consciousness coincide.”41 The confusion comes from the difference in assigning attributes to sensible objects which present those attributes to us, and thinking of that which is invisible or only an idea in which there are no sensations confirming the attributes. But that is overlooked, especially in theological absolute idealism. In truth, humans cannot get beyond their species-consciousness. Every attribute of deity is simply a projection of the subjective expression of humans, but Feuerbach thinks we are “too cowardly” to admit to ourselves that the unity of our feeling with itself is the truth, but rather destroy that by imagining an objective being distinct from that feeling (EC, p. 11). Rather, “all the attributes of the divine nature are, therefore, attributes of the human nature.” If religion tries to avoid ascribing attributes to “God” which might be offensive, it “might as well renounce existence altogether. A God who is injured by determinate qualities has not the courage and the strength to exist” (EC, p. 15). On the other hand, if the theologian tries to avoid the literal interpretation of the attributes assigned to “God,” by reverting to only negative attributes or a theologia negativa, then “God” is thereby dissolved, since without attributes, nothing actually can exist (EC, p. 14). To say “God” “in-himself” is really different from what we know, so, for example, does not really exist because “God” is something like “beingitself” or transcendent to existence yet still involved in it, is to argue from an unhealthy irreligiousness. In fact, once the “personal” or anthropomorphic

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form is removed from “God,” it is no longer “religion” in its pure form at all, as Feuerbach sees it. Thus, what theology and philosophy have held to be God, the Absolute, the Infinite, is not God; but that which they have held not to be God is God: namely, the attribute, the quality, whatever has reality. Hence he alone is the true atheist to whom the predicates of the Divine Being—for example, love, wisdom, justice—are nothing; not he to whom merely the subject of these predicates is nothing. And in no wise is the negation of the subject necessarily also a negation of the predicates considered in themselves. These have an intrinsic, independent reality; they force their recognition upon man by their very nature; they are selfevident truths to him; they prove, they attest themselves. (EC, p. 21)

So if the predicates attributed to “God” are doubted, so is “God.” If, on the other hand, the predicates are anthropomorphisms, then the subject of them is anthropomorphic, and theology is truly anthropology (EC, pp. 16–17). To know God and not oneself to be God, to know blessedness and not oneself to enjoy it, is a state of disunity, of unhappiness. . . . Thou believest in love as a divine attribute because thou thyself lovest; thou believest that God is a wise, benevolent being because thou knowest nothing better in thyself than benevolence and wisdom; and thou believest that God exists, that therefore he is a subject—whatever exists is a subject, whether it be defined as substance, person, essence, or otherwise—because thou thyself existest, are thyself a subject. Thou knowest no higher human good than to love, than to be good and wise; and even so thou knowest no higher happiness than to exist, to be a subject; for the consciousness of all, of all bliss, is for thee bound up in the consciousness of being a subject, of existing. (EC, pp. 18–19)

The infinite character assigned to “God” by human projection of its speciesconsciousness is simply the infinite abundance of predicates of human nature, having endless variations and modifiable possibilities, that is, predicates of a species of phenomenal being rather than imaginary being (EC, p. 23). The “mystery” of the Incarnation is simply the “consciousness of love by which man reconciles himself with God, or rather with his own nature as represented in the moral law” (EC, p. 30), which means the species’ awareness for all humans to love each other. This is the reason he can say that man is be loved, not for God’s sake, but for man’s sake, since “God” is simply the species as a whole which reinforces the imperative. The human being is “an object of love because he is an end in himself, because he is a rational and loving being” (EC, p. 268). Only when humans are earnest about ethics are they able to see

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that “they have in themselves the validity of a divine power” (EC, p. 274), that is, that the rational, just human ethic has its own “ground of sacredness in itself, in its quality” and needs no other by some external being or standard. He even thinks it is not only delusory but “wicked,” an “insidious design” to attempt to shift the source of ethics from humanity’s reason to something imagined as external and absolute (Ibid.). Unfortunately, whereas love unites humans, faith divides humanity. Faith has fellowship with believers only; unbelievers it rejects. . . . It is essential to faith to condemn, to anathematize. All blessings, all good it accumulates on itself, on its God, as the lover on his beloved; all curses, all hardship and evil it casts on unbelief. (EC, pp. 252–53)

If religion is the kind of projection of species-consciousness as Feuerbach notes, then when love identifies man with “God,” and “God” with man, it “identifies man with man” which becomes the ground for ethics that must not be uprooted by faith which is only the “conscious form” or mistakenly objective form of religion (EC, p. 247). The “lack” of which we have been examining, is of course, nothing more nor less than a comparison of the individual with the species. So the unlimited nature of the species, whether recognized by one as that or is thought of as God’s will, is, in any case, inseparable from each person. Only if one sees it as that external, projected, and objectified Other or “God” in contrast to one’s own great limitations in comparison is one dissatisfied with oneself. On the other hand Unity in essence is multiplicity in existence. Between me and another human being—and this other is the representative of the species, even though he is only one, for he supplies to me the want of many others, has for me a universal significance, is the deputy of mankind, in whose name he speaks to me, an isolated individual, so that, when united only with one, I have a participated, a human life; between me and another human being there is an essential, qualitative distinction The other is my thou—the relation being reciprocal—by alter ego, man objective to me, the revelation of my own nature, the eye seeing itself. In another I first have the consciousness of humanity; through him I first learn, I first feel, that I am a man: in my love for him it is first clear to me that he belongs to me and I to him, that we two cannot be without each other, that only community constitutes humanity. But morally, also, there is a qualitative, critical distinction between the I and thou. My fellow-man is my objective conscience; he makes my failings a reproach to me; even when he does not expressly mention them, he is my personified feeling of shame. The consciousness of the

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moral law, of right, of propriety, of truth itself, is indissolubly united with my consciousness of another than myself. (EC, p. 158)

At this point, we have moved beyond the theoretical impasse both Schweitzer and Nietzsche had in trying to explain how the basic instinctual affirmation of one’s life or one’s power or strength could coherently and consistently modify itself to give priority to another person’s life and welfare. It was only an absent theoretical connection, since neither lacked the connection in their personal lives. In any case, the moral impetus we see in Feuerbach comes from the presence of the other and the relation created and realized consciously, not from some transcendent source or merely abstract universal principle or sense of duty. If religion is all a projection of the human species, thus an illusion, then morality must be the same. Thus a morality can be valid only if its validity is within itself, that is, within the rational consciousness of humanity as a whole. If it does not have this, if “God” is still thought to be a being separated from humanity, then morality could be totally unnatural, arbitrary, and unmoral (EC, pp. 272–74). But Feuerbach argues, We have shown that the substance and object of religion is altogether human; we have shown that divine wisdom is human wisdom; that the secret of theology is anthropology; that the absolute mind is the so-called finite subjective mind. But religion is not conscious that its elements are human; on the contrary, it places itself in opposition to the human, or at least it does not admit that its elements are human. The necessary turning point of history is therefore the open confession, that the consciousness of God is nothing else than the consciousness of the species; that man can and should raise himself only above the limits of his individuality, and not above the laws, the positive essential conditions of his species; that there is no other essence which man can think, dream of, imagine, feel, believe in, wish for, love and adore as the absolute, than the essence of human nature itself. (EC, p. 270)

The final contribution Feuerbach supplied to modern thought and moral consideration is that he surmounted the Hegelian dualism of body and mind (spirit). Hegel knew of beginning studies in phrenology and related disciplines, but by Feuerbach’s time, a great accumulation of theory was pointing to the fact that what had been called “spirit” or even “mind” was only a function of the human brain, and this was bound to lead to a complete rethinking of Christian theology.42 Feuerbach is outspoken on this issue, as he was also on the superfluity of one’s thinking that somehow one needs to hang onto both Nature and God, even though the presence of either nullifies any possible need or role for the other. Even that, of course, may show the “essence of

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human nature” to be universal, but still not make it “absolute” as he claimed. Today, of course, many thinkers such as Richard Rorty, would argue that one cannot really be sure one has discovered the “essence” of being human.43 Feuerbach expanded his definition of “religion” with the “lectures on religion” to be both anthropology but also physiology44 (LER, p. 21). In trying to explain how it is that people have been so willing to accept the duality of body and spirit rather than admit that “spirit” is simply the operations or functions of the human brain, he notes that, of course, its functions are not sensibly perceived as are the functions of one’s eyes, hands, mouth, and stomach. The brain’s activity is more hidden, withdrawn, soundless, and imperceptible, which causes a person to view that activity as “an absolutely disembodied, inorganic, abstract being, to which he has given the name of spirit” (LER, pp. 154–55). If Martin Buber was influenced by the “I-thou” discussion and later explored that fruitfully, and Sigmund Freud utilized Feuerbach’s idea of “illusion” in this human projection, unfortunately, Paul Tillich and Karl Barth, the most famous twentieth-century theologians, seemed to lead the way in Christian theology to cast Feuerbach aside with caricatures of the inadequacy of his “projection” or his “anthropology” as an illegitimate substitute for theology, or for his being a “materialist” by dissolving the transcendent nature of Spirit. But these were no more substantive arguments against his position than was Barth’s insistence that a Christian believer’s response to Feuerbach should be simply to “laugh in his face” because of his “shallowness” in equating the essence of God with the essence of man, when we know that “we men are evil from head to foot” (EC, p. xxviii). It is Barth’s idea of human evil “from head to foot,” the inherent, fatal, universal, and eternal lack that is Christianity’s basic questionable presumption. Christian theology, especially its Christology, as we saw earlier, is all built merely on the tradition of St. Paul’s contorted readings of the various Psalms by which he was able to inject a universal sinfulness for which Christ as Spirit could be the answer, and this would alleviate the necessity for the Torah which he knew would be objectionable to most Gentiles, and was the only way his Christ-appointed position as being the “apostle to the Gentiles (or nations)” could be successful. This universal depravity was then explained with great flair by St. Augustine’s City of God as he expounded on the Garden of Eden story, from which the Church then never looked back. The universality of the need for salvation by Christ was planted in concrete. Or, has it been, what Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer called it in his Letters and Papers from Prison, a manipulative “method” of inflicting guilt on a person so one can be put in the power-seat of then offering the “answer,” the saving message—a “method” of controlling the other, a method Bonhoeffer insisted that Jesus never used?

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Did Jesus have a more positive view of the Torah than Paul, or less to prove about himself? We can only ask. Did either Paul or Luther intend to be read and to be the absolute and final vocabulary on Christianity and upon ethics, never being revised or redescribed? Or, did Feuerbach not know more of Luther’s theology than Barth and Tillich?45 Or was the decisive thing only that Feuerbach was “before his time” so lost his professorship, unlike those two? To Barth’s credit, he did see what Feuerbach was wanting to correct, to reveal the real source of life and morality to the sensible world, to move to scientific understandings that were neutral and could be embraced by all people and did not depend upon some historically unique and exclusive religion’s illusory comprehensive or absolutized schema, though Barth could not self-correct to that degree. As Feuerbach painted the problem: Thus the work of the self-conscious reason in relation to religion is simply to destroy an illusion: an illusion, however, which is by no means indifferent, but which, on the contrary, is profoundly injurious in its effect on mankind; which deprives man as well of the power of real life as of the genuine sense of truth and virtue; for even love, in itself the deepest, truest emotion, becomes by means of religiousness merely ostensible, illusory, since religious love gives itself to man only for God’s sake, so that it is given only in appearance to man, but in reality to God. (EC, p. 274)

TO REDISCOVER AND REDESCRIBE ONESELF BEYOND ILLUSION The “lack” was later spotted and analyzed by Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), and again religion had the opportunity to incorporate his understandings to revise its theology, but for the most part belittled Freud because of his preference for scientific openness vis-à-vis religion’s opposition to science, or was it from the Church’s anti-Semitism, or was all his talk of sex hard for the Church to hear? Born only twelve years after Nietzsche, he experienced much the same world, although he lived for thirty-nine years after Nietzsche’s early death. Nietzsche had called himself a “psychologist,” and had formed his objective picture of the origins or various moralities and religions from what he terms a “physio-psychological” investigation. If Nietzsche’s problem was the gap between his quite individualistic approach to perfection compared to his alleged general categorizations of group formations of both religions and ethical schemas, Freud still wrote in similar generalities, but his practice was in treating individuals, with the realization that each individual is unique. So the “perspectivism” that Nietzsche professed was more of a process of deduction from singular

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states of mind he thought he could detect from isolated people and categorize a whole group with such attitudes as “fear,” “ressentiment,” or “hatred.” The universalization of such inferred motivations from the bare evidence he utilized left much to be desired, no matter how necessary it may be to uncover primal attitudes. Notably, he refrained from universalizing the most positive attitudes he saw in a handful of the “higher” men who may have been borderline Ubermenschen. He never utilized them to classify a larger group or whole movement as therefore having similar outlooks and attitudes. These were lone exceptions, few and far between, and, as we saw, were described individually as one who “turned out well.” Although Nietzsche had renounced the Christian religion, there is hardly any doubt that his proclivity to bifurcate humanity into a different group of “sheep” and “goats,” dependent only on their “strength” of instinct or “will to power,” was a secularized form of the same attribution of “lack” or “wrongness” he despised so much on the moral plane of the faith against which he turned. Freud moved beyond such wholesale condemnation, and was primarily concerned with penetrating the buried, secret histories of individuals by psychotherapy which would hopefully allow humans to live more integrated and peaceful lives. Nevertheless, he understood the primal fears of humans, classifying them in The Future of an Illusion46 as (1) the fear of Nature; (2) the fear of Death; and (3) the Fear of Other Humans. He thought that any kind of psychotherapeutic assistance would need to recognize these as a part of most if not all people’s inherited, pre-programmed understandings and typical experiences, no matter what kind of different psychological problems they had. The “illusory” part, of course, was the notion that there was some “God” as “Father” who would rescue one or protect one from these dangers or negative experiences. Freud used “illusion” in distinction from “delusion,” he said, since the latter term implied that a person was out of touch with reality. Yet by the way he described these problem areas, it appeared that much “illusion” was itself one’s being out of touch with reality, or “delusion,” not just wish-fulfillment. Freud was not interested in covering the spectrum of world religions (probably because that was the religious mentality of his subjects), but only relating the obsessive neuroses of religion’s beginnings to the infantile stage of a child to the present form of Christianity as he understood it. But he approached it from his broader interest in civilization itself, civilization’s interests vis-à-vis the interests of individuals. Here we are reminded of John Locke’s idea that there is an opposition which requires a “social contract” in which all relinquish some of their benefits in order to gain the greater benefits of security for the whole, or all will continue in a stage of perpetual or

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potential conflict and war. While Freud branched out from psychoanalysis into religion, philosophy, and history, or culture or civilization in general, the latter had always been a primary concern of his. In order to present his picture of religion in general, he placed it within the analysis of civilization as a whole,47 and religion was contrasted with science. At the very outset, although he professed to be an atheist, a “lack” or deficiency in humanity’s self-image was as evident in his theory as it was in Christian theology, but had slightly different contents, yet whose dimensions had ethical ramification as did the “lack” Christianity took for granted. Freud said “civilization,” which largely distinguished humans from animals, consisted of two elements: (1) human knowledge and ability to utilize nature’s resources to its advantage to meet its needs; and (2) the regulations humans articulate to shape the relations between humans and their distribution of the resources or “goods.” Since the interests of civilization require these regulations, those interests are therefore a constraint on individuals, which means the interests of individuals and civilization basically work against each other. The control over nature has not been matched by any significant control over humans or individuals. The reason for this, Freud emphasized, is because “there are present in all men destructive, and therefore anti-social and anti-cultural trends,” so much that a large group of such people can adversely affect human society. He further suggested that the “masses are lazy and unintelligent,” and “they have no love for instinctual renunciation,” (p. 8) so basically the individuals in the group “support one another in giving free rein to their indiscipline” (p. 9). These may not be labeled under religious terms such as “sin” or “estrangement,” but if they are so “anti-social” and “anti-cultural” as to be destructive, the people are so lacking in discipline and lazy that they cannot control their instincts, Freud is certainly thinking they are not morally responsible people. Further, he states this not as a mere accident or aberration, but as a general or universal condition, which could be corrected only through exemplary individuals who are the leaders of the group, but leaders who have “superior insight,” including an unswerving personal disinterest, and have “risen to the height of mastering their own instinctual wishes” (pp. 9–10). But then there is the great danger of these leaders allowing the mass to have its own way, thereby losing their influence, unless they have independent power of their own to exercise on the mass. Again, the reason for this problem is that “men are not spontaneously fond of work and that arguments are of no avail against their passions” (p. 9). Despite the potential of humanity being able to share and utilize its vast array of different instinctual dispositions which is determined in early childhood, Freud is not confident that the two characteristics of the human masses can really be defeated, that is,

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laziness and ignorance (p. 10), though perhaps it can in a minority of people, and that is the best that one can hope for. He explains that civilization has developed a method of dealing with the laziness and ignorance, thus the chasm between civilization’s interests and those of the individuals through adding to the distribution of material goods a sort of mental or psychological compensation. He refers to these as a “reconciling” of the asset distribution and a mental “recompense” for the sacrifices therein required of individuals. We will see that this is strikingly similar to John Rawls’s two principles of ‘justice as fairness’, though the two scholars approached the problem from radically different perspectives. Instinctual “privations” are not easily compensated for, and Freud singled cannibalism, incest, and murder, suggesting that only the practice of the first has been totally eliminated. On the other hand, many instincts have been renounced by a slow process over a long time of the external coercion being internalized. Yet many moral demands to prohibit instincts are successful only by external enforcement and punishment, so to that degree remain only heteronomous law rather than internalized or autonomous choices (pp. 13–14). If the privations apply only to a certain class of people, and they become flagrant, the larger the class that is deprived, the greater will be the chances of hostility reaching an intensity enough to create a revolution, especially if those suppressed understand that they, by their work, make possible the very culture that is now depriving them by giving them too small a share of the wealth they have helped create. This, of course, prefigured the basic economic critique of civilization by Marx. Freud thought, however, that two forms of a culture’s valuing could postpone any revolution by supplying a subtle narcissistic sense of satisfaction and self-pride through its ideals or through art. That is, those who suffer any privation may ironically identify with the culture by the ideal they share which is based on the group’s feeling that it already or earlier achieved the ideal, which makes it superior to other cultures, or through the art one creates one receives a narcissistic satisfaction that one has helped perpetuate some emotional experience that is highly valued by the culture (pp. 16–17). The most obvious form of a psychical recompense or compensation is a culture’s religious ideas or illusions. When humans found themselves at the mercy of Nature, Fate, and the privations from other humans, the first step toward controlling in order to have Civilization was to humanize nature, so it could be supplicated and respond appropriately, whether by supplying crops, rain, or eventually providing life beyond one’s death, or by regulating the behavior of other humans by providing eternally binding and enforceable laws. One’s conforming to the moral good or these rules of human behavior was rewarded by the life beyond death, so when monotheism evolved, these

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ideas made more accessible the “God” who controls all. “God” was then conceived as one protective “Father,” an image which carried the “intimacy and intensity of the child’s relation to his father” (p. 24). These ideas, though only reflecting a single religion show how religious ideas could become the most important asset or possession of a civilization, even of whole nations. Freud then asks about the psychological value of the ideas. His answer is that they are “illusions,” not “delusions” or being out of touch with reality, but “illusions” in the sense of the expressions of human wishes. It was a form of “wish-fulfillment.” The claims and defenses of them were completely unverifiable if not irrational, but as long as religion was perpetuated in a culture from generation to generation, it was taken as too valuable a mental compensation or “recompense” to dislodge. Freud shows the ineptness of the two primary defenses of religious doctrine, considered as “inspired” or “revealed” as (1) based on faith which has antiquity behind it, so must be accepted, and is, in fact, even valid if it is absurd, as some early church fathers taught; and (2) the last resort defense is that the truth of the religious ideas has to be “postulated” or one has to pretend that the world has a moral governor, an “as if” kind of philosophy, which had obvious roots in Kant’s idea of having to postulate a source for morality even if it could not be proven (pp. 26–42). For those who Freud anticipates arguing for the maintenance of religion as is because it has made such a profound effect on creating civilization by its laws and insights, and because to do away with it would be to invite sheer chaos which would itself destroy religion as it destroyed the hope and meaning of life the religious individual has enjoyed, Freud says the history of religion has not shown that moral advance in civilization, but quite the opposite, even making “sin” necessary so it could take charge of people’s lives, and forgive them, whether they changed their behavior to be moral or not. If one blames “science” for destroying people’s faith, it is true that neutral science has enabled a growing number of people to see the mythically incredible and inhumane elements in religion, so moved beyond it; yet, if the only reason to retain religion is because of some fear that without “God” being the divine authority saying one should not commit murder, the whole human race would proceed to murder each other, such is a misreading of human reason and relationships as well as of science’s impact. To Freud, such a suggestion meant that “either these dangerous masses must be held down most severely and kept most carefully away from any chance of intellectual awakening, or else the relationship between civilization and religion must undergo a fundamental revision” (p. 50). On the other hand, the very self-defeating nature of unrestrained crime is obvious to most humans, and does not require an idea of “God” to restrain crime, but only a culture’s laws with penalties for enforcing it among the few who think they should be unrestrained. Rather than live by a heteronomy

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of divine apodictic laws which are given such divine and absolute status by humans, without explanation of the reasons behind them, the better route would be to make all civil and criminal laws explicitly tied to definite reasons so that everyone would recognize their validity. Thus autonomy replaces heteronomy, as human values replace alleged divine values. At this point, despite Freud’s earlier insistence that in Totem and Taboo, he was interested only in totemism, not religion, and here in The Future of an Illusion, he was interested only in religion, not totemism—he rehearses the killing of the primal father and the emotional result of men deciding to abide by the very law they broke, just as later the primal father was replaced by “God,” and all the psychological origins forgotten, but Freud speaks of this as the “historical truth” of the religious doctrine. Such frail historical data from which one is able to psychoanalyze an entire ancient people by inference from pre-conceived psychological ideas is even more lacking than was Nietzsche’s wholesale psychological analysis of earlier cultures behind their moral developments. But neither Freud’s nor Nietzsche’s basic arguments need such “primal murder” any more than they thought morality needs some conception of “God.” The gradual evolution of more humane ethics over the centuries appears to be a fact, although modern forms of inequality can even exacerbate earlier inequalities despite the moral discourse. To improve morality, one does not have to label religion as a form of “obsessive neurosis”48 to match the infant in its stage of needing to mature, unless one really thinks that all infants must go through long periods of intense psychoanalysis and psychotherapy in order to become normal, which Freud seems to imply (pp. 51–57). Finally, Freud expressed confidence in the distant future that human reason and experience would prevail over instinct and over mere wishes or illusions, and he mentioned the “illusions” of religion as having the character of “delusion” after all (p. 67). He considered himself and his approach as having similar ultimate goals to his “religious” opponents, namely, “the love of man and the decrease of suffering” (pp. 68–69). He remained unconvinced, however, that religious claims could satisfy common reason and human experience, and argued that if those religious ideas are “purified” sufficiently to make “God” indefinable and indiscernible so as to avoid being disproven by science, “then they will also lose their hold on human interest”49 (p. 69). This was, of course, a primary point of Feuerbach earlier. His final appeal is to the value of science, a new field of study still in beginning stages, which is open to correcting its judgments over and over, from mere approximations to more perfect explanations or what we today call “paradigms.” The reality which science studies is not inaccessible, but quite accessible, unlike religion. So, though an atheist, Freud refers to his “God” as Logos, which means the rational structure of all being, and he ends with the following reply to his religious opponent:

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Education freed from the burden of religious doctrines will not, it may be, effect much change in men’s psychological nature. Our god Logos is perhaps not a very almighty one, and he may only be able to fulfill a small part of what his predecessors have promised. If we have to acknowledge this we shall accept it with resignation. We shall not on that account lose our interest in the world and in life, for we have one sure support which you lack. We believe that it is possible for scientific work to gain some knowledge about the reality of the world, by means of which we can increase our power and in accordance with which we can arrange our life. If this belief is an illusion, then we are in the same position as you. But science has given us evidence by its numerous and important successes that it is no illusion. (p. 70)

Ultimately, Freud called attention to human awareness of its limitations, especially the lack of control humanity has over the natural world and death. Reason and science have certainly improved human methods of mitigating some of the negative aspects of these natural forces, but few suffer from the delusion of thinking human reason will ever exercise very much control either for the better for humanity or life in general. Earthquakes will still occur, uncontrolled fires can still burn and kill, water can destroy and drown, and people, animals, and plants will still die. Contingency and entropy appear to be here to stay, and humans must learn how to deal with them. It would be a shame to think these elements were enough to make anyone view life as no longer worth living. That acceptance of both positive and negative elements in life is what Nietzsche called the genuine love of real life, as we saw earlier. In fact, “acceptance” is a large part of dealing with anything that seems negative or unfitting or troublesome—a matter of perspective and/or attitude. If Freud saw “instinct” basically more negatively than did Nietzsche, neither one desired the elimination of instinct but only a rational approach to instinctual powers. Both opposed the positing of imaginary or chimeric causes and reification if not apotheosis that could eliminate instinct without human reason being involved. Both were aware of a psychological dimension in human life that certainly plays an important part, even if it cannot make some of the generalizations of entire cultures that both scholars made. If the subjectivity of the “other” was seemingly neglected by Nietzsche in his pursuit of individual perfection, one cannot get past Thus Spoke Zarathustra’s ending in which he left his cave in search of other humans in order to “do his work.” And likewise, the question Zarathustra asked the sun of what meaning it would have if there were no others upon whom it could shed its light. So others are not really left behind by Nietzsche. The social element is simply more explicit in both Feuerbach and Freud. As a result of the latter, of course, private morality has to address the situation of “civilization and its discontents.”

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The “lack” Freud saw in human life he felt could be resolved only by education and science, not by some illusion such as religion. Civilization already was working out norms and standards, laws and ideals, quite apart from religion, and the infantile nature of religious belief suggested to him that the future would see an accelerated, voluntary abandonment of the illusions of religion and its influence on civilization. The question is precisely how the culture or civilization or collective units will work out their norms, values, laws, and sense of justice. That is our next and final chapter, but first, we must conclude the idea of “lack” to see how it can be more “potential” as Feuerbach had suggested than simply a negative or debilitating “lack.” INSTINCT, REASON, CHARACTER, AND ATTITUDE To redescribe as only the presently unrealized potential of the human species what has been considered as the presumed a sinister, universal lack in humanity for centuries—whether lack of divinity, moral perfection, or reason, would be a reversal of one’s attitude, a radical revaluating of Western values, a release from an unnecessary guilt, a more inclusive and positive perspective. Rather than measuring the water in the glass as either half-empty or halffull, since we are thirsty, it would be more like a response of “Thank you for the water!” Rather than view the “world” as the “best” of all possible worlds, or the worst of all possible worlds, we, unlike Ivan Karamazov, are able to accept it as it is with gratitude, or as Nietzsche said, without changing or even desiring to change any single element in it. “Thank you for the world!” As portrayed by Jack Nicholson, perhaps this is “As Good as it Gets.” Perhaps. When Darwinism provided another opportunity to re-evaluate the qualities of human beings, the Church spurned it as well in the last half of the nineteenth century. Christianity simply retrenched in its absolutism of the Protestant verbal inerrancy of the Scriptures on the one hand or the Roman Catholic infallibility of the Pope on the other when papal authority or the basic heteronomy of the Church was challenged. So “becoming” was still despised, still marked by a coincidental “Fall” from which humanity was helpless, forever trapped in the crevasse, that is, until the “answer” was extended to pull one to safety. The “rescue” was facilitated by the “being” which was unchangeable and incommensurable, even if it actually possessed no universally recognized name or attributes. The irony, of course, of the explanation of the “lack” or “Fall” from St. Paul to the twentieth century had allegedly come from one’s lack of character, lack of authentic being, or lack of being a moral person, but the rescue involved only promises or threats that the convert’s will and morality should have changed, while the continual observation showed that nothing

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had actually changed in one’s character, nothing that was ethical whatever, despite protests by Kant and others who insisted that people had to change their moral maxim to be “worthy” of such a rescue or forgiveness.50 Were these all empty promises or eschatological imaginings? But this insight of Kant’s was ignored. By mid-twentieth century, Tillich’s Christian theology simply talked about the lack, the universal “estrangement,” as the great proof that Jesus was the Christ, the proof because he himself was never self-estranged from God, and because that is made certain via the very “transforming” power it has over every believer. Yet still nothing really changed other than the believer learning to accept himself or herself based on the forensic justification and comforting cliché of simul justus et peccator. The emphasis was still that any rescue from that state was totally beyond the scope or power of the “becoming” entity, in fact, a much greater impossibility for humans since it was not simply a moral failing, but the only “Sin” which is an “estrangement” from God, an estrangement or “Fall” which universally occurs with the maturity and decision every human makes to assert his or her freedom. Thus, the real nagging “lack” is the human lack of being simply static being, and instead, being a “becoming” being, or, in other words, a “lack” of not being “God,” which itself, for Tillich, was not a personal, “becoming” being, but only the “depth” of being beyond being and non-being, so implies it is the unchangeable power outside all contingency which is supposed to be reasonably assumed from one’s being one of the many contingent, “becoming” beings? This was necessary for Tillich since if the “lack” was assigned to the realm of morality, he feared it would simply initiate one of the many futile attempts at “self-salvation.” Yet he spoke in moral terms of “theonomy” or the moral change which was alleged to come from unchanging being-itself (unless the “correlation” between concepts and symbols can only be used in one direction!). It came from a course or state or power that was not interacting significantly with others, so “God” or “being-itself” could not in any way be viewed as a moral example or a standard of morality. It was only raw power of being. If “God” had not thereby been completely reduced to an impersonal dead identity in a form of eternal stasis, “God” was at least no more than an anthromorphic symbol of life for a non-living and non-conscious “beingitself,” so still the unchangeable being, since in Tillich, “God” was certainly not “a being” or “any being” but only the “depth” of being or “being-itself” “beyond” the split between being and non-being, beyond any possible significant change. In addition to “God” not being a moral example or not involved with moral decisions since “God” is neither personal nor changing nor in process of becoming, if the rescuing or redeeming “being” was really beyond all contingency, then it could not be viewed as a conscious or voluntary or volitional

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rescue but only a necessary or automatic one, so “God” in such scenario had no real personal sympathy or empathy for one’s inevitable “fall” through exercising one’s freedom to become a moral person. What proved Jesus as the Christ was not any morally instructive nature but only his “New Being” which meant nothing more than he did not estrange himself from God. So the “lack” was blamed on humans failing to live up to its essence, which was then strangely reduced to disrupting not human relations with each other but only one’s unity with the Infinite God, whereas the solution to that lack was only an ontologically programmed sense of “forgiveness” of the lack, not any real correction or help for one’s character or any other relationship, and no transformation or assistance from any other. The irony was that the Christian remedy for the alleged human defectiveness was not to blame “God” as the Creator, but to honor “God” as the gracious Savior in Christ. However, “forgiveness” was simply rubbing salt into the wounds of those who suffered consciously to be the kind of person they wanted to be or knew themselves to be. They were no better person, and they knew it, and they were supposed to find comfort in simul justus et peccator? It was of no practical help, especially when “God” was not “a being” but only the “source” of being or “being-itself” and impersonal as well as unchangeable so unaffected and unaffective. It seemed to be only an anthropological metaphor for a mere universal, abstract ontological inevitability. One could read one’s being forgiven as simply a formal form of impersonal or non-personal pity, the impersonal or non-personal necessary and automatic condescending natural power of being the best a non-conscious, non-entity, “God” (read “power of being”), could “offer,” as Nietzsche said, an impersonal response of “pity” that deprives the human of his or her dignity, that shames one—a response that therefore demeans the human while showing the diabolical or cruel nature of depicting a “God” in this way, the lingering anthropomorphic/anthropopathic problem of theism. Is this not the reason Nietzsche had Zarathustra discovering that “God” died because of his “pity,” since once humans realize that “pity” shames the one to whom it is shown, then the one extending such pity is viewed as cruel, humiliating, and demeaning—all characteristics or qualities Rorty has said are deplored by the “liberal” person. If the extension of the “pity” is not even personal, but a mere idea, simply the built-in mythology of a religion, created from the values or false values of earlier humans, how could it be acceptable? It is simply an equivocal word that can be dehumanizing, as it is heard: I pity you! It invariably exults in the superiority of the party extending it with an air of condescension, which is saying “I pity you because you cannot seem to do any better!” or “I pity you that you have not attained the state I have!” or “I pity you because you are not like me!” rather than simply asking “May I help you?”

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However it affected the Christian conception of “God,” the idea of human “lack” or “helplessness” has been pervasive not simply in Western religions but in Eastern as well. In Buddhism, the “suffering” that people would like to overcome is created by one lacking knowledge or insight, of not being “enlightened” about the impermanence of everything, and therefore of being fooled into thinking appearances are true reality, appearances of attractive things such as sexual excitement or luxurious living, or appearances of unattractive things such as old age, sickness, and death. The “chain of causation” leads from sensation to naming to reification to unjustified desire and union which simply spawns more of the same ignorance. If the “lack” is conceived as ignorance rather than as “sin” or “estrangement,” it is nevertheless conceived as universal, and it is thought to separate one from ultimate reality of anatta (no-self) and Sunyata (self-emptying). Some Buddhist thinking moved beyond Tillich’s asymmetrical schema of being and non-being to a symmetrical view of being and nothing that gives priority to neither and both sides, yet even that does not unambiguously resolve the problem of human “lack.” Nevertheless, Masao Abe compared the Sunyata or self-emptying with Buddhism’s “no-self” in the sense that the “no-self” is only emphasizing that the “ego-self” must die. He felt that was the point at which human ethics are not enough but turn to religion in its demand for a death to the old person or “ego-self” in order to live ethically.51 Debates on how being and non-being, or how being and nothing, are to be properly related to each other conceptually offers little or no ethical guidance, but if the primary thrust of life is the instinctual “will-to-live,” as I have shown already, it can be reasonably directed as it confronts others’ “will-tolive” and converts it into an ethical relationship. Basically, religions perceive something as an “answer,” and then in retrospect go hunting for the “question” and even Tillich admitted this when he insisted that the existentialist negatives or descriptions of separation or loss presuppose that from which one is separated, that, in other words, the “answer” is experienced before one knows how to word the “question.” Of course, that is not the normal spontaneous form of questions, but religions’ ideas are not merely spontaneous. I am suggesting that Christian theologians knew the “answer” of Christ and redemption or reconciliation or unity with God long before they discovered the question as a universal human lack. Even the original preaching described in Acts 2 show no appeal to a universal sinfulness as the reason for repentance; the speech has the apostle simply accusing the audience of murdering Jesus, an innocent man. But this reason for repentance has little or nothing to do with a universal human depravity, which had to be articulated by Paul in his unique view of the Torah and human frailties, which, as we already noted, depended upon a complete misreading of several Psalms which could then

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justify Paul’s position, thereby reinforcing also his claim to be commissioned by God as the “apostle to the nations.” Or was the whole of reality and God’s divine plan to make humans miserable with guilt over this “lack” so He could then save them from it, as Paul seemed to suggest? But aside from the awkward history the conception of human depravity had, in the twenty-first century, it is no longer possible to hold to such dualism of body and spirit (or mind), the material and spiritual, and so forth, since we now know that the thinking comes from the living brain, from a very material or physical organ, which contains reflective, emotional, active, and passive elements within its different lobes. If the old dualism between body and spirit now appears an insufficient metaphor, especially in the radical difference of valuation Western thought gave to the two, the animating or life-force is much more complex than earlier conceived, as is any distinction between a flourishing life and a frustrated life, or between a moral life and an immoral life. The terms are not only confusing but seem to be only clichés which assume a univocity which does not exist, even as every sentence I write reflects the same. If the uniqueness of each individual fills words with slightly different nuances if not even significantly different elements, just as a tone of voice can change meanings of words, all we can do is try to use words which will carry enough similarity of meaning that our sentences will not be mere nonsense by our presently agreed understandings of words. Our judgments, decisions, responses, and relations actually depend upon some kind of mutual understanding even if not much more than a wry smile or nod or grunt to the degree that it is felt as an unambiguous affirmation or negation. The political order or a just social order, which builds upon some moral consensus, certainly requires this if life is to continue, but that is chapter 7. ACCEPTANCE OF THE WORLD TIED TO ACCEPTANCE OF SELF What this means is that what needs changing is our attitude rather than some externals, perhaps that we need to be less brittle and dogmatic, less judgmental, less cynical, less resentful, less competitive, less ego-centered, less unrealistic. “Life” can be accepted with all of its joys and sorrows, all of its expected rewards and violent shocks, all of its apparent justice and gross injustice, and humans can be discerning enough to distinguish between what they can influence or possibly change, and what they have little or no power to change. In the complexity of each person’s programmed and continually re-programming and revising brain, each has powers, even if limited, to shape how one responds to certain stimuli, so one can choose to a degree whether

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to carry a grudge against another person for one’s entire lifetime, or whether to forgive, forget, and actually “move on.” One may have a limited perspective due to innumerable external factors beyond one’s control, yet there are many ways of expanding one’s perspective, even as Richard Rorty showed, such as great novels, plays, and so forth, by which one can view not only the world but even one’s life quite differently. These different perspectives can have a tremendous effect on one’s attitude toward life. One may easily discover that one has a limited but real choice of whether to compliment and encourage others who are busy in attempting to construct wholesome political structures that will benefit others, but one’s perspective will shape the attitude which decides on one or the other. One can simply ignore their self-giving, or be critical of it, as one’s perspective(s) shape one’s attitude. The things we judge as negative or positive can be either affirmed or negated by our responses, and our freedom to shape who we are depends very much on what our responses are, even our responses to others’ responses to us. Certainly much of the determination of our responses comes from our long history of the values of the particular culture in which we live, which has permeated our consciousness, even to the one or more smaller subgroups within that broader culture, subgroups or what Rawls calls “associations” which supply many of our deepest elements of identity, values, and meaning. Nietzsche recognized the need to assess the history of moral valuing by his physio-psychological analysis, by exploring different perspectives, and Schweitzer encountered radically different perspectives from his childhood and formal education once he and his wife began their work with the sick at Lambarene. Feuerbach reversed the subject and object of theology in his search for the more accurate perspective. And Freud felt that while many people need to inquire into their own subconsciousness through some form of psychoanalysis, a similar analysis, even without professionals, needs to be engaged in by each person as each realizes its own pre-programming, its genetic and cultural inheritance. All of these scholars were attempting to get people to become more aware, inclusive, tolerant of differences by focusing on opening up different perspectives. Some scholars feel that the latter was the most important contribution Nietzsche made, that is, when he turned his analytical tools upon himself, if one can move behind some of his words which appear full of bluster and growing overweening ego. This points to the possible elements of positive self-analysis, of a psychotherapy by which one finds out some of the most prominent factors in one’s past that are presently influencing one’s perspective, thinking, prejudices, and behavior. It is matched to a degree by Buddhism’s “Eightfold Path” which directs one to “right mindfulness” rather than simply a passing through life as a merely reactive being that has no

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realization of either what she is thinking or doing, much less why, so is really never in touch with nor in control of herself. While attention one gives to oneself in self-analysis may seem excessive or wasteful, it seems fairly obvious that one’s attitude toward oneself will also shape one’s attitude toward others and thus to the whole “world” and its history. In this sense, the ethical ideas we began with in this study, those suggested by the Dalai Lama, were presented by him as “freestanding” principles, values, ideas, or suggestions, not as merely Buddhist requirements, and they involved a great concentration upon the “inner self” or shaping of one’s attitude toward self and others, of anticipating real situations one might be in and practicing through meditation how one will deal with them. What we become aware of is that most behavior is shaped by one’s attitude rather than just rules, an attitude which itself is shaped not only by the subconscious and even unconscious spheres of our being but also by habitual conscious training and reflection as well as the different perspectives by which we judge the situation. The Dalai Lama emphasized that our physical responses as well as mental responses can be more positive to ourselves and others the more we reflect on them in advance and thereby “practice” them in preparation, before we are in the real situation. Despite the fact that the Dalai Lama’s suggestions seem still too rooted in Buddhism to expect any universal acceptance, most people do recognize that many things we do are done strictly from habit, even hardly conscious of what is going on, and this means that our habits created earlier shape our present attitudes and responses. They become ritualized, touching our subconscious selves, but something that has been addressed at a deeper level than merely a present cognition. This is true whether one is thinking of one’s state in meditation, or in one’s golf swing, or our participation in groups, or in our “making love,” in our getting “dressed,” even in our going to sleep. We are creatures of habit, creature of ritual, very much like our pets. But we need to re-examine these rituals, their programmed attitudes, and actions that are often just done without conscious thought. This would be done with the interest in living life to its fullest, realizing our potential, trying to be coherent, integrated, and consistent humans, being fulfilled by what we do, what we think, and how we act. Ultimately, Freud was correct that what he felt he was seeking without religion was probably not that different from what he imagined all religious people were seeking as well—“the love of man and the decrease of suffering”52—but he was seeking it by different methods and perspectives, open to reasonable challenge. The same is true in the classic study by William James in his Varieties of the Religious Experience, that the one thing all the religious people were seeking was “MORE life” a richer, more satisfying life, and other than that, they really did not care about who or whether “God” was or was not, so long

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as they experienced the result of that better life they sought, and that was not different from James’s own desires, even if he was not formally religious as they.53 In his analysis of people’s responses in their religious quest, he discussed both the presumed “lack” or presumed deficiency and its alleged religious solution. As he quoted a Prof. Leuba, God is not known, he is not understood; he is used. . . . If he proves himself useful, the religious consciousness asks for no more than that. Does God really exist? How does he exist? What is he? are so many irrelevant questions. Not God, but life, more life, a larger, richer, more satisfying life, is, in the last analysis, the end of religion. The love of life, at any and every level of development, is the religious impulse.54

As he weighed the “variety” of these self-described religious experiences, he said there is both an “uneasiness” and a “solution” to it. “1. The uneasiness, reduced to its simplest terms, is a sense that there is something wrong about us as we naturally stand. 2. The solution is a sense that we are saved from the wrongness by making proper connections with the higher powers.” He emphasized that the practical needs and experiences of religion seem to me sufficiently met by the belief that beyond each man and in a fashion continuous with him there exists a larger power which is friendly to him and to his ideals. All that the facts require is that the power should be both other and larger than our conscious selves. Anything larger will do, if only it be large enough to trust for the next step.55

This “next step” did not require a “God” nor any other-worldly being nor any complex theological system nor a comprehensive religious, philosophical, or moral schema, but only “trust” in another who could assist one in taking that “next step.” The “more life” which we all seek, he reiterated, is found in trust in another who can assist us to take the next step. That points to the social dimension of human life; hopefully no one has to try to live in isolation. We need each other’s help. This is what John Rawls meant when he described a democratic republic or liberal society as a decision to share our lives, which we will turn to in our final chapter. We can help each other only to the degree that we trust each other, but that also means honoring each other’s common will to live and need to be autonomous or self-directing. This kind of relation can be established between individuals who live in a variety of different political environments, but it is best when the moral connection between individuals has much in common

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with the moral ground of the political and social structures in which one lives. There is actually a reciprocal relation or interdependence there as well, which makes it a symbiotic relation leading to the flourishing life. Richard Rorty summed up the past four centuries in the following words: Beginning in the seventeenth century we tried to substitute a love of truth for a love of God, treating the world described by science as quasi divinity. Beginning at the end of the eighteenth century we tried to substitute a love of ourselves for a love of scientific truth, a worship of our own deep spiritual or poetic nature, treated as one more quasi-divinity. The line of thought common to Blumenberg, Nietzsche, Freud, and Davidson suggests that we try to get to the point where we no longer worship anything, where we trust nothing as a quasi divinity, where we treat everything—our language, our conscience, our community—as a product of time and chance. To reach this point would be, in Freud’s words, to “treat chance as worthy of determining our fate.”56

I respond with gratitude, especially because Rorty has uncovered a possible approach to human solidarity despite the contingency of everything in our world, even some “progress” in morality by his insights, with four qualifications. First, Rorty is not agreeing totally with Freud, and Freud was not suggesting that we forget science. Second, Rorty stresses that we should not overuse “we” but rather circumscribe it explicitly, such as “we liberals living in a democracy in the present century” or some such more reasonably limited group. Third, to use the word “worship” is perhaps less exact and more emotionally laden than using a more precise word such as “Absolute”—that which is thought to be incommensurable or “final” by Rorty’s terms. Fourth, to recognize “time and chance” as elements of life that are placed beyond our affecting is nothing new, but was part of the profundity uttered millennia ago in Ecclesiastes 9:11—“Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to the skilled, but time and chance happen to them all.” This wisdom about external powers over which we as humans have no control has been reflected by numerous philosopher-types throughout history, even Mark Twain.57 As frustrating as “time and chance” can be to one’s individual purposes or goals, such a fact does not mean that one must simply become passively resigned. If Fate has no purpose, that does prevent each individual from having his or her own purpose, which does not have to look to some imagined divine purpose for justification. The author of Ecclesiastes said one should find happiness in one’s work and in one’s family, despite all the absurdities of actual life (9:9–10).

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Similarly, Nietzsche and his Zarathustra continued to hunt for other people they could possibly influence and help. Schweitzer worked in the little hospital in Lambarene all hours of the days and nights at times, trying to heal the sick. As Nietzsche emphasized, this does not mean that they all were debilitated, discouraged, or prevented from doing anything, or even that they resented their Fate, but in fact, they worked with it, loved it, experienced real life not just in spite of it but to a large degree because of it and its challenges. Even Fate, in all of its novel or quite destructive aspects, is not Absolute and certainly not an unequivocal evil; only death puts an end to life, to real, actual life. But then one no longer has any interest and needs no further meaning. Until one reaches that point, one can learn to be more sensitive to others’ needs and suffering, more thankful for the positive external elements and influences of destiny or “Fate” or what Twain called “circumstances.” One can decide to be “liberal” in the sense of being more repelled by all forms of cruelty and humiliation, and more open and inclusive of differences, can be more an “ironist” in realizing that everything one does and says is contingent and subject to change and being superseded. But in the process, one can develop a greater sensitivity to the subjectively unique situation of everyone, and thereby more prone to expand one’s “we” to be much more inclusive, while realizing that most of what happens “just happens,” as Rorty said. And the “happenstance” aspect of human social life points us to Rawls in our final chapter, in which the “happenstance” or irrationally vested interests, advantages, and so on a person has must necessarily be bracketed out or hidden by a veil of ignorance in order to create a fair hypothetical social contracting. By our present understandings of what is possible in our relations to Nature, and what is possible in our relations with other humans, the former may be seen as the “best of all possible worlds,” and if we view what we seem to “lack” as “potential” through our freedom as Sartre stressed, rather than an inevitable disability with regard to our relations with other humans, that too could be seen as the “best of all possible worlds” since the potential of humans individually is beyond our present knowledge, and, as a species, is not as limited as is the potential of each person. With this qualification, we perhaps need to be reminded of Nietzsche’s “key” to life, his acceptance of Fate, his love of Fate, and his willingness to have the same life he lived, with all its joys but also problems, disappointments, extreme sickness, and other negatives—everything—repeated just as it was with no subtractions, alleged improvements, alterations—everything, even as unexpected as it came the first time—repeated exactly again and again. That need not be sloughed off as so much hyperbolic bluster. It is attitude which makes a difference. It is a realistic “love of life.” Had he not been sick, he might not have loved life so much.

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That simply reinforces the need for constructive or moral relations with others to preserve and develop the species to its maximum, while protecting individuals’ differences, rights, and unique contributions, as well as their own special “ends” they conceive for themselves as their own “projects,” as both Sartre and Rawls stress. That social nexus, however, introduces our final chapter, the “political conception of justice” vis-à-vis metaphysical conceptions of justice which can address the present pluralistic societies populating our world. Our search for a ground for a global ethic is not as formidably grand and macroscopic as the words since all changes, any progress in human relations involve individuals gradually redescribing and reforming their relations with other individuals, not some cosmic revolution. Only very gradually can those different relations, more expanded or inclusive groups of “we,” have any political effect to impact the actual political structures. Rorty summarizes his view of possible “moral progress” in the following: The view I am offering says that there is such a thing as moral progress, and that this progress is indeed in the direction of greater human solidarity. But that solidarity is not thought of as recognition of a core self, the human essence, in all human beings. Rather, it is thought of as the ability to see more and more traditional differences (of tribe, religion, race, customs, and the like) as unimportant when compared with similarities with respect to pain and humiliation—the ability to think of people wildly different from ourselves as included in the range of “us.” That is why I said, in Chapter 4, that detailed descriptions of particular varieties of pain and humiliation (in, e.g., novels or ethnographies), rather than philosophical or religious treatises, were the modern intellectual’s principal contributions to moral progress.58

It does not mean that the world ideal is for uniformity, so all must become atheists, skeptics, agnostics, or all must disavow any “comprehensive” schemas of epistemology, ontology, ethics, or religion. Rather, the “common” element necessary for the solidarity which is essential for a flourishing human community needs to be only the common agreement they endorse which has its own independent ethical grounding in principles which the community has found to be an “overlapping consensus.” Otherwise, aside from that political sphere, each person may have his or her own project and “end” or goal, may be religious or non-religious, may belong to any political party or none, may be a social extrovert or a recluse—to their own preference, so long as they realize and maintain the “political justice” they have agreed to, to which we now turn.

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NOTES 1. Paul Tillich distinguished the two, which revealed his idealist orientation. We simply live in our “environment” whereas we mentally “make” or “construct” our “world,” as he saw it (Systematic Theology, I:168–71). But, unlike his distinction of “spirit,” one has to say today that whatever the origin of mental or physical functions, they come from the brain, which is by Tillich’s view, then, properly, the “environment” rather than in our “world”? What is in our “world” are simply the names we have attached to the various impressions made on the brain. But there is no external or eternal world that places “spirit” in humans, nothing more than the brain within a living body, functioning well. 2. As the simplest substance, they are unlike atoms in the fact that they are conceived as not having parts, although they can be of quite different sizes. 3. Leibniz’s basic philosophy can be found in Leibniz: Philosophical Writings, tr. Mary Morris (New York: Dutton-Everyman’s Library, 1968), and his own arguments against Clarke can be seen on pp. 192–229 or in separate books on their debate. 4. Tradition has it that three of Siddhartha Gautama’s “Four Passing Sights” (old age, illness, death) were grotesque enough as “suffering” as to stimulate one’s question of why they existed, and how they could be avoided. The “why” came down to ignorance, whether willful or not, ignorance about the impermanence of everything, ignorance about “identities” which were only forms of reification, and ignorance of any method of getting beyond them. The “how” was then supplied by the “Eightfold Path.” 5. I realize the danger of putting it this way, as Bonhoeffer said, if one hears grace pronounced over and over before realizing what his real need is, “grace” becomes “cheap grace,” “requiring nothing.” But I am suggesting that in both Judaism and Christianity there was a sense of “covenant” between the people and God, not simply a one-sided expression of forgiveness or acceptance, no matter what the humans want to do or decide to do afterward. 6. In all three promises God gave to Abraham, none of them were “fulfilled” by Abraham simply accepting or believing God. He left his home in Haran (earlier in Ur) because of God’s promise. He took Isaac his son to Mt. Moriah because of God’s instruction. And he and Sarah must have continued to try to have a child of their own after God’s promise of Isaac. God was not simply counting Abraham for “righteous” for sitting around doing nothing other than “believing”! 7. The theme of this ancient purpose of God’s to create from the “nations” one “new humanity” (rather than a divided world), being disclosed through Paul’s ministry as “apostle to the nations,” is found in Col. 1:24–29 and Eph. 2:11–3:13, although the latter may not have been actually written by Paul. 8. Did he have an insatiable conscience, as we hear of Luther later, so could never be satisfied with his imperfect life? Or did he have an ego that was out of control, as he always insisted he knew best, and was always right, even when he knew how incorrect and presumptuous such a position could be? Or did he “covet” what others had, so when he speaks of not knowing what sin was all about until he heard the prohibition against coveting, he then discovered his life was full of coveting (Rom.

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7:7–12)? Or was there some element of desire he seemed unable to control by his “mind,” so that he served God with his mind, but not with his body? (Rom. 7:21–23). Or are all of these descriptions of conflict simply rhetorical devices he used to try to get his readers to slip into the garments of guilt that he was supplying and really not autobiographical in any sense? 9. Romans 3:10–18, in which there is no “universality” of sin but only a derogatory picture of the enemies of Israel as being degenerates or unrighteous. There certainly is nothing about any unrighteousness of anybody’s being due to what they inherited from some sinful act of an ancestor. Paul doesn’t mention that until he has firmly established the true answer as faith in Christ and His righteousness vis a vis a universality of unrighteousness including even despite the Torah. But in the chapter mentioning the “first man” (Rom. 5) which may well have been influenced only by late Jewish apocalyptic, Paul’s enthusiasm for the “answer” makes his argument incoherent, as if both unrighteousness as well as righteousness can come only from an external source, if not just from one person. So where is human freedom or justice in the picture? 10. See ch. 8 in my Will Humanity Survive Religion? Beyond Divisive Absolutes, in which I examine closely the method utilized by John Dominic Crossan. 11. Certainly from Claudius and Nero’s time to Domitian’s, their negative influence of the Empire can be felt in not simply the Apocalypse of John, but more in Paul’s writings, as more recent studies reveal. For the latter, see the close, analytical rhetorical and historical work done in Neil Elliott’s The Arrogance of Nations: Reading Romans in the Shadow of Empire (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008) and the hundreds of items of evidence he explains. A similar flow of indirect and unspecific anti-Empire sentiment may be detectable in the canonical gospels, which, because of the lag of time between the life of Jesus and the writing of those gospels, may have been more the Judaean or Christian response than coming from the historical Jesus. 12. On the problem within the synagogue in Rome, Neil Elliott discusses the “clemency” of Nero who allowed Judeans to return to Rome after Claudius’ expulsion of them, but shows how the pure formality and limitations of that clemency could leave the non-Judeans in the synagogue with a feeling of superiority over the returnees, and Elliott emphasizes that Paul’s main point is that the non-Judeans must realize that the ultimate status of people must not be judged from present appearances but from the coming justice of God. The Arrogance of Nations, pp. 117–19. 13. Augustine, The City of God Against the Pagans, p. 633: “The line of descent then from Adam through Cain the criminal ends with the number eleven, symbolizing sin. And it is a woman who makes up this number, because the female sex began the sin which is responsible for the death of us all.” See also pp. 564–78, esp. 570, 578 in which Augustine stresses it was pure lust and mental weakness which makes sexual intercourse sinful, which caused Eve to be deceived, but not Adam. So she hearkened to the voice of the devil and then in turn enticed Adam, though he simply went along with her, but not because he also was deceived. (All this Augustine was sure he could read out of the ancient, specious judgment of I Timothy 2:14.) Two verses earlier, the author says this is the reason he permits no woman to teach or have authority over a

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man; she is to keep silent” (2:12), and the Christian male hierarchy has used this for two millennia against women. 14. John Locke, The Reasonableness of Christianity, ed. I. T. Ramsey (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1958). He insisted that no natural morality could cause people to obey God, so only faith in Christ and obedience was the answer. He also did not believe in “original sin” in the capacity of death being a punishment imposed upon all people for Adam’s sin nor in Calvin’s idea that human nature was changed by that early sin (pp. 25–29; 60–68). So ethics or morality has to be heteronomous from a Divine Source, that is, dictated to humans by God through Christ. Humans cannot be autonomous and moral, he insisted, and morality must have real punishment in it which Christ added for the first time in the history of religions. Locke’s admiration for Christ is fine, but his familiarity with any religion was deficient (pp. 68–70). 15. See my analyses of their Christologies in Ethics and the Future of Religion: Redefining the Absolute. 16. Immanuel Kant, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, tr. Theodore M. Greene and Hoyt H. Hudson (New York: Harper Torchbook, 1960), pp. 15–53. 17. Ibid., pp. 50–114. On pp. 63–65, he concludes an extended footnote by reemphasizing “if we limited our judgment to regulative principles, which content themselves with their own possible application to the moral life, instead of aiming at constitutive principles of a knowledge of supersensible objects, insight into which, after all, is forever impossible to us, human wisdom would be better off in a great many ways, and there would be no breeding of a presumptive knowledge of that about which, in the last analysis, we know nothing at all—a groundless sophistry that glitters indeed for a time but only, as in the end becomes apparent, to the detriment of morality.” 18. Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, ed. H. R. Mackintosh and J. S. Stewart (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1960), p. 381. 19. Friedrich Schleiermacher, On Religion: Addresses to Its Cultured Despisers, see the “First Speech.” 20. Kant’s view of Jesus offered a way around the Docetism, as seeing the picture of Jesus only as a depiction of the Ideal of moral perfection, as if having descended from above, but could not be intelligible if pushed to being an actual embodiment of such an Ideal. Kant, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone. 21. See especially Cyril O’Regan, The Heterodox Hegel (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, Albany, 1994). 22. Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, p. 524. 23. Ibid., pp. 517–23. 24. Hegel, Phenomenology, Section C: Revealed Religion, pp. 750–85. 25. Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, pp. 479–80. The unjustified preference to “being” was seen in Tillich’s “asymmetrical” approach to the polarity of being and non-being by Buddhist scholar Masao Abe. When he was asked whether Tillich’s idea that “being-itself” was beyond the polarity of being and non-being and parallel to the Buddhist understanding of Sunyata, and he replied “No,” since it is asymmetrical in its preference of being over nothing. Masao Abe, “Double Negation

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as an Essential for Attaining the Ultimate Reality: Comparing Tillich and Buddhism,” in Abe, Buddhism and Interfaith Dialogue, ed. Steven Heine (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1995), pp. 104–11. 26. Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, pp. 107, 111. 27. Ibid., pp. 108–9. 28. Dasein is alleged pursued by its “uncanniness” (Umheimlichkeit), a recognition that one has been “thrown” into an existence one has not created, for which, as Rorty puts it in Nietzsche’s terms, one cannot say “Thus I willed it” (Rorty, Contingency, p. 109; also ftnt #9, p. 109). But he attempts to emphasize that neither Sein nor Dasein exist independently, yet the relation between the two is not reciprocal, even if Sein is totally finite and contingent. (See Heidegger’s Introduction to Metaphysics, pp. 139, 174.) I think his “Thus I willed it” was aimed less specifically. See ch. 5, note 66 above. 29. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, tr. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper & Row Pub., 1962), pp. 210–24. 30. Ibid., pp. 329–30. His language is as stilted as possible: “Thrownness, however, does not lie behind it as some event which has happened to Dasein, which has factually befallen, and fallen loose from Dasein again; on the contrary, as long as Dasein is, Dasein, as care, is constantly its ‘that-it-is’. To this entity it has been delivered over, and as such it can exist solely as the entity which it is; and as this entity to which it has been thus delivered over, it is, in its existing, the basis of its potentialityfor-Being. Although it has not laid that basis itself, it reposes in the weight of it, which is made manifest to it as a burden by Dasein’s mood” (p. 330). Of course, Heidegger places a denial of any connection of his conception of “guilt” with theology’s idea of “guilt” since his “knows in principle nothing about sin” (note #ii of Division Two, Chapter Two, p. 496). But it is not very dissimilar from Tillich’s in which one’s exercise of freedom within existence is the separation from Being (or Sein), but aims at recapturing one’s essence or true sharing (through a process of “essentilization”) of the divinity of pure Sein by redemption through Christ. Of course, there is no external redemption in Heidegger; yet in Tillich it finally cannot be said to be anything external or outside one’s mind, brain, or specifically “attitude.” 31. Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, II: pp. 29–44. 32. Ibid., I:132–34; 143; II:90–96. More than this, to be “final revelation,” it must involve only an individual, since anything involving more than a single person has no personal “center” by which a decision can be totally uniform. Further, it must involve the complete transparency of the individual to the “mystery he reveals,” and he must completely negate himself without losing himself or his connection to that “mystery” (I:133). Knowledge of such final revelation is beyond ordinary language and criteria for meaning or truth, including all scientific theories and historical knowledge (I:130). It is not literal but only analogous or symbolic knowledge of God, yet no analogy of being suffices to elucidate its meaning (I:131). 33. Tillich attempted to “restore” “spirit” to theology, even though he admitted that it had suffered the same fate in culture as “soul” in being deserted since it was being understood in some way as material. He did not mind “soul” being abandoned, but wanted to restore “spirit” as the “personal-communal” dimension of being, the

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“unity of power and meaning” in the animation of reflective life, but not reducible to “mind,” yet also not a power coming from outside the person. He insists that “mind” cannot become a substitute for “spirit” since “spirit” “expresses the consciousness of a living being in relation to its surroundings and to itself . . . [which] includes awareness, perception, intention . . . [even] eros, passion and imagination” (III:21–24). “Mind” or the “brain” does not supply these functions? He says that while the human spirit cannot compel the divine Spirit to enter the human spirit, the Spiritual Presence does “break into the human spirit” or “grasps” it, giving the human power to transcend himself or herself. That sounds very much like something coming from “outside” as a foreign element. “The ‘in’ of the divine Spirit is an ‘out’ for the human spirit,” so although it is still human, it is in a state of ecstasy, which, although it does not destroy the centeredness of the integrated self,” it does enable self-transcendence for the person (II:112). How he makes these fine distinctions is not clear, nor is it clear which functions are really different from what the human brain involves. 34. Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1967), II:31–44. 35. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, tr. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper & Row Pub., 1962), pp. 210–24. 36. This was the thrust of Tillich’s small book Morality and Beyond (Harper & Row, 1963). 37. Rorty insists that “most people would not feel guilty” about being thrown into a vocabulary they did not create, but “people with the special gifts and ambitions shared by Hegel, Proust, and Heidegger do . . . people who are unable to stand the thought that they are not their own creations.” Rorty admits that Heidegger later abandoned this vocabulary, changing its focus onto the spoken words’ actual sounds, but tells us neither what the connection between poets and thinkers is, nor how he thinks he has achieved a “self-consuming and continually self-renewing final vocabulary” (Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, pp. 109, 114, and note #14 on p. 114). 38. Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, pp. 501–5. 39. David F. Strauss, The Life of Jesus Critically Examined, tr. George Eliot (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1972), pp. 268–84. 40. Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, §95. 41. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, tr. George Eliot (New York: Harper Torchbook, 1957), p. 12. (Hereafter in text in parentheses as “EC”+ page #.) 42. We presently have scholarly books written in a semi-popular style which have enabled many to realize the significance of the brain, how it functions, stores information, classifies it, retrieves it, associates some of it to emotions, and so forth in books such as Stephen Pinker’s How the Mind Works (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997), and Daniel Levitin’s This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession (New York: Dutton, 2006). 43. Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, p. 189. 44. Ludwig Feuerbach, Lectures on the Essence of Religion, tr. Ralph Manheim (New York: Harper & Row Pub., 1967), p. 24. Hereafter in text designed “LER”+page number.

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45. At least Barth recognized how well read Feuerbach was in theology in general and Luther especially, a fact that should encourage many present Protestant leaders to read Feuerbach as well as Luther, and weigh their arguments against each other rather than simply rejoicing that Feuerbach had exposed Schleiermacher’s theology for being what it truly was—“anthropology.” But Barth knew that at least he (if not only he) could do real theology. 46. Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion, tr. James Strachey (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1961). Hereafter in text, it is indicated with page number within parentheses, while any reference to other writings are placed in the endnotes. 47. He wrote The Future of an Illusion in 1927, which was followed up with Civilization and its Discontents in 1930, and three years later, Hitler became chancellor or German, and five years later the Nazis rolled into Austria. He had earlier written his Thoughts for the Times on War and Death in 1915, in response to the outbreak of World War I, in which he spoke of “disillusionment” and of the “altered attitude toward death.” 48. Gay seems correct in saying that while Freud was not opposed to people seeking a “wholistic” experience, his dramatization of the fight between ego and id was his way of exposing the ego’s “complicity” in the “metaphysical lies of religion” which produced neuroses in people by making them incapable of confronting the world in its reality of sickness, misfortune, and death. See Volney P. Gay, “Against Wholeness: The Ego’s Complicity in Religion,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, XLVII/4, 539–55, esp. 550–51. For the relations of ego, id and super ego, see Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, tr. James Strachey (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1965), especially lecture XXXI, “The Dissection of the Psychical Personality.” Inasmuch as ego, id, and super-ego play also a role in dreams as well as ethical consciousness, another of his many books that can elucidate more of his unique approach is his The Interpretation of Dreams, tr. James Strachey (New York: Avon Books, 1965). 49. It can hardly be ignored that this very result occurred when Christian Idealism of the nineteenth century tried to save Christ by exempting him from any historicallydislodging data. One can see this development in detail in my Ethics and the Future of Religion: Redefining the Absolute. 50. Kant, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, pp. 92, 107–12. 51. See note #17 above and Masao Abe’s “Rejoinder” to the ethical criticisms of Buddhism in John B. Cobb, Jr. and Christopher Ives, eds., The Emptying God: A Buddhist-Jewish-Christian Conversation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1994), pp. 157–200. 52. Freud, The Future of an Illusion, pp. 68–69. 53. James, Varieties of Religious Experience. The “more” life people desire, he says, needs no “god” to supply, but actually can be found in any “other” who can help us take even the “next step,” and he speaks of it not even needing another actual person, but can be satisfied by the “higher faculties of our own hidden mind which are controlling,” the subconscious aspects of our being. That is what religious people conceive of as ‘“higher” as if it were deity. That “higher” or “larger” power “need not be infinite, it need not be solitary.” In fact, “Anything larger [than our conscious selves] will do,

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if only it be large enough to trust for the next step” (pp. 510–13; 517–19; 525). These should be compared with his personal responses to the Pratt Questionnaire but also his extended analyses of various religious topics, in which he finally suggests that many might end up being satisfied with a “pragmatistic or melioristic type of theism,” because he was convinced that religion can cause real effects, but he undoubtedly personally came closer to a non-theistic or panentheistic (not pantheistic) position, and was not confident his position would satisfy many religious people. 54. Ibid., pp. 506–7. 55. Ibid., pp. 506–8, 525. James admitted personally that he would not consider praying since that would be “foolish and artificial,” nor did he think God could be proven, nor that he himself had ever experienced God. But he saw God as simply a “more powerful ally of my own ideals,” and though he had no personal experience with God, he accepted testimony of others when they claimed they had (Ibid., pp. 529–31). His interest in religion psychologically seems a little too accepting in light of his insistence that he said religion is not credible if its ideas conflict with science, but he seems to beg off by saying we do not understand much about the human mind. 56. Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, p. 22. 57. Mark Twain called the two important factors of one’s life “circumstance” and “temperament.” Neither one is a person’s own doing, whether it is regarded as some “turning-point” in one’s career or the crossing of the Rubicon. As he graphically wrote, one can argue all one wants about “circumstances,” whether they are good or bad, but such privilege is parallel to the “privilege of a falling body to argue with the attraction of gravitation . . . it won’t do any good, he must obey.” He insisted that “temperament” is a “natural disposition”—it “is not his invention, it is born in him, and he has no authority over it, neither is he responsible for its acts. He cannot change it, nothing can change it, nothing can modify if—except temporarily. But it won’t stay modified. It is permanent, like the color of the man’s eyes and the shape of his ears.” Yet, we tend to use our retrospective vision to see a “purpose,” a “turningpoint” in one’s life, when, in reality, there were innumerable ones, and credit should not be singled out to a single moment or event, or one’s ingenuity, whether one is analyzing Columbus’ “discovery” or Joan of Arc, Luther, or even Adam and Eve. “Circumstances do the planning for us all, no doubt, by help of our temperament. I see no difference between a man and a watch, except that the man is conscious and the watch isn’t, and the man tries to plan things and the watch doesn’t.” But external circumstances keep both wound up. This is so parallel to Richard Rorty’s idea of “contingency,” that things, including language, “just happen.” Mark Twain, “The Turning-Point of My Life,” in The Family Mark Twain (New York: Dorset Press, 1988), pp. 1129–35. 58. Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, p. 192. As he says elsewhere, the novels show contingent humans speaking and even dying, whereas philosophical treatises are filled with abstract ideas which are much less powerful with regard to motivating a person. From the novels of Nabokov, Rorty notes that “the only thing which could really get Nabokov down was the fear of being, or having been, cruel. More specifically, what he dreaded was simply not having noticed the suffering of someone with whom one had been in contact” (157).

Chapter 7

Theoretical Trust in Unity Despite Differences

One of Richard Rorty’s concerns as a philosopher and professor of comparative literature was to somehow connect the private and public spheres of our existence, a question which has likely stimulated thoughtful people of many cultures for centuries. He noted that this concern lies behind both Plato’s attempt to answer the question “Why is it in one’s interest to be just?” and Christianity’s claim that perfect self-realization can be attained through service to others. Such metaphysical or theological attempts to unite a striving for perfection with a sense of community require us to acknowledge a common human nature. They ask us to believe that what is most important to each of us is what we have in common with others—that the springs of private fulfillment and the human solidarity are the same.1

That seemed to be the conviction of both Nietzsche and Schweitzer, who saw the “will-to-live” or the “will-to-power” or discharging of one’s strength in affirming life as instinctual. They were convinced that directed by one’s reason as one relates to others, that “will-to-live” or “will-to-power”—either by its mystical union with others’ will-to-live or by its emphasis to perfect itself by some form of “self-overcoming”—will manifest itself in life-affirmation in one’s thought and action toward others. It may require sublimating specific desires to achieve the more fundamental values of life-affirmation, but that does not negate the innate or instinctual and universal power of life-affirmation of all people. The sense of contingency and relativity had become more apparent during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with metaphysical certainty being challenged, despite the absolute idealism of Hegel. The former absolute answer in the West of the religious connection of all knowledge with a 317

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“metaphysics of infinity” had been eroded by the critical empirical approaches to all human sciences, so the question was whether what we “have in common” is any longer accessible either through a religion or through some individual self-perfection. In the modern technological age, what was being discovered was a growing sense of difference or pluralism which became more proximate, in some modern scenes eclipsing the idea of what “we have in common” by a cynicism, skepticism, or even an extreme authoritarianism. If it could be said that the primary ethical approach through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and into the twentieth remained some form of utilitarianism as the general epistemology turned more empirical and quantitative, the question was how this reduction of differences could be credibly justified in such a perspective of utilitarianism’s hypothetical individual or whole that was only a supra-individual. A sinister form of this ethical problem came as multinational corporations escaped personal responsibility and liability with corporations’ fictitious legal identity as a “person,” which finally opened Pandora’s box in the United States by Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 US 310 (2010). The nineteenth and twentieth centuries saw the value of religious ethics diminish as the erosion of the credibility of religious metaphysical bases left them hanging in mid-air. The critical approach to religion and its claims by its own professionals, was exacerbated by the more dislodging theories by Feuerbach, Freud, and Marx, who saw religion only as a projection of the species-consciousness or an illusion built upon basic fears or an opiate to deaden one’s sensitivity to one’s being economically exploited. The world wars and ruthless competition for the Earth’s resources knew no mitigating power in the thoroughly quantified or manipulated utilitarianism, whether in democracies or authoritarian governments. There is hardly any doubt that both Schweitzer and Nietzsche attempted the “private” or individual “perfection” side of ethics, hoping to influence through being an example, and hoping to bridge the gap between the particular religious communions or moral ideologies and the particular individuals by rooting the ethical within universal human instinct which then required shaping or directing by reason. It seemed to favor neither a capitalistic nor communistic schema. Neither one provided a wholly satisfactory theoretical answer about how this will-to-live or will- to-power can be consistent vis-à-vis competing and conflicting claims and interests of other people who have the same will-tolive or will-to-power. The conflicting claims and powers could present sheer chaos or instinct run wild with no restraints, and even Nietzsche, as we saw, warned against such. Their focus gives the impression that what needs to be corrected is simply the individual’s conception of value and its true source, as if it automatically

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will be recognized and reduplicated universally and almost naturally. Of course, the latter possibility was more Schweitzer’s view whereas Nietzsche seemed to think that only the rarest of exceptional people would discover real life as he described it, as the “Übermensch” or “overman.” In any case, life appears instead to be a picture of perpetual competition, even for Nietzsche a justified “exploitation” by the “strongest” or more rationally instinctual being. While it is true that Schweitzer refused to shoot monkeys to eat when he was in Africa, his example did not convert either the locals or the world at large into becoming vegans. And, significantly, neither Schweitzer nor Nietzsche felt one can assign altruism to being a second basic instinct. As far as being exemplary in their individual pursuit of human perfection as they saw it, the details of any private exemplary aspect were limited to so few immediate people that their insights and exemplary attributes were basically discovered only posthumously, despite Schweitzer’s being honored with the Nobel Peace Prize. The very awarding of such Prize implied that the committee was impressed with a very unique life, which tends slightly to undermine the whole idea of the will-to-live being instinctual or universal. It seems obviously universal, but then something else has to account for why it was so extravagantly experienced in a single unique life. Schweitzer had explained the altruistic element as coming from a sense of mystical union with the other, which seemed to be a connective not explored by Nietzsche. Even then, their writings seem to leave this theoretical gap of how the selfdenial or self-overcoming was consistently generated when the “will-to-live” or “will-to-power” was alleged to be the primary power within all humans. This would be the case unless the experience of a “mystical unity” with being in particular beings is actually a universal experience as Schweitzer seemed to suggest. If, however, it is conceived, as he insisted, not as a mystical unity with some theistic “God” or with “Being-itself” or the “Totality of Being” (as Tillich thought), and it does not require some form of induced ecstasy to be experienced, and it really can be described—then one wonders how it really is still “mysticism” in the traditional sense, and could not be simply a discovery of one’s self in another person more as Scharlemann proposes in The Reason of Following. Yet even Scharlemann required ecstasy for such discovery, but he described it only as Tillich had, as one’s being removed or transcending one’s normal subject/object mental framework. That need not imply something supranatural, and even he suggested an analogy of identifying with a certain character in a play, an identification which is so intense that one does not return to one’s “normal” self until the play ends. Perhaps that moves us a step closer to a connective between the private perfection and the public social solidarity. If one emphasizes that this mysticism is never with the totality of Being, or Being-itself, as Schweitzer

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stressed, but only the being in individual beings, there is no reason it could not be described, so perhaps this sense of unity is sufficient.2 Even so, as credible as are Nietzsche’s and Schweitzer’s ideas of this primary thrust of life being instinctual, how does a person deal with the competition and conflict between people who are moved by their own instinctual “will-to-live” or lifeaffirming “will-to-power”? Such difference cannot be dismissed by simply judging them as lacking the instinct or not being reasonable. Neitzsche’s and Schweitzer’s private-fulfillment focus, while attempting to connect with human solidarity or solidarity with all living beings through some power of identification with the subjectivity of the other or one’s sense of indebtedness to the other, still seemed to have fairly weak motivation. In Nietzsche’s case, he saw the rising, blindingly irrational nationalism of Germany and anti-Semitism in the build-up before World War I, and in Schweitzer’s case, he was overwhelmed with the utter national detachment from any ethics that he witnessed in World War I. Both perceived that the structures of government had to change, and one must remember that the structures of most of those governments involved were implicitly if not blatantly explicitly called “Christian.” Most crucially, then, Nietzsche’s and Schweitzer’s moral theories appeared to place a connection between private and public spheres. One’s instinctual motivation as dedication to self-perfection that included perfecting that instinct in whatever being it was found, seemed to fall short of explaining how that formed the basis for structures of human solidarity3 concerned with “justice,” where the utilitarianism appeared so strong. But the diversity or pluralism developed into radical competition, national and international conflict of the most intense proportions in which, as Barzun describes it, those ties of friendship that seemed so significant between diverse people were quickly abandoned in a sense of nationalistic pride, which provided a sense of purpose of even dying for one’s nation. The “common element” seemed elusive or of little significance at best; imaginary at worst. Or, are we actually getting closer to seeing the “common” element or the connective? Nietzsche had been repulsed by the growing absurd nationalism with all of its groundless clichés, blatant racism, and programs to “improve” mankind. The Enlightenment talk of equality was to him as empty and full of ressentiment as was all the ethical and religious language and posturing, with false causes, self-contradictory values, and a threat to humanity’s continued existence even underlying its ideals. Schweitzer’s understanding of the priority of “will to live” in all living creatures made sense as he formulated it during his incarceration during the national build-up toward World War I. What they both found difficult to explain was what would motivate one to be willing to diminish or sacrifice one’s benefits or interests to honor others’ will-tolive which was an obvious nationalism with potential of a war which was

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completely anti-life. The war, followed by another which ended by nuclear power only intensified the question of whether there really was any truth to the idea of humanity’s common “will-to-live,” since the destructive powers of humanity seemed more obvious than any willingness to sacrifice one’s will-to-live to enable another’s will-to-live. That seemed very other-worldly talk. Yet, if Rorty thought no theory could connect the emphases for either private perfection or for social solidarity, he did suggest that by actual experience or even imagination, one could confront “suffering” of either self or others, that could be the common element—not a theory—but a common experience. In fact, both Nietzsche and Schweitzer had gone through wars and seen the suffering of others aplenty, even ministering to those who were suffering. If that experience, whether in one’s actual life or even a reading of a great novel, makes the connection, is it not possible that such circumstances of possible suffering vis-à-vis co-existing peacefully with others can be imagined and form the basis for negotiating a social contract, as Rawls suggests. The imagination admitted as legitimate by Rorty can be operative in removing each participant from his or her “happenstance” or “accidental” or “irrational” elements, and thereby open him or her up to the possibility of either greater suffering or greater security. Therein lies the contribution of Rawls’s theory of justice and political liberalism. Nietzsche resorted to saying that everybody has the will-to-power, but some have it in greater and some in lesser degrees, but that could be suggesting only that some might be more egoistic than others, but surely the “will-to-power” as the primary pro-life human instinct would not allow itself to destroy life en masse. One is left wondering, as Nietzsche lost his mind in the period of Germany’s prelude to war, whether the real message of Zarathustra was perhaps that humans are left floundering to establish any connection with other humans that can even rival the connection humans can feel with animals. Put in different terms, both Nietzsche and Schweitzer, in their obvious genius, provided a “ground” for ethics that made sense when it came to explaining one’s primary motivation or instinct in life, and both of their concepts could have evolved out of ancient or early forms of the very natural survival instinct or self-preservation. Further, both men were quite motivated, even radically denying their own comfort to help others through their extensive hours of almost feverish service whether as a medic, ministering to the injured and ill during a war, or in a jungle hospital, dealing with innumerable illnesses of patients of a different culture, or by doing research and writing their books in the few undistracted moments they could find as their own and were even able to see sufficiently to write. The reality of suffering or the threat of suffering can connect the private perfection with the social solidarity if a sufficient number of those involved feel that prospect enough

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and see a way to prevent or mitigate it by an informal or formal agreement based on the mutual and final value of life. Does this mean that reason suddenly dictates to instinct or is more powerful than instinct, or if not, does this connective agreement based on reasonable dialog between interested parties restrain interest and reshape behavior from being driven purely by instinct? If the latter, would not this reasonable dialog, the dialectic function of reason which forms the mutual agreement not itself be the point at which it becomes “moral”? It does so by some form of “identity” the self feels with the others, an identity that is not merely theoretical and abstract, but existential, through a confrontation with the real “other,” driven by one’s instinctual “will-to-live” as one thinks about it and the “other” and the “world” to whom one is related. If one can relate as an “I–You” as Martin Buber said, to a tree or a significant painting, thinking or speaking of the other as “you,” because of its “exclusive presence” one feels,4 does this form a moral relationship any more than one’s identity of one’s “will-to-live” with the “will-to-live” inherent in the carrots and corn in one’s garden? Or, does it become “moral” or “ethical” only to the degree that both “I” and the other (either “it” or “You”) have subjective freedom, which the tree, painting, carrots, and corn do not? Or, does the relation carry moral connections with any entity upon which any life may depend? Would this mean that the “moral” relation seems to me to exist only between myself in varying degrees determined by how directly that which the “other” to me is essential to my life or another’s life? The highest degree of morality or ethics would then seem to describe reflective human beings relating to other reflective humans beings, and the lowest degree of morality would perhaps entail a human being’s relation to a rock which he might possibly step on and might possibly trip or slip on and hurt himself, or, which, if he failed to remove it from the path, another living being might be hurt because of its peculiar placement on the path. In between these would be all the different degrees of entities which are not self-reflective but are conscious, as well as those forms of life which live without consciousness at all, to entities that are very essential to live (such as air and water and various nutrients), to entities which are only quite marginally connected to the lives of any being or living specie, and the question of probabilities of actually affecting another would have to be considered. Despite the fact that Buber called certain words “relational words,” as if the use of them actually establishes a relation, they establish the relation only in the minds of the speaker using the words in speaking of the other objects either as a “You” or “It,” and the minds of those who hear and understand the words spoken. To living species who might hear the words but not understand what the sounds meant, there would be no sense of establishing a relation.

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And if the tree or painting heard me call it “You,” it would not have any reaction . . . well . . . of course not, since it has no consciousness nor ability to hear. If I speak to the painting, it will have even less effect that if I speak to my cat, even if my cat does not speak English, because the cat, unlike the painting, has consciousness and can hear and perceive and has at least some awareness of causality which can involve words I habitually use in addressing it. The painting is a reflecting image which can surely have “presence” as Buber said, but its “presence” and its “exclusiveness” is not “living” in the same sense as my cat or even the living tree in the yard. The painting depends more on the viewing subject than on its own elements or even style since it literally has no “life” in it.5 Is the important distinction that between a conscious and a non-conscious will-to-live, or is the instinct not really a “will” by itself but only becomes that within conscious beings or perhaps only in self-reflective conscious beings, so morality or ethics is involved primarily within those beings who are self-reflective enough to understanding them actually acting from will power more than mere instinct? This is pretty obvious, probably something most or all people recognize even if they do not articulate it as theory. Again, a partial answer seems to be that some kind of realistic confrontation, either in person or by imagination of a possible or real suffering is requisite, which therefore jogs one’s instinct, upon which the emotions and intellect kick into action. In non-reflective beings, the instinct will perhaps cause it to hide or run or fight back, without any reflection. In reflective humans, the confrontation of suffering, perhaps already experienced or even anticipated, of either self or others, can not only stir the instinctual will-tolive but even one’s reflective capacity by which one becomes cognitively aware of the common subjectivity or common “will-to-live” and is driven to try to eliminate or at least mitigate the suffering, which might mean administering medical assistance, or helping to negotiate a social contract or peace treaty to prevent or end suffering or to compensate for it when it occurs, or even other encouraging gestures. John Rawls seemed especially qualified to speak of the process of being willing to accommodate difference and even identify with others in their suffering, because he had terrible experiences in war but also personal horrifying experiences of suffering and guilt as a child. The former might have or should have been prevented by social contracts and political forms of justice, but the latter experiences were sheer family accidents. In any case, the social contract does not cure every ailment in life, but it can be a general agreement to form structures that are intended to potentially benefit all citizens, which advantage no particular individuals or groups more than all others, and that, when sanctions are agreed on for the most significant rules of law, assist in preventing suffering as much as is humanly possible in a fair way.

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THE CONNECTING AND ETHICAL ELEMENT: AN AGREEMENT OR SOCIAL CONTRACT It is at this precise, crucial point that the philosophy of John Rawls is so apropos because he revived the old social contract theory from Locke, Hume, and especially Kant. If humans are thinking and valuing creatures, which he believes they are, is it reasonable to presuppose their thinking and valuing will be identical or synonymous? Rawls’s answer is “No, that is not reasonable.” If they are social creatures, is it reasonable to think that their thinking and valuing would not affect their social relations? Again, he strikes that out. Is it not fairly obvious that humans will have a diversity of influences, radically different backgrounds, unique experiences, and therefore synthetic interests and values that are so complex and even retained subconsciously, that they are not identical with other people’s values and interests, perhaps almost totally incompatible except in the most general goals or values? Then how can they have constructive relations, much less a sense of unity, of “social solidarity” as Rorty calls it, especially in a world that changes so rapidly and extensively, providing continuously new stimuli for one’s reflection? There might be a single authoritarian source who enforces or coerces humans’ relations with each other and even tries to control their thinking and valuing. That single source might be one of the people involved, or some outsider or even some alleged god. It could be a parent or parental surrogate or court judge. It might be a priest, pastor, prophet, imam, or other religious authority, thought to have supreme or ultimate insights or perhaps even being infallible in such matters, or it might be even documents alleged to have originated from such single ultimate source as a god, as we learned in the last half of the nineteenth century. Or it might be several different individuals or institutions or agencies or ancient cultural or religious traditions, either with or without any clearly delineated agreements between them about the boundaries or limits of their jurisdiction. But all this is heteronomy, allowing others or submitting to others to make the important decisions for oneself. If Dostoevsky’s “Grand Inquisitor” was certain that humanity by and large fears freedom and prefers a form of heteronomy that can release one from the responsibility of having to make one’s own moral decisions,6 Sartre countered that by describing humans as not simply having freedom but “being freedom” through conscious choice. The will to transcend the mental pains of having to choose was simply to Sartre the unrealistic wish to be “God” (which as finite “being-in-itself” had no choice or consciousness). Such a wish by a human (a conscious, “being-for-itself”) would make the human a “wasted passion.”7 While heteronomy may be necessary when one is immature or mature but incapacitated, such paternalism or surrogate for self is not an ideal state for

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the mature and flourishing adult human. It can be dehumanizing to those who are forced to submit to it. Once we move away from heteronomy to autonomy, however, in our social existence with each other, one can hardly expect others to honor one’s autonomy in any significant relationship unless the relation is reciprocal, that it also involves a mutual trust, mutual autonomy, and mutual responsibilities. That ought to be self-evident. But the “mutual” part requires what we call trust and trustworthiness, a concept seldom discussed explicitly in moral discourse, though always present. If two or more people take charge of making their own decisions, to what extent are they able to do that, especially if both have many other relations with other people? Here we enter into the realm of seeking some common agreement or understanding, a “social contract.” It is built upon the “common” element or connecting element between humans which is discovered not as some predefined or a priori essence but of a need arising from the actual sheer contiguity of humans, the physical and social empiricity itself, of possible or real suffering vis-à-vis peaceful co-existence. The prospect of the reality of the relation between the two or more persons shows a common need of self-preservation within a relation of some unity. Here the universal will-to-live or will-to-power recognizes the different other, and in recognizing the potential of either an attraction to an enhanced life or the danger of suffering, either creates or ignores a relationship with the other. In cases in which there is a reciprocal will to create and sustain a relationship, an ethical relation is created. It requires a recognition, articulated or even unarticulated if not subconscious, of a common need for a mutual agreement or understanding. The common element involves a need for communication of one’s desire for a compatible symbiotic relation with each other. If it begins as primarily survival instinct, as one matures or the social network becomes more complex, through reflection, the commonality will spread to having the “primary goods” that sustain life, and it can become very intensely common, even competitive but ironically also quite generous, when there is a scarcity of the sustaining primary goods, as my final reference to Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath will reveal. The identity of “suffering” creates an instinctual response, which in humans may involve both cognition as well as emotions. Between individuals, this agreement might never even be explicitly articulated but simply basically understood because they either find themselves thrust together or attracted to each other in complex and even intimate ways, and develop a sense of mutual trust that did not require some formal contract. However, for those not in such proximity and continually close relations with each other, if some kind of relationship is nevertheless anticipated or does occur occasionally or exists because of their status as citizens of a particular governmental unit, or if there is a significant type of interdependence that

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they have even if it seems remote from their everyday decisions, some form of social contract is needed. We can refer to such a social contract as only a “political” agreement of autonomy as does Rawls, to distinguish it from what he calls a moral autonomy which might have a completely different base and could be much more inclusive or exclusive. Our concern here is to ask whether some kind of social contract does not underlie every human relation, not simply those which involve political structures of justice. And if it involves autonomy in any relation, it is necessarily mutual autonomy as we already mentioned, unless it is an involuntary relation or sheer coercion which is not moral unless it was agreed to by the one being coerced. The next question is who draws up the social contract and how? Rawls says a social contract could be built around a single principle or several principles. If it is several, the relations or sense of priority between the various principles will have to be part of the consideration. He sensed they could achieve the most coherence if they were arranged in a “lexical” order which we will explain shortly as an order of priority and finality. As to “who” draws it up, unless one reverts to heteronomy, it should be the ones who intend to live by the agreement. Of course, in many cases, in actual life, people are born into situations in which there already exists a political framework that has been established long before, so the question is not really one of deleting the whole and starting from scratch. Rather, the existing structures provide the fact that one’s person was already “represented” in prior generations, so one or one’s present representative is now only involved in a re-thinking or revaluation of those basic interests and values, of the agreement and its ability to honor and mediate between the conflicting ideas, to be able to assess whether or not it has a sense of balance or equilibrium to it or is quite one-sided or prejudiced. Marriage is one example when the agreement is somewhat an original one, though not within Rawls’s specific purview of governmental justice. Marriage appears to be a new public-promising between private parties, even if involving only two witnesses, a promising they now choose to formalize and memorialize, a new agreement even if they utilize traditional clichés and formulae and rituals in the ceremony. However, much remains unarticulated, some of which is understood but many elements of which may not have been explored or even imagined yet by the parties. Their future committed lives together will be a continual reaffirming of the contract with amendments and ramifications or extensions based on new insights and new experiences. Of course, it likely will not be formalized in another written document, but the relationship requires such continuous dialogue and adjustments of each party. While most of our social relations do not require such obvious public proclamation of a contract which is so personal; nevertheless, even the constitution or basic laws under which we live are

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implicit commitments from which we arrive at reasonable expectations as to the behavior of each other, expectations which continue to allow for differences because of the uniqueness of each person and his or her background and perspective, but reasonable expectations which stand within the unity to which we are committed, especially when it is formalized with publicity and memorialized in writing. All of this is built on reason and instinct. But without basic trust, it would amount to nothing but continual disappointment, chaos, and confusion. Even if most people are simply born into a country which already has its constitution or basic principles established, one still always has the privilege of reviewing its basic principles, and if one objects to them strongly, one may have to make a choice between staying and living under them or leaving for another country. Of course, citizens always have a voice within a constitutional democratic republic, but this gives them rights to express themselves only within the agreed constitutional provisions and principles, or through agreed methods of “amendments.” If we could assume that Nietzsche and Schweitzer are correct in seeing the primary power or thrust of a human life is the life-affirming “will-to-power” or “will-to-live,” then what will be willed by the parties in their mutual, voluntary agreement? If it is social contract or one expressing the will of the people of a nation, for example, surely the agreement would focus on principles which would make the relations constructive for all, which would create a sense of unity, in which all honor life itself. Then the question probably turns to what degree do we desire a relation that preserves for us our individual liberties or freedom for our lives? Unity in our minds can consciously or subconsciously mean to us that we seek other people to agree with our ideas and values, which means more a uniformity than mere unity, a heteronomy for the “others.” But where there are many different opinions, interests, values, experiences, influences, and so forth, it is unrealistic to expect a uniformity or that any single person’s liberty would be placed in an advantageous position over all the others. Yet for some reason, there arise specific issues that we may feel so keenly about that we become intolerant of others holding to an opinion opposite ours. If this describes our attitude toward a large number of issues or interests, if we feel we cannot tolerate significantly different opinions, we may find our group of friends becoming quite small. If we want, even subconsciously, to influence others to get them to embrace our views at the cost of their own, we may find less and less people in our lives that even want to be around us, so the whole becomes a self-defeating vicious circle. But if we are talking about a democratic republic, it does so rightfully because the system itself is built upon the whole people and only on the power of persuasion based on “public reason.”

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The real question, then, becomes to what extent I desire a relation or even some sense of belonging to a united group of people, and to what degree I want that relation, whether I want it keenly enough to be willing to tolerate other peoples’ significant differences.8 This is what “political liberalism” involves, although Rawls says it is more limited than a general liberalism or moral liberalism in that it touches only on the “political” aspects of one’s life, the basic structures or institutions which all have agreed on in order to have a system which tolerates difference within their embodiment of a political conception of justice. If it is concerned with “justice,” then it is only those structures or institutions that attempt to balance the concern for justice with their liberalism or tolerance of differences. Otherwise, people may elect to belong to any number of associations which are either less open to difference or more liberally open to difference than the structures of government, but their principles and structures neither exempt them from abiding by the basic political structures of justice nor give them any voice in trying to change that basic political structure since their purposes and constituency differ radically with those of the nation. A CONTRACT BASED ON A CONCEPT OF JUSTICE AS FAIRNESS John Rawls’s did not intend his theory of justice to focus on a social contract, especially one of fairness, to be a complete ethical theory, so did not include considerations of how one should relate to other people in private relationships, or to animals nor to the rest of nature, or the Earth and Universe (TJ, p. 17).9 Its focus is on the process of social contracting, the needs driving it, the voluntary nature of it, and the principles that would most likely be agreed on if the process met the “restraints” which the very process seems to require in the name of “fairness,” and the various public structures or institutions involved in such a political theory. It does work from a presupposition that “each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override” (TJ, p. 3), and this includes even the majoritarian powers (TJ, pp. 224–31). He shows how any ethical theory that hopes to be inclusive would profit from envisioning the diversity of interests of humans under a contract theory of justice as fairness rather than strictly ethical ideas of utilitarianism, perfectionism, or intuitionism. If neither Schweitzer nor Nietzsche provided us a complete ethical system, but primarily only a basic ground for a universal ethic, but with few details and primarily negative judgments on traditional ethics in their application to the social, political, legal, and economic structures, Rawls provides us with the structural side but little about individual

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relations outside the political, legal, and economic structure. But he admits he is not attempting to give a systematic, complete ethical theory. Nevertheless, he asserts that “any ethical theory recognizes the importance of the basic structure as a subject of justice, but not all theories regard its importance in the same way. In justice as fairness society is interpreted as a cooperative venture for mutual advantage” (TJ, p. 84). So his focus is on the social contract, to articulate the process and principles involved in arriving at a social contract, as well as the political liberal structures than embody a willingly cooperative fair process and reasoning as well as fair institutions for which “justice” or “mutual advantage” is paramount. While Nietzsche had an unnecessarily negative view of democracy as being generated from the weak, degenerate, incapable “chandala” class, while he saw the aristocracy, the elite, the “nobility,” the “superior,” or “higher men” (and not women) as being the preferred leaders of the world, this was inconsistent with his idea of autonomy and the will-to-power being universal as an instinct. On the other hand, Schweitzer saw his “Reverence for Life” requiring no particular type of government since it transcended that level of life. Rawls, on the other hand, was reviving the social contract theory of Rousseau, Locke, and Kant, in fact, was very Kantian in his emphasis of reason articulating the ethics as a universal imperative to honor autonomy and equality, thus democracy, though he did suggest that the same principles might be followed in a socialist regime as well to the degree that it embodies the autonomy and equality. He did not ignore the diversity within human perspectives, nor did he think one person could reduce these diversities to the answer for culture as Nietzsche seemed to want. Instead, humans are social creatures with different values, so living together is a group effort of sharing life, a reciprocal or “reflective equilibrium” (TJ, pp. 20; 119–20; 456–57). Rawls’s proposal was for a hypothetical “original position” based on equality which involved a voluntary decision to voice one’s primary principles— but behind a “veil of ignorance” or all the irrational or pre-determined or “happenstance” features of one’s actual life—so assuming one does not know these factors—to reach an agreement with others in which all advance their interests in a state of mutual “disinterest” doing the same, which makes the process of the social contracting itself a fair voluntary process. It eliminates the necessity of unjustifiably injecting some natural altruism into the picture, but also of allowing sheer egoism the possibility of one arguing for principles which would give him or her an advantage over others (TJ, pp. 11–21). If the agreed-on principles are embraced by all, and viewed as good for at least two generations, it would be a credible beginning point from which to flesh out the structures of justice. He insists it must cover at least a “whole life,” yet it must decide on our present principles by considering our relation and obligations to the next generation and to time in general (TJ, pp. 284–97).

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Rawls sees his system of justice as fairness, based on contract theory, more realistic and fair and more what one would select, behind the veil of ignorance, than any utilitarian or intuitionist ethic. The problem with the intuitionist is that it presumes too much uniformity to “common sense” without showing it, and its avoidance of being informed by ethical theories—so has no method to justify the weight it assigns to various principles and does not want to engage in any analysis of a process of weighting or prioritizing these principles. So it has an unjustified confidence on being able to reduce all the diverse positions on principles into a single one (TJ, pp. 34–40). Similarly, the utilitarian not only subjects the “right” to its prior definition of the “good,” but has problems with its basic criterion of “maximum fulfillment” when it comes to the distribution question. Its approach eclipses any significant consideration of individuals, any distinction between actual persons, but assumes an impartial hypothetical spectator can sympathetically identify with the plethora of the desires of all the different interested people and through his imaginative faculties reduce all these into a single position (TJ, pp. 22–27). In contrast, Rawls’s contractual approach allows people or their representatives to bring with them in this hypothetical original position of contracting what would be their most important interests or needs among the “general goods” and their general plan of life but ignorant of the particular position into which they would be born (TJ, p. 200), which does not per se eliminate different voices, but attempts to put them on a fair footing to negotiate with others and hopefully arrive at basic principles upon which they can agree. It is assumed that in this “original position” one is cognizant that whatever his or her goal or final end, it will require certain primary goods, natural and social, and the person would rather have more than less of such goods to achieve this goal (TJ, p. 93). This “veil of ignorance” is a hypothetical, not an actual or historical process engaged in, and is markedly different from any negotiating or bargaining in the ordinary sense in which a person is fully aware of the particulars of his situation in society, his natural assets, race, sexuality, religion, and so forth. None of this is known behind the hypothetical “veil of ignorance” (TJ, pp. 17–21, 139, 148, 206). It would be a state in which we know only that we have unique values, though we do not know what they are, or we know that we want to live (Schweitzer) and we want to “discharge our strength” (Nietzsche) or be ourselves, but we otherwise know no particulars about ourselves or others that could be used to disadvantage others. This “veil of ignorance” places us all in a “status quo” or position of fairness, removing what otherwise would have been irrationally vested interests and “happenstance” advantages coming from nature or genetic structuring, family influencing, special talents, external accidents as well as fortunate occurrences—none of which has a rational

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justification by which to give us an advantage in the field of justice, either in the negotiations or in the distribution of benefits, privileges, or rights. We have only to ask ourselves if we would rather try to negotiate without such a “veil of ignorance” and instead just negotiate with whatever assets or vested talents, opportunities, or education or wealth one has vis-à-vis what others have. We live in a culture that emphasizes that irrational form of negotiating, that one should only bargain from “strength.” But such an assumption is a cliché which comes only from those who think they have considerable strength, that is, strength to prevail over the others to their own benefit. Sometimes the slogan of negotiating only from one’s strength simply obscures the unarticulated wish that one’s contracting parties not have any strength to match. But that is not a legal contractual theory at all. In our everyday world, we all know that a legal contract involves a good faith, voluntary agreement in which there is a legitimate offer and acceptance involving “consideration,” in which both sides are valued approximately as equal, and there is no coercion or undue influence. Put bluntly, if we cannot fairly preclude the unequal elements, the happenstance interests, wealth, and powers from being exercised against our position and interests, how can we really feel it is a valid contract, or how can both parties be confident of getting the result for which they hope? Without the hypothetical veil of ignorance, many will be excluded from even having their voices heard for sheer inequality of opportunity, assets, and power, as the latter are passed from generation to generation or within small circles, influencing legislation by sheer wealth and power to retain the status quo (TJ, pp. 220, 225–26). Can those who really object to the “ignorance” of the hypothetical position not see what its purpose is, or they cannot envision themselves lacking the assets or power to bargain from “strength”?10 If we cannot work out the social contract behind a veil of ignorance, then all kinds of vested interests owned by the others, but also prejudices and biases—whether racial, ethnic, sexual, economic, political, or other—can be argued against us to our detriment. To be reduced from all these particulars which naturally comprise a major part of each person’s identity means that the veil of ignorance will lead to only a meager but very general beginning agreement. But if it can reach even a single principle, that would still be an improvement over having no agreement at all11 or one which is coerced or contrived. It is this basic approach of attempting to arrive at a social contract in simple language, even if at first it is only quite brief, that enabled Rawls to move us further along the route of finding a way the basic instincts can form uniting principles to which all would reasonably agree, and those very principles can provide liberty to people to differ in their own special goals and interests or special associations to which they belong, so long as they strictly comply with the basic principles of justice.

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In his A Theory of Justice (1971), he implied that such a system can avoid being a contradiction because all parties would or have unanimously agreed to a principle of equality that “overrides” any interests or claims that would violate it by creating an inequality or providing one side with advantages over the other. But he later realized that he was construed as having treated “justice as fairness” as a “comprehensive” moral scheme (rather than simply one of any number of possible conception of justice) parallel to the way he treated utilitarianism. ON NARROWING THE SCOPE AND EXPECTATION OF THE CONCEPTION OF JUSTICE Thus, in his later Political Liberalism (1993), he distinguished various conceptions of justice from those that are “comprehensive philosophical, religious, or moral doctrines” which are not embraced or agreed to by the entire people. He realized that in a modern free or democratic society there are and will always be a pluralism not only of morality in its specific doctrines, but even many incompatible yet reasonable comprehensive moral doctrines. If one cannot expect all of these to be reduced into a single position, one also cannot think they are all unreasonable just because they compete and actually conflict with each other. What is needed, then, is not to try to distill from the existing comprehensive schemas an average group of representative ideas, but rather to develop a “political conception” of justice that is truly “freestanding,” but with hopes that it can be agreed to on the basis of its narrower political orientation and application as well as its independence from any comprehensive schema, yet can be seen as not necessarily incompatible with many or most of the reasonable comprehensive moral schemas. Political liberalism assumes such plurality of comprehensive but incompatible doctrines is the normal result of the exercise of human reason within the framework of free institutions of a “constitutional democratic regime” just as it assumes that a “reasonable comprehensive doctrine does not reject the essentials of a democratic regime” (PL, p. xvi). A second change he made is less noticeable. Where in A Theory of Justice, he is talking about apparent persons doing the negotiating in the original position behind a veil of ignorance, it sounds as if they know nothing about themselves that makes them particular. If that is true, and they also do not know the status of ethical arguments and the state of the world, how would they argue for anything—not just not argue for self-interests, but for anything?12 There is a certain lack of clarity here, which is cleared up in Political Liberalism when we realize he is talking about negotiators or representatives who know little

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or nothing about those they represent. They otherwise know about things in general, about valid arguing specifically, about what comprises a good argument, about what the common interests of citizens are, even what might attain the approval of all the participants in the way of general goods. So it is not a person who is ignorant of his particularity, but his representative who knows nothing about his unique status, beliefs, assets, attachments, specific goals, and so on, but would be able to see a principle that would be the most logical, the surest bet for all those he represents (PL, pp. 304–9). So with this slight change of focus, and broader scope, with more emphasis upon the realistic continued existence and possible compatibility of different comprehensive schemas and political conceptions of justice, Rawls speaks more of “freestanding” principles, an “overlapping consensus” and a “wellordered democratic society” in his Political Liberalism. The results are essentially the same in creating a well-ordered democratic society, although the later book does try to eliminate the possible misunderstanding that “justice of fairness” is a comprehensive schema, and he suggests that a close reading of A Theory of Justice will prove that to be so, so that he was earlier mistaken is proposing that it was simply a replacement for utilitarianism which is a comprehensive schema. It replaces only the ground of a possible theory of justice, a ground consisting of two basic principles, which remain the same throughout, but do not require a unanimous acceptance of any existing or possible comprehensive moral schema. Political Liberalism still furnishes only a “political” idea of justice by its insistence that principles being brought to the “original position” must be “freestanding” in order to be “political” or open to negotiation with all citizens. He emphasizes that they must be separated from, not dependent upon, and not presented as, any comprehensive religious or moral theory that involves arguments which are not part of the public reason. He still retains the necessity of the hypothetical original position and its veil of ignorance (PL, pp. 24, 75–79, 304–14). That is the “balance” or “reflected equilibrium” that Rawls proposed in both books that his contract theory of “justice as fairness” can achieve since “political liberalism” is a much narrower scope than the comprehensive schemas. That is, one can assume a unanimity on a single principle (or even two principles) or narrow idea of a constitutional political justice without expecting that people will abandon their more comprehensive schemas of morality, and the political conceptions will be limited in application to only the political sphere which is more narrow than the general moral sphere. This distinction may strike a reader as strange, because one may think the sphere of national political discourse is much broader than that of a small religious institution, but he is distinguishing the intended scope the groups feel entitled or even constrained to, and most religious groups feel their ethics should be universal since they are derived from their Absolute. Further,

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most religious groups emphasize their ethics applies to very intimate aspects of quite limited personal or private relationships to which the nation per se is completely indifferent, regarding any inquiry as completely off-limits for the government. Obviously, to try to arrive at an agreement about justice in a contracting process, to utilize or accept arguments from one’s irrationally vested interests, talents, or on natural and inequitable endowments, contingent features of history, or upon accidental advantages one person has over another—would not be a fair position or “level playing field,” as our century would call it, from which to work out a contract. It would not only be unjust but impossible to articulate. Under Rawls’s proposal, in addition to being free of these vested interests, the arguments citizens would be allowed to bring to the bargaining table would have to carry a recognized rationality or “public reason” with it rather than a “non-public” reason that typifies organizations or association as opposed to a nation, not some distinct, unique, or particular position that was known not to be acceptable to others, such as particular religious mythical or metaphysical presumptions. They would have to be presented with choices involving natural laws and other restraints; otherwise, there would be no structure of understanding by which rational choices could be made (TJ, p. 159, PL lecture 6, pp. 212–54). This does not mean that the basic “original position” provides all obvious principles to solve every issue henceforth, but only that it is a base which all people can regard as having been fairly reached, to which all agree and can expect the others to honor with strict compliance (TJ, pp. 240–45). That is called mutual trust. Further, despite intuition’s basic objection to any prioritizing of principles, Rawls is convinced that because men’s conceptions of justice are so different, “if we cannot explain how these weights are to be determined by reasonable ethical criteria, the means of rational discussion have come to an end” (TJ, p. 41). He emphasizes that the role of intuition can be minimized by virtue of what he described as the “original position” since that places validity on the parties voluntarily realizing the difference between their values and the necessity of resolving this difference in their claims, a process in which the very reasons they used for choosing certain principles for possible adoption may also assist in supporting the agreements reached about the weights. This can be resolved either by having only a single principle which determines everything or else by allowing a plurality of principles but only within a lexical order. If the weights of the principles are established in a “lexical” order, that means that each subsequent principle after the first must be built upon the validity of the first and the second must not conflict with the first. If it does, the first principle holds priority. That means that a prior principle cannot be sacrificed to uphold a subsequent principle. As

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an example, he says he would rank the “principle of equal liberty prior to the principle regulating economic and social inequalities” (TJ, p. 43). He finally suggests that, even though intuition may have some role to play, it should be minimized not only through the above means but also by “posing more limited questions and by substituting prudential for moral judgment” (TJ, p. 44). His position is that the parties negotiating their contract would likely, under these conditions, agree on two principles set in a lexical order, first given very briefly, then expanded, and finally solidified (TJ, pp. 60, 250, 302–3; PL, pp. 5–6, 271): First Principle Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all. Second Principle Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both:

(a) To the greatest benefit of the least advantaged, consistent with the just savings principle, and (b) Attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity. First Priority Rule (The Priority of Liberty) The principles of justice are to be ranked in lexical order and therefore liberty can be restricted only for the sake of liberty. There are two cases:

(a) A less extensive liberty must strengthen the total system of liberty shared by all; (b) A less than equal liberty must be acceptable to those with the lesser liberty. Second Priority Rule (The Priority of Justice over Efficiency and Welfare) The second principle of justice is lexically prior to the principle of efficiency and to that of maximizing the sum of advantages; and fair opportunity is prior to the difference principle. There are two cases: (a) An inequality of opportunity must enhance the opportunities of those with the lesser opportunity; (b) An excessive rate of saving must on balance mitigate the burden of those bearing this hardship. General Conception All social primary goods—liberty and opportunity, income and wealth, and the bases of self-respect—are to be distributed equally unless an unequal distribution of any or all of these goods is to the advantage of the least favored.

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TOWARD A POLITICAL RATHER THAN A METAPHYSICAL CONCEPTION OF JUSTICE Not simply in the “original position,” but even in later constitutional and legislative stages, the “veil of ignorance” still operates, though progressively less so since the unanimity of the acceptance of the principles of justice reasoned out behind that veil are still the primary political principles. They can override positions that would threaten equality, for example, positions based on metaphysical arguments that cannot arrive at an overlapping consensus. Otherwise, once the particular interests of diverse parties are known, if the representatives no longer recognize their allegiance or voluntary acceptance of those principles of justice, the divers particulars would dissolve the whole project. For example, when he speaks of “political justice” and the constitution, he notes that the constitution, founded on the basic principles of justice, which we just listed, includes protections for certain liberties such as speech and assembly and political associations. But the constitution as well as political liberalism takes for granted that there will be a diversity of positions and attitudes, even of reasonable comprehensive moral or religious schemas, as well as a “loyal opposition” under quite normal conditions of human life. He insists that the principles of justice have priority over this diversity and opposition since those two principles received unanimity of approval. This is extremely important if one is to properly understand Rawls. Thus, these different opinions where there is no “overlapping consensus” are simply operative in non-political areas of life. Of course, there is always the possibility that certain principles in the comprehensive schemas might be similar to the “freestanding” principles adopted by all for the political conception of justice, but one cannot argue for principles that are known to have only limited acceptance, whether religious or other. He writes, a lack of unanimity is part of the circumstances of justice, since disagreement is bound to exist even among honest men who desire to follow much the same political principles. Without the conception of loyal opposition, and an attachment to constitutional rules which express and protect them, the politics of democracy cannot be properly conducted or long endure. (TJ, p. 223)

This understanding of the priority of the principles of justice articulated and agreed to unanimously, presupposes that everyone involved also recognizes that there are and will continue to be differing reasonable opinions and even incompatible comprehensive moral and religious schemas with their heteronomous absolutes, but they can distinguish the separate realms in which each operates. This was precisely what Jefferson and Madison, and their supporters had in mind in formulating the two religion clauses of

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the First Amendment, that both religion and government can more purely and effectively do their own specific work if they do not interfere with each other.13 In fact, Rawls’s statements about individuals being the only ones who can decide if, when, or how they are to obey “God,” or whether they even choose to believe in such “God,” is remarkably similar to Jefferson’s and Madison’s expression of the same. Rawls writes, The problem of liberty is that of choosing a principle by which the claims men make on one another in the name of their religion are to be regulated. Granting that God’s will should be followed and the truth recognized does not as yet define a principle of adjudication. From the fact that God’s intention is to be complied with, it does not follow that any person or institution has authority to interfere with another’s interpretation of his religious obligations. This religious principle justifies no one in demanding in law or politics a greater liberty for himself. The only principles which authorize claims on institutions are those that would be chosen in the original position. (TJ, p. 218)

And earlier, he wrote, It suffices that if any principle can be agreed to, it must be that of equal liberty. A person may indeed think that others ought to recognize the same beliefs and first principles that he does, and that by not doing so they are grievously in error and miss the way to their salvation. But an understanding of religious obligation and of philosophical and moral first principles shows that we cannot expect others to acquiesce in an inferior liberty. Much less can we ask them to recognize us as the proper interpreter of their religious duties or moral obligations. (TJ, p. 208)

Regarding “toleration and the common interest,” he insists that the characteristic feature of the “arguments for liberty of conscience is that they are based solely on a conception of justice. Toleration is not derived from practical necessities or reasons of state. Moral and religious freedom follows from the principle of equal liberty . . . the argument does not rely on any special metaphysical or philosophical doctrine” (TJ, p. 214). Further any limitation of liberty is justified “only when it is necessary for liberty itself, to prevent an invasion of freedom that would be still worse” (TJ, p. 215). If anyone’s liberty is suppressed by religious faith or theological principles, “no argument is possible” because these are not based on the “original position’s” principles (TJ, p. 216). He further insists that “from the standpoint of the original position, no particular interpretation of religious truth can be acknowledged as binding upon citizens generally; nor can it be agreed that there should be one authority with the right to settle questions of theological doctrine. Each

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person must insist upon an equal right to decide what his religious obligations are,” and that autonomy is still primary even if he or she decides to accept another as his or her religious authority (TJ, p. 217). But that all stands outside the primary principles of justice agreed on in the hypothetical original position behind the veil of ignorance, principles each person has accepted as primary and final, as having priority over all other principles in the political realm, although so long as one’s actions meet the standard civil universal requirements of the society and the primary principles of justice on which it is all established, one is free within those parameters to retain one’s religious or moral ideas, or, as he says in Political Liberalism, even one’s “comprehensive” religious or moral schemas, even if they differ radically with political justice. Once again, in his discussion of “toleration of the intolerant,” he is more explicit about how the principle of equal liberty is a powerful limiting concept, resolving potential squabbles over diverse ethical and religious beliefs by “overriding” them. The “original position” can provide the principle of equal liberty that all can still agree on, even if not all their other profound different ideas, that is, “if they can agree on any principle at all.” This person must always be able to hypothesize that “original position” and feel that limited but guaranteed agreement with all others; yet outside the hypothetical veil of ignorance one does know the particulars of his or her moral or religious position, but with the knowledge that he or she and all others unanimously agreed to the universal principles of justice in the social contract or embedded in the constitution, basic principles which are ultimate and fixed by the agreement. If his or her moral or religious values are now seen to conflict with the principles of justice that they have unanimously agreed to, those principles of justice of the “original position” override particulars within the religious sphere. He significantly adds that “otherwise, they need not revise their [religious] opinions nor give them up. In this way the principles of justice can adjudicate between opposing moralities just as they regulate the claims or rival religions.” In his words, [w]hat is essential is that when persons with different convictions make conflicting demands on the basic structure as a matter of political principle, they are to judge these claims by the principles of justice. The principles that would be chosen in the original position are the kernel of political morality. They not only specify the terms of cooperation between persons but they define a pact of reconciliation between diverse religions and moral beliefs, and the forms of culture to which they belong. (TJ, p. 221)

This is his most concise statement of the relation of one’s religious views and ethics vis-à-vis the “freestanding” principles that all citizens agree to form

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the “overlapping consensus” of the ethical base of the nation’s structure of justice. If Rawls feels it is fairly certain that there will continue to be a moral and religious pluralism, and much of this involves comprehensive theories, then he has supplied the key not only for the political conception of justice being based on an “overlapping consensus” of “freestanding principles,” but in the process protected a sphere of legitimate existence of these comprehensive theories so long as the people who embrace the latter do not violate the basic principles of justice which come from a freestanding origin. In his brief explanation of the uniqueness of the modern situation of the realization of such pluralism of comprehensive schemas, he does not distinguish between the non-reflective or traditional doctrines and those positions within the scholarly circles or critical thinking which is radically different from those absolutist traditional positions. In the critical approaches, there is much less a problem between the position and the political conception of justice, even as much of the actual movement within Christian theology of the past two centuries has reinterpreted symbolically or completely abandoned the unscientific, mythical, and metaphysical claims of the religion, and has moved far beyond any theism and any real form of absolutism. The trend in such critical theology which abandoned theism, reached a new form of phenomenological universalism articulated by Robert P. Scharlemann, with an attachment to particular religious symbols only to the degree that they could inclusively embrace contradictory positions, therefore, the universalism also experienced in what he called “reflexive” reason as opposed to reflection.14 On the other hand, since for many religious lay people who learned their religion as the absolute, their intolerance to any conflicting position and even of any thought of compromising with others may still see the latter as blasphemous. Rawls may to that degree still be correct when he says the choice that we face in light of obvious religious pluralism within a single country is now squarely between either mortal conflict moderated only by circumstances and exhaustion, or equal liberty of conscience and freedom of thought. Except on the basis of these last, firmly founded and publicly recognized, no reasonable political conception of justice is possible. Political liberalism starts by taking to heart the absolute depth of that irreconcilable latent conflict. (PL, p. xxvi)

Most of his unique insights about the process of the contracting remained intact, despite his updating and correcting the misconception he created about “justice as fairness” as if it were a comprehensive schema when it really is only one among many possible conceptions of justice, but not “comprehensive” in the sense that utilitarianism is, and with his brief analysis of the uniqueness of the modern situation in which he wants to say that what is

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“new” is the “clash” that the modern consciousness “introduces into people’s conceptions of their good.” The modern era of the absolutizing and exclusiveness of religion which is not open to compromise yet is set within a new consciousness of the pluralism of conflicting absolutes and exclusive competing moral and religious groups. (PL, pp. xxi–xvi) While the consciousness of religious pluralism within a given country is fairly new in human history, the consciousness of other existing religions is not really that new, but has simply been revived when Western religions began to feel threatened by modern science, and by the actual immigration and refugee situations which finally brought conflicting religions and morality into real geographical proximity to each other, as neighbors. The threat of modern science was countered by extreme conservative religious reactions of declaring an inerrancy to the Christian scriptures or an infallibility to the Pope when he speaks ex cathedra, more than a century ago but seems now to have narrowed the conflict down to three vital areas: (1) whether the single figure of the Pope can really overrule the people’s will on ethics by saying he is speaking ex cathedra; (2) are human evolution and global warming (much of which is due to human causes) merely opinions or actually scientifically supported; and (3) whether Christians can justifiably expect the civil government to rule against abortions or non-heterosexual marriage? Public reason is beyond the pale and interest of the church, and when the religious people want the government to yield to their ethic, this simply reaffirms Rawls’s understanding that religious institutions in the present are often so absolutized that any compromise is unacceptable to them. Terrorist activity has alarmed many with the possible danger of people of other religious or moral persuasions being as absolutistic or making similar claims on changing the government, and perhaps less restrained, so the thought of mixing of such comprehensive schemas together or of allowing the religious competitors to determine civil law seems even more unthinkable to many. Two related problems remain of (1) being able and willing to use only “freestanding” principles in the political sphere, and (2) restraining one’s comprehensive schema of morality to private engagements or at least within a strict observance of the restrictions of the “overlapping consensus” of principles that comprise the social contract or political conception of justice, as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison both distinguished. The more absolute one sees one’s religion or comprehensive moral schema, the more likely it is that it does not fit the requirement of being “reasonable.” It cannot be used in forming the voluntary social contract since it, as Rawls says, is not interested in real negotiation or compromise, a good faith effort to reach an “overlapping consensus.” I gave in an earlier chapter a very brief sketch of what happened to the concept of “God” in Western thought in the past two centuries as the “reasonable” criteria cut down progressively on

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the doctrines that could still be credible, without trying to find some new sphere of “reason” such as Scharlemann’s “reason of following,” which was considerably different from both theoretical and practical, which are the only two which Rawls is still accepting. A. C. Grayling has shown the continuing basic unreasonable aspects of a religion that denies all gods except the one that it still holds to. But perhaps this is all alleviated in Political Liberalism by the requirement of the necessity of finding an “overlapping consensus,” which would accomplish much the same result as Rawls did in A Theory of Justice, since a consensus cannot be overlapping if its presuppositions are diametrically opposed. OTHER CONSIDERATIONS ON THE PRINCIPLE OF EQUALITY AND THE DIFFERENCE PRINCIPLE One cannot cover every argument or facet of Rawls’s detailed analysis, and that is not my interest here since this inquiry about a possible global or even national ethic is hunting simply to find a “ground” or “base” from which such an ethic could be developed and possibly agreed to in its most basic bare bones. He articulated only two basic principles, as we have seen, which could be embraced by all citizens, and most other considerations or specific legal areas, proposed laws, and the like can be resolved between those two distinct principles as we have already shown with regard to freedom of conscience or religious belief to which we have already alluded. This chapter was intended to resolve the theoretical gap left by the brilliant moral theories of Nietzsche and Schweitzer, a gap we began to close in the prior chapter, but has to conclude with reasonable motivation by the instinct to reach a mutual agreement, an agreement involving real others. This removes the vagueness of how reason or thought relates to the basic instinct of “will-to-live” or “will-to-power.” At the beginning of this chapter, we noted how Rorty’s idea of “suffering” could relate to both the instinct for life as well as the real other, specifically moving the discussion from pure theory as well as from the private to the public realm, and we showed how it would likely involve an agreement about the nature of the relationship the parties want to create, which includes the length or duration of the relationship. Rawls assumed in Political Liberalism an existing nation with a constitutional democracy in which significant reasonable differences in citizens’ ideas of morals could be expected, but continued to think it was possible to reach an “overlapping consensus” on the two principles he enumerated and explained. Inasmuch as the second principle or the “difference principle” Rawls articulated, in line with the first principle’s priority placed an emphasis upon the criteria of determination of the justice of a law from

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the standpoint of the judgment of the “least-advantaged” citizens, and that any inequality under the jurisdiction of that principle had to be to the benefit of the “least-advantaged,” the second principle would have validity and wide appeal. This is not to minimize the great contributions Nietzsche and Schweitzer made to the ongoing discussion of ethical formulation, but rather opens up the necessary public dimension of being able to accommodate reasonable differences to eliminate people taking advantage of each other. Certainly Schweitzer’s mission was to the “least advantaged,” as he surmounted what could have been advantages to himself in his commitment to their “willto-live.” Further, Nietzsche’s emphasis upon the uniqueness of each individual, and what he considered one’s obligation to maximize one’s abilities, uniqueness, or even genius, was given a negative cast only as he belittled what he saw as the lazy and inept people clamoring for equality rather than attempting to work to make their own contribution, was more a reaction against what he saw as the excesses of the Enlightenment and Revolution. Yet Zarathustra was certainly not one who took advantage of others, but rather tried to free them to find themselves in maturing; the genius to Nietzsche, was the one who spends himself in such a prodigal manner that he uses himself up. The following, then, are simply to be regarded as samples of the way Rawls’s suggested two principles would work in their lexical order. In the discussion of the second principle, the principle of difference, Rawls emphasizes the lexical order of even its two parts. Then in discussing the “tendency to equality,” he insists that the principle of difference could help in the direction of a “redress” in the sense that it could justify allocating more funds for such things as education, especially early education, for those who are the “least advantaged,” whether financially or in talent. But redress is definitely warranted since the contingencies and inequalities established by birth or the natural endowment are undeserved. Thus one who is favored in the inequalities by nature, accidents, or the irrationality of life should be able to utilize his or her position of advantages “only on terms that improve the situation of those who have lost out,” but not to exacerbate the inequality. Any extra educational funding for the least advantaged would not depend upon being justified by some idea of economic efficiency or social welfare, but by the basic quality of the first principle and the realization of the improvement of the “long-term expectations of the least favored.” (emphasis added) These expectations, however, are not limited to finances but point to the value of self-respect and self-confidence, as he says, “equally if not more important is the role of education in enabling a person to enjoy the culture of his society and to take part in its affairs, and in this way to provide for each individual a secure sense of his own worth” (TJ, p. 101).

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In addition to its ability to “redress,” the difference principle is able to “mitigate” the natural inequities that are beyond a person’s control. Rawls insists that natural distribution is neither just nor unjust; nor is it unjust that persons are born into society at some particular position. These are simply natural facts. What is just and unjust is the way that institutions deal with these facts. Aristocratic and caste societies are unjust because they make these contingencies the ascriptive basis for belonging to more or less enclosed and privileged social classes. The basic structure of these societies incorporates the arbitrariness found in nature. But there is no necessity for men to resign themselves to these contingencies. The social system is not an unchangeable order beyond human control but a matter of human action. In justice as fairness men agree to share one another’s fate. (TJ, p. 102)

The difference principle of the most fortunate increasing its wealth, power, and so on only if it also increases the wealth, power, and so on, of the least advantaged, is the primary element to overcome the irrational “natural” elements of one’s particular birth situation, specific family and environment, with all those accidentals for which one cannot take any credit. In this sense, it is a form of redress, even though redress needs to go further where possible. This tendency toward equality is also seen in the difference principle in its sense of reciprocity, in which no one has some “desert” to greater or disproportionate advantages when derived from those same natural or happenstance elements that enabled them to profit. There is no such thing as “desert” for traits, abilities, talents, positions, wealth, and so on that are inherited, occur irrationally or accidentally (TJ, pp. 103–104). In this sense the difference principle operates with obvious reciprocity, presupposing a cooperative scheme which is proportionate or fair. In this recognition, the difference principle, ignoring the natural endowments, and so on is egalitarian and would be acceptable to all people in the “original position.” One of the most telling arguments he makes is his observation that in a family, there is seldom the thought of one person maximizing benefits at the expense of the others. On the contrary, most families flourish as a unit, with the rejection of any member realizing gain unless all the members of the family also gain (TJ, pp. 100–105). This is the same attitude of fraternity which is part of people agreeing in the hypothetical original position behind a veil of ignorance to the “difference principle” in lexical order after accepting the first principle of equality (TJ, p. 105). If one thinks of fraternity without the emotions often associated with it, it can, with liberty and equality, round out the two principles of justice that Rawls has articulated that people would opt for in the original position, that is, “liberty corresponds to the first principle,

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equality to the idea of equality in the first principle together with equality of fair opportunity, and fraternity to the difference principle” (TJ, p. 106). The intriguing thing about the example of the relations within the family is that their model also operates with this implicit trust, equality, mutual autonomy, reciprocity, and protection of the least advantaged. It is no different than the elements of the social contract Rawls proposes. This surely helps close the imagined gap between private and public morality, especially when we add the earlier observation that instinct and reflection respond to the prospect or experience of suffering, whether in self or others, and that solidifies the connection between self and other when the suffering prospect or even its opposite enhancement of one’s life elicits some agreement between self and others. This is essentially what drives the social contracting and what gives it validity since it is mutually desired in a situation in which people want or need to continue a reciprocally beneficial relationship, whether it is a family or even a nation. The second part of the principle of difference is equality of fair opportunity which is designed to mitigate the irrational natural or social fortunes or contingencies. It addresses the distribution of goods or access to them by virtue of ruling that any inequality experienced to the benefit of the most privileged is just only if it works to increase the expectations and access to benefits to the least privileged, as determined by the perspective of the representatives of the least benefitted15 (TJ, pp. 142, 144, 148). This is one of the most important principles Rawls derived from the two basic principles, that any benefit to the most privileged that comes from an inequality can be justified only if, in the perspective, not of those most-benefited, but of the least benefited (or their representatives) it will increase their (the least-benefited) expectations and access to benefits. So any improvement in the conditions of the “least-benefited” in the society does not depend upon whether corporate leaders of Wall Street are in favor of it, or whether the predominant racial group is in favor of it, or whether the predominate religious group supports it, but whether the least-benefited reasonably believe it will benefit them. Nor does an improvement of living conditions for the least benefited depend upon some super-generosity or rare philanthropic urgings, or some large tax deduction for the very wealthy which are supposed to “trickle down” to benefit the least advantaged. In fact, it does not really even depend upon some nebulous commingling of reflection with one’s basic instinct of will-to-live or will-to-power. The latter may or may not stimulate the re-examination of a proposed law by the least advantaged, but it is assured by the basic agreement or “overlapping consensus” all citizens voluntary made in the hypothetical “original position” behind the “veil of ignorance,” which included Rawls’s “second principle,” of political justice, the principle of difference.

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The most obvious problem, however, is that very few of the federal legislators are among the “least advantaged” in the nation, and the lobbying and funding of campaigns for even anyone bordering on this category of “least advantaged” is geared to forming an asymmetrical relationship of dependence which subverts the principle of the voice of the “least advantaged.” That leaves the voice confined only to public elections, and here Rawls noted that the equal voice in voting is the most important right or liberty of the citizens, yet is often overwhelmed by gerrymandering, voter suppression, and the implicit power of campaign financing which determines the issues or political discourse which the wealthy donors desire, subverting the varied but more common interests of the nation as a whole.16 The problem which sometimes remains, however, is that people want to define the “good” or “justice” or the “ethical” while they are only partially behind such a veil of ignorance, perhaps still carrying with them a certain irrational attachment to inherited values or biases, even perhaps a strong sense of privilege or advantage that they are reluctant to abandon even hypothetically, even including sexual and racial discrimination (TJ, p.149). That, of course, could be the egocentric or purely selfish side of the instinctual “will-to-live,” but Schweitzer contended that although the “will-to-live” is instinctual and altruism is not, the “will-to-live” is not blind to the fact that we all live together, that is, in relation with each other, and no one’s “willto-live” has priority over any else’s “will-to-live.” But even if one has not matured enough to grasp that existentially, one still belongs to a nation in which the agreement to its basic democratic principles is expected of all citizens, even if every citizen was not involved in the original or actual negotiating of the agreement (TJ, pp. 55–56). In the democratic society which takes the form of a constitutional republic, the two principles Rawls lists are quite self-evident and always agreed to if we place ourselves in that “original position” of the contracting or working out the constitution as the basic structure. The fairness of his idea of justice is not just within its results or application, but within the procedure of the negotiating of the social contract itself which involves “pure procedural justice” through finding simple concepts that can be assembled to give a reasonable conception of justice. The notions of the basic structure, of the veil of ignorance, of a lexical order, of the least favored position, as well as of pure procedural justice are all examples of this. (TJ, p. 89)

“Pure procedural justice” means a process which does not need some independent criterion being utilized to judge it, but itself guarantees fairness or a just result because the process itself is fair, and all participants so recognize it and agree to it (TJ, p. 86).

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Rawls conceives of processes of securing the justice agreed in the original position as involving next a constitutional convention in which a constitution is developed, from which it moves into a legislative stage, and finally into the stage of application. The constitutional stage operates primarily with the first principle, of equal liberty. It requires less of a veil of ignorance since the first principle of justice has already been agreed to. It, however, must design the power of the structure of government as well as the rights of the citizens, embodying methods of weighing the justice of procedures for “coping with diverse political views.” It must develop a just procedure while protecting the individual liberties of the constitution. The legislative stage works with the second principle of justice, with the representatives still being behind a veil of ignorance regarding the particulars of those they represent in order to meet the demands of transcending the vested, irrational interests in forming or dictating the social and economic policies “aimed at maximizing the longterm expectations of the least advantaged under conditions of fair equality of opportunity, subject to the equal liberties being maintained” (TJ, p. 199). The “application” stage moves beyond the need for any veil of ignorance, as the principles and rules are well known and accepted, so administrators and judges and the general populace can attempt to live by them. THE ROLE OF TRUST AS THE COMMON UNMENTIONED ELEMENT Rawls’s schema avoids having to address the problem of trying to account for the altruism, benevolence, or selflessness which is regarded by some as a part of instinct. Both Schweitzer and Nietzsche denied that altruism was instinctual, preferring to think that it came later by some interaction of reflection with either the will-to-live or the will-to-power, which resulted in one’s assisting the other rather than simply oneself and sometimes at the expense of oneself. Rawls’s hypothetical original position with its veil of ignorance, by bracketing out any particulars of one’s knowledge about oneself, does not decrease one’s self-concern, but operates only with general concerns that all citizens naturally have. It assumes each rational person or representative of other people, will, in this original position, seek to maximize his opportunities and benefits, or the benefits of those he represents, as much as possible in order to meet his or her general goal for the maximum general goods, but by not knowing particulars such as one’s race, gender, family assets, education, religion, and other, no one is able to have an advantage over others. That is the purpose of the hypothetical veil of ignorance, and in the process of such negotiations with only this very general knowledge, the resulting consensus should be agreeably endorsed by all who are involved. The process of trying

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to reach an overlapping consensus is not an attempt to negotiate between special interests unique to a person or to incompatible interests that people have, but only to find what all would agree to by a hypothetical ignorance of any irrationally vested interests of everyone in the process. So the hypothetical process of imagining one in the original position behind a veil of ignorance simply drives all parties beyond the specifics of happenstance to the most general principles to which all would agree. He uses the term “disinterest” in the other to describe this (TJ, pp. 147–49). That is, he does not assume that somehow each person must or will be or should be transformed in his or her attitude and become very empathic, altruistic, and sacrificial to help others. It would probably be a real boon if they did, but even then, if the empathy seemed at times not reciprocal, one might resent one’s own empathy, thinking others were just selfish. In Rawls’s scheme, the parties are equalized by the “disinterest” with no need to have a change of heart or be more empathic. So the social contract asks only the bare minimum, but it asks it to be voluntarily accepted by all so the resulting laws and actions will be reciprocal and symbiotic. Everyone involved does know that he or she must be cooperative in trying to work out a system of justice and live by it. In this sense, the Dalai Lama’s idea that one is happier when one can make others happy is true; however, with Rawls, the decision does not depend upon one’s developing any exceptional compassion, but simply agreeing to live by a legal system to which all agreed, which in itself renders that result of common benefit. The system will work even from nothing other than pure self-interest, or, from what Schweitzer and Nietzsche saw as purely one’s own instinctual “will-to-live” when reasonably guided. But that is only interest in the general will-to-live, which is common among all, not merely a few peoples’ interests or anyone’s advantageous irrationally vested interests. The principles all people will agree to are for their own protection when they are behind the veil of ignorance, and since all people are in that position in the hypothetical process of the contracting, there would be a complete agreement which produces the equilibrium and stability sought in the structures of justice. Very importantly, this, “self-interest” or “disinterest” in others, as Rawls insists, is not sheer egoism, but only the most reasonable approach behind the veil of ignorance, since if one does not know what would even be to his or her advantage, it would be irrational for the person to agree to principles which would place certain people in an advantageous position, since he very well might not end up being there. For example, behind a veil of ignorance, Rawls insists, “none would urge that special privileges be given to those exactly six feet tall or born on a sunny day” or that basic rights “should depend on the color of one’s skin” (TJ, p. 149). The two principles he articulated, however, would be universally agreed to behind the veil of ignorance precisely because they would presume the

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most equal treatment for everyone, and compensate for any inequalities. Why would anyone not be in favor of such principles? So this is the “disinterest” one has toward others but also toward oneself, but only because that is the position behind the veil of ignorance. One cannot have an interest in certain advantageous particulars vis-à-vis others if one has no idea of which particulars he or she will ultimately have. To hold to different principles which would favor any specific type or group would be completely irrational as well as unethical and unworkable (Ibid.). Thus, this original position utilizes the weak argument and finds that the very constraints of “rights” placed upon the parties by the original position and veil of ignorance, whereby one cannot know how to argue for the particular benefit of those he represents, but only in general for everyone, assures the accuracy of a more reliable protection for the less privileged which all would want behind that veil of ignorance, by virtue of the voluntary and unanimous selection of the two principles of justice he articulates. This is certainly not “pity” for oneself or others which Nietzsche despised as shameful, but simply the most reasonable use of the “will-to-power.” Even if one ignores the original position with its veil of ignorance, even a reasonable person should be able to see that comprehensive moral, philosophical, or religious schemas in their particularities and unique claims are incapable of achieving any widespread acceptance, so no social contract could be reached if they are allowed to determine the principles and its base. This insistence on the social contract or political justice being based only on “freestanding” principles within a democratic society therefore leads to the same result as the “veil of ignorance” in the hypothetical original position. The agreement ultimately depends upon independent principles rather than specific traditional principles closely associated with any unique comprehensive political, ethical, and religious system. This enables a unanimous consent to the basic principles of justice, the “ground” or base from which the other principles will be worked out in a “lexical order,” but all of this will depend on the unanimous consent of the basic principles forming a sense of unity in which each person can actually have reasons to trust that the others involved will honor the agreement as well. If the principles favored some form of inequality, one might have reasons to not trust that the other parties would all agree to it, or might agree but later change their minds, unless they were the primary ones being privileged. So trust works with equality and impartial application of the principles. Trust invariably involves two of more parties or agencies which are represented as affirming or committing themselves to something that will benefit all concerned, so it is usually if not always a mutual trust. Though Rawls does not use that word much, the concept is there when he speaks of the assurance people will have that others will “strictly comply” with the principles to which they all agreed.

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Rawls’s concern is with the structures and reasoning behind a theory of justice. The reasoning and structures are necessary to any agreement. Obviously to agree to any social contract, whether only a non-verbal understanding or a complex written constitution, requires transparency and univocity of the language used, which is also a part of the base for trust. Rawls insists that the parties can “rely on each other” or “assume” or “know” the agreement will be respected by all concerned precisely because it is to their benefit. Trust will be confirmed by people’s actual behavior. For example: he argues that since the parties “are presumed to be capable of a sense of justice and this fact is public knowledge among them,” they can assume “strict compliance.” The parties can rely on each other to understand and to act in accordance with whatever principles are finally agreed to. Once principles are acknowledged the parties can depend on one another to conform to them . . . their capacity for a sense of justice insures that the principles chosen will be respected. (TJ, p. 145)

He assures that such participants in the agreement know their effort is “not in vain.” Is this the case primarily because the selection of the “correct” principle of justice was so logical and universally applicable that it was an inevitable selection? That is certainly Rawls’s primary argument. But the more the agreement or basic principles are publicized (TJ, pp. 175, 183), the more transparency, understanding, and supportive trust is possible. When one thinks of the “rule of law” as the protection of the rights of persons, there are obvious failures when one in authority applies the wrong rule, misinterprets the rule or ignores the rule. Rawls also lists “gross violations exemplified by bribery and corruption, or the abuse of the legal system to punish political enemies” (TJ, p. 235), but sees even more subtle “distortions of prejudice and bias” which effectively discriminate against certain groups in the judicial process. The rules themselves are necessary to provide a “basis for legitimate expectations. They constitute grounds upon which persons can rely on one another, and rightly object when their expectations are not fulfilled” (Ibid.). This is the trust which is key to the relationships and agreement. Yet he notes that “[i]f deviations from justice as regularity are too pervasive, a serious question may arise whether a system of law exists as opposed to a collection of particular orders designed to advance the interests of a dictator or the ideal of a benevolent despot” (TJ, p. 236). If the unanimity of the basic principles of justice cannot really guarantee specific performance, sanctions, or other incentive safeguards must often be put in place to provide the trustworthy observance. If those in power are able even to avoid the sanctions as they violate the rule of law, trust is overwhelmingly destroyed. “Trust” implies that a person can perform what is agreed to or expected. It is what Kant meant when he insisted that the sense of “ought” means that one

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actually “can” act in a certain way. Rawls tries to qualify this a bit by saying this assumption is really only that the parties “have a capacity for justice in a purely formal sense,” which, combined with their weighing of the “strains” it might place on them, they still would not agree to something they know they “cannot keep.” That would be true for people who are both realistic and honest, but one who lacks either honesty or realism might very well agree to something he either cannot or does not intend to do. So it is not just one’s own possible failures to keep the bargain or rules, but the issue of what is to be done when trust in the other is not enough. Rawls notes that people may lack full confidence in the others keeping their side of the contract, especially when it can be visibly discovered that the functions of the institution seem to continue even when one or more parties quit doing his or her part. Of course, it is also visible when the institution does not meet its expected functions because one or more people have quit doing what they agreed to do. Again, despite the unanimous acceptance of the logically obvious basic principles of justice, the rule of law itself often needs the support of penalties the government can impose since some do violate the trust. For example, he notes that “it is hard to imagine . . . a successful income tax scheme on a voluntary basis. Such an arrangement is unstable. The role of an authorized public interpretation of rules supported by collective sanctions is precisely to overcome this instability,” and in the process, it alleviates in others’ minds their suspicion of other people not complying with the rules or not doing their part (TJ, p. 240). Rawls emphasizes that such penalties are not to be viewed as retributive or denunciatory, but enacted only to protect liberty itself (TJ, p. 241). But this raises the question of the actual power of one’s agreeing to the basic principles, or the extent of agreement or even of which ramifications of principles. Behind a veil of ignorance, one would likely agree to taxes being necessary for a nation to exist since many projects such as national defense, infrastructure, health care, and so on require massive resources. Would such an agreement behind a veil of ignorance on taxes in general not also spawn agreement for a graduated tax rate, and if so, to what degree? What about basing part of the tax code on economic incentives, and, if so, what kinds of specific incentives with what purpose? Rawls’s “difference principle” that relates to social and economic inequalities applies primarily to the structures of justice contained in the pubic law or to the institutional background structures of justice rather than to individual transactions. It cannot have as its purpose to eliminate all contingencies from social life with the intent of creating some uniformity, but it must have an ideal formulated as a guide to the institutions concerned with these areas, and that guide within the second principle was that the inequality is best compensated for by depending on the judgment or voice of those least benefited. Thus in income and property taxation as well as certain entitlements, he is aware

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that the structures continually need updating or addressing actual conditions, so they cannot simply give some formula for the maximum inequality that can be tolerated. But the institutions in charge can work within the two principles which express the idea that no one should have less than they would receive in an equal division of primary goods, and that when the fruitfulness of social cooperation allows for a general improvement, then the existing inequalities are to work to the benefit of those whose position has improved the least, taking equal division as the benchmark. (PL, p. 284)

Yet two areas of tax law and procedure probably create the most general ground of distrust: (1) the feeling that the tax code is largely formulated and influenced by the most-benefited, not least-benefited; and (2) the legal structure which disallows the citizens of having a direct voice into actual expenditures of the funds collected, being limited only to input to particular representatives without having access even to laws that are being proposed. The second area may prevent people from bringing legal action against the government for its specific expenditures, but the expenditures themselves end up being greatly influenced by lobbyists who, for the most part, represent the most-benefited individuals and corporations. For people to participate intelligently as responsible citizens by their voting and contacts with their representatives, more attention needs to correct the special interests behind political campaigns and lobbying which silence the equal voice that was assumed in Rawls’s first principle. He admits that political liberties and political participation are easily abused or overpowered by purely financial inequalities which themselves are a matter of “happenstance” (TJ, pp. 221–34). In addition to the problems he enumerated, it seems that the first principle itself would dictate more public access to the judicial and legislative sessions, and more governmental departments need to make regular public presentations of their work. The less the public knows, the less reason it has to trust those invested with such power over them. The public’s trust in its legislative, judicial, and executive branches is extremely low, due largely to the partisan politics that have crept into the highest judicial appointments, cabinet appointments, and even the proposed bills that are never allowed to see the light of day in the Senate, which undermines any possibility of Rawls’s two basic principles actually being supported by government as a whole. Among other things, “rule of law” means impartiality and consistency of treatment in similar cases, or the doctrine of stare decisis or precedent, but pure precedent itself leads only to stagnation unless the basic two principles of Rawls (or comparable ones) are held in common as priorities. If law is to “rule,” it must not only be impartial and consistent, but it must cover only

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what a rational person can do or cannot do, must be given in good faith, and should recognize the impossibility of performance as a defense (TJ, p. 237). The laws must be known and expressly promulgated, with their meanings clear. They cannot be retroactive or arbitrary, or changed without notice (TJ, p. 238). But perhaps the most important need that Rawls articulates is the need for all legislators or those negotiating the law must be willingly or voluntarily cooperative in attempting to negotiate and support reasonable laws for a well-ordered society rather than approach the job with only a special form of reason unique to only one specific political party and unyielding or opposed to any form of compromise. When one is alleged to have violated the rules, a legal system must provide for an orderly trial or hearing with definite rules of evidence, reasonable procedures of inquiry, and due process to arrive at the truth. It goes without saying that “no man may judge his own case” (TJ, p. 239). No one helping formulate a social contract in the hypothetical original position behind a veil of ignorance would be willing to adopt these rules of law as merely optional, depending upon whether a citizen wants to observe them at any given time. The same is true for anyone who, even without such a veil of ignorance, is aware that the basic principles of justice must be agreed to unanimously and based on “freestanding” principles which are not principles tailored to any particular comprehensive schemas or to any particular person or group’s advantage which would create an inequity or unfair process as well as treatment. There must be an impartial, voluntary “overlapping consensus,” not a bunch of rules tailored to favor one person or group over others, or coerced by special interests. Unfortunately, if a political party operates only within the sphere of what will advantage itself, or defines what will benefit the whole nation only by its narrow political ideology, the people will suffer. Madison’s vision of the nation profiting from its differences rather than allowing them to be eclipsed by a majority, needs to be heard today. There are many other elements that can destroy the trust of people which Rawls lists in addition to the voter suppression, and extensive gerrymandering we mentioned, including unfair elections, adversarial misinformation, or lies in political campaigns, and the attempt to deprive or refuse to provide one vote for each person (TJ, p. 231), laws framed obviously from the selfinterest of the legislators or those who fund their campaigns. On the negative side, Rawls admits that conditions may reach the extreme, (which have been discovered in the 2020 election year), where there are “no procedures that can be relied upon once distrust and enmity pervade society” (Ibid.). So here Rawls does use the term “distrust.” He notes that even legislators’ partisan inflexibility that prevents their accepting compromise with opponents, or prevents their honest recognition of the inevitable political dynamics of the clash of political beliefs or the presence of loyal opposition, which Rawls

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sees as “normal”—even this rather naïve, oblivious, or superiority view can undermine the possibility of trust. Rawls writes that unanimity is achieved only in selecting the basic principles or ground of the social contract but it is unreasonable to expect unanimity on every possible issue: A lack of unanimity is part of the circumstances of justice, since disagreement is bound to exist even among honest men who desire to follow much the same political principles. Without the conception of loyal opposition, and an attachment to constitutional rules which express and protect it, the politics of democracy cannot be properly conducted or long endure. (TJ, p. 223)

If political parties or representatives of the primary positions are so inflexible, dishonest, or remain egoistic even though superficially agreeing to such a standard of justice as fairness, trust is violated and the contract becomes worthless. Trust and trustworthiness of those representing the people need to operate on a completely different level than merely their rational ability if they are to be able to see the equality, or even to place oneself behind a veil of ignorance—especially since political, military, and business leaders seem more concerned to “bargain from strength,” which means visible, vested interests and powers, precisely to gain an unfair advantage in contrast to a “veil of ignorance.” Although Rawls does not say so, for people in those professions who are trained and educated on bargaining only from one’s strength or advantage, a certain amount of re-education is necessary for them ever to appreciate the real equality of the constitution or of Rawls’s ideas of justice, with its two primary principles, of the necessary limitations to any interference with that social contract by separate associations to which the entire citizenry does not belong, associations which have their own limited forms of reason rather than a fully “public reason.”17 The relation between the different people is the common element—the relation which is built upon an agreement under the original position, so providing a “common perspective” (TJ, p. 517)—would not itself be destroyed by a lack of intelligence or a failure to see all the factors involved, but the relation would be shredded by a lack of trust. So the relation of trust is what humans have in common rather than some predefined or stable “essence” of human nature. Relations depend upon people’s creativity; only in restricted areas can they be said to come automatically by one’s situation. No relation between living conscious beings exists without trust; no nation exists without trusting relations; no constitutions or articulated principles of justice, no matter how profound, have any significance without a mutual trust exhibited by compliance with the rules by all the people involved. Trustworthiness is not mere compliance when one is aware that one is being observed, but even when one is in a solitary or private situation in which

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one’s actions either do or will have causal ramifications upon or will affect vital interests of others not present. Trust is a matter of character or virtue rather than sheer authority, a matter of self-respect and respect for others rather than some idea of mere quantity or material goods involved. If I may use more trivial examples than Rawls did, a lack of trustworthiness is the implication of one’s thinking that driving above the speed limit is fine as long as there is no highway patrolman in sight, or one can behave anonymously in a big city with no consequences because it advertises that what happens there “stays there,” or one can cheat on one’s income tax forms since the chance of being audited are slim, or one can steal another person’s car since he will receive a comparable amount of cash because he has it insured—and insurance means no one gets hurt. Such reasoning is warped because the insurance company is hurt, and that pain they experience is spread and passed down to all the innocent clients they serve in the form of higher premiums. And the theft of one’s car is not only a great inconvenience to the owner, but is an intrusion into his or her life, a violation of their right to ownership and property, a threat to their security, no matter whether the owner is reimbursed or not by insurance. All of these scenarios not only hurt others but also one’s own self-image, that one realizes that one is not really trustworthy, that the way one represents oneself is only a sham or lie. So trust and trustworthiness extend throughout all relationships, and most people will not be willing to trust someone they know is not trustworthy. Any betrayal of the trust required by a social contract or constitution destroys a democracy just as surely as Kant was correct that lying undermines the basic principles of a democracy, even if one said one was lying from “altruistic” motives. Likewise, agreements that are insincerely drawn up or are done in bad faith, or involve hidden motives, are only pseudo-contracts. The only way social units, from the family to international relations, can exist with diverse interests and claims, is by a genuine social contract, agreed on in good faith, even if only by very simple marriage vows or other simple agreements, even through understood gestures, so long as done in good faith. It is this “good faith” that enables trust to be more than “blind” or a mere “wish.” This proposal of Rawls stands as still most reasonable, and not only connects individuals with groups, communities, and political structures, but also provides the bridge from instinct to actual moral action which benefits all citizens. Through trust, parties can expect “strict compliance” of which he spoke. Where the freestanding principles were able to be formed into an “overlapping consensus” grounding the agreement, as Rawls admitted, one need no longer be concerned with the “original position.” But the “veil of ignorance” or the requirement of justice being based on “freestanding” principles in which the group arrives at an “overlapping consensus” are so transcendent to everyday bargaining by the powerful that it requires a radical

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revaluation of values. It is not done simply by a single philosopher such as Nietzsche with his primary concern on individual perfection, nor by a giant corporation with its primary interest in profit, nor by an aristocrat or dictator or supreme religious leader with its primary interest in power or authority, but by cross-sections of diverse and socially aware citizens. It is an undertaking, an extensive discourse, which many nations, states, corporations, cities, religious groups, and families need to have—to address their diverse interests from behind a hypothetical veil of ignorance in the “original position,” or to articulate “freestanding” principles which can accommodate their diversity if it can be shaped into an “overlapping consensus” as a ground for both morality as well as a ground for a system of justice with its structures and laws. That was actually the “lively experiment” of the formation of the United States and its constitutional republic with its ideal of equality, liberty, unity, with a separation of powers and checks and balances by which it could maintain equilibrium and stability. Its formation required lengthy discussions by hundreds of people, representing very diverse interests, and continual debating for many months, experiments in language for a suitable or workable fair and clear plan for all people. That constitution and its principles and structures were conceived in secular terms by an ethic that was forced to be secular in order to be approved as the underlying base for the structures and rights. It was not an abandonment of religion or some prohibition of religion. Rather, it transcended the traditional religious differences over which those peoples’ ancestors had fought in many religious wars and/or been persecuted because they were conceived as religious dissidents. This republic broke the 1,400-year tradition of the conflated church-state, the “Christendom” which had more problems than benefits. It did not come easy, but required tireless inquiry, study, discussion of options, and evaluation of justifications for everything. For those who need more data to be convinced that the ethical base of the U.S. laws and system of political justice was not any religion, I explore that in a detailed historical examination in a different volume and cannot repeat it here.18 CONCLUSION Rawls’s system of a “political conception” of justice vis-à-vis a “metaphysical conception” of justice serves to tie the private and public spheres together through voluntary agreement of the parties involved. That willful establishing of a relationship may have been evoked by a mutual attraction or a mutual fear of the other, or especially from awareness of some “suffering” of the other or even of oneself within a social setting. In any case, it not only bridges between the theoretical and real but also between the private and public, and

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seems to address needs and interests that were not and are not addressed by the predominant utilitarianism. Schweitzer wrote that one needs little to no knowledge of the world in its complexity as long as he or she recognizes the “will to live” in himself, herself, and all other living beings. But one needs to formulate a basic principle from which this awareness can develop itself and shape relations between all living beings, and that was his “Reverence for Life.” Nietzsche had said that the more perspectives one can assume in one’s thinking, the more one can sense the way in which instinct and the will-to-power are the basic energies of life, and the more one can move beyond false values and a self-contradictory anti-life morality of ressentiment, fear, and hatred. Nietzsche’s insights were self-generated, exalting the individual, the superior thinker, the “overman” who can penetrate into actual psychological causes but also isolate his thinking from all other thinking and culture. Rawls, however, thought the morality underlying social structures and behavior must be a group effort, contracted from diverse representatives of various perspectives of authority and knowledge, but articulated in simple terms in which the basic principles of justice will be unanimously approved since they require no special knowledge but rather a willingness to transcend one’s vested particularities which comes from the natural or accidental factors of one’s life. His view was that human life must be a shared experience. That is especially true of any social contract. While autonomy was obviously paramount in Nietzsche, it was not defined as a mutual autonomy, whereas in Rawls, that is imperative to the voluntary and rational nature of the procedure of the social contracting. Autonomy was evident in Schweitzer’s philosophy as well as personal life, though his recognition of all forms of life did not place him into a position of arbitrariness or superiority over other forms of life. It was a mutual autonomy with those who were possessed of consciousness or self-reflection, but to others it was a protectiveness of their will to live, an awareness of the universal will-to-live which is the most basic datum of existence. Mutual trust was paramount in Schweitzer’s will-to-live. While it should have been in the “will-to-power” of Nietzsche, his position was more individualistic and isolationist, especially after feeling manipulated and betrayed by Wagner, with trust being confined more simply to instinctual self-trust, a cautious approach to receiving anything. With Rawls, the trust of a social contract is assumed, although it needed to be analyzed as a vital factor, as much as the reasonableness of the process or the “veil of ignorance.” If there is a mystery in the “living” being, in none of the three was it a theism which should be shaping one’s ethical interactions. Schweitzer had left theism behind in his “mystical union with Being” in one’s relationship with particular beings, never with the totality of Being or “being-itself.” Nietzsche

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had experienced the “death of God” as a being, being-itself, or Being as opposed to becoming; it was an empty concept, only a word, even Kant’s Ding-an-sich which he ridiculed. Rawls saw religion having no place for its absolutized metaphysical claims within the process of social contracting, but he was very open to Kant’s idea of true religion as aspiring only to form an “ethical commonwealth” as well as a system of unity which can allow the maximum liberty of conscience to all under the “original position” of “political justice.” The diversity of life and different life perspectives was obvious to all three of these ethical men, Nietzsche, Schweitzer, and Rawls. Schweitzer emphasized preserving and sustaining all forms of life and Nietzsche’s admission that his will-to-power is very largely a will-to-live, though not limited to that, emphasized the need to be inclusive of different perspectives in that the “Whole” is all there is. Whereas the will-to-power and the will-to-live both have to assume others also carry with them this awareness and value, in order for them to trust the other, the social contracting of the ethic and concept of justice in Rawls does not rely upon such an assumption or informal spreading of an awareness which is supposed to be so universal as to be instinctual. He recognized that in a liberal democratic society, one must expect that the normal situation would include a tremendous amount of reasonable but conflicting comprehensive schemas or perspectives. So the point is not to eliminate diversity but to create a stable unity which can allow diversity to flourish, thus preserving individual freedom of autonomy. Beyond the instinctual, humans have reason, and by Rawls judgment, similar to Freud and Feuerbach, humans are not destined to be ruled by nature’s particular endowments or lack of endowments or nature’s happenstance disasters or great fortunes. For Rawls, especially, humans can themselves control their behaviors or relations despite their finitude, largely through spoken or unspoken agreements. But any agreements that attempt to form an inclusive unity of different perspectives will have to approach the task with a sense of giving priority to the most inclusive principles rather than trying to mix conflicting, exclusive and narrow interests together. If “freestanding principles” can be utilized and trusted, they can provide a basic structure from which a stable and meaningful unity is obtained, not by coercion but by unanimous approval, in which a basic equality of liberty is to everyone’s benefit, and within which individuals may exercise their liberties and special interests, seeking their unique goals, so long as they keep the trust and willingly comply with that “overlapping consensus” they reached in the basic free principles and their constitutional formulation. Finally, on the place of “religion” in such an ethical, political schema of justice as fairness, Rawls emphasizes that the first principle, the equality of liberties which cannot be overridden by any other concerns, includes

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the liberty of conscience, and even originated as a general concept by its focus on the liberty of conscience to protect people’s religious liberty in the Enlightenment under people like John Locke. But liberty of conscience, as protected under this first principle, also stands under the original position with its veil of ignorance, so one could not suggest passing laws to benefit one’s own particular religion since one would be ignorant of whether one was even religious in any sense, nor have any knowledge of the status of any religion in the world or one’s country, and, in fact, would even be ignorant of what country and culture one belonged to. This hypothetical veil of ignorance is absolutely necessary to gain voluntary or autonomous unanimity to live by the agreed principles. On the other hand, if particulars are placed within it, divisiveness would make the social contract impossible. However, if a well-ordered society or position of political liberalism accepts the reality that a diversity of reasonable comprehensive moral and religious schemas will probably always exist, the diversity which comes from such extensive freedom can attain order out of the chaos only by formulating a “political conception of justice” rather than a “metaphysical conception of justice,” provided we remember that by “political,” Rawls does mean partisan or a political party but rather as something negotiated publicly by “public reason” and voluntarily accepted. Then reasonable people will understand the choice is reduced to either a “mortal conflict’ between comprehensive religious, philosophical, and moral systems if no “overlapping consensus” can be found, or “equal liberties” including liberty of conscience and freedom of thought, built on the “freestanding” principles used for the political conception of justice (PL, xvi–xxvi). So the first principle protects the liberty of conscience, but even here only within the scope of people’s being subject to the other universal laws they arrive at regarding the order of the society, which would mean one would be free to exercise one’s religion or worship so long as that does not break out into overt acts of disorder, as Jefferson and Madison both said. More specifically, Rawls insists that those (or their representatives) in the original position know they have moral convictions, but since the veil of ignorance prevents them from knowing what those convictions are, they also understand that the first principle overrides any of their moral or religious beliefs if there is a conflict between them; but they would also realize that “otherwise they need not revise their opinions nor give them up when these principles do not uphold them.” He says that “in this way the principles of justice can adjudicate between opposing moralities just as they regulate the claims of rival religions.” The differences in various moralities may be adopted in various parts of society, but so long as people are willing to judge those claims by the principles of justice, if the moralities or religions pass the test, this shows

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the “original position” as a device of reconciliation between diverse religions and moral beliefs (TJ, pp. 220–21). So Rawls provides an approach to ethics that will establish a framework of “political” justice rather than some “metaphysical” and divisive idea of justice. It will be people’s realization of an interdependence in their relationships which flows out of their sense of unity and minimizes their differences, though is aware and honest about them. The lexical status of the first principle of equal liberty stands firmly on trust of the value of Schweitzer’s “will-to-live” and Nietzsche’s “will-to-power.” From this it realizes a sense of equality and basic fairness that must be a part of the process and substance of any agreement the parties formulate or understand, an equality and fairness formalized in definite “rules of law” and “rights,” all established on the principles agreed on in that “original position” behind the “veil of ignorance,” which benefits all citizens thereby grounding a reasonable trust in a strict compliance by all citizens. NOTES 1. Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1989), p. xiii. 2. Scharlemann’s interest was not in ascertaining ethical motivation but in grounding Christology. His denial of any of the particular things through which “God” or Being manifests itself as being the totality of God or Being-itself is obvious in his rejection of the “two nature” idea of traditional Christology. So the “otherness” of God was always encountered in a limited or finite form. The only question is whether there are really grounds for thinking that what is called “God” is anything more than finite existences, that is, whether it is in anyway more than universal or common existence which is never knowable in totality but only in definite somewhat similar manifestations. 3. Rorty thinks there is no way philosophy or other theoretical disciples will allow us to connect the private perfection posture with the social solidarity position, but I believe Rawls’s idea of voluntary agreement is possible as the connective, especially if people can imagine or have witnessed the “suffering” that is common to humans, as Rorty notes. Whether one thinks in terms of a necessary agreement with others from a feeling of vulnerability or from a feeling of attraction, it can still be rooted in instinct, but then is subjected to one’s reason. This combines Rawls with Rorty, since, although Rorty said no theory can combine private and public interests, he thought an imagination and experience of suffering of self and other can cross the bridge from the private perfection to the social solidarity of the public side of justice. That is the reason that I have emphasized throughout that ethics must be evoked from the “presence” of the real other living being. See Rorty, p. xiv–xvi, 192–98.

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4. Explore that Buber’s position in Robert P. Scharlemann’s article “Does Saying Make it so? The Language of Instantiation in Buber’s I and Thou,” in God in Language, ed. Robert P. Scharlemann and Gilbert E. M. Ogutu (New York: Paragon House Publishers, 1987). 5. Christian theology has reduced its certainty only to one’s response to an “image” or “symbol” and in that sense it functions more like a novel than even a production on stage in that the “characters” need not have any resemblance to actual living forms, so may not present anything with which one can identify, while identity through suffering is the moral power Rorty thinks exists in novels. The more abstract or less representational the symbols become, reflecting less and less of the empirical world we experience, the less could be their power of identifying with the “suffering” or “cry” of that other. Of course, it still exists in Picasso’s Guernica because Picasso has distorted representations, but many are still recognizable in the distortion, enough to evoke the response of alarm, fear or death. But any connection between Guernica and Protestantism, which Tillich saw, is not what most viewers see in that great painting. 6. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (New York: Penguin Books, 1991), pp. 283–304. 7. Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, tr. Hazel E. Barnes (New York: Gramercy Books, 1994), pp. 566, 617. 8. John Dewey emphasized the significant of “difference” when he said “the expression of difference is not only a right of the other persons but is a means of enriching one’s own life experience.” Dewey, “Creative Democracy—The Task Before Us” in Dewey, Later Works, Vol 14: 1925–1935, 1939–1941: Essays, Reviews and Miscellany, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1988), pp. 228–30. 9. Page numbers in parenthesis in the text will be either to John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1971) or his Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), so will be designated as either TJ with the page number or PI with the page number. 10. This problem was all hypothetical, not real, so when Rawls changed the process to people having an awareness that political justice required “freestanding principles” which were within the public reason and by which the group could reach an “overlapping consensus,” it resolved most of the substance of the former criticism of his “original position” and its “veil of ignorance.” For a sample of those who spotted the problem before it was resolved, see Derek L. Phillips, Toward a Just Social Order (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1986), pp. 53–66. While Phillips makes use of Rawls’s “difference principle,” he thinks that Rawls’s “original position” requires a plurality of subjects arguing different concepts of justice, but the veil of ignorance eliminates the knowledge of the latter. That obviously was not Rawls’ intention, and if the entire thing is hypothetical, why does it require certain things to be known or not known other than what the hypothesis utilizes? An even less sympathetic understanding of Rawls’s “veil of ignorance” is found in Alec H. Goldman, “Responses to Rawls’s from the Political Right,” in John Rawls’ Theory of Social Justice: An Introduction, ed. H. Gene Blocker and Elizabeth H. Smith (Athens, OH: Ohio Univ.

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Press, 1980), pp. 431–62. Rawls resolved this by his PL, but even in TJ, p. 141 he insists, “If a knowledge of particulars is allowed [in the original position or contracting process], then the outcome is based on arbitrary contingencies.” This is the point. 11. John Locke described a state of nature in which one has no superior force on earth to appeal to by which to escape force from another as a “state of war.” That could even exist where there was such an authority, but the authority did not operate in good faith to do justice, one is still in a state of war. This avoidance of being in a state of war was “one great reason of men’s putting themselves into society, and quitting the state of nature.” Locke, Second Treatise of Government, ed. C. B. Macpherson (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Co., 1980), pp. 15–16. 12. Phillips, pp. 60–66. 13. See Thomas Jefferson, “A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom”; 12 June 1779, Papers 2: facing 305 in The Founders Constitution, ed. Philip B. Kurland and Ralph Lerner, Vol. Five (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987), p. 77 and James Madison, “Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments,” 20 June, 1785, Papers 8:298–304, Ibid., pp. 82–84. 14. For the religiously universal symbol which can acknowledge both positive and negative assessments, see Robert P. Scharlemann, The Reason of Following, pp. 197–205; for the “depth of truth” in “reflexivity” which embraces relativism of all opposing perspectives and therefore a form of universalism, see Scharlemann’s The Being of God, pp. 177–83. See my assessment of these in my Ethics and the Future of Religion: Redefining the Absolute (Lanham, MD: Lexington-Fortress Academic Press, 2021), chapter 5. 15. I use “least-benefitted” for Rawls’s “least-advantaged” some since “advantage” seems to designate a favored group whereas “benefit” is very neutral. Thus, many benefits might not give one any advantage over others at all, whereas any advantage can trump over many benefits. 16. Rawls, TJ, pp. 222–26. 17. Rawls, PL, pp. 212–54. Rawls distinguishes the ethics necessary to ground the political conception of justice as based on “public reason” since it necessarily must include all citizens which means all the possible diversity of perspectives, and therefore must be something all can agree to comply with to their own advantage since it is a mutual and universal agreement. On the other hand, comprehensive ethical or religious schemas might be embraced by people in different “associations,” but they are built on a “non-public” reason, that is, a reason not to be negotiable with “public reason” or open to challenge, so they are not willing to cooperative to reach an “overlapping consensus” with those outside the group. 18. See my forthcoming Reconciling Opposites: Religious Freedom and Contractual Ethics in a Democratic Society.

Chapter 8

Concluding Challenge To Become Responsible in the Present

I think the world famous paleoanthropologist Richard Leaky had this common ethical civil life of a trusting unity, mutual autonomy, and equality or individual liberties grounded on the life-instinct in mind when he wrote of the “responsibility” of being “better tenants” of this Earth. In his fascinating Origins Reconsidered: In Search of What Makes Us Human, after tracing the complex origins of the species, he turned his vision to the future: “What will happen next?” The world will carry on without us once Homo sapiens becomes extinct, no doubt about that. But that is of no account to me, to my children, and to the rest of the human species. None of us will be around. The period over which we have responsibility, the period in which we have an interest as a species, the period in which we can make a difference, is now. We need to be quite clear about ourselves as one species among many. We need to be better tenants. I hope that what will happen next is that, collectively, we decide we will be better tenants.1

Here on Earth, we are all “joint tenants,” in the sense that the whole of it is entrusted to each of us in a shared form of benefits and responsibilities. And although Leaky said “that is of no account to me,” I believe his emphasis on being “better tenants” proves that the future, no matter how it turns out, is extremely significant to Leakey. If Leakey’s life-work illustrates how far science has moved us during the past 300 years in understanding Homo sapiens’ place in the history of our expanding universe, we have also come extremely far not simply in paleoanthropology but in our other “human sciences and arts,”2 such as biology, chemistry, physics, economics, history, anthropology, sociology, psychology, literary theory, philosophy, and so forth—and even in theology during these three centuries. To know how we as humans have 363

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developed over the centuries and to know how human perception of the world in which we live has changed radically, enables us to know more who we are and what this Earth is that embraces, sustains, and fascinates us with teeming beautiful forms of life and fantastic potential. This is the reason we felt it necessary to document this movement-inorientation within the Christian thought world that transferred the discussion and real concern far from the old traditional theistic dogmas of the sixteenth century or centuries prior to that. Leaky’s concern for us to become “better tenants” of this Earth is simultaneously a long perspective ahead but motivated by imminent problems that need to be addressed in the present in order for Earth and Homo sapiens to have a future. To be better tenants will require us to re-think our values and become more responsible to each other and to our home, our great grandchildren’s Earth. But, interestingly, Leaky did not simply speak of the “Earth” possibly continuing on without the human species, but the “world.” What will or even might continue on is not simply a physical globe that rotates around the sun, but a “world” in the sense of all the tangible items humans have created. If the human species continues or a succeeding species arises which has reflective ability, what will continue includes also the mental constructs we have developed over many millennia, including even our values which spawn the structures of relationships including governments’ structures of justice. What we pass on to future generations is not merely an Earth that supplied the power of life, growth, and thought but also the conceptions that human thought has engaged in which have built the operational superstructure for life in that environment. The question is whether we have been and are being “good tenants” of that whole world which includes Earth as well as our conceptions of how to relate to each other. The radical transformation in human thinking began to make giant strides with the geographical “discoveries” which altered not simply maps and globes but human thinking especially from the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries. Then the Enlightenment in Europe and England accelerated the study of our world and Homo sapiens’ place within it during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Human evolution moved from theory to accepted fact within a century among most first-world countries, so that even a Roman Catholic Jesuit theologian and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin published many works in the middle of the twentieth century, attempting to at least agree with an earlier Lamarckian theistic evolution. But by the time of the publication of his works, higher education, though impressed with his courage, considering his status in the Church, wondered why Darwin had not superseded Lamarck’s influence on Teilhard’s views.3 As Homo sapiens, we can no longer return to a pre-Enlightenment mentality any more than we can return to simply replicate the life and thought of Homo erectus or prior ancestors of ours. If we know that the

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hunting-gathering societies of ancient humanity had much less inequality of goods than we have today, even so, there is no going back to such a culture. We must find ways of increasing equality within our own unique “world” that we have created. Similarly, humans can no longer opt for what Kant called a “self-incurred tutelage” in which one willfully refuses to think for oneself. Autonomy and mutual autonomy are essential. We do not and cannot live as people did 3,500 years ago, or even 1,400 years ago, or anywhere between (which encompasses the approximate beginnings of many religions including Hinduism, Jainism, Judaism, Shinto, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam). Replicating those ancient mentalities is not an option even for the most astute historians who might like to attempt such. Time has not stood still, nor has there been some “essence” defined by one of these periods which has gained universal acclaim today among leading natural and social scientists as being “the essential” truth about Homo sapiens and the cosmos in which it lives. It is no longer credible to say that humans have never changed, so whatever was good as an ethic in one age, is good for all ages. Of course, nobody says it quite that way, but rather that since humanity has never changed, whatever “God” gave as ethical principles will be good for every age. But that assumes an old theism, and stakes the entirety of the future of humanity and its world on the ancient conceptions of those religions who claimed some “god” as the originator of the ethics. There, again, we encounter not uniformity or agreement, but a diversity of religions, all having different ethical claims, all based on different metaphysical claims that others find completely unacceptable. The ancients were not faced with competing religions for the most part, not in the same sense as has existed in the world during the past five centuries. We cannot return to any state of unending religious conflict such as racked Europe from the time of Luther till the twentieth century, and then simply manifest its divisiveness in more subtle ways. It is not just a problem because of the plurality of religions, but even within any single religion, many people experience cognitive dissonance between their inherited religious dogma with its ancient metaphysics or ontology and modern science which we take for granted. Any cognitive dissonance one experiences in attempting to combine the religions’ ancient metaphysics, ontologies, and merged mythical-historical claims and their ethical views with modern science creates a disintegrating burden on one’s psyche. Yet many religions are so fixed in form that they seem to compete for the dubious honor of being the most antiquarian groups in the present world, which can easily mean the most de-humanizing. There is not a greater irony. That irony will not be resolved by simply increasing the irony by merely attaching to the ancient symbols a message of “the power of positive thinking” or “think, and grow rich,” or that each person has a divine “purpose” in

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this life, three of the themes of famous motivational, or even capitalistic selfhelp books of past generations. Instead, the problem will be addressed only if we can utilize “freestanding” principles to reach an “overlapping consensus” or at least the two basic principles which Rawls delineated, which will provide equality and unity which maximize liberties within a stable sense of unity. The greatest security, then, is found not in accumulated wealth, prestige, or the number of people who “follow” one on a social website, but rather in a sense of unity with others which preserves one’s liberty in a constructive relationship of mutual trust. The twentieth and twenty-first centuries have accentuated the “new vocabularies” necessary for any further understanding scientifically of our cosmos and reality in its micro and macro methods and completely new frontiers in outer and inner spaces, in some cases correcting earlier theories and in other situations simply abandoning them after new models explained reality better. This occurred in the discoveries of relativity, DNA, the human genome, and quantum physics, and it underlies not only remarkable instruments of discovery such as an MRI or the Hubbell telescope, but the ambitious plans to send humans to Mars. The entire focus of nineteenth-century Christian thought on the “Absolute Spirit,” as if the life-instinct or even thought processes come from some divine source outside oneself, something having nothing to do with the material brain, is no longer credible. Similarly, the ancient idea of humans having an eternal, identifiable, although invisible, “soul” which survives their death so that it can be reincarnated in another physical body, as Plato thought, or can be reincarnated in a transformed “spiritual body” as St. Paul thought, is no longer scientifically believable. The universality of entropy and the finality of death, which most people seem willing to acknowledge when they think about other living species such as their pets, creates a state of denial when they conceive of their inevitable future, a denial that is a detriment to their being authentically human, as Heidegger showed. The result is that we have a deeper understanding or at least more workable present understanding of Homo sapiens as well as the universe in which it exists. Even those who do not read Heidegger recognize the validity of what I am suggesting. We also have a more realistic view of what can and what cannot be meant by religious talk about “God,” as we saw in chapter 3, and it is more problematic than ancient cultures realized. In ancient cultures, many different gods were thought to exist, sometimes representing human form and other times being identified with certain cosmic elements such as the sun, moon, Earth, ocean, and so forth. There were even many mixtures of gods and humans, half and half, as we know in the Ancient Greek and Roman cultures. But those are problematic in the present world. The hyperbolical metaphysical and mythical talk of a personal “God” is finding a decreasing possibility of ever being

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located as it used to be, even if some people still think such a distinct being is somehow, somewhere “out there” beyond space and time.4 More than half a century ago, Bishop John A. T. Robinson wrote his famous book, Honest to God, in which he attempted to explain what “God” could mean and no longer mean, using the most important theological insights of the day, including the work of Paul Tillich. He insisted that we cannot any longer continue to conceive of “God” as “up there” or “out there,” but only “within” or immanent rather than transcendent. Thomas J. J. Altizer’s announcement of the “death of God” in the 1960s also pointed back to “God” as itself somehow dying and now being the “Total Presence,” no longer transcendent or objective or opposite us and our world or as sacred, but rather quite secular and anonymous. Ludwig Feuerbach, as we saw, had earlier shown that all theology is simply anthropology, that humans simply subconsciously project the infinite qualities of the human species beyond themselves, turning it in a transcendent “wholly other,” whereas the real contrast is only between the individual human’s potential and the potential of the species as a whole. We saw even more progression dealing with the demise of credible theism in chapter 3. That shifted-conception of the meaning of “God” corresponds more closely to the facts of history which show no evidence of any God intervening to save humans from wars, pandemics, earthquakes, genocide, or other negatives of real life. Whatever claims we hear of God’s intervention into history are nearly always placed within a single individual’s having been cured of some insufficiently diagnosed illness or some bad habit such as drunkenness. But “God” never appears for the really big crises. For Judaism and Christianity, this was the God who promised to show up, to “be there” in times of crises, even as Jesus is reported, as promising to be with his followers to the “end of the age” (Matt. 28:20). If people are not delivered from genocide or being murdered or becoming chronically ill, does this mean that the promising “God” is only a silent spectator to such even if God has the power to change or prevent it, so God is not a God of love? Or is God only one who loves but has no power to prevent sin, crime and death and all the natural disasters? The terrible disappointment of the Holocaust, that was devastating to many Jews, including Rabbi Richard Rubenstein, caused Rubenstein to say he could no longer believe in that traditional picture of God intervening to deliver his people, nor could he believe in the Jewish people as “God’s chosen people.” Were Christians not as deeply affected by such demonic genocide by Hitler’s forces? The latter difficulties may also explain the total de-sacralization through which the name “God” has been shoved, so its most common usage seems to be “Oh, my God!” which is only an expression of surprise, either good or bad, or consternation over not having an answer to some question, which is the way the modern insurance policies use the term “acts of God.” Otherwise than indicating a bit of

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consternation over the unexpected, the word is empty, as Nietzsche said, the emptiest of concepts. As Richard L. Rubenstein emphasized, if there ever was “God” in the sense in which it was talked about, “God” does not and cannot die; yet, he insisted that on the other hand, Nietzsche was certainly right that we live in the “time of the death of God” as a cultural event, that is, in the sense that in our times there is simply no consciousness of “God,” that is, “the divine-human encounter is totally non-existent.”5 Of course, to many, the ancient tradition still seems quite valid because it is comforting with its group worship, rituals, images, its sounds and smells, its certain assurances. As Rubenstein said, religion is still needed, especially so in this “time of the death of God” as a changing cultural consciousness, because it can keep us feeling rooted. It can enable us to share our deepest moments of joy and sorrow, our cyclical involvements of birth, marriage, and death, as well as lesser moments of crisis and happiness. We can still confess our guilt, and still pray, and still have hope for a better life for all. But even Rubenstein could not move beyond seeing life as quite “tragic” since he sees Judaism as realistic, not being able to accept the Christian answer of an easy escape into a utopian life after death.6 But when wars and terrorism continue, pollution of our Earth and atmosphere increases, racism, sexism, inequality, hatred, fear, resentment, and exploitation of our fellow humans persists, we may naturally feel incapacitated by our inability to change things. Of course, we also stand almost helpless before tsunamis, raging forest fires, rising seas, and chronic illnesses. But our hypocrisy and self-destructive tendencies sicken us often when we view the slaughter of our innocent children in schools because of unrestrained fear and obsession with guns, and the same exploitation of corporations to peddle addicting drugs that kill us, and immoral people who sell the destitute as sex-slaves. We not only eat many of the non-human living creatures but allow entire species that we do not eat to be eliminated by either our attempts to enrich ourselves or by our indifference toward their lives. The evidence indicts us for not being responsible “joint tenants” at all. The deeper meaning of our hope for a better life and our most sincere, reverent prayers are diluted by our own racist and anthropocentric negative actions and selfish concerns. The pious wait for some “God,” and pray for God to do what we are supposed to do. We know we should not build our homes on earthquake fault lines or on low beaches, but it is still done. We know we should not build campfires in dry forests, but still do it. We know 300 million guns should not be possessed by ordinary citizens, simply making domestic accidents and homicides more frequent, and creating more problems for law enforcement who can be outmatched by citizens’ weapons. But we do nothing even when many children are killed at school. We know that even police attitudes, policies, and behavior are often lethally racist and abominable, but for the most

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part, we have allowed things to go on fairly unchanged. We know that big corporations control our legislature and executives, creating indebtedness which eclipses the national interests of those elected by the bonded selfinterests with their donors, which, in turn, causes political stagnation and brittle partisan politics rather than justice. So the greater problems cannot be addressed, and we do nothing. We know that a pandemic requires effective leadership from the top, a consistent and honest picture, and competent supplying of necessary equipment, drugs, and personnel, and even requires in some cases being a bit unpopular with others by restricting their movement temporarily for the sake of many other people’s lives. While most cooperate, many, including our national leaders, flout it and seem untouched by the growing number of infected people and huge number of deaths. It is not a face of courage we see among those who were elected to serve, but often the face of incompetence or lack of interest. An administration which separates children from their parents at the border, and does not make provision to reunite them is therefore one we do not expect to be interested no matter how high the death toll of a pandemic goes out of sight. Any trust, essential to governmental structures of justice and the ethics underlying them, is completely abolished when one political party undermines the most basic political freedom, to vote and have one’s vote count, as Rawls pointed out in 1971. If such hideous scenes of intense suffering and death and disregard for human life cannot create a deeper social sensitivity in people, there may be no hope for humanity. It is disheartening to see the United States at the forefront of this degraded and inhumane activity. It was “suffering” which Rorty said would touch our inner being, would enable us to identify with others, would cause us to move beyond our cruelty, to broaden our sense of “we” and thereby create a greater social solidarity. Our world simply cannot afford to be led by those who cannot respond humanely to suffering or who undermine the structures of justice and any sense of what is right. Many religious people even seem to wait for “God” to tell them how to live, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer saw when Christians in Germany became cowardly before Hitler. Is it possible through cowardice of narcissism that one can completely eclipse one’s own natural life-instinct, so cannot see that “will-to-live” all around us in all humans and various species of animals, in which parents protect their young in their nests or other shelters, and even in trees and plants as they reproduce, sometimes against all odds, and older trees even protect younger saplings. This is not speculation.7 But why do the most self-reflective species, the most intellectual living creatures have to be told what to do when so many in the animal kingdom would quickly die to protect their young? Of course, we have discovered in the pandemic that we have many compassionate people working night and day in the hospitals and various services to try to save others’ lives, and we will never forget them.

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But why do not people in the nation, and even all people on Earth, realize that we are all in this together. And that won’t quit being true once the pandemic is behind us; it is the truth of our being on this bit of space here and now at the same time. In late 2020, it seems it is either everybody “together” or possibly nobody at all. Our place or role on this Earth, in this universe, is not primarily as “consumer,” or “possessor,” or “collector,” or “exploiter,” or “spectator,” or merely a “passive passenger” on its cycle round and round the sun. We are joint tenants, trustees, and custodians, rather than mere egoistic beneficiaries. Custodians often do not get paid much, but we could really not think of asking for anything more than the privilege of living on this Earth in this universe. We have been entrusted by our destiny or our non-rational “beinghere-now” with becoming more aware of the universal will-to-live surrounding us, and finding a way to maximize or perfect that instinct which is so precious but precarious. This requires studious individual and group research, concerted and consistent reflection, sharing of vital information, adaptation of structures, and policies from family understandings to international treaties and projects. More than anything, it necessitates operating in good faith with each other, completely out of trust, in which a sense of unity based on our common will-to-live is pervasive and continually pronounced. In our world, such freedom of discovery of the heretofore unknown or unrecognized has come through long struggles for human dignity, equality, and genuine autonomy. Unfortunately, many races and different sexual orientations have still not even yet become fully equal in the thinking and laws of all citizens and countries of the world, while others teeter on the political edge of slipping away from a general obligation of equality of rights to forms of authoritarianism and tyranny. Where did we ever learn the anti-species and anti-life idea— that some people in our species are not equal? Had such an attitude been as dominant in other species as it seems to be in the human species, those others would probably have annihilated themselves long ago. To the degree that present forms of authoritarianism verbalize some kind of “return” to a past rather than address the future, their approaches are as uncritically repristinating as those religions which preach a renewal of the thinking of ancient cultures. Such a practice places a potent retardant upon the actual development of humanization, so that even if their metaphysics are ignored per se, their ethno-ethics and discrimination against many in their own species are still founded on their narrow-communal or tribal interests and old metaphysics, often either inconsistent with people’s scientific understandings, or else the hanging on to the past means of espousing non-scientific understandings in the present by belittling scientific discoveries as simply theories or belief systems or mere opinions. Even if there is valid comfort in

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belonging to a group of people who have a long history, and even if this is agreed as being limited to people embracing each other and mutually sharing their joys and hopes, to the degree that their outlook on life cannot be separated from some of those ancient unethical presuppositions, these old understandings can still have a divisive and anti-humanizing effect. BEING RESPONSIBLE FOR THE “WILL-TO-LIVE” Under enough coercion, many people would decide to agree with a variety of things they otherwise would oppose, especially if the coercion is a blatant or even veiled threat to their own “will-to-live” or that of their friends’ or family members’ “will-to-live.” Whether we like it or not, that describes many people throughout the world, living under too much coercion and thereby losing that amount of their freedom. It inherently points out two things: (1) that with many, if not all people, the highest value they have is life itself, what Schweitzer called the “will-to-live”; and (2) coercion from outside powers, whether from individuals, groups, or nations, can cause a diminution or selfrelinquishing or even hypocritical posture for a person’s survival. If these are correct, then the conclusion seems to be that any relationship between reflective living creatures should be built on a voluntary basis, that everyone’s “will-to-live” takes precedence over lesser concerns behind some power’s coercion. If the “will-to-live” is common to all living creatures, is there any way that such coercion can be eliminated or at least defused sufficiently that it would no longer be a threat to life itself? In the quest for an ethic which can unite people on a voluntary basis rather than coercion, we asked whether there is a possibility that the basis for the ethic—rather than being divisive or exclusive or professing the Absolute, which is the case with specific associations and religions with their limited and special purposes and interests—could find principles which are “freestanding,” that is, not necessarily attached to or associated with one of these exclusive associations. If the people for whom the ethic and its subsequent laws regard themselves as equal in voice (and the ethic has to be a negotiated social contract), are confronted instead with an ethic of an association that is not open to its principles being negotiated or possibly changed or superseded, or who think their position is one of absolute certainty, that association has ruled itself out of participating by virtue of its exclusive attitudes. Of course, most religions not only do not welcome any challenges to their basic doctrines or claims; those that are more than 300 years old were founded on ideas totally uninformed by the very scientifically common understandings of the present: the evolution of Homo sapiens, the age and size of the expanding universe, the entropy that characterizes everything within the flow of time

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and space, and therefore the relativity of everything we know, including what we know about “humans,” and what we know about knowing. This absoluteness in which most religious are still ensconced continues to make many religious people incapable of adapting to the modern world’s understandings, even unable to see a need for an independent global ethic or any “freestanding principles,” which, in turn, makes the non-religious or those belonging to competing religions completely opposed to allowing that other to shape the ethic of the government or the legislature which in turn affects the substance of the various laws. People continue to fight each other in the name of their religion and alleged gods, or continue to argue over whether a city with holy sites of more than one religion can really be utilized by people of a religion other than their own, whether in India or Jerusalem or other place. The ethics are determined completely by old exclusively religious ideas with their anti-scientific myths and metaphysics. In one of my earlier books, Will Humanity Survive Religion? Beyond Divisive Absolutes, I examined many different burdens that plague the typical religious life in most cases with an unscientific illusion based on its conflated historical-mythical claims, claims that would not be humanizing even if it were experienced as real rather than mere illusion. For example, the dogma that death is God’s punishment of humans for Adam’s sin, or that the Final Judgment will separate the righteous from sinners, even if the “righteous” are really not any more righteous than the “sinners,” or the idea that one can kill God’s enemies if God instructs one to do so. These not only lack metaphysical and historical credibility but also ethical credibility. Meanwhile, the most fulfilling life of mutual autonomy and trust, the most flourishing self or better life of finding solidarity with others, or discovering oneself in a deeper way in the other person, is bypassed by religion in its insistence on unrealistic, exclusive claims and promises of an infinite destiny, of transcending contingency with this world of illness and death, of carrying one’s own personal identity into an unending utopia which is supposed to comfort the adherents and put the outsiders in their place. Religion’s problems are both cognitive and practical, theoretical and ethical. On the other hand, we have discovered that this fulfilling or better life that William James was convinced religious people actually seek is a life that can be experienced in the present by anyone to the degree that she or he lives out of a sense of genuine, honest, mutual, trusting, autonomous, and interdependent unity with others, as free and equal voices who recognize their co-operative power over their symbiotic interdependent lives and the values, meanings, and civilization they create. As James put it, this “more life” requires only a connection with any other who can help us “take the next step,” not necessarily just some god. This is why I said that the primary importance of our relations with other humans is already apparent to many

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people. It is certainly not a novel insight that I discovered. Most people know who it is they can trust for help or assistance, who it is that really will do something actual to help them. Regarding relations between people, Richard Rorty hoped to find some connection between the private and public spheres of life, some social solidarity despite the ironic contingency of everything we know, including our language. Since he cautioned that one must not seek to have the “final word,” the answer which no one in the future can criticize or negate or supersede, our conclusion at this point must hear that warning. Even so, he felt that in our time, novels may be more effective in bridging the gap between the private and public, more capable of assisting us to attain the solidarity we need by enabling us to hear the voice of the other more graphically, realistically, and sensitively than happens when we merely read a philosophical or abstract theoretical text about ethics. One would hardly argue with that. (If I could have written such a novel, I would have.) In that way, we may now identify with others’ needs and problems, but we also may see ourselves in the more unethical postures of many of the characters in such novels, and thereby become mortified and determined to be more sensitive to others’ suffering, to be less cruel, so to make moral progress. Hopefully, such confrontation will enable us to broaden our sensitivity to others, to be more inclusive, to have a larger group included in our sense of “us” or “we,” while a decreased population in our sense of the mere “them” or “they.” In some of the novels I utilized in Will Humanity Survive Religion? while I earlier brought attention to the primary metaphysical problems, the ethical dimension now becomes apparent. In John Updike’s The Beauty of the Lilies, Rev. Wilmot struggled with aligning the religion’s required trust or faith in God with his reading and experience that made him doubt that there was any credibility in that trust. He experienced this doubt about his trust finally not as occasional question, but a complete loss of any trust or faith in such a theistic god. But he knew no other way to live. He then floundered and lost trust or confidence even in himself. In his alleged “loss of faith” in God and himself, he failed his family when he was unable to be satisfied with trusting them and other real people in his life. In such a state, he died a premature death, a pathetic, broken man, leaving behind a confused family. A second example, very different kind of situation, was Dostoevsky’s sketching of The Brothers Karamazov as competing, selfish voluptuaries, who were aware of their obsessive, wasteful, and unfulfilled lives, but hoped or trusted fruitlessly for some kind of windfall of great fortune, true and lasting love, and even possibly starting afresh in another country somehow to escape their reputation. While Alyosha turned to a monastery for the answer, he found it detached from real life so much that the local people seemed thrilled to smell the rotting body of his superior whom they had

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been trained to think of as a most holy person, ready for a great miracle or sainthood. As his trust in the religion’s lasting significance dissipated, family problems pulled him back from the monastery, especially when his father was murdered. The episode ends or breaks off after a trial has found one brother, Mitya, guilty of the murder on circumstantial evidence, while the actual murderer, the servant, Smerdyakov takes his own life to escape. The other brother, Ivan, realizes it was his words that Smerdyakov took as license if not a veiled command for him to murder the father. Guilt causes Ivan to become very ill, while he and Alyosha realize that Mitya’s health will not withstand the lengthy prison sentence. So Ivan and Alyosha find each other, even with two women that they and their father had fought over, and plot to somehow break Mitya out free. This requires a trust in obvious real people, a conspiratorial trust to commit an obviously unethical and illegal act which they would never have anticipated, and it supersedes the very nebulous trust the brothers had in some coming great fortune or ecstatic love of their life, and certainly not in some divine rescue since even the most saintly die and get mocked. Ivan had even expressed to Alyosha earlier that the evil committed in the world so disgusted him, that it was not God he could not accept but the world that God allegedly made. It was a world in which even innocent children are hurt by adults, a world lacking in trustworthiness. A unity is found here, though quite late for the various members of the family, a unity and trust that had been totally missing, as their guilt causes all of them to share in the suffering and therefore even in Mitya’s fate. In the last scene, at a funeral of a small boy who died, Alyosha, in conversation with several of the boy’s friends, hears one of them tell the other to shut up, that no one wants to hear from him, that no one cares whether he lives or dies. Alyosha redirects the conversation with patience, telling them to live good lives and remember this occasion of their uniting, again, trying to instill a sense of trust and unity with the common will to live. There is no unrealistic instruction from this former monk for them to trust in God, no assurance provided that faith in the invisible would be a great comfort to them; rather, it is simply the memory of a playmate who died prematurely that should create in them a sense of unity, quite symbolic of the unity the Karamazov brothers finally realized after years of distrust, struggling against each other. On the other hand, an overriding theme of the book, found in the chapter on “The Grand Inquisitor” was that freedom or trust in oneself to make the major decisions of one’s life is too terrifying for the majority of humans, so they would rather be released of their freedom and autonomy by trusting in the Church and its alleged miracles, mystery, and authority. They trusted the Church to forgive their unethical lapses, or almost completely depraved lives, and were promised security, forgiveness, and life in another world, an apparent bargain, but it

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involved a sort of lobotomy by removing their autonomy, by which, ironically, they could no longer be moral in any way. If Ivan’s and Alyosha’s decision was made only on the basis of the projected and undeserved suffering Mitya was facing, it is commendable, but still wrong-headed perhaps because the Church had released them for so many years from actually being held responsible for their decisions. Which of these is what we want as humans? The third example is Camus’s The Plague, when the small Algerian community was unexpectedly torn apart by the bubonic plague, disrupting everyone’s life. The leaders of the city were forced to quarantine the city, and try to minimize the deaths as well as protect other countries. Although most the people’s time had been devoted to business and pleasure, suddenly many turned to the local church, to Father Paneloux, to hear some answer of comfort. He could give them none. In his initial sermon after the plague took its hold, he intoned that God was obviously punishing the community for its sinfulness, for its neglect of worshiping God regularly, that they were simply receiving what they deserved. They had neglected God, not trusting Him, so He was now punishing them to awaken them. Over the ensuing months, hundreds of locals died and were sent down the coast to be cremated, and life went on simply because that was all people could do, trying to live a normal life, though with proper precautions. Paneloux finally volunteered to assist the nurses and Doctor Rieux in trying to care for the stricken. In one notable case, he and the doctor stood helpless by the bedside while a young lad writhed and screamed in his final pains, dying a most agonizing death. Shortly thereafter, both the Father and Doctor left the hospital, meeting each other outside, and the doctor insisted that this was an innocent child, in no way deserving of that death. Not long after that, Father Paneloux became ill and bedfast in the small room he was renting. He did not call or ask his landlady to summon medical help. By the time help finally arrived, he coughed up a huge clot of blood and died in front of them, after telling them that a priest has given his all to God so has no friends. Upon close examination, they concluded that there were no signs that indicated he had died of the plague. Father Paneloux had also planned a publication showing that a religious leader as himself would be a hypocrite if when sick he were to call in a doctor. Was it simply that he had lost his trust in God and had found no way of reconstituting or redirecting the lost trust by placing it in somebody that was real and caring? Had he no trust in other humans, in the very will-to-live that he saw in the doctors, helpers, the struggling patients, and even in his own assisting the doctor? Had his faith in God destroyed even his “will-to-live”? Indeed, Rorty is correct in saying that novels, plays, and similar productions can certainly enable us to see more clearly the importance of

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relationships, the value of life as instinctually universal, and to understand the importance of mutual autonomy and trust in those relationships. As he admitted, they may be much more effective in the present than abstract or theoretical philosophical or ethical treatises. The reason is their very concreteness by which one can identify with another person in a realistic setting, so different from abstract analyses. That concreteness, of course, makes the actual other humans in our lives the most obvious ones we need to trust, even more than a novel, who, as James said, are enough to enable us to “take the next step,” without requiring gods. We can see the inadequacy of mere tradition or authoritarianism which destroys our sense of value in our own autonomy, and we can see how we can become irresponsible to others when we are judgmental and exclusive. In fact, moral judgment of other humans is quite often a pastime for people, but we can see that even any such judgment can become too simplistic. Here we are drawn back to the apocalyptic text of Fourth Ezra, of a writing which was supposed to predict a vision of the future, of God projected to issue the Final Judgment, so it was a mixture of real history and apocalyptic otherworldliness which is probably an equivalent of “science fiction” more than even “historical fiction.” The one who is being given this glimpse into such an intense event sees God’s plan to reward His faithful and punish the unfaithful, the eternal bifurcation of humanity, as being too simplistic and too extreme. So he objects to God that even God’s “chosen” to which he belongs, do not keep God’s law perfectly. On that basis, the judgment is unfair and too severe. The only reply he receives is that God tells him to mind his own business, to quit thinking of those who are going to be punished by God, and rather just be grateful that he is not. There is no stronger indictment of the division that religions often envision, of its religious but quite favoritistic unethical application of law or principle. That picture of such Final Judgment is too unrealistic to be acceptable to the sensitive, ethical person. Its focus on some life beyond death minimizes the present “will-to-live” and one’s responsibility for the present, especially when “God” tells the person to not be concerned about others who miss out on the future utopia. An awareness of our common instinctual “will-to-live,” however, elicits our responsible actions toward others in order to be responsible to that very “will-to-live.” As we analyzed Schweitzer’s and Nietzsche’s approaches to ethics, the focus was primarily upon the individual or private sphere of life, probably because their understanding of the primary power or base of human values was life-affirming and individually and universally instinctual. Yet they recognized that the “ethical” or “moral” is often a judgment we give to actions that are altruistic, self-sacrificial, which seems a contradiction of lifeaffirming. They were therefore both persuaded that altruism is not another instinctual power, so they were simply concluded that somehow the primary

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power of “will-to-live” or “will-to-power” exerts itself in relations by the thought it elicits in each person, causing one to see the same “will-to-live” in others, and to reasonably extend or perfect that primary instinct. Whether that can reshape one’s self-affirmation simply by one’s private reason or even instinctually, is unclear, but Schweitzer was persuaded that the more thought one gives to life and the world, the more one’s “will-to-live” will become clearer and begin to change things in a “spiritual” way, and he distinguishes “spiritual” from “religion” as he distinguishes the “will-to-live” as itself “spiritual” but more universal than any religion. It is not impossible to have a change of heart, nor is it inconceivable to want to share what one has with others. But in extreme cases of altruism, in which one actually gives one’s self to preserve another self, that is not an equal or fully rational sharing. But it could come from a very strong sense of unity with the other(s). Rawls proposed to show that the sense of unity can be strong enough and agreeable enough, that it could be formalized in a social contract or constitution without people having to become so compassionate as to be self-negating. Its basic principles might be neutral enough as to eliminate all the unique advantages that everyone might accidentally have in the “happenstance” events of life, if people could reasonably work out the contract from a hypothetical “original position” and veil of ignorance. In such case, the agreement would itself benefit all equally in its most basic principles, so would not even require some “change of heart” in the sense of leaving behind one’s self-interest or exalting the unique interests of others. Its “disinterest” would be the equivalent of its ignorance of self’s and other’s specific attributes, interests, or positions behind that veil of ignorance. It is not an indifference either toward self or others, but simply a hypothetical lack of knowledge of specific non-rational vested interests which must be precluded from the negotiating process. That enables the private impulse of the “will-tolive” to formalize itself in the reasonable negotiation of the social contract or reasonable reconsideration of an already existing social contract of a democratic liberal society. Its benefit over its fairness in procedure and equality in substance far surpasses the utilitarianism with which Nietzsche, Schweitzer, and Rawls all found fault. When we view the real lives of these three, all recognized the different basis that a political ethic or a diverse population had to have from any religious ethic. I suggested this is analogous to one’s having different clothes for different occasions, which are not necessarily contradictory but serve different purposes, have different bases, and involve different constituencies. Nietzsche cast off his religious heritage more extremely and its values in what he considered his embracing of the real values of the instinctual life-affirming “will-to-power.” If his writings were hyperbolic and often severe, his demeanor in his relations with other people was the opposite, and, although

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his illness prevented him from having continual close relationships with others, those who knew him felt he was a very congenial, respectful, and ethical person. Despite his debilitating sickness, he did not resent it or blame it, but acknowledged that without it, he would not have been able to understand or do the things he was able to think and do, and that he loved his particular life even with all its problems, so much that he could will it over and over with all of its positives and negatives, just as it was. That was his amor fati. It was sincere, not just bluster, or he would not have worn out his eyes and body writing so prolifically in his extreme sickness. Schweitzer’s religious background, similar to Nietzsche’s in having a Lutheran pastor for a father, enabled him to discover inclusiveness and compassion early in life. But his sense of other people’s needs and of the inequities of life prompted him to decide to leave the world of privilege behind by age thirty, to spend the last two-thirds of his life ministering to others’ needs in a crude jungle hospital. This seemed to him only the obvious need to share his good fortune with others, a kind of “debt” people have toward others. Therein, his ethics broadened out from its restricted Christian base to a universal base in his mysticism of being, or “ethical mysticism,” including his denial of there being any such reality as Absolute Spirit. What Schweitzer said was absolute was one’s obligation to affirm all forms of life. The empirical world in its diversity, but in the common element of the “will-to-live” which he saw not simply in other humans but also in all kinds of animals and other forms of life, dug out its permanent place of priority in his mind and approach to life, a “Reverence for Life.” He was overwhelmed by others’ needs and sickness, and devoted his days and nights ministering to people’s illnesses and suffering. This real suffering of the others moved him from a private or individual mystical unity with Christ to a broader, more inclusive mysticism with Being in any particular being. But, as I already said, “Being” was not some Hegelian Absolute Spirit, but only the being of the particular person or animal. He did not regard himself as some exceptional hero but simply tried to live close to being life-affirming as consistently as possible, even if it was discovered only by his association with people he had never known before and who had a very different culture. John Rawls was also raised in a religious family. In his youth, on separate occasions, two of his younger brothers came into his room when he was ill, contracted his disease, and died. This guilt, even when it was no fault of John’s, became deeply etched on his psyche, causing him tremendous suffering, as he undoubtedly struggled with his religious indoctrination about an all-powerful and all-loving God. He later served in World War II, and experienced first-hand many of his fellow-soldiers dying excruciating deaths, one even intentionally removing his helmet to stand up and get shot in the head by the enemy. This is thought to have ended his faith in God or religion.

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Yet his subsequent brilliant work on contract theory and his theory of justice as fairness and of political liberalism did not discriminate against religion, but preserved a place for it and any other associations of limited constituency within the more inclusive politically conceived structures of justice. His awareness of the basic concept of equality, impartiality, or fairness led him to hunt for a way by which a body of people could voluntarily form an “overlapping consensus” from “freestanding principles,” which would give them both a sense of unity with stability but also preserve certain basic freedoms for all the diverse individuals. It had to be a negotiated contract with a fair process to which all would voluntarily agree, so it is not an accident that he saw it requiring a bracketing out all of the non-rational, accidental, or happenstance or inherited interests of each individual which might be advantageous to them alone, and do it by a strictly hypothetical original position and its veil of ignorance. It was that voluntary agreement that eliminated and superseded the possibility of any absolutism or rigid positions being allowed a voice since such an agreement would require reasonable discussion and compromise as well as “freestanding” principles. His first or primary principle of the two he articulated was that of equal liberty, and consonant with that, freedom of conscience or of religious conviction had an established place in the constitutional republic despite the very different positions religions took. The primary principle established their freedom but limited any group from diminishing others’ equal liberty, which in itself precluded the religiously exclusive groups from having a voice in the discussion, but the further reasons he gave was that obviously no one could establish a reasonable ground that all others would accept that he or she or their religion had the right to speak for all people regarding what was God’s will. The process could utilize only “public reason,” and associations which did not intend to allow their views to be challenged or negotiated by other reasonable people proved they were operating only with a non-public reason. TWO SPHERES FOR THE TWO SETS OF ETHICS: POLITICAL AND METAPHYSICAL This brings us in a roundabout way back to the issue of bridging religion and government by a recognition of two sets of ethics, parallel to having two sets of clothes or two sets of tools, or many different books or recipes or pictures. Each specie embodies sufficient sameness between many things that they can be classed as a single species, but the various entities also have differences which give them more specific identities, names, and functions. There are different sets of things that serve different purposes, require a different comportment, or maybe have a considerably different scope. To put

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that in contemporary examples, one’s religious ethic might emphasize complete abstinence from alcoholic beverages and it might forbid abortion and non-heterosexual marriages, while the political ethic and law of the nation, because of its basic principles needing to receive unanimous approval from all citizens, made all of these legal possibilities which people can choose under certain restricted circumstances. The law does not require people to drink alcohol or have an abortion or become married to a gay person in order to be a citizen or to have the nation’s basic protections. These are only legal freedoms from which one can choose, and one can certainly be free to follow only one’s religious ethics here. But what is a legal option or choice does not become mandatory by that for citizens whose consciences do not so dictate, and the First Amendment simply forbids reversing the situation so that the morality of the single religion is mandatory for all citizens. Another example would be in ethics themselves, that while the most general ethic would underlie the laws for all the different citizens of a nation, the doctors might also adhere to a special ethic peculiar to their profession, just as do attorneys. But these association’s ethics are not appropriate for governing the population as a whole, even if they are very specifically appropriate to the professions. I earlier suggested that it is likely that all I am doing here is explaining theoretically what some religious people already do whether they are conscious of it or not, that is, that they no longer view their religion or any element in it as Absolute or beyond their critical reasonable judgment. But most religious institutions are not open to such innovative posturing, or even much criticism. Instead, they insist on a unique answer which is Absolute and promoted only heteronomously, an answer that in many cases such as in Christianity, then requires the adherents to view humans as born in a morally depraved state and the world as inherently “fallen” or evil as we discussed in chapter 6. Yet we have seen in chapter 3 that even a single religion’s expert theologians have not and do not seem capable of agreeing among themselves on what they mean by “God.” We do not live in an age brimming with a real consciousness of some living, supranatural being which intervenes within history. And any idea of “God” as not being anything definite, but only manifest through anything simply cannot account for any “God” having any consciousness, and this is precisely the distinction one finds in Sartre’s contrast of the “in-itself” with the “for-itself.”8 Is it the case, then, that some religious people have already gradually, even rather subconsciously, bracketed out the heteronomous, unscientific metaphysics or the elements of an anti-social or exclusivistic ethical orientation of their religious institution, while maintaining their affiliation with the institution primarily for the single benefit of having an embracing community? Here Rabbi Richard Rubenstein’s view of the place of such a community in which one can share one’s joys and sorrows, and find personal support, even if one does not agree with most of the theology or ideas or even rituals, is apparently

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an option for some. “Auschwitz” forced Rubenstein to such a position, since he said that after Auschwitz he simply could no longer believe in a God who intervenes in history or in a “chosen people,” both of which were so important to Judaism. He could still worship with them, enjoy the subconscious positive effects of the rituals and music, and see it as social solidarity providing people with their historical meanings as a group. Since he said he could not believe in much of their ideas, and since those, such as the “chosen people” has been central to Judaism, the heart of the “covenant,” I suggested that he could see it more in terms of “contract” than “covenant” since he had emphasized the diversity of the people included in it from the point of the Exodus. That would enable it to give him somewhat a choice in ethics since he did not desire to see himself in some “superordinate” sense which “chosen” implies.9 In fact, do not most individuals within such religious groups come to the realization that they cannot expect uniformity of thinking in all of their members, not in such a diverse population with unlimited areas of interest and inquiry, as well as multiple conceptions of people’s identity carried by each individual? This still means, however, that as individuals continue to change in this contingent world, even the religious institutions will have to formally change if they are to have any relevance to the individuals. For those few who continue to espouse those ancient views as uniform and absolute while ironically being uncomfortable with them, cognitive dissonance will continue to be the primary result. We showed that if the metaphysical claims that religions present in their absolute form, that is, allowing no criticism or argument, negate any validity to human autonomy, their insistence that their ethics are grounded only on such metaphysics simply means that their ethics accomplish the same demeaning process of killing human thinking or human autonomy, thus annihilating the humanization process. This will take its toll on attracting people and even on many of those inside the group, since few people want to have no voice in making decisions about their life and relationship with others. They would rather be people who think on their own and make their own decisions, which means they would rather have the opportunity to become moral people than to be mere robots. Trusting mutual autonomy in a variety of forms has been recognized as a key to one’s finding one’s own self in the other, or at least discovering a commonness in subjectivity and the “will-to-live” that overcomes the strain of unique differences between people, resulting in a sensitivity or openness to having a more inclusive “we” rather than a more exclusive “we” which is the case of nearly all religions. This trusting mutual autonomy and the mutual agreement it implies, is the bridge between private and public life, as it is able to make the most of the “will-to-live” as well as the “will-to-power” as the discharge of one’s strength. The sense of “we” which occurs especially in any relation built upon mutual agreement, even when unarticulated, enables the

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parties to be able to help each other, and, if necessary, even at the expense of sacrificing themselves to do so, a compassion which is not a denial of either the “will-to-live” or the “will-to-power” as long as it based on the common element of the relation with the other, the understood trust between the parties, or even a formal written agreement such as a constitution. “Identifying” this common element as the agreed on relation between two or more people, in their subjectivity and freedom does not make “us” identical nor does it revert to some ancient idea of “essence.” We remain quite different and particular, but our need for self-assertion or “will to power” or “will to live” or autonomy is mutually discovered as natural to each of us, thus we confront the necessity of mutual autonomy, “will to power” and “will to live.” When one does awaken to or become sensitive to another person in this sense of realizing the equal legitimacy of the other’s will or self-determination, whether it by feeling the other’s “suffering” or realizing that the other’s “willto-live” might cause oneself to suffer, one can see both the possible negative threat of one’s own “will-to-live” being adversely affected by the other as well as the possible positive affect of being attracted to each other. It consists of a relationship which is expressed, as Martin Buber said, in words that establish relation, and it is often formalized in a written agreement such as a marriage certificate. On its positive side, the relationship enables one to transcend rather than merely ignore the separating effects of mere accidentals or “happenstance” elements or even advantages or disadvantages in each life, to transcend mere objectification of the other, accepting all difference, even all opposites, all the free and unpredictable responses, not as something previously known and planned for but as a natural outgrowth of the development of a meaningful relationship between us, a sense of unity that is more important than individuality. In less intimate relationships, such as citizens of a nation, the “happenstance” elements have to be formally eliminated by mutual agreement so no one has an irrational advantage over the others. That was what Rawls proposed. In its extreme relating potential of very different people, as Altizer calls it, it may even seem to be a “coincidence of opposites.” At least it can be a real awareness of near-opposites, or perhaps better described as a “coinherence of polar opposites,” so is not a mere mental exercise nor a sense of unity that annihilates each’s sense of self. Autonomy or freedom is preserved vis-à-vis “destiny,” and is actually encountered in the fullest sense in this revelation of equal freedom through my consciousness of the real other, which stimulates my conscience rather than mere competitiveness, through my awareness of the coincidence or coinherence of polar opposites or at least very different positions or perspectives which require some mutual agreement. If we recall Kant’s refusal to have the “end” determine the “moral” since the end was a hypothetical which was quite subjective to egoistic input, we

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noted in Schweitzer and Nietzsche that the “end” can also mean “purpose,” and from Rawls we learned that “purpose” can be a group determination or relational procedure rather than simply a sickly egotistic maneuvering. We saw in Schweitzer how the “end” moved from a quasi-literal, mythical, supracosmic individualistic concern in its ancient eschatological and apocalyptic form, to a present mystical union with Christ as Schweitzer detected in St. Paul, to a present mystical union with the being or “will-to-live” in any other being, with “mystical” only indicating that each person has transcended his or her typical subject/object style of thinking in the existential unity with an “other” or others, which means the “end” is not something far in the future, but more as Nietzsche saw it, as one’s purpose, as even the present daily existential involvement which pushes one beyond heteronomous and anti-life moral rules to find what is of real value. That drive in Rawls did not demand some impossible compassion or sickly “pity” but a reasonable and humanizing discussion which arrives at an agreement. This long but gradual journey all means that the “end” or goal of living in each present is to “discharge our strength” in creating and sustaining constructive and symbiotic relationships with humans and all living species. No amount of collective wealth will ever equal life itself. No amount of pleasant advantages over others will ever cure the lack of self-respect that accompanies such irrational and undeserved privileges, nor will it compensate for the injustice to the disadvantaged. No amount of coercion can ever create the unity of voluntary relationships and voluntary agreements for those relationships. No amount of hyperbole will long deter the revelation of truth about life and relationships. That seems to be where Nietzsche, Schweitzer, and Rawls have taken us. And Rawls believed that this kind of basic social contracting of justice as fairness underlies the democratic republic of the United States, although, of course, real life has not yet measured up to the ideals of the system. All three of these brilliant men were modest enough to not really think they had the “last word” or that all people would have to study everything they studied for years to be able to understand what they were saying. I think they all felt the answer to life’s problems is right in front of our faces, accessible to all, requiring neither genius nor some absolute purity to perceive nor some Absolute God or Spirit to dictate. THE UNIVERSAL ABILITY TO RESPOND EVEN FROM WITHIN POVERTY TO OTHERS’ SUFFERING Therefore, this inclusiveness and sense of solidarity—such a sense of ethics as the trusting mutual autonomy built on the common will-to-live—requires

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no great education, as most of us realize. Many of our best examples of morality or ethics, even as the Dalai Lama suggested, may easily be found among those who are the poorest and most disadvantaged among us, and the compassion may manifest itself in the most extreme cases of others’ suffering. There may be no particular religious orientation whatever. As Rorty emphasized, we can experience this sensitivity to solidarity, the inclusiveness in one’s “we,” perhaps most graphically in the human lives in novels rather than in philosophical treatises. John Steinbeck’s famous novel, The Grapes of Wrath,10 powerfully manifests this interplay between consciousness, conscience, and coinherence of polar opposites. No theme in the book is stronger and more pervasive than human autonomy, trust, and the common will to live, based on instinct and reason, and creating even an unspoken understanding, agreement, or unity between people. Within this autonomy, the characters amaze us with their ability to freely identify with others through conscience, to embrace people they only meet by mere coincidence or accident, and to find life in these relationships with very different people, an abundance of life despite their extreme poverty. They are not intent on taking or exercising advantage over the others, nor is there any indication that they were religious or schooled in ethics. This is the story of share croppers in the 1930s in Oklahoma being driven off their property by the combination of new farming methods made possible by the advent of the industrial age, by the profit motive of capitalism that knew no bounds, by the ability of people to treat each other only as things, and by the dryness of the land that made it almost useless. The dust bowls were merciless. Many died of dust pneumonia. Others left Oklahoma for California on their own. Yet others waited till the owners of the land pushed them off the soil. The autonomy that these people retained, in which they found life, is described humorously in the serious conversation between several who were reluctant to leave. It is not their personal greed that makes them want to stay. Nor is it that they are so stupid that they failed to realize the significance of the drought and near-uselessness of the land. Nor is it that they were merely in a state of denial. Rather, people’s autonomy often simply balks when it is threatened. Casey asked his friends, “Why they kickin’ folks off the lan’?” Muley’s mouth snapped shut so tightly that a little parrot’s beak in the middle of his upper lip stuck down over his under-lip. He scowled . . . “I tell ya, men, I’m stayin. They ain’t getting’ rid a me . . . I ain’t a-goin. My pa come here fifty years ago. An’ I ain’t goin.”

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Joad said: “What’s the idear of kickin’ the folks off?” “Oh! They talked pretty about it. You know what kind years we been havin’. Dust comin’ up an spoilin’ ever-thing so a man didn’t get enough crop to plug up an ant’s ass. An’ ever’body got bills at the grocery. You know how it is. Well, the folks that owns the lan’ says: “We can’t afford to keep no tenants.” He explains how the owners insist that they give all their profit away to the tenants but he insists he is not leaving, period. He continues by describing how the land has never been much good, should not have ever been cultivated, and then cotton farming nearly finished it off. He admits that had he not been told to leave, he probably would have been long gone by now, well out into California, eating grapes and oranges. Joad wondered why Grampa went so easy, why he didn’t kill anybody that tried to force him off the land. “Nobody never tol’ Grampa where to put his feet. An’ Ma ain’t nobody you can push aroun’ neither. I seen her beat the hell out of a tin pedlar with a live chicken one time ‘cause he give her an argument. She had the chicken in one han’ an’ the axe in the other, about to cut its head off. She aimed to go for that pedlar with the axe, but she forgot which hand as which, an’ she takes after him with the chicken. Couldn’ even eat that chicken when she got done. They wasn’t nothing but a pair of legs in her han.’ Grampa throwed his hip outa joint laughin.’ How’d my folks go so easy?” (pp. 44–45)

The discussion ensues, describing once again how the “Company” talks sweet but depersonalizes people, but one is told not to blame the actual owners, since it is really just the “Company” doing this dirty thing. At the end of the saga, when the family, after migrating to California, found life in California just as tough if not more so than it had been in Oklahoma, they are faced with lack of employment and such extreme poverty that they have little or no food. They are now faced with the daughter delivering a still-born child into the temporary quarters they are huddled in that is being invaded by swollen flood waters, and their few belongings cannot be moved, yet their lives are in danger. Ma finally persuades some of the group to leave. Before they vacate the temporary shelter, they are racked with the pain of the loss of the child, but recognize that it never was alive. And they mutually agree that they did everything possible, but it wasn’t enough. So Ma thanked Mrs. Wainwright, a near-total stranger, who had assisted her in this futile effort. Mrs. Wainwright smiled and told her she needed no thanks, since everyone was “in the same wagon,” and if she and her husband were down, they would have helped her. Ma quickly agreed, even that she and Pa would have helped anybody. Use’ta be the fambly was fust. It ain’ so now. It’s anybody. Worse off we get, the more we got to do. (pp. 407–8)

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The still-born carcass was set afloat in the rapid waters in a small apple box, since there was neither dry ground in which to bury it nor could it be kept around without causing more grief. When the few, including Ma, Pa, the daughter, Rose of Sharon, who lost the baby, and other small children, finally trudge through the heavy current to a distant barn and try to settle in, they discover there a father and small son huddling in a dark corner. The son quietly comes over and emotionally informs them that his father is dying of starvation. In a fantastic gesture of compassion, while the others step out of the barn, Rose of Sharon, gets free of her soaked clothes. She wraps herself in a blanket supplied by this small boy and lays down beside this total stranger, this extremely sick father, and attempts to put her swollen breast into his mouth. He is at first reluctant, but she told him “You got to.” So the stranger finds life and Rose of Sharon finds fulfillment. This is the social solidarity created by the “will-to-live,” an ethic of trust that many of us witness almost daily, more often among the less-fortunate. While we realize empathy and compassion cannot be made into a civil law, Rawls’s plan of the social contract enables a formal agreement by all citizens to behave in comparable ways of sharing and supporting life, even if we cannot expect everyone to personally extend help to others in such a spontaneous way. Yet by a system of real equality of liberty and opportunity, including a graduated tax base to correspond with Rawls’s “principle of difference,” at least the structures of addressing such crises can be ready to respond as individuals arise to answer the call. If such acts of kindness and compassion which preserve mutual autonomy in trust are very common on this smaller, individualized scale, there is no reason the basic principles articulated by Rawls cannot help transform the structures of government into structures of genuine justice rather than just an aspiration of justice. SACRIFICING ONESELF TO SAVE HOMO SAPIENS: THE COMPLEXITY OF A GREAT MORAL EXAMPLE In more extreme cases of injustice, governmental oppression, and systemic fascism, while many legislators and government officials may simply keep silent, there are those courageous souls that come forward to challenge the direction the country is going. Some people were so impressed over the example set by Albert Schweitzer that they thought they needed to go to Africa to join. Although some actually did, he insisted that there are any number of ways we can serve those in need with our “Reverence for Life” ethic. Some are directly connected with medical service, whether working directly with patients or doing research that will have a positive effect of making life better. Others address ecological issues, necessary interests we have in

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preserving the planet, keeping its water and soil as pure as possible, addressing abuses of its resources, or showing a variety of ways of sustaining life on this marvelous Earth. Others address racial and economic and sexual forms of discrimination, seeking a more equitable life for all. We have real ethical heroes in such people as Florence Nightingale, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., Clara Barton, Malcom X, Rosalind Franklin, Nelson Mandela, Mary Seacole, Mahatma Gandhi, and Wangari Maathai. But this is only a select few from thousands and thousands over the years who have shown such moral courage to fight to save Homo sapiens in its unity and fantastically positive diversity. For every one that could be named, there are undoubtedly thousands more who have shown the same courage, jeopardizing their lives in mass demonstrations for justice, equity, compassion, unity, and reasonableness all over the world. These heroes are not always adequately appreciated while they are alive because they usually are working in very complex situations, often in a strong head-wind. In the most difficult situations, it seems to require an exceptionally strong person who will take a stand against all odds, even jeopardizing her job or life to try to preserve the lives of others. It may even take a direction that forces them to violate other ethical commands of less importance as they see it, so they cannot feel guiltless. Often, few people outside their own families can understand the difficulty of the positions they take, and it is not compensated for by them being able to project how some later reflection by others might finally see what a great moral example they were. Some of our ethical heroes took so seriously the responsibility to support the common “will-to-live” that they died to protect that life-power in humanity, and quite often they were assassinated or executed by the dissenting power structure of their own country, whether by a firing squad, hanging, poisoning, suffocation, or other. Some of the most courageous realized that their deaths were just around the next corner, and even spoke of such, like Malcom X and Martin Luther King, Jr. But it did not deter them from their sense of mission, the daily purpose to do whatever is necessary for the preservation of Homo sapiens, for the realization of humanization and real equality and liberty for all. As Rawls emphasized, the only restriction of others’ liberty that can be justified is when it is necessary because of the way they would otherwise destroy liberty for many or all. Here is the ultimate test of whether one can identify sufficiently with others’ present of potential suffering that one will allow one’s own instinctual “will-to-live” to be suspended or even extinguished to try to preserve that “will-to-live” in all the other potential victims. Such a courage might come from a blind ideology. But usually, when it is more universal in scope, it is not based on any particular comprehensive moral or religious view but upon the more general idea of humanity itself, of the necessity of life going on and

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maximizing itself in future generations in the broadest possible way, beyond all petty divisions, power struggles, cruelty, and individual interests. Early in the morning of April 9, 1945, at Flossenburg, Germany, several notable German men, including Admiral Canaris, General Oster, and Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, were executed by the Third Reich as “traitors,” who had conspired to assassinate Hitler.11 They were only a handful of the many who had realized several years before that Hitler’s policies would destroy Germany, but possibly even the whole world, if he were not stopped. More than twelve years before, Bonhoeffer, as a young pastor, in early 1933, had begun his opposition to Hitler with a radio address in which he objected to Hitler’s utilization of the title “Die Führer.” Bonhoeffer warned against the intoxication for Hitler that had accompanied the Youth Movement, an uncritical enthusiasm that he felt could lead to an intensified individualism that would splinter the country. He insisted that the true leader must not allow himself to be turned into an idol and thereby “mislead” the people as well as mock God, but he must rather disillusion the people with himself or minimize his person. Goebbels had Bonhoeffer cut off the air before he got to his most negative statement, but he later published the address and sent it around on his own. When Hitler subsequently was appointed the new Chancellor, after the burning of the Reichstag on February 27, 1933, he promised to protect Christianity and to protect the people and the state with all kinds of new laws. This meant basically putting the control of the church under Hitler and his appointees, eliminating all non-Aryans from positions of responsibility in it, passing laws against treachery, and so forth. What began as temporary emergency orders morphed into a dictatorship rather quickly. Shortly thereafter, even Bonhoeffer’s international correspondence was being censored by authorities. Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s life had come a long ways in the twenty-seven years since his birth into an aristocratic family of professionals, including professors of theology, doctors, councilors, and musicians. His father had become professor of psychiatry and neurology at the University of Berlin when Dietrich was six years old, and the family never lacked funds or status, even during rampant inflationary years in Germany. When he was eight and a half, World War I broke out, and his brother, Walter, was killed in that war in April 1918. Despite the fact that his immediate family had no actual connection with a church, and engaged in only a minimal amount of religious custom such as having the children say grace at meals or say their prayers before going to bed, Dietrich decided early on that he would be a theologian, even though he had little idea what that would involve. His theological training and preparation for college teaching eventually took him to Tübingen and Berlin, to a pastorate for Germans in Barcelona,

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Spain, as well as Union Theological Seminary in New York City in the summer of 1930, the same year he became qualified for university teaching in Germany by his second dissertation, Act and Being,12 and was appointed as a lecturer at the University of Berlin. The Christian church was taken over by Hitler in 1933. In 1934, Bonhoeffer and others established the “Confessing Church” and its influence extended far beyond Germany. German authorities felt the Confessing Church’s secession or its refusal to be subordinate to the German church. By June 1935, Bonhoeffer and others established a seminary in Finkenwalde for the Confessing Church. Bonhoeffer’s last lecture at the University of Berlin was in February 1936. In August of that year his authorization to teach on the university level was revoked. By 1937, more than 800 seminarians of Finkenwalde were put under arrest. As of January 1938, Bonhoeffer’s name was on a list of people prohibited entry into Berlin. The infamous “Crystal Night” was November 9 of that year, and before the year was over, Bonhoeffer had met for the first time with Admiral Canaris and General Oster and others. Whereas most of the Christian clergy had either fled Germany or had capitulated as the Evangelical Church was taken over by a Hitler appointee and transformed into the “German Christian Church,” Bonhoeffer, instead, founded this alternate Christian church, the Confessing Church and its seminary, while he also began, with Canaris, Oster, and others to make plans to remove Hitler. He knew killing Hitler would not be an act of innocence or morality, but he also became persuaded that if Hitler were not removed, it might mean not only the destruction of Germany but perhaps the entire world. To choose the more popular option that most pastors selected, of simply endorsing Die Führer, was to avoid responsibility, and to become complicit in Hitler’s grotesquely inhumane plans of murdering eventually millions of innocent people. During these years of the 1930s, as Hitler gained in power and began his campaign to conquer, Bonhoeffer made many significant contacts in England, Switzerland, the United States, Sweden, and other countries through his church work and lectures, contacts of which the German government became suspicious. When he was about to be drafted, family, friends, and colleagues at seminaries in the United States arranged for him to come to the United States in the early summer of 1939 to escape the German draft. Within only a couple of weeks after arriving in the United States, however, he quickly realized that whatever combination of work they might find for him at Union Theological Seminary or with churches and committees, he would not be willing to stay longer than a year. Here he made another decision to become responsible rather than to escape responsibility. Actually, he returned to Berlin in less than two months, feeling that he could not help rebuild his nation if he were not there to share in the problems. As he put it,

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I have made a mistake in coming to America. I must live through this difficult period of our national history with the Christian people of Germany. I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people. . . . Christians in Germany will face the terrible alternative of either willing the defeat of their nation in order that Christian civilization may survive, or willing the victory of their nation and thereby destroying our civilization. I know which of these alternatives I must choose; but I cannot make that choice in security.13

In 1940, he was allowed to work under General Oster, and Oster was head of the Abwehr which Bonhoeffer joined, but he was forbidden to speak in public and required to report regularly to the police, and by March 1941, he was forbidden to print or publish anything. After the attempted assassinations of Hitler in March 1943, Bonhoeffer as well as his brother-in-law, who was also a part of the Abwehr and the conspiracy against Hitler with Canaris and Oster, were arrested. Bonhoeffer, who in January of that year had become engaged to be married, was at first certain that the status of his family would secure his early release. He was only to be disappointed time after time, being moved from one prison to another until his eventual hanging two years later. What is exceptional about this life is the fact that his view of Christianity evolved so radically, from childhood in which religion was totally marginal, to a professorial preparation and orientation which was almost completely abstract and academic. But gradually, he became more and more a “pastor” in the sense of finding his life in helping others. His eyes were opened to the plight of blacks in the United States when he came to Union Theological Seminary as he befriended a black seminarian. He revolted at the demonic element in the “Aryan clauses” Germany placed into the social structure to eliminate Jewish people from the Christian ministry in Germany. It was only a terrible irony that on his visit to the United States when he discovered black people for the first time, a letter he received from his brother back home talked of how awful this racial problem in the United States was, and that he was certainly gratified that they had no problem of such magnitude in Germany. At that time they were still untouched by their “problem,” at least in a state of denial of it, but his relations with others soon changed all that. In his writings, Bonhoeffer explored what the ethics of the Christian ought to be, and although in his book entitled Ethics,14 he still operated with the typical ethical “structures” current in the Lutheran theology, in his earlier examination of the “Sermon on the Mount” in The Cost of Discipleship, he did demand that these extreme commands by Jesus were to be taken seriously. One had no right to water them down. One had to be willing to take them literally before discovering precisely just what was demanded of one.

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In the same rather idealistic book, he made obvious references to Hitler as the “antiChrist.”15 The writings that became his most famous were the Letters and Papers From Prison, compiled for him posthumously.16 It was in these that he reflected what was going on in his life in prison. And that was simply that he was finding relationships more important than theory, actual rapport established with people he earlier would never have given the time of day to— common prisoners—who now became his life more than did his Bible. He now insisted that most of the ideas of God in the church were simply fantasy and unjustified, whether the mechanistic God who makes everything turn out fine or the “God of the gaps” that is placed wherever we do not yet have a scientific answer. Instead, he saw God as the hidden God, the God who suffers, the God before whom we must live as if God does not exist. That is, religious people can no longer sit and wait for God to change structures, to stop evil. Rather, they must do it, as he admitted in earlier writings, even if by helping to assassinate Hitler, he would not be guiltless. So the choice is not between good and evil, just as he claimed that “Christ” is not something on the edge of our lives, but rather in the very center, in the very acts by which we relate to others.17 We do not relate to others by trying to convince them first that they have sinned, so we can then arrogantly supply the answer to them. That “method” of evangelizing, he argued, is diametrically opposed to how Jesus related to others. We accept people where they are. Ultimately, he often wrote, God may call us to come and die, but in that death, we have found our true selves. He really had no word for “God,” and “Jesus” or “Christ” became less a historical person of the past and more of one’s Ideal, defined by one’s present moral situation, as he moved more deeply into real human relations and the sheer fact that things just happen without any apparent purpose. Just happen.18 So Bonhoeffer’s life was a transformation of consciousness, a developing conscience, which finally accommodated the coincidence of opposites. There would be no pointing to an evil world in contrast to God, no resentment of those prison guards, no separation of a church from secular society, no easy division of “sheep from goats.”19 It was in prison that he encountered what the title of his very first book meant—The Communion of Saints.20 One’s life or self is only in relation with others. Not in our church affiliation or religiousness. Indeed, the morality of Bonhoeffer during his prison years was not prompted from some heteronomous doctrine or some authority that he felt obligated to obey. He could find no commands in the Bible for what he had attempted to do in conspiring to kill Hitler. If he prayed less and read the Bible less, and felt reluctant to speak in theological or even churchly language lest he be unable to develop any rapport with the others, he was finishing

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out an episode of his life in which he had found out what it was to live truly before God as if God does not exist. He no longer used the word “guilt” to describe his moral sensitivity in his conspiracy to assassinate Hitler. “Guilt” implied heteronomy, yet heteronomy ironically eliminates the free-will of the subservient one, thereby removing him or her from possible guilt, as we saw implicitly in Dostoevsky’s “Grand Inquisitor.” Nor did he speak of Hitler as the “Antichrist” in his final writings as he had in his more conservative, earlier The Cost of Discipleship. He saw the situation in terms of humanity and inhumanity, as social contract of mutual consent violated by a tyrant, as a world in which too many religious people were reticent to become involved to stop injustice or inhumane treatment, preferring some imagined spiritual passive purity to a responsible involvement of protest. No longer could he identify some ideal life that God would supply believers, nor was he willing to avenge himself against those who were about to execute him. He had found life. Not in theology or doctrines, not even in symbols and rituals, and certainly not in the theological ethics he had written. Rather, his real life he found only in his voluntary assumption of responsibility in his trusting relations—responsibility to the point of total self-emptying by his execution by the SS. NOTES 1. Richard Leaky and Roger Levin, Origins Reconsidered: In Search of What Makes Us Human (New York: Anchor Books, 1993), p. 339. 2. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), esp. ch. 7. 3. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Christianity and Evolution (London: Collins, 1969); The Future of Man, tr. Norman Denny (New York: Harper & Row Pub., 1964); The Phenomenon of Man, tr. Bernard Wall (New York: Harper & Row Pub., 1961). 4. Many theologians have attempted to move beyond the ancient male-person idea of “God,” even to the point of suggesting such things as “Mother” or “Lover” or less personal terms. See, for example, Sallie McFague, Models of God: Theology for an Ecological, Nuclear Age (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987) or many of her other books that explore what she thought should be plural models for understanding “God” which must supplement each other rather than be taken as literal and final. But the inner contradiction between seeing “God” as only an impersonal power or impersonal substance and at the same time one that can be worshipped, prayed to, and described in anthropomorphic terms as having a “purpose” for the world and humans, as “forgiving,” as “knowing,” etc. prevents any clarity, and it cannot be resolved by saying that everything is necessarily doxological, symbolical, analogical, paradoxical, or dialectic, as we have shown. Unfortunately, she was not understood when she described herself as a “panentheist” (similar to Tillich’s

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self-description), but was only faulted for trying to dissolve transcendence and move beyond Christianity. Such criticism misses the real point: that if Christian theology is not to become completely incredible and irrelevant, it has to refocus— as she tried—on our immediate lives and world, and broaden itself while escaping earlier confused historical-mythological claims. It needs a new vocabulary but not a secret one. 5. Richard L. Rubenstein, After Auschwitz: History, Theology, and Contemporary Judaism, 2nd ed. (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1992), p. 250. 6. Ibid., p. 265. 7. See Richard Grant, “Do Trees Talk to Each Other: A controversial German forester says yes, and his ideas are shaking up the scientific world,” Smithsonian Magazine, March 2018. See also Peter Wohlleben, The Hidden Life of Trees, What They Feel, How They Communicate: Discoveries from a Secret World, tr. Jane Billinurst (Vancouver, Canada: Greystone Books, 2016). 8. Of course, Sartre also insists that the “in-itself” is obviously finite, so not anything close to what typical religions want “God” to be. 9. See W. Royce Clark, “Contract vs. Covenant in Post-Holocaust Theology and Society,” in Confronting the Holocaust: A Mandate for the 21st Century: Part Two ed. Stephen C. Feinstein et al. (New York: Univ. Press of America, 1998). 10. John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (New York: Penguin Books, 1939). Page numbers in the text. 11. Two or three days earlier, Bonhoeffer’s brother-in-law, Hans von Dohnanyi, whom the Third Reich considered as the leader of the resistance, was also executed. 12. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Act and Being: Transcendental Philosophy and Ontology in Systematic Teology, Vol. 2, Dietriech Bonhoeffer’s Works, Gen. editor, Wayne Whitson Floyd, Jr. (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1996). 13. Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Man of Vision, Man of Courage (New York: Harper & Row Pub., 1970), p. 559. 14. Bonhoeffer, Ethics, ed. Eberhard Bethge (New York: Macmillan Co., 1955). 15. Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (New York: Macmillan Co., 1963). 16. Bonhoeffer, Letter and Papers from Prison: The Enlarged Edition, ed. Eberhard Bethge (London: SCM Press, 1971). 17. This was the theme in his book, Christ the Center. 18. As I noted earlier, Richard Rorty describes the contingency of life and language, not as something planned previously, but often very unexpected, something that “just happens.” 19. Is this similar to Scharlemann’s interpretation of “reflexive” knowledge and the “negation of negation” in the symbol of the Cross as a new form of universalism? See my Ethics and the Future of Religion: Redefining the Absolute. 20. Bonhoeffer, Sanctorum Communio: A Theological Study of the Sociology of the Church, tr. and ed. Joachim Von Soosten (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998).

Bibliography and Table of Cases

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TABLE OF CASES American Legion et al., v. American Humanist Assn, et al., 588 U.S.___, 139 S. Ct., 2067 (2019). Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 US 310 (2010). Espinoza et al. v. Montana Department of Revenue et al. No. 18-1195; Decided June 30, 2020. Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 US 602 (1971). Marsh v. Chambers, 463 US 783 (1983). Orden, Thomas Van. Petitioner v. Rick Perry, Oral Argument, No. 03-1500 (3/5/2005). Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. 145 (1879). Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968).

Index

Note: Page numbers followed by “n” denote endnotes. Abe, Masao, 115–16, 302 Absolute, 6, 8, 12, 22, 27–28, 31, 33, 35–38, 47, 49–52, 64, 67, 70, 71, 73, 77, 79–81, 90–93, 96, 163–64, 170, 184, 189, 238, 283, 307. See also Spirit, Hegel’s idea of absolute/absoluteness, 6, 8, 12, 21, 26–27, 35–37, 202; as subjective position, 27; supranatural authority, 23; truth, 27 abstract expressionism, 186 Act and Being (Bonhoeffer), 389 “acts of God,” 367 addictive lethal drugs, 76 adverse possession, 15–16n14 An Agnostic in the Fellowship of Christ: The Ethical Mysticism of Albert Schweitzer (Goodin), 152 agnosticism, 139, 157, 159, 167–69 Altizer, Thomas J. J., 110, 111, 140, 174, 178–88, 195n55, 196n57, 197n61, 205–7, 367, 382; absolute novum, 179, 183, 186, 187; on atheism, 179; on Bible, 179; Buddhism and, 178–79; as a Christian atheist, 178, 179; on church, 179; coincidentia

oppositorum, 179, 184, 205; on common or universal humanity, 184–85; concerns, 179–80; on Crucifixion, 181–82; on death of God, 178–81, 367; dividing history of the world in three eras/mentalities, 180–81; human consciousness, 186; objectification, 186–87 altruism, 92, 150, 151, 170–71, 222, 225, 229, 345, 346, 376–77 Alzheimer’s disease, 14 Amendment XIX. See Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution Amendment XV. See Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution anacoluthon, 78–82 anatta (no-self), 302 Ancient Israel, 183, 276–78; Hegel’s idea of a “slave-morality,” 216, 223, 252; “reform” prophets, 31; religion of, 32, 180, 276; Sitz-im-Leben in, 278 ancient wisdom, 69–70 ancient world, 212–13 anonymous humanity, 182–83 The Antichrist (Nietzsche), 54, 254, 255 anti-Semitism, 211, 320 405

406

Index

apropos, 324 arbitrators, 214 arts, 186, 217–18 As Good as It Gets, 299 aspirational symbols, 35–37 associations, 304 atheists, 25 attitude, 293, 303–9 Aufheben/Aufhebung, 105, 184, 232, 246, 251 Augustine of Hippo, 69, 116, 142, 183, 197n70, 231, 251, 265n34, 275, 279, 282, 291 authoritarianism, 9, 10, 47, 74, 150, 318, 370, 376 authoritarian leaders, 1 autonomy, 2, 365; challenge, 49–54; defined, 13; metamorphoses of the spirit, 51–54, 81–82, 237–39, 254, 257; undermining, xi. See also mutual autonomy axial age, 31 Backus, Isaac, 9 Barth, Karl, 43, 119, 133n61, 143, 203, 291–92, 315n45 Barzun, Jacques, 64–66, 76, 78, 320 The Beauty of the Lilies (Updike), 373 becoming, 299; prioritizing “being” over, 283–86 Begriff, 105, 181–82, 186, 281 being: and non-being/nothing, 302; prioritizing, over becoming, 283–86. See also mysticism of Being belonging to groups, 3, 4 Beyond Good and Evil (Nietzsche), 240 Blake, William, 143, 178, 179, 182, 183 Bloch, E., 178 Bloom, Harold, 35 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, 37, 125–26, 172, 200, 291, 310n5, 369, 388–92; on God, 391 boredom and fatigue, 65–66, 76–77, 202, 203, 205 brain, 303

Brasslau, Helene, 154 The Brothers Karamazov (Dostoevsky), 15n12, 373–75 Buber, Martin, 22, 120–22, 187, 207, 291, 322–23, 382 Buddha and Buddhism, 30–31, 63; asceticism, 30; Eightfold Path, 30– 31, 304–5; enlightenment, 30; Four Passing Sights, 30; “no-self,” 302; suffering, 302 Buddhists, 21 Bultmann, Rudolf, 35, 42–43, 171 Burkhardt, Jacob, 211 Camus, Albert, 375 causality, 217 Christendom, 19, 20, 24, 32, 39–40, 95, 184, 201, 355 Christian communions, 35 The Christian Faith (Schleiermacher), 101, 103, 286 Christian nation, 20, 21 Christians/Christianity, 6–7, 21; questionable presumption, 291; religious divisions, 33; theism, 98–123; theocracy, 9, 19–28, 32; as universal, generic religion, 20. See also God; Jesus; religion(s) Christ-mysticism, 42, 139, 147–48, 164, 168, 189, 199, 215 church, 15n12; sacramental system, 142 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 US 310 (2010), 318 civil law and ethics, 13, 15–16n14 Civil War, 5, 18 Clarke, Samuel, 274 Cobb, John B., 231 coercion, 371 cognitive dissonance, 35, 49, 84, 91, 96, 126, 365, 381 Cold War, 4 common ethics, 61–85; anacoluthon, 78–82; dissolution of trust, 73–78; mutual trust and autonomy, 83–85;

Index

prospect and retrospect, 62–66; religious attempts to address ethical problems, 66–73 The Communion of Saints (Bonhoeffer), 391 compatible symbiotic relation, 325 Confessing Church, 389 conscience, 284–85 conscious beings, 36; self-reflective, 323 Constitution of the United States. See U.S. Constitution Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Rorty), ix contingency of conscience, 258 contract theory of justice as fairness, 328–33 corporations, 318, 369; fictitious legal identity, 318 The Cost of Discipleship (Bonhoeffer), 172, 390, 392 courts, 214 Covid-19, x, 3, 19 Creed of Chalcedon, 79 criminal law and ethics, 13, 15–16n14 Critique of Pure Reason (Kant), 100, 131n24 Crossan, John Dominic, 42, 174–76, 190n1, 192n9 Crucifixion, 100; resurrection and, 277; as symbol of grace, 277 cruelty, xi cubism, 186 cultures, 27; axial age, 31; minority, 32; objective consciousness and, 186; quantum mechanics, 187 culture war, 27 Dalai Lama, 6, 33, 34, 37, 62–64, 66, 305; on ethical revolution, 63; on religious differences, 63 Dante, 143, 182, 183, 267n54 Darwinism, 299 Davidson, Donald, 258, 259 death of God: Altizer on, 178–81, 367; Nietzsche on, 110–14, 179, 210, 368

407

decadence, Barzun on, 65, 76 Declaration Toward a Global Ethic, 67–74, 77 de-humanization, long period of, 66 delusion, 296, 297 democracy, lying undermines principles of, 354 Descartes, René, 156, 160, 204, 220, 225, 274 Destruction of Jerusalem, 150 detachment, 151–52 dialectical materialism, 185 difference principle, 91, 341–46, 350– 51, 360n10, 386 discrimination, 18–19, 70–71, 76 distrust, 1, 2 diversity, 2, 11, 17–19; discrimination, 18–19; partisan politics and, 18 divine agency, 36 Docetism, 200, 280, 286, 312n20 Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 143, 185, 373, 392 drug corporations, 75 dualism of body and spirit, 303 Durkheim, Emile, 47, 58n50 Dworkin, Ronald, 15–16n14 Ebeling, Gerhard, 43 Ecce Homo (Nietzsche), ix, 113, 230, 236, 238, 253, 255, 267n54, 268n60 Ecclesiastes, 248, 307 economic justice, 68 ecumenism, 34, 66–67, 72–73 egalitarian movement, 44 ego, 225 egocentrism, 140 Eightfold Path, 30–31, 304–5 Eliade, Mircea, 47, 129n5 empathy and compassion, 386 end, 139–90; detachment from world, 150–52; Heidegger and, 172–73; instinct as an, 216–28; as life-process, 228–44; mythical and mystical, 144–50. See also eschatology Enlightenment, 2, 3, 211, 364

408

Index

E Pluribus Unum, 2 equality, 329; ancient idea, 69–70; cannot be given/bestowed, 21; Declaration on, 69–70; of fair opportunity, 344–45 eschatology, 7, 41–43, 142–44; Altizer’s apocalyptic, 178–87; Crossan’s ethical, 174–76; detachment, 151–52; Heidegger and, 172–73; Pannenberg’s proleptic, 176–78 estrangement, 300 eternal recurrence, 219, 233, 242, 269n71 ethical codes, 13 ethical mysticism versus supra-ethical mysticism, 163–69 ethics, 17–54; as articulated principles, 213; challenge of autonomy, 49–54; as coherent systems of moral principles, 213; defined, 12–13; as invisible element, 213–14; presentday issues/dilemmas, 45–49. See also common ethics; religion(s) Ethics (Bonhoeffer), 390 Ethics and the Future of Religion: Redefining the Absolute (Clark), 52, 57n34, 99 Ethics for the New Millennium (Dalai Lama), 62 ethnic-majority-religious groups, 21 evil, 277–78; in nature, 203 ex cathedra, 340 faith, 13–14. See also trust Fate, 307, 308 fear, 22–24, 164–66, 213, 252, 293 Feuerbach, Ludwig, 11, 124, 125, 127, 133n59, 133n61, 136n116, 143, 259, 304, 367; on consciousness, 109; on idea of God, 106–10; Lectures on the Essence of Religion, 107 Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, 18 figures, 40–45

Final Judgment, 71, 95, 139, 142, 372, 376 First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, 2, 20, 24, 32, 33, 91, 337, 380 forgiveness, 301 Förster, Bernhard, 211 Foucault, Michel, 64, 92, 93, 126, 129n4, 184, 198n77, 215, 236 Founding Fathers, 9, 19, 24, 32–33 Four Great Truths, 30 Four Passing Sights, 30 Fourth Ezra, 376 Francis, St., 185 Franco-Prussian War, 211 free exercise of religion, 25–26 freestanding ethical principles, 14, 371, 372; radical revaluation of values, 354–55 French Revolution, 211 Freud, Sigmund, 11, 29–30, 110, 252, 275, 286, 291–99, 304, 305, 307, 318, 357 Fuchs, Ernst, 43 fundamental consensus, 67 The Future of an Illusion (Freud), 29, 293, 297 gaslighting, xi The Gay Science (Nietzsche), 113, 216, 217, 229 genealogy of morals, 221 geographical discoveries, 364 gerrymandering, 19, 345, 352 God, 20, 98–123, 366–67; Altizer on death of God, 178–81, 367; ancient cultures, 366; Bonhoeffer on, 391; as an anthromorphic symbol of life, 300; Clarke on, 274; Descartes on, 274; Feuerbach on, 106–10; Hegel on Absolute Spirit, 79, 104–6, 118, 123, 146–47, 158, 177, 181, 211, 223, 232, 378; Kant on, 99–101; Leibniz on, 274; Nietzsche on death of God, 110–14, 179, 210, 368;

Index

Robinson on, 367; Rubenstein on, 367–68; Scharlemann on, 118–23, 126–27; Tillich on, 115–19, 123–26, 300–302 Golden Rule, 68, 70, 77, 139 Goodin, David K., 152 Gospel of Matthew, 79 grace, 276–77 “The Grand Inquisitor” (a section in The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky), 15n12, 48, 324, 374–75 The Grapes of Wrath (Steinbeck), 325, 384–86 Grayling, A. C., 37, 93, 341 Great Irish famine, 4 guilt, 275–79, 392 gun: homicides and suicides, 75; private possession, 75; sales, 75 Hamilton, William, 110, 180–81 happiness, inner peace as, 63 Harnack, Adolf von, 144, 171, 191n5 Harris, Sam, 38 Hegel, G. W. F., 133n50, 178, 179, 181–86, 197n61, 211, 216, 223, 231–32, 237, 238, 241, 246, 251–53, 262n20, 265n40, 280–82, 286, 287, 290, 314n37; absolute idealism of, 317; on Absolute Spirit or God, 79, 104–6, 118, 123, 146–47, 158, 177, 181, 211, 223, 232, 378; on Crucifixion, 181; speculative idealism, 282 Heidegger, Martin, 23, 43, 52, 116, 172–73, 237, 267n54, 270n79, 283– 85, 313n30, 314n37, 366 Hellenistic mysticism, 147 Hermann, Wilhelm, 170, 192n19 heteronomy, 324–25 Hindu, 21; fundamentalists, 21 Hinduism, 31, 38, 70, 365 History of Dogma (Harnack), 191n5 Hobby Lobby case, 25–26 Holocaust, 367 Honest to God (Robinson), 367

409

honesty, 171, 253–58 Human, All-Too-Human (Nietzsche), 255 human depravity, 303 human rights, 82 humans: evolution, 364; history of responsibility, 28–34; saving, by sacrificing oneself, 386–92 human thinking, radical transformation in, 364 hunting-gathering societies, 364–65 illusions, 296, 297 images and symbols, 34–37 immigration, 32 Incarnation, 36, 40, 104, 105, 124, 175, 199, 200, 233, 288 India, 1; caste system, 5; Hindus/ Hindutva ideal, 21, 58n41 individualism, 34 Inferno (Dante), 182 inner peace, 63 instinct, 215; arts, 217–18; being natural, 217; as an end, 216–28; Freud on, 298; manifestations of, 217; spiritualization of, 250–51 instinctual certainty versus relativism, 159–61 instinctual trust, 162–63 insurance policies, 367 Inventing a Christian America: The Myth of the Religious Founding (Green), 58n41 Iran, 9 ironist, xi irrevocable ethical directives, 68 Islam, 38–39 Jainism, 31, 38, 365 James, William, 38, 127, 203, 222, 305– 6, 315–16n53, 316n55, 372, 376 Jaspers, Karl, 31 Jefferson, Thomas, 9, 24, 90, 91, 336– 37, 340, 358 Jesus, 7; cultural interpretation, 41; dehumanizing of, 280–82; dying

410

Index

on a cross or death of, 78–81; as egalitarian, 41; historical, 43–45; as human, 80; “New Being,” 301; resurrection, 43, 45, 147–49, 172–74, 176–78, 277; scholarly analyses, 41; suffering and death, 150. See also eschatology Jesus Seminar, 44 Jewish Emancipation, 211 Joachim de Fiore, 142 joint tenants, 363, 370 Joyce, James, 178, 179, 182, 184 Judaism, 32, 79, 367 justice: equal liberty principle, 127, 335, 337–38, 379; as fairness, 328–33; intuition, 334, 335; men’s conceptions of, 334; political conception of, 14, 332, 333, 336–41; Rawls conception/principles/theory of, 328–55 just social order, 303 Kant, Immanuel, 8, 99; Critique of Pure Reason (Kant), 100, 131n24; on idea of God, 99–101; on lying, 354; self-incurred tutelage, 365; sense of “ought,” 349–50; on sin or evil, 280 Kaufmann, Walter, 7, 216, 221, 224, 225, 232, 240, 251 Kierkegaard, Soren, 39, 79–80, 143, 184, 186, 196n57, 201, 281 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 77 kings, 31–32. See also priests Küng, Hans, 34, 43, 66–67, 81, 86n20, 172, 206 Labor Law, 15–16n14 lack (human), 299–303; Freud on, 299; as ignorance, 302; potentiality, 286–92 language, ix, 204; as contingent “alternative tool,” 258; Davidson’s “passing theory” of, 258

law, 19–20, 214; difference principle, 350–51; ethical foundation, 27; rule of, 5, 349–52; taxation, 350–51 law enforcement agencies, 75 The Law of Peoples (Rawls), 10, 261 Leaky, Richard, 363–64 Lectures on the Essence of Religion (Feuerbach), 107 Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (Hegel), 104 legal contract, 331 legal system, freedoms in, 89 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 101, 204, 253, 274–75, 280, 310n3 “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” (King), 77 Letters and Papers from Prison (Bonhoeffer), 291, 391 liberal, xi liberal democracy, 8 life, 14; fulfilling or better, 372; James on, 372; Nietzsche’s view, 208, 219, 228–44; Schopenhauer’s view of, 208 The Life of Jesus Critically Examined (Strauss), 286 Locke, John, 279 Logos Christology, 148 love, 110 Madison, James, 9, 11, 24, 32–33, 55n12, 90, 91, 336–37, 340, 352, 358 majoritarianism, 11, 21 marriage, 5, 326 Marx, Karl, 106, 185 Merkel, Angela, 5 metaphysics of infinity, 65, 215, 318; critical reflection versus retention of, 87–98; prioritizing being over becoming, 283–86 military conflicts, 74–75 Milton, John, 178, 183 minorities, 21–22, 32, 76 miracles, 274

Index

Moltmann, Jürgen, 178, 193n31, 196n56 monads, 274, 275 money laundering, 75 monotheism, 94, 104, 295 Montana case, 25, 56n16 Montanism, 183 moral codes, 13 morality, 7, 29; of “castratism,” 224 moral liberalism, 328 Moral Man and Immoral Society (Niebuhr), 3 moral person, 47, 82 Mt. Sinai, 276, 277 multinational corporations. See corporations Muslims, 21; resenting ISIS, 27 mutual autonomy, 8, 13; development of trust in, 162–63; mutual trust and, 49, 83–85; social human and, 28 mutual trust, 10, 11, 20, 49, 83–85 mysticism of Being, 139–40, 155–69; ethical versus supra-ethical, 163–69; fundamental datum, 155–56; instinctual certainty versus relativism, 159–61; instinctual will-to-live, 156–58; reflection on relations, 161–62; trust, 162–63; union with real finite Beings, 158–59 myths, 34–35; Christology, 35; Western religions, 35 natural survival instinct, 321 natural world, Leibniz’s idea of, 274, 275 New Hermeneutic, 43 new millennium, 1; anticipations of, 61; common ethic, 61–85 New Testament, 34, 42, 130n11, 175, 252 Nicholson, Jack, 299 Niebuhr, Reinhold, 3–4 Nietzsche, Friedrich, ix, xi, xiii, 3, 6–8, 200–201, 203, 318, 319; on altruism, 376–77; on aristocracy, 329; as an atheist, 111; Beyond Good and Evil,

411

240; on “death of God,” 110–14, 179, 210, 368; on democracy, 329; describing himself in third person, 82; Ecce Homo, ix, 113, 230, 236, 238, 253, 255, 267n54, 268n60; education, 210; The Gay Science, 113, 216, 217, 229; on honesty, 253–58; on idealism, 253; illnesses, 211; as an immoralist, 111, 179, 205, 212, 223–24; on immortal man on earth, 200–201; on instinct, 215–28; Jesus and, 201; on Kant, 111, 253; on Leibniz, 253; on life, 208, 219, 228–44; list of “liars” or “counterfeiters,” 253–54; literary focus, 184; Lutheran Christian background, 210; as a medical orderly, 211; nihilism and, 184, 205, 212, 222, 223, 230, 252; on “origin” of morality, 213; on passions, 250–51; perspectivism, 292–93; physio-psychological analysis, 252, 304; private-fulfillment focus, 320; protesting anti-life moral ideals, 111; relations with other people, 377–78; revaluation of all values, 82, 205, 215, 254; Schweitzer on isolation of, 210–11; small virtues, 151; three metamorphoses of the spirit (analogies of “camel, lion, and child”), 51–54, 81–82, 237–39, 254, 257; on truthfulness, 171, 253–58; Übermensch (overman), 113, 215, 222, 228, 233, 234, 237, 255, 270n75, 293, 319, 356; “Why I Am So Clever,” 113–14; writings, 226, 377–78 Nietzsche Contra Wagner (Nietzsche), 255 9/11 attacks, 73–74 Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, 18 novels/plays, 304, 373–76 objective consciousness, 186

412

Index

objective knowledge, 186 obsessive neurosis, 297 “Oh, my God!”, 367 Old Testament, 175 oligarchies, 1 Origins Reconsidered: In Search of What Makes us Human (Leaky), 363 otherness, 205 overcoming of self. See will-to-power overlapping consensus, 333, 339, 379 overman (Übermensch), 113, 215, 222, 228, 233, 234, 237, 255, 270n75, 293, 319, 356 pandemic, 369 panentheism, 115, 116 Pannenberg, Wolfhart, 43, 130n13, 133n61, 143, 172, 174, 176–78, 194n39, 194–95n45, 195nn51, 54, 231 pantheism, 115 Papal Infallibility, 43, 48 paradigms, 297 Paris Bach Society, 155 Parliament of the World’s Religions, 5; addressing ethical/religious problems, 67–73 partisan politics, 2, 18 passions, 250–51 Paul the Apostle, 7, 16n15, 276–77, 311n9, 366; Christ-mysticism, 42, 139, 147–48, 164, 168, 189, 199, 215, 277, 383; eschatology, 147; ethics for, 149–50; idea of “redemption,” 36, 147, 149, 200; legal-ethical system, 276; new Jesus movement, 276; non-heterosexual activity, 252; opposition to a law, 203; readings of Psalms, 291, 302–3; status-quo ethic, 149, 151; view of the Torah, 276–77, 292 phenomena, 217 Phenomenology of Spirit (Hegel), 128n1, 181

Philosophy of Civilization (Schweitzer), 154, 155, 157, 191n7 pity (impersonal or non-personal), 301 The Plague (Camus), 375 Plato, 31, 45–46, 317, 366 pluralism, 21, 201, 318, 320, 339; consciousness of, 340; system of justice, 201 political leaders, 4 political liberalism, 10, 260, 321, 328, 332–33, 336, 358, 379 Political Liberalism (Rawls), 332–33, 338, 341 political order, 303 Pope, 340 post-death life, 142 poverty, 68 power, 1, 4 practical reason, 99 priests, 31–32. See also kings private-fulfillment focus, 320 privilege, 4 Proust, 314n37 public reason, 27, 334, 340; versus nonpublic reason, 10 pure procedural justice, 345 quantum mechanics, 187 Quest of the Historical Jesus (Schweitzer), 154 Qur’an, 39 racism, 5, 75 radical revaluation of values, 354–55 Radical Theology and the Death of God (Altizer and Hamilton), 180–81 Rawls, John, 3, 4, 8, 309, 321, 366, 378–79; associations, 304; contract theory of justice as fairness, 328–33; difference principle, 91, 341–46, 350–51, 360n10, 386; religious background of, 378; on religious institutions, 340; using “disinterest,” 347; on voting, 19; World War II, 378

Index

realistic confrontation, 323 reason and instinct, 322 The Reason of Following (Scharlemann), 192n19, 258, 319 reciprocity, 343 redemption: Nietzsche’s idea of, 200, 223, 232–34; Paul’s idea of, 36, 147, 149, 200 reflective equilibrium, 329, 333 reflective humans beings, 322 reform prophets of Ancient Israel, 31 refugees, 5, 21, 76 Reimarus, Herman Samuel, 42, 146 relational words, 22, 120–21, 322 relations/relationship with other humans, 372–73; altruism, 376–77; novels/plays and, 373–76 relativism, instinctual certainty versus, 159–61 religion(s), 5–6, 17–54; absolutism, 6; anacoluthon, 78–82; contingent perspectives, 37–45; critical approach to, 318; defined, 12; exclusiveness and divisiveness, 206; faith, 13–14; figures, 40–45; free exercise, 25–26; history, 28–34; as an ideology, 12; images and symbols, 34–37; misuse/ unethical activities, 67–68; neutral symbols, 206; present ethical issues and ancient absolute ethics, 45–49; theocracy, 9, 19–28, 32; values, 33; Whitehead’s assertion, 38. See also God; Jesus religious identities, 22 religious institutions: authoritarianism, 9; stifling autonomy, 9 religious pluralism. See pluralism religious structures, 29 religious test, constitutional prohibition of, 18 religious war, 27 representation, 186 rescue, 299–301 ressentiment, 6–7, 82, 124, 192–93n20, 210, 218, 222–23, 260, 320

413

resurrection: bodily, 142–43; book of Daniel, 148; Hegel’s idea of, 181; Jesus Christ, 43, 45, 147–49, 172– 74, 176–78, 277; Judaism on, 95; Messianic kingdom, 148; Pannenberg on, 143, 176–78; Paul’s letters, 147; Scharlemann on, 173; spiritual, 223 revaluation of all values (Nietzsche), 82, 205, 215, 254 “Reverence for Life,” 139–40, 189, 199, 206, 329, 386 Robinson, John A. T., 367 Roman Catholic tradition, 279 Rorty, Richard, xii, 301, 321; approach to human solidarity, 307; concerns, 317; Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, ix; Davidson’s “passing theory” of language and, 258; as an “ironist,” 1; on moral progress, 258, 309; on past four centuries, 307; relations between people, 373, 375– 76; sensitivity to others, x–xi, 22–23, 59n53; social solidarity, xi, 22; on suffering, 321, 369; on truth, 258 Rubenstein, Richard L., 59n56, 111, 159, 181, 197nn64–65, 246, 265n38, 367–68, 380–81 rude awakening, 73–78 Rule Against Perpetuities, 15–16n14 rule of law, 5, 349–52 Russia, 211 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 114, 173, 257, 286, 308, 309, 324, 380 Scharlemann, Robert P., 35, 44; on idea of God, 118–23, 126–27; as a Lutheran pastor, 126 Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 12, 43, 101–4, 106, 118, 123, 126, 132n35, 136n116, 177, 186, 197n61, 233, 253–54, 280–82, 286–87, 315n45 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 208, 211, 229, 231, 233, 253, 267n49, 270n76 Schweitzer, Albert, 3, 6–8, 10, 11, 139–90, 199–201, 304, 318, 319;

414

Index

Altizer on, 140; on altruism, 319, 376–77; autobiographical works, 152; criticism of Hegel, 106; on Descartes’ “cogito,” 156; education, 152, 154; ethical mysticism versus supra-ethical mysticism, 163–69; on historical Jesus, 41–42, 143; on historical person, 144; on knowledge of external world, 204; medical career, 155; medical education, 154; as a medical missionary to Africa, 152–54; mysticism of Being, 155– 69, 199, 378; Nobel Peace Prize to, 152, 155, 319; on one’s union with Christ, 277; private-fulfillment focus, 320; religious background, 378; suffering of the others, 378 science: being accessible, 297; paradigms, 297 self-analysis, 304–5 self-denial, 319 self-discipline, 251 self-emptying, 181, 302 self-incurred tutelage, 365 self-overcoming. See will-to-power self-perfection, 251 self-preservation, 29, 321, 325 self-reflective conscious beings, 323 self-sacrifice, 7 self-salvation, 300 sense of responsibility, 13 “Sermon on the Mount,” 150–51; Bonhoeffer’s analysis of, 390; Nietzsche’s analysis of, 251; Schweitzer’s view on, 172 slave-morality, 216, 223–24, 252, 263n20 slavery, 5, 34, 39 social contract, 321, 324–55; betrayal of trust, 354; building or drawing, 326; complete agreement, 347; disinterest, 347, 348; independent principles and, 348; justice as fairness, 328–33; principles, 335, 377; public proclamation, 326; pure

procedural justice, 345; role of trust, 346–55; self-interest, 347; sharing and supporting life, 386; unanimous consent, 348; utilitarian ethic, 34 social solidarity, xi, 22, 324 Socrates, 31, 216, 241 Soelle, Dorothee, 185 solution, 306 soul, 142–43, 366 Spirit, Hegel’s idea of, 79, 104–6, 118, 123, 146–47, 158, 177, 211, 223, 232, 378 Spirit of Christianity (Hegel), 132n43, 181 spiritual body, 366 spiritualization of instinct, 250–51 Steinbeck, John, 384 Strauss, David F., 35, 42, 118, 143, 238, 286, 287 sublimation, 7, 54, 151, 220, 227, 232, 250–52. See also will-to-power suffering, x, 30, 321–22, 369; Buddhism, 302; confrontation, 321, 323; guilt and, 275–79; identity of, 325; reality or threat of, 321–22; universal ability to respond, 383–86 Sunyata (self-emptying), 302 supra-ethical mysticism, 106; universal ethical mysticism versus, 163–69 Supreme Court of the United States, 20; Hobby Lobby case, 25–26; Montana case, 25, 56n16 symbols. See images and symbols Systematic Theology (Tillich), 284 ta eschata (the last things), 142 taxation/tax law, 350–51 tax legislation, 3 Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, 364 telos, 140 terrorism, 1, 73–74 Terry v. Ohio, 86n17 Teutonic gods, 211 theism, 98–123. See also God theocracy, 9, 19–28, 32

Index

theonomy, 300 theory of justice, 8, 10, 20, 260, 321, 328–33, 349, 379; difference principle, 91, 341–46, 350–51, 360n10, 386 A Theory of Justice (Rawls), 332, 333, 341 thinking, 303 threat of modern science, 340 three metamorphoses of the spirit (analogies of “camel, lion, and child”), 51–54, 81–82, 237–39, 254, 257 Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Nietzsche), xi, 51, 112–13, 219, 222, 233–34, 237, 247, 271n85, 298 Tillich, Paul, 37, 57n36, 58n47, 110, 111, 162, 164, 203, 291, 310n1, 312–13n25, 313–14n33, 319, 367; apologetic theology, 115, 117; Christian theology, 300; eschatological talk, 171–72; estrangement with God, 285, 300–301; human lack, 284–85; on idea of God, 115–19, 123, 124, 125, 126, 300–302; as a pan-en-theist, 115; self-salvation, 285; Systematic Theology, 284 toleration, 337; and common interest, 337–38; of intolerant, 338 Totem and Taboo (Freud), 297 totemism, 297 trust, 2–3; concept, 13–14; dissolution of, 73–78; instinctual, 162–63; as instinctual, 2; lies dissolving, 2; mutual, 10, 11, 20, 49, 83–85; as mutual agreement, 77 trustworthiness, 325, 353–54 truthfulness: Nietzsche on, 171, 253–58; will-to-live, 169–71 Twain, Mark, 307, 308, 316n57 Twilight of the Idols (Nietzsche), 219, 221, 229–31, 246, 253, 269n71 two sets of ethics, 379–83

415

Übermensch (overman), 113, 215, 222, 228, 233, 234, 237, 255, 270n75, 293, 319, 356 uneasiness, 306 United States, 1 University in Strassburg, 152 University of Basel, 211 University of Berlin, 389 unjust peace, 4 Upanishads, 31 Updike, John, 373 U.S. Constitution: conception of the majority, 11; Fifteenth Amendment, 18; First Amendment, 2, 20, 24, 32, 33, 91, 337, 380; freedom of diversity, 19; Nineteenth Amendment, 18; prohibiting religious test, 18; theocracy, 9, 15–16n14 utilitarianism, 3, 34, 318; capitalism/ capitalist society, 3–4, 282; as dominant ethics, 282 Vahanian, Gabriel, 110 values, 364; cultural, 304; radical revaluation of, 354–55 van Buren, Paul, 110 Varieties of the Religious Experience (James), 305–6 Vedism, 31 voter suppression, 19 voting, right of, 19 Wagner, Cosima, 211, 243, 244 Wagner, Richard, 211, 243–44, 254–56, 270n76, 356 Werner, Martin, 142 West/Western cultures/cultural life, 3, 19; Barzun on, 62, 64–66; as cybertechnical-world, 65; egalitarianism, 41; equality idea in, 69; myth in, 35 What Is Christianity (Harnack), 144, 191n5 white-collar criminals, 76

416

Index

Whitehead, Alfred North, 37–38, 231 “Why I Am So Clever” (Nietzsche), 113–14 Will Humanity Survive Religion? Beyond Divisive Absolutes (Clark), 51, 372, 373 will-to-live, 7, 14, 203–8; being responsible for, 371–79; coercion, 371; fundamental datum, 155–56; instinctual, 156–58; mutual trust and autonomy, 83–85; as primary power, 319; social solidarity, 386; trusting others, 167–69; truthfulness, 169–71 will-to-power, 6–7, 14, 244–52, 321; continuous creativity, 233; instinct,

221–26; as primary power, 319; as pro-life human instinct, 321; purpose of life, 228–44; sublimation, 7, 54, 151, 220, 227, 232, 250–52 women, voting right, 18 world, 35–36; conscious beings, 36; religious people and, 36 World War I, 106, 143, 320, 388 World War II, 378 Wrede, William, 146 Zarathustra, xi, 28, 31, 112–13, 192– 93n20, 220, 226–28, 231, 233–34, 237, 244, 247–49, 254–55, 257–58, 264n31, 268n54, 271n85, 298, 301, 308, 321, 342

About the Author

W. Royce Clark, PhD, JD, is professor emeritus of Pepperdine University. He began teaching religion in college in 1961 in Portland, Oregon. He received his PhD from the School of Religion of the University of Iowa in 1973, with his dissertation being directed by the late Robert P. Scharlemann. He is the author of Will Humanity Survive Religion? Beyond Divisive Absolutes (Lexington/Fortress Academic, 2020) and Ethics and the Future of Religion: Redefining the Absolute (Lexington/Fortress Academic, 2021). During his thirty-one years with Pepperdine (1970‒2001), Prof. Clark taught undergraduate and graduate classes in the history of religions, modern and contemporary Christian thought, and many courses in ethics as well as biblical studies courses, and organized team-taught courses in human values and introduction to religion. After receiving his JD from Pepperdine School of Law in 1985, he taught courses in the law of religion and state. Beginning in 1986, he and two colleagues organized and taught a five-semester course of study in the “Great Books.” He has published in the areas of euthanasia, the legal status of religious studies in higher education, post-Holocaust theology, and on particular religious thinkers, including Wolfhart Pannenberg, Friedrich Schleiermacher, and Richard Rubenstein. He has participated in many professional societies and seminar groups, presenting papers on various topics such as the alteration of the ethics behind the criminal law “exclusionary rule,” the idea of reconciliation in Dostoevsky, ultimate concern and Susan Sontag, and religious hermeneutics and Constitutional interpretation, among other topics.

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