Towards a phenomenology of courageous willing
This paper was based on a presentation to the World Phenomenology Institute, meeting in conjunction with the World Congress of Philosophy, Istanbul, Turkey, August 12, 2003. It has been published as Jeffrey Wattles “Towards a Phenomenology of Courageous Willing.” In A.-T. Tymieniecka, ed. Phenomenology of Life: Meeting the Challenges of the Present-Day World. Analecta Husserliana, vol. 84. 81-95. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer, 2005 (February 2005).
What is the phenomenologist’s vocation in the world of life? If we think of the world in terms of its present challenges, then we can answer, to begin with, that our vocation is to cultivate courageous living in response to these challenges. This is a universal human task. The phenomenologist, specifically, can draw on the resources of phenomenology to articulate courageous living in helpful ways.
Facing world problems—environmental, biological, social, economic, political, and cultural—the mind is staggered. The uncertainties are great and the disappointments deep; we sometime confront apparent defeat; the sheer difficulty of the tasks is daunting; immensities loom; and there is much that is inexplicable. The problems call for well-focused resources of mind, body, soul, and spirit, mobilized in decisions of the integrated personality, cooperating in teamwork with others. At a time when scientific understanding, philosophic wisdom, and spiritual inspiration so need to be creatively joined, nothing is easier than to abandon hope. Phenomenology can help by developing accounts of willing that show new paths for growth in courageous living.
In what follows I narrow the topic (for the most part) from courageous living to courageous willing. I take it that willing has a major impact on living, including on how we experience things. To be sure, willing does not arise in a cognitive vacuum. In the classical case, willing rests upon deliberation, which rests in turn upon evaluation, which rests upon interpretation, which rests upon perception. In other words, one’s grasp of fact is basic to one’s interpretation of a situation, which in turn founds one’s grasp of the values implicit in the situation, the values that willing strives to actualize. A fatalistic or pessimistic outlook would subvert courageous willing. In what follows I make sorties into the phenomenology of some of the relevant spiritual experiences; but much of what I propose could be affirmed by Bertrand Russell, when he proclaimed a vision of humanity’s potential glory in science, art, and ethics, despite what he took to be the fact that the prospect for human greatness is a cosmic accident destined to eternal annihilation.[i][i]
The coming sections first rehearse some contributions of William James to a phenomenology of courageous willing, then describe a typology of challenges and correlated responses, and last indicate how the spiritual domain of life referred to in the second section responds to the contemporary need for a measure.
I. Courageous willing
William James is a prime resource for a phenomenology of courageous willing. His philosophy of the “strenuous” life celebrates vigorous responses to problems. Like Paul Ricoeur and Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, James shows a healthy respect for reality and its constraints, while a spiritual perspective repeatedly comes through to invigorate hope.
Courageous living, at its maximum, is heroic living, and James gives a characterization of the hero in his essay, “Will,” which I will quote at length to give the momentum needed to convey the tone.
The huge world that girdles us about puts all sorts of questions to us, and tests us in all sorts of ways. Some of the tests we meet by actions that are easy, and some of the questions we answer in articulately formulated words. But the deepest question that is ever asked admits of no reply but the dumb turning of the will and tightening of our heart-strings as we say, “Yes, I will even have it so!” When a dreadful object is presented, or when life as a whole turns up its dark abysses to our view, then the worthless ones among us lose their hold on the situation altogether, and either escape from its difficulties by averting their attention, or if they cannot do that, collapse into yielding masses of plaintiveness and fear. The effort required for facing and consenting to such objects is beyond their power to make. But the heroic mind does differently. To it, too, the objects are sinister and dreadful, unwelcome, incompatible with wished-for things. But it can face them if necessary, without for that losing its hold upon the rest of life. The world thus finds in the heroic man its worthy match and mate; and the effort which he is able to put forth to hold himself erect and keep his heart unshaken is the direct measure of his worth and function in the game of human life. He can stand this Universe. He can meet it and keep up his faith in it in presence of those same features which lay his weaker brethren low. He can still find a zest in it, not by “ostrich-like forgetfulness,” but by pure inward willingness to face it with these deterrent objects there. And hereby he makes himself one of the masters and the lords of life. He must be counted with henceforth; he forms a part of human destiny.[ii][ii]
Given a description of the hero, the question arises how we attain or approach that level of living.
To some extent, we are stimulated to high-energy living by various factors. In “The Energies of Men,” James lists eight kinds of stimuli that operate either in crisis situations or in a sustained way: excitements, ideas, efforts, duty, crowd-pressure, the example of others, contagion, and “conversions, whether they be political, scientific, philosophic, or religious”.[iii][iii] James expands on the example of others in the same paragraph just quoted:
Just as our courage is so often a reflex of another’s courage, so our faith is apt to be a faith in some one else’s faith. We draw new life from the heroic example. The prophet has drunk more deeply than anyone of the cup of bitterness, but his countenance is so unshaken and he speaks such mighty words of cheer that his will becomes our will, and our life is kindled at his own.[iv][iv]
Despite James’s keen personal interest in religion, he repeatedly notes the generality of the salient features that he grasps in religious living. Not only may there be non-religious conversions, but the qualitative transformation of heroic work may affect any kind of effort. James notes that high-energy living shows not only a quantitative change but also a qualitative transformation; and he notes that the efforts involved may be “physical work, intellectual, work, moral work, or spiritual work.”[v][v]
In “The Energies of Men” James takes heroic living to result from liberating the organism’s latent energies, which most of us are unaccustomed to use because we are blocked in various ways by the force of competing functions, such as ideas that run counter to what we would otherwise choose.
In “Will,” James makes two especially relevant claims. First, he proposes that “effort of attention is . . . the essential phenomenon of will.” He asks how a particular “idea of action” “comes to prevail stably in the mind.” “The whole difficulty is a mental difficulty, a difficulty with an ideal object of our thought. It is, in one word, an idea to which our will applies itself, an idea which if we let it go would slip away, but which we will not let go. Consent to the idea’s undivided presence, this is effort’s sole achievement.”[vi][vi]
James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience adds to his picture of heroic living. As a result of “conversion,” the individual gains enhanced access to energies and inspiration coming from beyond the conscious mind. One of the defining marks of religious living is that is manifests either a lyrical or a heroic character. Thus we can say that courageous living in some cases results from the change in the “personal center of energy” that occurs in religious conversion .[vii][vii]
Building on selected ideas of James, then, one may synthesize the following view. Courageous living integrates every dimension of the human being, from (1) the life in the cells of the body, through (2) the unconscious and conscious mind, to (3) the immanent-and-transcendent divine spirit. Faith, mobilizing the full powers of the personality, achieves this vital integration.
II. Types of challenge
Philosophy can assist positive motivation to become more effective by differentiating types of challenge. Since these types may be combined, a given problem may seem needlessly overwhelming, but distinguishing them as aspect of a task helps one focus inner resources on the problem. Since Descartes proposed to solve complex problems by breaking them into their simplest elements, later philosophy has persuaded us that there are no atomic elements that can be truly isolated from the whole; nevertheless, it remains true that focusing on elemental aspects of a problem has practical leverage.
The types of challenge discussed here are uncertainty, disappointment, apparent defeat, difficulties, the immensity of a task, and the inexplicable. Since “difficulties” is a general term, embracing all the other types of challenge in this list, it seems odd to list it as a separate category. Nevertheless, the list makes sense if we consider it from a narrative perspective. First we encounter uncertainty, then, perhaps disappointment; the situation becomes more acute if we face apparent defeat. Finally, having thus far mobilized our resources, step by step, there remains the task of directly facing the specific difficulties of the case. As we do so, taking up the labor of the task before us, we may feel overwhelmed by the immensity of it all. Finally, there may be things that we remain unable to explain.
1. Uncertainty
In virtue of the most primitive intuition that all animals share, an amoeba instinctively reaches out to encompass a particle of food, and it instinctively withdraws to protect itself if poked. Uncertainty often elicits a protective response rather than a positive, eager response. Although the uncertainty of a playful game is a positive stimulus, when the stakes are high and the self feels threatened, uncertainty becomes an obstacle to effective performance. However, it is possible to reflect upon uncertainty so as to elicit the emergence of the positive attitude. Reflection enables new meanings and values to come to light, and the lure of these values (in Whitehead’s phrase) motivates the act of will that assumes the positive attitude. Moreover, it is possible to make this positive response to uncertainty a habit, to that the very recognition of uncertainty as such is enough to stimulate the positive response.
Regarding degrees of uncertainty or confidence in a belief, Husserl portrayed doxic modalities along a spectrum running from fully certain affirmation to equally certain rejection.[viii][viii] In between are shades of ”probable,” “doubtful,” simply “uncertain,” and “probably false.” As Husserl recognized, there is a fundamental certainty that underlies doxic modifications of certainty. For example, when we find something to be doubtful we find it certainly doubtful. Note that Husserl would distinguish noetic uncertainty—the uncertainty of the conscious subject—from noematic uncertainty, which pertains to the thematic proposition or situation under consideration. We may fall into complete error, being certain of what is false; for example, when paralyzed by a challenge, we may be seized by a false certainty, such as, “I am alone in having to deal with this problem.” Our very understanding of the world may be infected with false certainties.
To translate Husserl’s analysis of modalities of belief into the realm of doing could lead to something like the following analysis. There is a fundamental confidence, the sense, “I can,” which sustains our actions primordially. This “I can” remains fundamental even when we fearfully withdraw from something that is poking us. We continue to assume, in this case, that we can withdraw and that doing so will in some measure distance ourselves from the unwelcome provocation. The “I can” is furthermore associated with confidence in our ability to discern the path ahead and to pursue our course effectively. It is precisely this confidence that may be modified in situations of uncertainty. We may move from confidence to the sense that success is merely probable, possible, or doubtful. The action to be taken may be clear, but the consequences may be unclear. Or the action to be taken may be unclear. Reflection on the uncertainties gives an opportunity for the spontaneous confidence of the “I can” to infuse our future-regarding attention.[ix][ix] Facing possibilities honestly and thinking through strategies of response allows belief in the reality of our power as agents to be renewed. The “I can” may expand to a “we can.” The more faith one has in the other person or persons involved, the more robust will be the “we can.”
Because of the intimate correlation between consciousness and world, doubt makes the world look more frightening and hostile, while faith makes the world look more inviting and friendly. The “I can” envisions the world as a realm where, in a significant measure, we know things to be “work-with-able.” The world is a realm in which we can cope, solve problems, cooperate, and achieve goals. Of course it is essential not to set expectations too high; moreover, though our ideals be sublime, our ability to live up to them grows gradually.
Reflection allows the mind to thematize fear and doubt, thus to distance oneself from the immediacy of these emotions so as to allow them to be replaced by intelligent prudence and realistic confidence. Aristotle’s analysis of akrasia, the failure of self-control, includes the insight that success in action depends in part upon the mind’s sustaining a proper understanding of the situation. For example, a temptation must be regarded under the aspects of its being harmful and wrong rather than under the aspects of its being attractive and available; or, better yet, the situation is seen so resolutely and constructively that temptation does not arise. Reflection enhances the power of choice to direct attention to those features of a situation associated with positive potentials. Such “positive thinking” must not be confused with blind optimism. In a bad situation, a tactical retreat may be advisable; in a period of civilizational decline, the best one may be able to do is to slow the decline and prepare for a later upturn. The reflection in question promotes the mental poise that avoids irrational responses and realistically discerns the requirements of the situation.
William James is the philosopher of positive attitude in the presence of uncertainty, and we return to his work for an illustration.
Suppose, for example, that I am climbing in the Alps, and have had the ill-luck to work myself into a position from which the only escape is by a terrible leap. Being without similar experience, I have no evidence of my ability to perform it successfully; but hope and confidence in myself make me sure I shall not miss my aim, and nerve my feet to execute what without those subjective emotions would perhaps have been impossible. But suppose that, on the contrary, the emotions of fear and mistrust preponderate; or suppose that, having just read the Ethics of Belief, I feel it would be sinful to act upon an assumption unverified by previous experience—why, then I shall hesitate so long that at last, exhausted and trembling, and launching myself in a moment of despair, I miss my footing and roll into the abyss.[x][x]
For James, the great questions of life cannot be decided by scientific evidence or by intellectual reasoning. Rather, they call for a choice of attitude which alone holds the key to many successes that would otherwise be missed.
The ideal of vigorous, even heroic, response to challenges should not be taken to extremes. The ideal does not imply hastily and harshly suppressing sadnesss, for example, which leads to a divided self, not an integrated self. Moreover, in my opinion, James goes too far in the direction of voluntarism, giving too little credit to the way that a realization of truth can guide the decisions of the will. Consider, for example, the difference between the will to believe (which is prepared to override one’s better judgment) and the will that believes, namely in the light of its recognition of truth.
When facing uncertainty one may have the chance to consider possible alternatives with some thoroughness, so as to allow inner resources to emerge to assist one in facing unwelcome possibilities. If strategic planning in business and politics helps mobilize the resources of reason, how much more benefit may one gain from opening oneself to a fresh infusion from the depths of the inner life! The creativity of the inner life surfaces in occurrences of insight when, for example, a great scientist is in a moment of undirected relaxation and openness—Archimedes in his bath, Newton under the apple tree. Sometimes the answer comes in moments of surrender where one releases conscious effort on a problem. An ideal process of reflection makes time for letting go of one’s grasp of the problem in order to become receptive to an incursion from beyond the conscious mind.
2. Disappointment
Disappointment, whether occasioned by factors outside or within oneself, explodes hope previously held. Whether the hope was a definite, explicit expectation or a tacit protention, disappointment changes one’s emotional course and often one’s practical course as well.
Josef Pieper distinguishes two kinds of hope: particular hopes, correlated with events in the world and fundamental hope, which has no object that can be found in the world. He notes, “Precisely in disappointment, and perhaps in it alone, we are offered the challenge of entering into this broader existential realm of hope per se.”[xi][xi] Fundamental or existential hope cannot be disappointed by any worldly outcome, and it persists even in the face of death.
Fundamental hope finds expression in the protention toward and expectation of a life after death. Religions articulate these expectations differently, but they generally offer the faithful something positive to look forward to. From the perspective of faith, one’s essential interests are not at stake in any situation in which one may be called upon to sacrifice. One’s essential future is secure. The resulting confidence liberates energy for decisive and committed living.
Assurance of eternal life, to be sure, may become fanatical if religious conviction is not integrated, balanced, with scientific realism, philosophic interpretation of meanings, ever-expanding spiritual experience, the recreation offered by the beauties of nature, the education of vision offered by the arts, and sturdy ethical commitments.[xii][xii]
Contemplating history in an age when humankind are threatened by nuclear weapons, Pieper raises the question whether there can be a credible, non-empirical, “prophetic” insight into the historical future of humankind. Of course individuals will judge for themselves what they find credible or not. Nevertheless, the promise of an advanced civilization on our planet gives some content to the notion of human destiny. Acknowledging that neither empirical science nor philosophic reasoning could prove the validity of the notion, Immanuel Kant called it an Idea, suggesting that it could help us organize our empirical knowledge of history and guide our practical participation in history.
Spiritual hope for human progress toward a high planetary destiny links fundamental hope with a partly determinate worldly goal. Although this hope is capable of being empirically refuted, it has an extraordinary resilience, since nothing short of the destruction of the human race would refute it. This spiritual hope could be a unifier in today’s world.
Fundamental hope enhances our readiness to tread the path into which disappointment forces us. This path, too, leads to eventual triumph. Even if irreparable losses have been sustained, a basis for more durable future achievement will eventually be constructed. This path, too, has opportunities for growth and service. The more we sense that the good we do is never lost, that our best efforts that seemed to have been in vain have indeed been invested in a better future, the more we will be able to absorb disappointment, grow, and redirect our productive energies effectively.
3. Apparent defeat
On countless occasions people have, as the phrase goes, “snatched victory from the jaws of defeat.” In sports, an athlete or a team comes from behind to win an upset victory. In the midst of the competition, the eventual victor finds a gleam of hope, a live opportunity for striving, setting aside fear, perhaps in the knowledge that a heroic effort will shine regardless of the outcome.
In 1915, commenting on the disillusionment in Europe brought on by World War I, Rabindranath Tagore, the Nobel Prize-winning poet from India, wrote to his English friend C. F. Andrews a letter concluding with the following paragraph.
Will Europe never understand the genesis of the present war, and realize that the true cause lies in her own growing skepticism toward her own ideals—those ideals that have helped her to be great? She seems to have exhausted the oil that once lighted her lamp. Now she is feeling a distrust against the oil itself, as if it were not at all necessary for her light.[xiii][xiii]
For many European authors disillusioned by the war, talk of truth, beauty, and goodness seemed hollow. Husserl, seeing the decline of faith in ideals well before the first World War, had an urgent sense of the historical import of his life work, which aimed to restore sturdy foundations for the scientific and philosophic grasp of truth and for the achievements in beauty and goodness which depend on a realization of truth.[xiv][xiv] Husserl’s adventuresome and pioneering spirit exemplifies the response to the challenge of apparent defeat.
4. Difficulties
When the reflective analysis has been done and we face the difficulties directly, the challenge becomes one of mobilizing our full resources. This is a moment when turning within can be of tremendous help. Some would call this prayer, some would call it meditation, while others would refuse such rubrics altogether. I will propose a map for religious experience, inviting redescription by those who question whether the component of religious faith is essential.
We can sketch a phenomenology of the divine presence using distinctions familiar in phenomenology.[xv][xv] Sometimes the divine is the object of attention, the Thou-focus of personal prayer or worship. Sometimes the divine is the all-encompassing background of experience. Sometimes the divine is felt in the modified quality of a given act of consciousness. And sometimes the divine is heard from within the very origin of our conscious acts. (Note that combining the first two moments yields a concept of God that speaks to Heidegger’s worry about ontotheology, since God becomes the self-focalization of infinity, personalizing to make relationship possible.[xvi][xvi] What happens to the background when relationship becomes maximally full? Phenomenologically, in Martin Buber’s phrase, the Thou “fills the firmament.”[xvii][xvii])
To receive what we need spiritually in facing difficulties, all that is needed is to turn receptively, holding up our cup to be filled. This is easier said than done when the mind is turbulent or when callouses of resistance have made the mind less permeable to divine blessings. Nevertheless, the experience of turning within and finding can be very simply stated.
To invigorate in the presence of difficulties, it is not enough to receive inspiration. Receptivity prepares a forward step. After receiving all that one can of wisdom and truth, one focuses energy in a personal decision that launches the action.
5. Immensity
Sometimes we falter because the task ahead seems so great. It will take so much time and effort, and our finite resources seem hardly adequate. There is a curious mix of insight and blindness when we notice our limits in confronting a huge task. The insight is that we are finite. The blindness is to overlook that we have access to inexhaustible resources of mind and spirit. These resources nourish such basic mental activities as intuitive perceptual orientation, associating ideas, mobilizing courage, exploring knowledge, taking counsel with others, worshipping, and seeking wisdom.
Classical philosophy offers a neglected basis for the thought that the human mind has access to circuits of mind stemming from trans-human sources. In Plato’s Ion, Socrates offers a suggestive interpretation to the Ion, who has just won a prize for his recitation of Homer.
It’s a divine power that moves you, as a “magnetic” stone moves iron rings. . . . This stone not only pulls those rings, if they’re iron, it also puts power in the rings, so that they in turn can do just what the stone does—pull other rings—so that there’s sometimes a very long chain of iron pieces and rings hanging from one another. And the power in all of them depends on this stone. In the same way, the Muse makes some people inspired herself, and then through those who are inspired a chain of other enthusiasts is suspended. You know, none of the epic poets, if they’re good, are masters of their subject; they are inspired, possessed, and that is how they utter all those beautiful poems. . . .
This spectator is the last of the rings . . . . The middle ring is you, the rhapsode or actor, and the first one is the poet himself. The god pulls people’s souls through all these wherever he wants, looping the power down from one to another. And just as if it hung from that stone, there’s an enormous chain of choral dancers and dance teachers and assistant teachers hanging off to the sides of the rings that are suspended from the Muse. One poet is attached to one Muse, another to another (we say he is “possessed,” and that’s near enough, for he is held). From these first rings, from the poets, they are attached in their turn and inspired, from one poet, some from another; some from Orpheus, some from Musaeus, and many are possessed and held from Homer. You are one of them, Ion, and you are possessed from Homer. And when anyone sings the work of another poet, you’re asleep and you’re lost about what to say; but when any song of that poet is sounded, you are immediately awake, your soul is dancing, and you have plenty to say . . . .[xviii][xviii]
Here are the main points in this speculation about circuits of mind.
1. There are mind circuits of divine origin.
2. They are multiple.
3. We are differentially receptive to them.
4. They link humans to the divine.
5. They link humans to one another.
6. They communicate divine blessings.
Aristotle puts more pieces of the puzzle in play. Although Plato’s metaphorical and mythic speculations on mind circuits did not appeal to him, Aristotle includes in his account of the highest level of psyche (“soul”) something akin to a circuit of divine mind. For Aristotle the highest function of psyche is intellectual activity, the mind’s contemplative engagement in eternal, unchanging truth and divine reality. What does the human mind have to do with divinity? The text we have of Aristotle’s De Anima preserves a hint, however controversial its interpretation, that a single divine mind operates in the highest thinking of all humans.[xix][xix] Our highest thinking participates in, or approximates, the activity of the divine mind. Most religious philosophers would definitely distinguish in principle between the human mind and the divine ministry that illumines and guides it, however blended they may be phenomenologically.
In the face of immensity it is customary to weaken, but refreshing the mind spiritually renews confidence and facilitates the concentration and patience needed persevere. Even if the notion of mind circuits seem but a work of the imagination, it may still have heuristic value.
6. The inexplicable
We all elaborate, more or less articulately, ideas about ourselves and the world. However, no matter how extensive our knowledge may be and how developed our philosophy may be, we come across facts that do not readily harmonize with reality as we conceive it. If religionists have a hard time explaining how a great and good God could create a world in which we find so much evil, atheists have a hard time explaining how chance and necessity emerging from physical chaos could ever evolve creature life with all the truth, beauty, and goodness that we enjoy. There are wonders and horrors that surpass our comprehension. Even for a person of faith, catastrophes may overwhelm. But even if catastrophes remain inexplicable, they need not paralyze, at least not permanently. Nevertheless, spiritual communion usually does not clarify such puzzles directly; as Job found, the relief comes on a level different from that of the question.
III. Finding a measure in the ontopoetic level of life
Finally, I want to develop the import of the preceding ideas toward a phenomenology of spiritual experience for a question raised in the dialogue regarding Professor Tymieniecka’s lectures and writings. How can the “ontopoetic” level of life can provide a measure?[xx][xx] The question deserves some explanation, including, first, an observation about the human predicament. Modern humanity seeks a measure at a time when traditional and static standards have become widely discredited. Where a measure is lacking altogether, the resulting chaos becomes intolerable. Second, we can make an observation about philosophic resources. Phenomenology has begun the careful description of a layer of life that underlies our cognitive achievements. Consciousness can only achieve its awareness of things, meanings, values, and persons through the spontaneities of a deeper level of life. Let us here accept the term “ontopoetic” for this primordial constitutive level.
To the problem of the loss of confidence in traditional proposals regarding a divine measure, the answer hinted at above is that the measure can be found within the mind. It is unnecessary to dream of the divine far off in the skies when the treasure lies within. Religious traditions testify to this discovery: Hinduism speaks of the atman, the eternal spirit Self; Buddhism speaks of the “Buddha-nature” within; Judaism tells of “the spirit in man, the candle of the Lord, searching all the inward parts”; Jesus taught that “the kingdom of heaven is within you”; the Qur’an preserves the teaching of the spirit of God, “closer to you than your jugular vein.”[xxi][xxi]
The ontopoetic level of life can provide a measure only if the pre-cognitive spiritual input is sought in a post-cognitive way. Let me explain. It is necessary to differentiate, to acknowledge the heterogeneity of the pre-cognitive layer of life. The work of the divine is so silent, so behind-the-scenes, and its results are so mingled with the rest of our mental process, that to differentiate the divine may seem like an arbitrary act of faith. Sometimes, of course, people have an experience of a quality sharply differentiated from that of ordinary experiences, an extraordinary perception of truth, beauty, or goodness.
When we seek the divine, when we are probing for wisdom and energy for the task at hand, we listen, we attune as best we can, we let the deep harmony be initiated from beyond the human will. However, the faint stirrings of life that we may notice in such a moment of suspended attention may not be the expression of divinity, for they may originate simply in the energies, impulses, and ideas of the subconscious. To improve our discernment of revealed truth, beauty, and goodness we must discipline our receptivity through responsible engagement with science and philosophy. In other words, we must satisfy the “cognitive” requirements as part of our quest. Our sense of beauty must mature through experience in the beauties of nature and the charm of the arts. We do well to fulfill the demands of ethical deliberation.
The quest culminating in divine illumination is to a remarkable degree portrayed by Aeschylus in The Suppliant Maidens.[xxii][xxii] The drama begins with the arrival of a ship bringing fifty Egyptian women and their father/spokesman to the shores of Argos. They seek protection from pursuing Egyptian men who would force them into “impious marriage.” The women introduce themselves to Pelasgus the king of Argos by revealing their kinship with the Argives, their special claim to protection. They narrate their genealogy, a lineage that Aeschylus may not have meant the discerning among the audience to take literally. To portray these dark Egyptian women as kin to the Argives, as equally the descendants of Zeus, is Aeschylus’ spiritual insight. In modern terms, the universal fatherhood of God is the source of the brotherhood of man. Even after accepting that the women and their father are originally also Argives, the king has a decision to make, and he is in the throes of uncertainty. From the outset we were reminded that the will of Zeus is “not easily traced. Everywhere it gleams, even in blackness.” The king acknowledges, “I am at a loss, and fearful is my heart.” The king’s dilemma is that if he protects the women, he risks destructive war with the pursuing Egyptians; if the king does not protect them, the women threaten suicide upon the altar for suppliants, a move that would bring and divine retribution. What is needed to clarify the decision? “We need profound, preserving care, that plunges/ Like a diver deep in troubles seas,/ Keen and unblurred his eye, to make the end/ Without disaster for us and for the city . . . .” In the moment of decision, the crucial factor is “the height of mortal fear,” making the king unwilling to offend Zeus, who is also a suppliant like these maidens. As the king turns to appeal to the people (who sustain his request), he expresses his discovery of the principle of goodness that governs this situation: “Everyone,/ To those weaker than themselves, is kind.”
The link between the drama and the preceding phenomenological proposal is that the king’s courageous effort to struggle responsibly with the (“cognitive”) facts and duties before him enables him successfully to plunge like a diver in troubled seas (the “ontopoetic” level of life) to find the will of God (the wisdom and energy of the divine within).
At its fullest, courageous willing is a devotion to goodness based on a realization of truth whose beauty is felt. A full realization of the truth of a situation requires not only scientific realism, but also a spiritual idealism to which faith alone gives access. As the mind fills with the vision of truth and becomes saturated with beauty, it prepares to participate in goodness. Faith opens the mind so that the divine life within may connect with the life inherent in the cells of the body. The result is a thoroughgoing vitality in the human system, liberating potentials for courageous living.
Kent State University
[i][i] Bertrand Russell, “A Free Man’s Worship,” 104-116, in Why I Am Not a Christian (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1957).
[ii][ii] William James, The Writings of William James, ed. John J. McDermott (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1977), pp. 715-16.
[iii][iii] Ibid., pp. 674, 675, and 681.
[iv][iv] Ibid., p. 716.
[v][v] Ibid., pp. 672-73.
[vi][vi] Ibid., pp. 709 and 711.
[vii][vii] William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: Macmillan, 1961); the pages supporting the exposition in this paragraph are 405, 398, 399, 377, and 175.
[viii][viii] Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1982), ##103-08.
[ix][ix] Jean Nabert’s Elements for an Ethic (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1969) opens with three chapters that portray a deep and spontaneous self-affirmation that emerges to overcome the self-doubt occasioned by reflection on fault, failure, and solitude.
[x][x] William James, “The Sentiment of Rationality,” in Essays in Pragmatism, ed. Alburey Castell (New York: Macmillan, 1948), p. 27.
[xi][xi] Josef Pieper, Hope and History (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, [1967] 1994), p. 30.
[xii][xii] This thought is developed in Jeffrey Wattles, “Religious Experience, Fanaticism, and Kant,” in The Ohio Academy of Religion Scholarly Papers 2002, ed. R. Blake Michael (Delaware, Ohio: Ohio Wesleyan University: 2002), pp. 27-34.
[xiii][xiii] Rabindranath Tagore, A Tagore Reader, ed. Amiya Chakravarty (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966), p. 25.
[xiv][xiv] The “effect” of truth on beauty and goodness is indicated by the following quotation: “If the general idea of truth in itself becomes the universal norm of all the relative truths that play a role in human life—actual and conjectural situation truths—then this fact affects all traditional norms, those of right, of beauty, of purpose, of dominant values in persons, values having a personal character, etc.” Edmund Husserl, “Philosophy and the Crisis of European Man,” in Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy, ed. Quentin Lauer (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), p. 174-75.
[xv][xv] The phenomenology of spiritual experience is developed in Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, Logos and Life: The Three Movements of the Soul, Analecta Husserliana XXV (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 1988); see especially pp. 18-35 and 88-95. She notes, for example, that “the spiritual act exhibits its presence in immanent perception in absolute evidence, several diverse aspects of which establish certitude of its actual presence” (p. 28).
[xvi][xvi] The first chapter of Nicolas Berdyaev, Slavery and Freedom (London: Geoffrey Bles: The Centenary Press, 1934), sets forth a useful concept of personality.
[xvii][xvii] Martin Buber, I and Thou (New York: Scribener, 1970), p. 59.
[xviii][xviii] Plato, Ion, tr. Paul Woodruff, in Plato: Complete Works (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), 533d2-e9 and 535e7-536d1.
[xix][xix] Aristotle, De Anima, III.5, 429b5; 430a22-25.
[xx][xx] Here is a quotation establishing the theme.
Bewildered humanity is challenged to seek by a need to find new ways to assess gains and losses and make socioeconomic and cultural adjustments and resolve political and religious conflicts.
Our bewilderment over life’s new enigmas may issue in a New Enlightenment, a new awareness of all of the forces carrying life and with that ever widening horizons. We are challenged to enter into our depths in order to achieve a new understanding of our place in the cosmos and the web of life, to find new wisdom for charting our paths together and fresh inspiration to animate our personal conduct.
I will here submit that the key issue for this New Enlightenment is that of measure, the measure of all things concerning life. Just as important is the discovery of motivation, the force needed for the commitment to apply measure. We have to realize that ethics is rooted in the two factors of measure and motivation. Without these ethics cannot address the demands of situations.”
Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, Impetus and Equipoise in the Life-Strategies of Reason: Logos and Life, Book 4. Analecta Husserliana, vol. LXX. (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2000), p. 615.
[xxi][xxi] For the eternal spirit Self, the atman, see the Bhagavad-Gita, chapter 2. For the Buddha-nature as the “self,” see the Mahaparinirvana Sutra 3.75. For “the spirit in man,” see Proverbs 20.27; for the “kingdom within,” Luke 17.21; for the presence of God closer than your jugular vein, see the Qur’an, Sura 50, verse 16 (cf. 8:24).
[xxii][xxii] Aeschylus, The Suppliant Maidens, tr. S. G. Benardete, in Aeschylus II (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1956). The quotations cited are from lines 88, 379, 407-10, 487, and 487-88.