The Transcendentals
Is There Evidence for a Trans-material Soul?
Part Two – the Five Transcendentals
© Robert J. Spitzer, S.J. Ph.D./Magis
Institute July 2011
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Contents
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Conclusion
If we examine our own desires and capacities
in the domains of truth, love, goodness/justice, beauty, and being/home, it is
difficult to deny the presence of transmaterial awareness and desire which
seems to indicate a connection with a transmaterial source of that desire. This
connection, in turn, reveals the transmaterial dimension of human beings.
If we wish to reduce humanity to mere
materiality, to mere artificial intelligence, and to mere animalic consciousness,
we will not only have to ignore Gödel’s proof for non-reductionistic human
intelligence, we will also have to equate ourselves with beings that lapse into
sleep without the stimulus of biological opportunities and dangers. More than
this, we will have to deny the presence of all the above transcendental desires
within ourselves (desires which cannot be explained through algorithmically
finite – physical – structures). This seems a rather high price to pay, for it
would mean condemning ourselves to ignore everything that matters – truth,
love, goodness/justice, beauty, being/home – at its highest possible level. Do
we really want to do this, all for the cause of defending materialism or
justifying serious violations of the principle of non-maleficence? It would
seem to be complete self-negation in the effort to negate the true dignity of
every human being. This is probably not the best way to make the most of our
lives.
The What and Why of Transcendentals
The following adds to the previous Units’
discussion of human trans-materiality by examining five transcendent desires
(which reveal five kinds of transcendent awareness): the desire for perfect and
unconditional truth, love, justice/goodness, beauty, and home. These five kinds
of transcendent desire (and awareness) distinguish human consciousness from
animal consciousness, and explain why humans have creative capacity beyond
preset rules, algorithms, and programs (Gödel’s proof), and why human beings
have a natural propensity toward the spiritual and transcendent.
So why do philosophers, scientists, and
people of common sense assert that human beings have such a special value? The
answer lies in several interrelated observations which will be discussed below.
These observations are present in the works of many philosophers and
scientists,[1] beginning with Socrates,
Plato, and Aristotle, moving through St. Augustine, Moses Maimonides, Averroes,
St. Thomas Aquinas, Francisco Suarez, John Locke, Immanuel Kant, G.W.F. Hegel,
John Henry Newman, and into the 20th and 21st centuries (e.g., Edmund Husserl,
Edith Stein, Jacque Maritain, Henri Bergson, Emerich Coreth, Bernard Lonergan,
and many others). This idea is also central to the works of many prominent
physicists and biologists in the 20th and 21st centuries. Two examples of this
will suffice to make our point. The first comes from the great
physicist/astrophysicist, Sir Arthur Eddington, who observed, after detailing
the equations of quantum physics and relativity physics:
We all know that there are regions of the
human spirit untrammelled by the world of physics. In the mystic sense of the
creation around us, in the expression of art, in a yearning towards God, the
soul grows upward and finds the fulfillment of something implanted in its
nature. The sanction for this development is within us, a striving born within
our consciousness or an Inner Light proceeding from a greater power than ours.
Science can scarcely question this sanction, for the pursuit of science springs
from a striving which the mind is impelled to follow, a questioning that will
not be suppressed. Whether in the intellectual pursuits of science or in the
mystical pursuits of the spirit, the light beckons ahead and the purpose
surging in our nature responds.[2]
The eminent geneticist Francis Collins,
Director of the Human Genome Project, expresses a similar insight:
As the director of the Human Genome Project,
I have led a consortium of scientists to read out the 3.1 billion letters of
the human genome, our own DNA instruction book. As a believer, I see DNA, the
information molecule of all living things, as God’s language, and the elegance
and complexity of our own bodies and the rest of nature as a reflection of
God’s plan. …Can you both pursue an understanding of how life works using the
tools of genetics and molecular biology, and worship a creator God? Aren’t
evolution and faith in God incompatible? Can a scientist believe in miracles
like the resurrection? Actually, I find no conflict here, and neither
apparently do the 40 percent of working scientists who claim to be believers.[3] I have found there is a
wonderful harmony in the complementary truths of science and faith. The God of
the Bible is also the God of the genome. God can be found in the cathedral or
in the laboratory. By investigating God’s majestic and awesome creation,
science can actually be a means of worship.[4]
If the human genome can be viewed as the
language of God, then human beings can be viewed as the consummate expression
of that language, and it is not unwarranted to say, from a scientific and faith
perspective, that human beings are made in the image of God (Gen 1:27 – “So God
created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and
female He created them”).
So what is the philosophical and scientific
origin of this belief in the specialness (and transcendence) of human beings?
It is predominately grounded in a longstanding observation about nonhuman
animals, which continues to be verified in recent empirical investigations.
Bernard Lonergan expresses it as follows:
…[I]t is only when [animals’] functioning is
disturbed that they enter into consciousness. Indeed, not only is a large part
of animal living nonconscious, but the conscious part itself is intermittent.
Animals sleep. It is as though the full-time business of living called forth
consciousness as a part-time employee, occasionally to meet problems of
malfunctioning, but regularly to deal rapidly, effectively, and economically
with the external situations in which sustenance is to be won and into which
offspring are to be born. … ¶ When the object fails to stimulate, the subject
is indifferent; and when nonconscious vital process has no need of outer
objects, the subject dozes and falls asleep.[5]
This might be summarized quite simply as
follows. When animals run out of biological opportunities and dangers, they
fall asleep. When you stop feeding your dog, or giving it affection and
attention (biological opportunities), and introduce no biological dangers (such
as a predator) into its sensorial purview, it will invariably and inevitably
fall asleep.
In stark contrast to this, when human beings
run out of biological opportunities and dangers, they frequently ask questions,
seek purpose or meaning in life, contemplate beauty, think about the goodness
(or imperfections) of their beloveds, think about unfairness or injustice and
how to make their situation or the world better, and even think about
mathematics, physics, philosophy, and theology – for their own sake.[6] When human beings run out
of biological opportunities and dangers, they generally do not fall asleep;
they engage in what Plato and his followers (the neo-Platonists) called
“transcendental activities.” These activities reveal the specialness of human beings,
which makes them deserving of special value.
The neo-Platonists identified five areas of
transcendental activity (termed “the five transcendentals”): the awareness of
and desire for truth, love, goodness/justice, beauty, and Being/home. They are
called “transcendental” because they all seem to have a limitless horizon, and
human beings seem to be aware of their limitless possibilities, and seem to
desire their perfect (limitless) fulfillment. Thus, in the view of many
philosophers, mathematicians, and scientists, human beings seem to have an
awareness of and desire for perfect and unconditional truth, love,
goodness/justice, beauty, and Being/home. Since these five transcendentals are
necessarily beyond all algorithmically finite structures (which determine all
physical realities and laws constituting subatomic particles, molecules, cells,
and complex organic structures such as a brain), many philosophers,
mathematicians, and scientists have held that human beings are more than mere
matter. Human beings seem to have a transmaterial or spiritual power or
dimension which enables them to move beyond every algorithmically finite
structure (physical structure) and to be creative in ways that defy the
possibilities of artificial intelligence.
Interestingly, this claim is corroborated in
the domain of mathematics by Kurt Gödel (in the famous theorem named after
him). He anticipated the limits of artificial intelligence which are defied by
human intelligence on a regular basis. Essentially, Gödel showed that there
will always be unprovable propositions within any set of axiomatic statements
in mathematics. Human beings are able not only to show that consistent,
unprovable statements exist, but also to prove that they are consistent by
making recourse to axioms beyond those used to generate these statements.
Artificial intelligence is incapable of doing this. This reveals that human
thinking is not based on a set of prescribed axioms, rules, or programs, and
is, by nature, beyond such prescribed rules and programs.[7]
If one is to deny this transmaterial
dimension, one will simply have to ignore the stark differences between animal
and human consciousness; to ignore human awareness of limitless horizons of
truth, love, goodness/justice, beauty, and Being/home; to ignore the remarkable
properties of human creativity explicated by Gödel; and to ignore the natural
human capacity to seek a transcendent God. If one feels uncertain about writing
off this body of evidence, then it is unjustifiable to rush into materialistic
reductionism, naïve identifications of animal and human intelligence, and a
denial of the human capacity for self-transcendence. But if one stops short of
these simplistic positions, one remains open to the specialness of human
beings, and therefore open to their special value.
I. The Desire for Perfect and Unconditional
Truth
In his famous work Insight: A Study of Human
Understanding,[8] Bernard Lonergan presents
an argument substantiating the existence of our desire for (and awareness of)
perfect and unconditional truth (which he terms “complete intelligibility”).
The argument may be set out in seven steps:
(1) Lonergan begins with the frequently
experienced phenomenon of asking further questions immediately upon arriving at
answers. We may remember our childhood when we besieged our parents with
questions such as: “Why is this?” And our parents would respond, “Oh, because
of that,” and we would immediately ask, “Well, why is that?” And they would
respond with yet another answer, to which we would ask another question. This
ability to continuously ask questions reveals our awareness that an answer is
incomplete, that is, that the answer is not completely intelligible; that it
does not explain “everything about everything.” If we did not know that an
answer was incompletely intelligible, we would not ask any further questions
“What?” “Why?” “How?” etc. We would be very content to know our names, and to
respond to biological opportunities and dangers – nothing more. It is the
awareness of “something more to be known” at the very moment when something is
known that drives the further question.
(2) Lonergan affirms that he has a pure
unrestricted desire to know, that is, he desires to know all that is to be
known; and that he has the capacity to ask further questions when he has not
yet grasped “all that is to be known.”
(3) Now, the question arises, how could I
have the power to ask a question every time I understand something that does
not meet the expectation of “all that is to be known?” It would seem that I
would have to have some awareness (at least a tacit awareness) of “all that is
to be known” sufficient to know that whatever I have grasped has not yet met
this objective. Thus, I might move from analytical geometry, to the calculus,
to non-Euclidean geometries, to the tensor, and know that the tensor does not
adequately describe the whole of mathematical intelligibility – and it truly
does not. Similarly, I can attain an understanding of space-time fields,
electromagnetic fields, quantum fields, the grand unified field, etc., and
realize that the grand unified field still does not exhaust all that is to be
known – and it truly doesn’t. This applies to every area of inquiry and every
field of knowledge, and I would know if my idea did not explain everything
about everything.
(4) The question again arises, how would I
always know that there is more to be known when I have grasped even the highest
ideas through the highest viewpoints? How would I know that those ideas and
viewpoints did not explain everything about everything? How do I know what qualifies
for an explanation of everything about everything? How can I have a
“pre-knowledge” (an awareness) of the explanation of everything about
everything sufficient to keep on asking questions, and to know what will fail
to meet the objective of an explanation of everything about everything? This
last question presents an essential clue to our transcendentality. How would I
be able to continuously recognize incomplete intelligibility (even in the
highest and most grandiose ideas) if I did not have some tacit awareness of
those ideas failing to qualify for complete intelligibility? Wouldn’t I have to
have some sense of what complete intelligibility is in order to recognize the
limits of the intelligibility of the idea I have already grasped? Doesn’t the
recognition of a limit mean that I have to be beyond the limit? If I weren’t
beyond the limit, how could I recognize it to be a limit? A limit of what?
Therefore, it seems that I must have a tacit
awareness of “what is sufficient to qualify for an explanation of everything
about everything.” Obviously, I cannot explicitly know all the contents that I
do not know; but I could have a tacit awareness of what would be sufficient for
an explanation of everything about everything. This would explain how I could
reach very high viewpoints of mathematics, physics, and metaphysics, and still
know that I did not have an explanation of everything about everything – and
even have a sense of where to turn to find such an explanation.
(5) What could be the origin of this awareness?
It cannot be a physical or restricted source (empirical data, finite data, or
the contents of restricted acts of understanding) because the tacit awareness
of “what is sufficient for an explanation of everything about everything” is
always beyond every “intelligible reality which leaves a question unanswered,”
and every restricted intelligible always leaves a question unanswered. Why?
Any restricted intelligible must leave a
question unanswered because the intelligibility (information) available to answer
questions about it is restricted. Thus, there can always be more questions
about a restricted reality than there will be intelligibility (information
within the restricted reality) available to answer them. Why? Inasmuch as the
answers from a restricted intelligible have an intrinsic limit (i.e., they do
not keep on going indefinitely), they will eventually be open to further
questions which cannot be answered by the restricted intelligible itself. Thus,
we might say that every restricted intelligible is more questionable than
answerable. There will always be a domain of answers which give rise to more
questions than the intelligibility of the restricted reality can answer.
Therefore, the tacit awareness of “what is sufficient for an explanation of everything
about everything” is always beyond any restricted intelligible.
Therefore, the source of this “tacit
awareness which is always beyond restricted intelligibility” must be
unrestricted intelligibility. Lonergan asks himself what unrestricted intelligibility
could be. He knows it cannot be a physical reality, because the intelligibility
of physical reality is restricted by space, time, and other algorithmically
finite structures. He therefore settles upon a trans-physical or transmaterial
reality such as an unrestricted idea (within an unrestricted act of
understanding). Needless to say, such an unrestricted act of understanding
cannot be viewed as a brain (which is material and restricted by space, time,
and other algorithmically finite structures); so Lonergan refers to it as a
“spiritual” reality. This spiritual reality, this unrestricted act of
understanding which is the ground of the idea of unrestricted intelligibility,
would seem to be the source of my tacit awareness of “what is sufficient for an
explanation of everything about everything.”
(6) Even though the idea of complete
intelligibility is the source of my tacit awareness of “what is sufficient for
an explanation of everything about everything,” I cannot say that I understand
this idea, because it must be grounded in an unrestricted act of understanding,
which I, evidently, do not have.
But how can this be? Lonergan uses the
terminology of “notion” (“the notion of being,” or what I would term, “the
notion of complete intelligibility”). What is a notion? It is a presence to
consciousness – not a presence that is held or controlled by my consciousness,
but one that is held or controlled outside of my consciousness while still
being present to it. Now if I don’t understand this presence, then how am I
aware of it? I must be aware of it as something on the horizon; as something
beyond my understanding, but, nevertheless, something which can act as a
backdrop over against which I compare the ideas which I have understood. This
would explain how I would know that there is more to be known at the very
moment I have understood something new, and would explain how I would know that
the tensor is not the complete explanation of mathematics, and that mathematics
is not the complete explanation of intelligibility itself. I am comparing it to
a backdrop that is so much more than the highest possible viewpoints, so much
more than any restricted intelligible, so much more than any content of a
restricted act of understanding.[9]
Now, as I said, I do not understand, hold, or
control this idea; it is, as it were, held and controlled for me as a backdrop
to compare the intelligibility of the ideas that I have understood. But what is
holding and controlling this idea for me as a backdrop? I must adduce that It
would be Its source, namely, the unrestricted act of understanding.
(7) This would mean that the idea of complete
intelligibility, that is, the content of an unrestricted act of understanding,
that is, the divine essence, is present to me as a horizon, that is, as a
backdrop which can be compared to every intelligible content I grasp through my
restricted acts of understanding. The presence of the divine essence, therefore,
must be the impetus for my awareness of incomplete intelligibility, the impetus
for every question, the impetus for every act of creativity.
If the divine essence were not present to me,
I would only be capable of recognizing objects of biological opportunity and
danger, such as food, snakes, my name, affection, etc., but nothing more, for I
would not ask questions about intelligibility (such as “What?” “Why?” “How? –
which penetrate the nature of reality). My curiosity would be limited to
biological opportunities and dangers, to discerning the mood of my master, to
detecting whether an herb smells right, or a creature is dangerous.
Intelligibility (the nature of things, heuristic contexts, “What?” “Why?”
“How?”) would be quite beyond me – totally unrecognized by me. Therefore, I
would not have a pure desire to understand – let alone a pure, unrestricted
desire to understand. Without the notion of complete intelligibility (the
presence of the idea of complete intelligibility, the presence of the divine essence),
I would find fulfillment through a fine piece of meat and ignore the tensor.
The above argument for the existence of our
transcendental awareness of complete intelligibility (and the presence of its
trans-physical, unrestricted source to our consciousness) is remarkably
probative. Regrettably, the cost we must pay for this probity is the nuance and
complexity of the argument. The reader will be relieved to know that the other
arguments for the existence of our desire for perfect and unconditional love,
goodness/justice, beauty, and being/home are less nuanced and complex, but
consequently have less probity. Perhaps it is best for the reader to use the
above argument as a foundation for and a light through which to see the other
four transcendental desires, which express the fullness of our communion with
their trans-physical source.
II. The Desire for Perfect and Unconditional
Love
Human beings also appear to have a “sense” of
perfect and unconditional love. Not only do we have the power to love (i.e.,
the power to be naturally connected to another human being in profound empathy,
emotion, care, self-gift, concern, and acceptance), we have a “sense” of what
this profound interpersonal connection would be like if it were perfect. This
sense of perfect love has the positive effect of inciting us to pursue ever
more perfect forms of love. However, it has the drawback of inciting us to
expect ever more perfect love from other human beings. This generally leads to
frustrated expectations of others and consequently to a decline of
relationships that can never grow fast enough to match this expectation of
perfect and unconditional love.
This phenomenon gradually manifests itself.
For example, as the first signs of imperfection, conditionedness, and finitude
begin to emerge in one’s beloved, one may show slight irritation, but have
hopes that the ideal will soon be recaptured (as if it were ever captured to
begin with). But as the fallibility of the beloved begins to be more acutely
manifest (the other is not perfectly humble, gentle, kind, forgiving,
self-giving, and concerned with me in all my interests) the irritation becomes
frustration, which, in turn, becomes dashed expectation: “I can’t believe I
thought she was really the One.” Of course, she wasn’t the One, because she is
not perfect and unconditioned. Nevertheless, the dashed expectation becomes
either quiet hurt or overt demands, both aimed at extracting a higher level of
performance from the beloved. When she does not comply, thoughts of terminating
the relationship may arise.
The root problem was not with the
authenticity of this couple’s love for one another. It did not arise out of a
lack of concern, care, and responsiveness, or a lack of desire to be
self-giving, responsible, self-disciplined, and true. Rather, it arose out of a
false expectation that they could be perfect and unconditional love, truth,
goodness, fairness, meaning, and home for one another.
Why do we fall prey to what seems to be such
an obvious error? Because our desire for love and to love is unconditional, but
our actuality is conditioned. Our desire is for the perfect, but our actuality
is imperfect. We, as human beings, therefore, cannot satisfy one another’s
desire for the unconditional and the perfect. If we do not have a real unconditional
and perfect being to satisfy this desire, we start looking around us to find a
surrogate. Other human beings at first seem like a very good surrogate, because
they display qualities of self-transcendence. Hence, we confuse one another for
the perfect and unconditioned, and undermine the very relationships which hold
out opportunities for growth, depth, joy, common cause, and mutual bondedness.
What is the origin of this desire for
unconditional love? Just as the unrestricted desire to know must include a
notional awareness of complete intelligibility to give rise to an awareness of
and dissatisfaction with every manifestation of incomplete intelligibility, so
also the desire for unconditional love must include a notional awareness of
unconditional love to give rise to the awareness of and dissatisfaction with
every manifestation of conditioned and imperfect love. This notional awareness
of unconditional love seems to be beyond any specifically known or concretely
experienced love, for it seems to cause dissatisfaction with every conditioned
love we have known or experienced. Thus, our dissatisfaction would seem to
arise out of an ideal of unconditional love which has neither been experienced
nor actualized. How can we have an awareness of love that we have neither known
nor experienced? How can we even extrapolate to it if we do not know where we
are going? The inability to give a logical answer to these questions has led
some philosophers to associate the desire for unconditional love with “the notion
of unconditional love within us,” which would seem to have its origin in
unconditional love itself.
Lonergan believes that when we fulfill our
desire for unconditional love by authentically loving God, we simultaneously
fulfill our capacity for self-transcendence, which includes our desire for
perfect truth, goodness, and beauty:
I have conceived being in love with God as an
ultimate fulfillment of man’s capacity for self-transcendence; and this view of
religion is sustained when God is conceived as the supreme fulfillment of the
transcendental notions, as supreme intelligence, truth, reality, righteousness,
goodness.[10]
Once again, the human awareness of and desire
for the perfect and unconditional manifests a dimension which is not reducible
to algorithmically finite (physical) structures; and so it seems that we have
yet another trans-physical (spiritual), self-transcendent power.
III. The Desire for Perfect and Unconditional
Goodness/Justice
As with the “sense” of perfect and
unconditional truth and love, philosophers have long recognized the human
desire for perfect goodness or justice. Not only do human beings have a sense
of good and evil, a capacity for moral reflection, a profoundly negative felt
awareness of cooperation with evil (guilt), and a profoundly positive felt
awareness of cooperation with goodness (nobility); they also have a “sense” of
what perfect, unconditioned goodness/justice would be like. Human beings are
not content to simply act in accordance with their conscience now, they are
constantly striving for ways to achieve the more noble, the greater good, the
higher ideal. They even go so far as to pursue the perfectly good or just
order.
A clue to this desire for perfect
goodness/justice may be gleaned from children. An imperfect manifestation of
justice from parents will get the immediate retort, “That’s not fair!” Adults
do the same thing. We have a sense of what perfect justice ought to be, and we
believe others ought to know this. When this sense of perfect justice has been
violated, we are likely to respond with outrage. A violation of this sort
always seems particularly acute. We seem to be in a state of shock. We really
expect that perfect justice ought to happen, and when it doesn’t, it so
profoundly disappoints us that it can consume us. We can feel the same outrage
towards groups, social structures, and even God.
One need only look at last year’s newspapers
to find a host of well-meaning, dedicated, and generous men and women who have
tried to extract the perfect and unconditioned from the legal system, the
ideals of social justice, and institutions dedicated to the common good. The
despairing rhetoric of dashed idealism and cynicism does not belong solely to
early Marxism; it can be found in public defenders who decry the legal system for
prosecuting the innocent, and victims who vilify the very same system for
letting the guilty go free. It can also be found in educators who criticize the
educational system for not setting high enough standards, and in community
advocates who tear down the very same system for making the standards too high
and too exclusive. But our imperfect world will not allow either side to be
perfectly correct.
As with our “sense” of perfect and
unconditional love, our sense of perfect and unconditional goodness/justice has
both a positive and negative side. The positive side is its ability to fuel all
our strivings for an ever more perfect social order, a more just legal system,
greater equity and equality, and even our promethean idealism to bring the
justice of God to earth. The negative side of this “sense” of perfect or
unconditional justice is that it incites our expectations for perfect justice
in a finite and conditioned world, meaning that our promethean ideals are
likely to be frustrated. This causes disappointments with the culture, the
legal system, our organizations, and even our families. We seem to always
expect more justice and goodness than the finite world can deliver, and it
causes outrage, impatience, judgment of others, and even cynicism when it does
not come to pass.
What is the source of this “sense” (notion)
of perfect goodness/justice, even the promethean desire to save the world, and
to be the “ultimate hero?” As with the desire for complete intelligibility and
unconditional love, the desire for perfect goodness/justice seems to go beyond
any experience or knowledge of justice we could possibly have. Our frustrated
idealism reveals that we continually see the limits of any current
manifestation of goodness and justice which, in turn, reveals that we are
already beyond those limits. Given that our desire will only be satisfied when
we reach perfect, unconditional goodness/justice, it would seem that our desire
is guided by a notional awareness of perfect, unconditional goodness/justice;
and, given that this notion cannot be obtained from a conditioned and imperfect
world, it would seem that its origin is from perfect, unconditional
goodness/justice itself. For this reason, philosophers have associated it with
the presence of God to human consciousness. This presence of perfect and
unconditional goodness/justice to human consciousness further reveals the
transmaterial (spiritual), self-transcendent dimension of human beings.
IV. The Desire for Perfect and Unconditional
Beauty
One need not read the nineteenth century
Romantic poets or listen to the great Romantic composers, or view the works of
Romantic artists to see the human capacity to idolize beauty. One only need
look at the examples of simple dissatisfaction with beauty in our everyday
lives. We don’t look good enough and neither do other people. The house is not
perfect enough, the painting can never achieve perfection, and the musical
composition, though beautiful beyond belief, could always be better. Once in a
great while, we think we have arrived at consummate beauty. This might occur
while looking at a scene of natural beauty: a sunset over the water, majestic
green and brown mountains against a horizon of blue sky; but even there,
despite our desire to elevate it to the quasi-divine, we get bored and strive
for a different or an even more perfect manifestation of natural beauty – a
little better sunset, another vantage point of the Alps that’s a little more
perfect.
As with the desire for the other three
transcendentals (perfect truth, perfect love, and perfect goodness/justice),
human beings seem to have an awareness of what is more beautiful. It incites
them to the desire for this more perfect ideal. This desire has both a positive
and a negative effect. The positive effect is that it incites the continuous
human striving for artistic, musical, and literary perfection. We do not
passively desire to create, we passionately desire to create, to express in
ever more beautiful forms, the perfection of beauty that we seem to carry
within our consciousness. We do not simply want to say an idea, we want to
express it beautifully, indeed, more beautifully, indeed, perfectly
beautifully. We do not simply want to express a mood in music, we want to
express it perfectly beautifully. This striving has left a legacy of
architecture and art, music and drama, and every form of high culture.
The negative effect is that we will always
grow bored or frustrated with any imperfect manifestation of beauty. This
causes us to try to make perfectly beautiful what is imperfect by nature. It is
true that a garden can achieve a certain perfection of beauty, but our
continuous desire to improve it can make us grow terribly dissatisfied when we
cannot perfect it indefinitely.
This is evidenced quite strongly in the artistic
community. When one reads the biographies of great artists, musicians, and
poets, one senses the tragedy with which art is frequently imbued. What causes
these extraordinarily gifted men and women to abuse themselves, to judge
themselves so harshly, to so totally pour themselves into their art? Perhaps
it’s when art becomes a “god,” when one tries to extract perfect and
unconditional beauty from imperfect and conditioned minds and forms.
Where does this sense of perfect beauty come
from? As with the other three yearnings for the ultimate, we are led to the
beautiful itself, for dissatisfaction with even the most beautiful objects of
our experience reveals our ability to indefinitely perceive the limits of
worldly beauty, which, in turn, reveals our ability to be beyond those limits,
which, in turn, reveals a notional awareness of what perfect beauty might be (a
notional awareness of a beauty without imperfection or limit). Therefore it is
not surprising to see the divine associated with perfect beauty, majesty,
splendor, magnificence, grandeur, and glory.
This notional presence of perfect and
unconditional beauty to human consciousness further reveals the transmaterial
(spiritual), self-transcendent dimension of human beings.
V. The Desire for Perfect and Unconditional
Being/Home
Human beings also seek a perfect sense of
harmony with all that is. They not only want to be at home in a particular
environment, they want to be at home with the totality, at home in the cosmos.
This is confirmed by Mircea Eliade’s exhaustive study of world religions,[11] which may be summarized as
follows. Religion is grounded almost universally in a sense of the sacred which
is not reducible to a mere subjective projection. Rather, the sacred is a
source or cause of human striving to live in a spiritual and transcendent domain.
This domain is not a sterile concept, but rather is filled with transcendent
awareness and emotion frequently resembling what Rudolf Otto terms the sense of
“creatureliness,” “mysterium tremendum,” “awesomeness,” “overpoweringness” (or
“majesty”), “energy” (or “urgency”), “fascination,” and “transcendent
otherness.”[12]
Exhaustive as Eliade’s (and others’) studies
are, it is important to validate this conclusion for ourselves. Have you ever
felt, either as a child or an adult, a sense of alienation or discord – a deep
sense of not belonging? You ask yourself, “What could be the source?” and you
look around and see that at this particular time you have a good relationship
with your friends and your family. Your work relationships seem to be going
fairly well, community involvements have produced some interesting friends and
contexts in which to work. Yet, something’s missing. You don’t quite feel at
home in a general sense. Yet you do feel at home with family, friends,
organization, etc. You feel like you are out of kilter with, and don’t belong
to, the totality. And yet, all the specific contexts you look at seem just
fine. You feel an emptiness, a lack of peace, yet there is absolutely nothing
you can put your finger on.
Many philosophers and theologians connect
this feeling with a human being’s yearning to be at home with the totality; not
merely at home with myself, my family, my friends, or even the world, but to be
perfectly at home (without any hint of alienation). When the desire for perfect
home is even partially fulfilled, philosophers, theologians, and mystics
variously refer to it as joy–love–awe–unity–holiness–quiet.
What is the origin of our desire to be at
home with all that is, to live in what Eliade termed the “sacred domain”? What
gives us the capacity to experience what seems to be transcendent
joy–love–awe–unity–holiness–quiet? Indeed, what enables us to sense
transcendent otherness, and to be able to bridge the gap between ourselves and
this transcendent Other? Does not the transcendent Other have to bridge the gap
to us? If so, then our sense of perfect and unconditional home further reveals
our connection and participation with a transmaterial (spiritual),
self-transcendent domain.
Conclusion
If we examine our own desires and capacities
in the domains of truth, love, goodness/justice, beauty, and being/home, it is
difficult to deny the presence of transmaterial awareness and desire which
seems to indicate a connection with a transmaterial source of that desire. This
connection, in turn, reveals the transmaterial dimension of human beings.
If we wish to reduce humanity to mere
materiality, to mere artificial intelligence, and to mere animalic consciousness,
we will not only have to ignore Gödel’s proof for non-reductionistic human
intelligence, we will also have to equate ourselves with beings that lapse into
sleep without the stimulus of biological opportunities and dangers. More than
this, we will have to deny the presence of all the above transcendental desires
within ourselves (desires which cannot be explained through algorithmically
finite – physical – structures). This seems a rather high price to pay, for it
would mean condemning ourselves to ignore everything that matters – truth,
love, goodness/justice, beauty, being/home – at its highest possible level. Do
we really want to do this, all for the cause of defending materialism or
justifying serious violations of the principle of non-maleficence? It would
seem to be complete self-negation in the effort to negate the true dignity of
every human being. This is probably not the best way to make the most of our
lives.
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