[Re:] Why should things Exist?

[Guest guest]

Namaste Gregoryji,

 

I am prompted by your post and by Benjaminji's heartfelt message to

give reign, somewhat freely, to some thoughts on the subject of

existence....

 

The problem of the meaning of "existence" in Western Philosophy is

the problem of the loss of meanings in modernity. It is true that the

meaning of existence in the dominant threads of Western Philosophy

has been as you have elucidated them, but it would be an injustice to

Western Philosophy if we do not recognise that there has been an

ancient and medieval tradition, which has all but lost its meaning

today, in which philosophy tried to uncover the meaning of existence

as it lay in the mystical region behind the shadows of appearance.

That is the tradition of Eleatic and Platonic philosophy, as it truly

was, before its meanings were reified by the restricted

interpretations given to it by modern acadamia. It is ironical, in

this context, that the establishment of Plato was called

the "Academy".

 

The four different uses of the word "existence" that Frege, Russel

and others analysed simply do not address the numinous meaning of

existence that lies behind the affirmative answer that we are all

compelled to give to the question "Does the circle exist?" For here

we do not ask whether there is manifested or instantiated the

attribute circle in a particular body, but we ask the question with a

meaning that penetrates beyond the actualisation of the attribute or

body. Such a question and its answer is meaningful, and we all employ

it in the languages that we speak. It is the task of philosophy to

unravel the meanings behind those locutions that are meaningful, and

not to restrict their meanings by artificial definitions as has been

done by modern philosophy. The search for clarity in analytical

philosophy, for example, is undertaken on the foundations of a

meaning of "existence" that is not uncovered, but which is given to

analytical philosophy by Frege and Russel while defining its

syntactical structures. The meaning of "existence" as "instantiation

of objects" was not the result of a philosophical investigation, but

the result of a forcing of dogma on to the framework of modern

symbolic logic. It fails to include within it the range of meaning

that the word "existence" has, as it extends over its meaningful

employment. It is because of this restriction that modern philosophy

fails to quell the deep noetic unrest within us; it fails to respond

to the mystical that lies in the core of our being. It fails to

penetrate the surface of the world and restricts us to an

understanding of existence as only that which stands revealed to our

senses as concrete particulars. But if we go back to the fragments of

the "Way of Truth" of Parmenides of Elea, we find a more encompassing

meaning of "existence", and one which carries over into the entire

Platonic and neo-Platonic tradition until it loses itself in the

schism that separates mind and matter, abstract thought and concrete

objects, that began with Aristotle and gained dominance somewhere in

the course of medieval philosophy. In Parmenides and Plato, there is

no such schism, and the meaning of existence is the same meaning that

we find in Vishistadvaita, and it is the same meaning that is there

in the "real context" of the real-unreal matrix of Maya in Advaita.

It is that there cannot be non-being, that all is Being.

 

There is a chronic problem with philosophy today. In some respects,

this problem is a legacy of Aristotelian logic. The word "logic" has

its roots in the word "logos", and it is logos or language that holds

its secrets. Wittgenstein sensed it, but his roots in the analytical

system was too strong for him to dive to its secret founts; yet his

philosophy remains as a luminescent masterpiece in the twilight of

European philosophy. Philosophy, for Socrates, was about learning how

to die a deeper death than the mortal deaths we die in our bodies,

but modern philosophy has made it into an apology for the romantic

desires of man. But now, to return to the question: What is the

chronic problem that characterises modern philosophy?

 

We endeavour to discover the secrets of the world. Unfortunately, we

also assume, while thus endeavouring, that we have with us the

perspicuity of reason to embark on such a venture. This is the

problem. We question the world, but we never question this thing

called "reason" that we have defined and encapsulated in a formalism.

The focal point here is not reason, for there is nothing wrong with

reason as such, but with the assumption that we already know what

reason is. It has never struck the modern man that we may have to

uncover what reason itself is, that both reason and the world are

revealed in the one epiphany of revelation; that the unravelment of

the secrets of the world may also be the unravelment of logos or

reason. Reason is part of the world; it is part of the mind-body

continuum, and therefore it is part of the world that is to be

unraveled. We can see what reason is only in the perspicuity of

knowledge, and knowledge is paradoxically the end of the striving of

reason. What a madness this is! What a matrix of Maya! That is why

philosophy has no methodical beginning; it must be a darshana. That

is why in Indian Philosophy, it is not called philosophy, but a

darshana, a vision of revelation. That is why Advaita places reason

below perception, and perception below Shruti, in the hierarchy of

pramanas. That is why Socrates was the wisest man in all of Greece,

because he refused to say what the truth is, and was content to

remain a midwife for any man that was pregnant already with

knowledge. (It might be appropriate to mention here that the "Way of

Truth" was given to Parmenides by the Goddess as a revelation.)

 

Philosophy cannot therefore be progressive as a human science. For it

is not a public science, it is the journey of the individual soul.

And soon the journeying soul cannot talk the same reason as the

people of the world. It has left its worldly home in "the dark night

of awakening", and it now proceeds with the light of its own lamp.

Its words now become mystical, full with the revealed reason of the

light of Truth. It is a reason that unfurls into song to sing the

poetry of Existence. It is the reason of the intellect sinking back

into the Heart as the self returns to Self.

 

Therefore, it would seem to me - as both Benjaminji and you point

out -- that it is the sense of wonder and the whisper of mystery that

is our guide more than a reason that is still to be reached and only

shines "through the glass darkly".

 

With regards,

Chittaranjan

 

 

 

advaitin, Gregory Goode <goode@D...> wrote:

> About existence in spiritual contexts.

> ======================================

> I'm not sure how it feels coming from an Indian background. But

coming from a Western background I know what it feels like to want to

certify and prove existence. Those (few!) who think about these

things want a rock-solid guarantee that there's a logical and

metaphysically *MUST* to existence. We don't want that vacant

feeling, where there merely *happens to be* something. We want an

explanation. We don't want to be left hanging in the air!

>

> Basically, we want "existence" to do therapeutic work for us. But

this can only be done if we use the word in a way that makes no

metaphysical sense. Conversely, if we use it the way that does make

sense, then the notion of "existence" thins out and cannot do the

work we expect from it.

>

> The only kind of use of the "existence" notion that will give this

cozy guarantee-feeling to us is the predicate-use of existence. This

is the one that functions like other predicates, adding something to

the subject that is not there without its addition.

>

> Frege-Russell wrote about "is," because it can do the work

of "exists." They distinguished 4 different uses:

>

> 1. Socrates is. (the "is" of existence)

> 2. Jennifer Lopez is JLo. (the "is" of identity)

> 3. Socrates is wise. (the "is" of predication)

> 4. A dog is a canine. (the "is" of inclusion or generic

implication)

>

> For us to get that certified, guaranteed, settled feeling from our

spiritual investigations in to existence, we need it to function as a

predicate. We need it to act like (3). After (3), you know

something about Socrates that you didn't know before. We want to

know about the world something more than observation tells us. We

want it also to "exist"!

>

> But as in the article cited earlier

(http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existence), all (3)-like,

predicate-like notions of existence are problematic. You can't add

to what's there just by speaking it. And our spiritual yearnings are

not satisfied by (1)-type uses of "exists." If we were told only

things like (1), we'd say, "I already knew that by knowing

Socrates." If we were used to (1)-like uses of existence, we

wouldn't expect it to do that extra work that predicates do, like

(3). That is, we wouldn't ask Leibniz questions of (1) as we do

thinking that existence is (3).

>

> Basically, if it's a predicate, it makes no sense. If it's not a

predicate, then it seems vacuous and irrelevant to the spiritual

yearnings.

>

> So why do we expect the predicate-kind-of-use from "exists" as in

(3)? Like Wittgenstein and others (Berkeley 200 years before him)

have said, we are bewitched by language. "Exists" functions

*grammatically* like "eats." So we are bewitched into thinking that

it functions *metaphysically* like "eats." By habit, we think that

we'll learn something extra about the world if we know it exists.

And if it's a predicate, then we can push it even harder and require

that the world *necessarily* exist. This is what the Western

philosophical spiritual seeker asks of this word. And it can't do

the work!

>

> --Greg