N. A. BERDYAEV (BERDIAEV)
PART TWO
The Problem of Being and Existence
88
CHAPTER III
i. Being as objectification. Being and the existent, that which exists.
Being and non-being. Being as concept. Being and value. Being and spirit. 2. The
supremacy of freedom over being. The determinism of being and freedom. Being and
primary passion. Being as congealed freedom and congealed passion. Being as nature
and being as history
From ancient times philosophers have sought for the knowledge of being (ousia,
essentia). The construction of an ontology has been philosophy's highest claim.
And at the same time the possibility of achieving this has raised doubts among
the philosophers. At times it has appeared as though human thought was in this
respect pursuing a phantom.
The transition from the many to the One, and from the One to the many was
a fundamental theme in Greek philosophy. In a different way the same topic has
been fundamental in Indian philosophy also. Indian thought has been disquieted
by the question: how does being arise out of non-being? It has to a large extent
been focussed upon the problem of nothingness, non-being and illusion. It has
been occupied with the discovery of the Absolute and deliverance from me relative,
which meant salvation. Indian thought has tried to place itself on the other side
of being and non-being, and has revealed a dialectic of being and non-being. It
is this that has made it important.1
The Greeks sought for apxn—the primordial. They medi-
1 See R. Groussct: Les philosophies indiennes. O. Strauss: Indische Philosophic.
A. Schweitzer: Les grands penscursde Flnde.
91
tated upon the unchangeable; they were disquieted by the problem of the relation
of the unchangeable to the changing; they desired to explain how becoming arises
out of being. Philosophy has sought to rise above the deceptive world of the senses
and to penetrate behind this world of plurality and change to the One. Doubts
were felt even about the reality of movement. If man breaks through to the knowledge
of being he will reach the summit of knowledge, and, it was sometimes thought,
he will attain salvation through having achieved union with the primary source.
Yet at the same time Hegel says that the concept of being is quite futile, while
Lotze says that being is indefinable and can only be experienced.1
Heidegger, in claiming to construct a new ontology, says that the concept
of being is very obscure. Pure being is an abstraction and it is in an abstraction
that men seek to lay hold upon primary reality, primary life. Human thought is
engaged in the pursuit of its own product. It is in this that the tragedy of philosophical
learning lies, the tragedy, that is, of all abstract philosophy. The problem which
faces us is this: is not being a product of objectification? Does it not turn
the subject matter of philosophical knowledge into objects in which the noumenal
world disappears? Is not the concept of being concerned with being qua concept,
does being possess existence?
Parmenides is the founder of the ontological tradition in philosophy, a highly
significant and important tradition in connection with which the efforts of reason
have reached the level of genius. To Parmenides being is one and unchanging. There
is no non-being, there is only being. To Plato, who carried on this ontological
tradition, true being is the realm of ideas which he sees behind the moving and
multiple world of the senses. But at the same time Plato maintains the supremacy
of the good and beneficent over being, and from that it is possible to go on to
another tradition in philosophy. In Plato the unity of perfection is the 1 See
Lotze: Metaphysik.
92
highest idea, and the idea of being is being itself. Eckhardt held that Ewe
is Dews. Husserl, after passing through a phase of idealism and asserting the
primacy of the mind, came to carry on the tradition of Platonism in the contemplation
of ideal being, IVesenheiten.
In the processes of thought the human mind sought to rise above this world
of sense which presents itself to us, and in which evey thing is unstable, above
a world which is a world of becoming, rather than of being. But by that very fact
the search for being was made to depend upon thinking, and the impress of thought
lay upon it. Being became an object of thought and thereby came to denote objectification.
What reason finds is its own product. Reality is made to depend upon the fact
that it becomes the subject matter of knowledge, in other words an object. But
in actual fact the reverse is true, reality is not in front of the knowing subject
but 'behind' him, in his existentiality.
The erroneous character of the old realism is particularly clear in the case
of Thomism, the philosophy of the common or of sound common sense. It regards
the products of thinking, the hypostatization of thought, as objective realities.1
And so St Thomas Aquinas supposes that the intellect, and the intellect alone,
comes into touch with being. Being is received from without. This is to make the
average normal consciousness, which is also regarded as unchangeable human nature,
absolute. That kind of ontology is a clear example of naturalistic metaphysics,
and it does not recognize the antinomies to which the reason gives birth. The
nature of the intellectual apprehension of being is settled by the fact that being
was already beforehand the product of in-tellectualization. In the Thomist view
being comes before thought; but this being was already fabricated by thought.
Being is secondary not primary.
In mediaeval philosophy the question of the relation between essentia and
existentia played a great part. "Being is essentia. But the question remains:
does essentia possess an existentia of its own? In
1 See Garrigou-Lagrange: Le sens commun.
93
present day philosophy, for example in Heidegger and Jaspers, this question
assumes a new form, that of the relation between Sein and Dasein.1 Aristotle and
the scholastics admitted a classification in logic of the same sort as in zoology
and in this classification the concept of being took its place as the broadest
and highest. Brunschvicg points out with truth that it was Descartes who broke
with this naturalism in logic and metaphysics.2 But ontology has never been able
to cut itself off entirely from the naturalistic spirit.
Hegel introduced a new element into the concept of being. He introduced the
idea of non-being, nothingness, without which there is no becoming, no emergence
of what is new. Being itself is empty and the equivalent of non-being. The initial
fact is being-non-being, unity, being and nothingness. Being is nothingness, indeterminate
and unqualified being. Dasein in Hegel is the union of being and nothingness,
becoming, determinate being. Truth is in the transition from being to nothingness,
and from nothingness to being. Hegel wants to put life into numbed and ossified
being. He seeks to pass from the concept to concrete being. This is attained by
way of recognizing the ontological nature of the concept itself, it is being which
is filled with interior life. 'Identity', says Hegel, 'is a definition of only
simple, immediate, dead being, whereas contradiction is the root of all movement
and vitality. It is only in so far as nothingness has within itself its contradiction
that it has movement and attains a state of wakefulness and activity.3 Dialectic
is real life.
But Hegel does not attain to real concreteness. He remains under the sway
of object-ness. Vladimir Soloviev, who was much under the influence of Hegel,
makes a very valuable and important distinction between being and the existent.
Being is the predicate of the existent, which is the subject. We
1 Heidegger: Sein undZeit. Jaspers: Philosophic, 3 Vols. 1 See L. Brunschvicg:
Spinose et ses contemporains, and Le progrls de la conscience Jans la philosophic
occidentals. 3 See Hegel: The Science of Logic. Vol. II.
94
say: 'this creature is' and 'that sensation is'. A hypostatization of the
predicate takes place.1 Various kinds of being are formed through the abstraction
and hypostatization of attributes and qualities, hi this way ontologies have been
built up which have constituted a doctrine of abstract being, rather than of the
concrete existent. But the real subject-matter of philosophy ought to be, not
being in general, but that to which and to whom being belongs, that is, the existent,
that which exists. A concrete philosophy is an existential philosophy, and that
Soloviev did not arrive at, he remained an abstract metaphysician. The doctrine
of the all-in-one is ontological monism.2
It is not true to say that being is: only the existent is, only that which
exists. What being tells of a thing is that something is, it does not speak about
what is. The subject of existence confers being. The concept of being is logically
and grammatically ambiguous, two meanings are confused in it. Being means that
something is, and it also means that which is. This second meaning of 'being'
ought to have been discarded. Being appears as both a subject and a predicate,
in the grammatical sense of those words. In point of fact, being is a predicate
only. Being is the common, the universal. But the common has no existence and
the universal is only within that which exists, in the subject of existence, not
in the object. The world is multiple, everything in it is individual and single.
The universally-common is nothing but the attainment of the quality of unity and
commonness in this plurality of individualities. There is some degree of truth
in what Rickert says, that being is a judgment of value, that the real is the
subject-matter of judgment. From this the mistaken conclusion is drawn that truth
is obligation, rather than being; the transcendent is only Geltung. Geltung refers
to value not to reality.
When the primacy of obligation over being is asserted, this
1 See Soloviev: Critique of Abstract Principles, and The Philosophical Principlesof
Pure Knowledge.
2 See S. Frank: The Unfathomable.
95
may seem like the Platonic primacy of the good over being. But Soloviev says
that that which obliges to be in this world is the eternally existent in another
sphere. A fundamental question arises: does meaning, the ideal value, exist and
if so in what sense does it exist? Does a subject of meaning, value, and idea
exist? My answer to this question is that it does, it exists as spirit. Spirit
moreover is not abstract being, it is that which concretely exists. Spirit is
a reality of another order than the reality of 'objective' nature or the 'objectivity'
which is born of reason. Ontology should be replaced by pneumatology. Existential
philosophy departs from the 'ontologicaT tradition, in which it sees unconscious
objectification. When Leibniz sees in the monad a simple substance which enters
into a complex organization, his teaching is about the world harmony of monads,
and what he is most interested in is the question of simplicity and complexity,
he is still in the power of naturalistic metaphysics and an objectified ontology.
It is essential to grasp the inter-relations of such concepts as truth, being,
and reality. Of these terms, reality is the least open to doubt and the most independent
of schools of philosophical terminology, in the meaning which it has acquired.
But originally it was connected with res, a thing, and the impress of an objectified
world has been stamped upon it. Truth again is not simply that which exists, it
is an attained quality and value, truth is spiritual. That which is, is not to
be venerated simply because it is. The error of ontologism leads to an idolatrous
attitude towards being. It is Truth that must be venerated, not being. Truth moreover
exists concretely not in the world but in the Spirit. The miracle of Christianity
consists in the fact that in it the incarnation of Truth, of the Logos, of Meaning,
appeared, the incarnation of that which is unique, singular and unrepeatable;
and that incarnation was not objectification, but an abrupt break with objectification.
It must be constantly reiterated that spirit is never an object and that there
is no such thing as objective spirit. Being is only
96
one among the offspring of spirit. But only the trans-subjective is that which
exists, the existent. Whereas being is merely a product of hypostatized existence.
Pure ontologism subordinates value to being. To put it in another way, it
is compelled to regard being as a unique scale and criterion of value and of truth,
of the good and the beautiful. Being, the nature of being, indeed is goodness,
truth and beauty. The one and only meaning of goodness, truth and beauty is in
this, that they are—being. And the reverse side of the matter is similar, the
sole evil, falsehood and ugliness, is non-being, the denial of being. Ontologism
has to recognize being as God, to deify being and to define God as being. And
this is characteristic of the kataphatic doctrine of God, and distinguishes it
in principle from the apophatic which regards God not as being, but as supra-being.
Schelling says that God is not being, but life.1 'Life'—it is a better word
than 'being'. But ontological philosophy has a formal likeness to the philosophy
of life, to which 'life' is the sole standard of truth, goodness and beauty: life
at its maximum is to it die supreme value. The highest good, the highest value
is defined as the maximum of being or the maximum of life. And there is no disputing
the fact that one must be, one must live, before the question of value and good
can be raised at all. There is nothing more sad and barren than that which the
Greeks expressed by the phrase OVK ov, which is real nothingness. The words ^
Sv conceal a potentiality, and this therefore is only half being or being which
is not realized.
Life is more concrete and nearer to us than being. But the inadequacy of the
philosophy of life consists in this, that it always has a biological flavour:
Nietzsche, Bergson and Klages illustrate the point. Being indeed is abstract and
has no interior life. Being can possess the highest qualities, but it may also
not possess them, it can be also the very lowest. And therefore beine cannot be
a
1 See Schelling: Philosophic der Offenbarung.
97
standard of quality and value. The situation is always saved when the phrase
'real and true' is added. But then 'reality and truth* become the highest standard
and appraisal. It is the attainment of 'real and true' being which is the aim,
not the affirmation of being at its maximum. This only underlines the truth that
ontologism is a hypostatization of predicates and qualities. Being acquires an
ariological sense. Value, goodness, truth and beauty are a vision of quality in
existence and rise above being.
But there is something else still more important in characterizing ontologism
in philosophy. The recognition of being as the supreme good and value means the
primacy of the common over what is individual and this is the philosophy of universals.
Being is the world of ideas which crushes the world of the individual, the unique,
the unrepeatable. The same thing happens when matter is regarded as the essence
of being. Universalist ontologism cannot recognize the supreme value of personality:
personality is a means, a tool of the universally common.
In the most living reality essentia is individual in its existen-tiality,
while the universal is a creation of reason (Duns Scotus). The philosophy of ideal
values is characterized by the same crushing of personality, nor has it any need
to oppose the philosophy of abstract being. Real philosophy is the philosophy
of the concrete living entity and entities and it is that which corresponds most
closely to Christianity. It is also the philosophy of concrete spirit, for it
is in spirit that value and idea are to be found. Meaning also is something which
exists and by its existence is communicated to those that exist. Being and becoming
must have a living carrier, a subject, a concrete living entity. That which concretely
exists is more profound than value and comes before it, and existence goes deeper
than being.
Ontologism has been the metaphysics of intellectualism. But the words 'ontology'
and 'ontologism' are used in a broad sense and not rarely are identified with
metaphysical realism as a whole. Hartmann says that the irrational in ontology
lies deeper than the
98
irrational in mysticism, for it is beyond the bounds not only of what can
be known, but also of what can be experienced.1 But in this way ontological depth
is assigned a higher (or deeper) level than the possibility of experience, that
is, than existence. This ontological depth is very like the Unknowable of Spencer.
In Fichte being exists for the sake of reason and not the other way about. But
being is the offspring of reason and reason moreover is a function of primary
life or existence. Pascal goes deeper when he says that man is placed between
nothingness and infinity. This is the existential position of man, and not an
abstraction of thought.
Attempts have been made to stabilize being and strengthen its position between
nothingness and infinity, between the lower abyss and the higher, but this has
been merely an adjustment of reason and consciousness to the social conditions
of existence in the objectified world. But infinity breaks through from below
and from above, acts upon man, and overthrows stabilized being and established
consciousness. It gives rise to the tragic feeling of life and to the eschatological
outlook.
And this accounts for the fact that what I call eschatological metaphysics
(which is also an existential metaphysics) is not ontology. It denies the stabilization
of being and foresees the end of being, because it regards it as objectification.
In this world indeed being is change, not rest. That is what is true in Bergson.2
I have already said that the problem of the relation between thinking and being
has been put in the wrong way. The actual statement of the problem has rested
upon failure to understand the fact that knowledge is the kindling of light within
being, not taking up a position in front of being as an object.
Apophatic theology is of immense importance for the understanding of the problem
of being. It is to be seen in Indian religious philosophy and, in the West, principally
in Plotinus, in the neo-platonists in pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, in Eckhardt,
in
1N. Hartmann: Grundziige einer Metaphysik der Erkenntnis. 2 Bergson: L'Јvolution
creatrice.
99
Nicholas of Cusa and in German speculative mysticism. Kata-phatic theology
rationalized the idea of God. It applied to God the rational categories which
were worked out in relation to the object world. And so it has been light-heartedly
asserted, as a basic truth, that God is being. The kind of thinking which is adapted
to the knowledge of being has been applied to him, the sort of thinking which
is stamped with the indelible impress of the phenomenal, natural and historical
world. This cosmomorphic and socio-morphic knowledge of God has led to the denial
of the fundamental religious truth that God is mystery and that mystery lies at
the heart of all things.
The teaching of kataphatic theology to the effect that God is being and that
he is knowable in concepts is an expression of theological naturalism. God is
interpreted as nature and the attributes of nature are transferred to him (almightiness,
for example); just as in the same sociomorphic way the properties of power are
communicated to him. But God is not nature, and not being, he is Spirit. Spirit
is not being, it stands higher than being and is outside objectification. The
God of kataphatic theology is a God who reveals himself in objectification. It
is a doctrine about what is secondary not about what is primary. The important
religious process in the world is one of spiritualizing the human idea of God.1
The teaching of Eckhardt about Gottheit as of greater depth than Gott is profound.
Gottheit is mystery and the concept of creator of the world is not applicable
to Gottheit. God, as the first thing and the last, is the non-being which is supra-being.
Negative theology recognizes that there is something higher than being. God
is not being. He is greater and higher, more mysterious than our rationalized
concept of being. Knowledge of being is not the last thing, nor the first. The
One in Plotinus is on the other side of being. The depth of the apophatic theology
of Plotinus, however, is distorted by monism according to which the separate entity
issues from the addition of non-being. This would 1 See R. Otto: Das Heilige.
100
be true, if by 'non-being' we understood freedom as distinct from nature. Eckhardt's
teaching is not pandieism, it cannot be turned into the language of rational theology,
and diose who propose to call it theo-pantheism have a better case. Otto is right
when he speaks of the supra-theism not the anti-theism of Sankhara and Eckhardt.1
One must rise higher than being.
The relation which subsists among God, the world and man is not to be thought
of in terms of being and necessity. It must be conceived by thought which is integrated
in the experience of spirit and freedom. In other words it must be thought of
in a sphere which lies beyond all objectification, all object power, authority,
cause, necessity and externality, outside all ejection into die external. The
sun outside me denotes my fall, it ought to have been within me and to send out
its rays from within me.
This is above all of cosmological significance, and it means that man is a
microcosm.2 But in the problem which concerns the relations which subsist between
man and God, it certainly should not be taken to mean pantheistic identity. That
is always evidence of rationalistic thinking about being in which everything is
either relegated to a place outside, or identified widi, something. God and man
are not external to each other, nor outside one another; neither are they identified,
the one nature does not disappear in die other. But it is impossible to work out
adequate concepts about this, it can be expressed only in symbols. Symbolic knowledge
which throws a bridge across from one world to the other, is apophatic.
Knowledge by concepts which are subject to the restraining laws of logic,
is suitable only to being, which is a secondary objectified sphere, and does not
meet the needs of die realm of die spirit, which is outside the sphere of being
or of supra-being. The concept of being has been a confusion of die phenomenal
world widi the noumenal, or die secondary" with die primary, and of
1 See Otto: West-Oestliche Mystik.
2 See my The Meaning of the Creative Act.
101
predicate with subject. Indian thought took the right view in asserting that
being depends upon act. Fichte also maintains the existence of pure act. Being
is postulated as an act of spirit, it is derivative. What is true does not mean
what belongs to being, as mediaeval scholastic philosophy would have it. Existentia
is not apprehended by the intellect, whereas essentia is so apprehended, simply
because it is a product of the intellect. What is true does not mean what belongs
to being, but what belongs to the spirit.
A matter of great importance in the question of the relation between kataphatic
and apophatic theology, is the working out of the idea of the Absolute, and this
has been in the main the business of philosophy, rather than of religion. The
Absolute is the boundary of abstract thought, and what men wish is to impart a
positive character to its negative character. The Absolute is that which is separate
and self-sufficient, there is in the Absolute no relation to any other. In this
sense God is not the Absolute, the Absolute cannot be the Creator, and knows no
relation to anything else. The God of the Bible is not the Absolute. It might
be put in a paradoxical way by saying that God is the Relative, because God has
a relation to his other, that is to say to man and to the world, and he knows
the relation of love. The perfection of God is the perfection of his relation;
paradoxically speaking, it is the absolute perfection of that relation. Here the
state of being absolute is the predicate not the subject. It is doubtful whether
the distinction can be allowed which Soloviev draws between the Absolute Existent
and the Absolute which is becoming; there is no becoming in the Absolute. The
Absolute is the unique, and the thinking mind can assert this of the Gottheit,
though it says it very poorly.
A real, not verbal, proof of the being of God is in any case impossible because
God is not being, because being is a term which belongs to naturalism, whereas
the reality of God is a reality of spirit, of the spiritual sphere which is outside
what belongs to being or to supra-being. God cannot in any sense whatever be
102
conceived as an object, not even as the very highest object. God is not to
be found in the world of objects. Ontological proof shares in the weakness of
all ontologism. The service which Husserl rendered by his fight against all forms
of naturalistic metaphysics must be acknowledged.1 Naturalism understands the
fullness of being in terms of the form of a material thing, the naturalization
of the mind regards the mind as a part of nature. But existence bears different
meanings in different spheres. Husserl draws a distinction between the being of
a thing and the being of the mind. In his view the mind is the source of all being,
and in this respect he is an idealist. It is the being of consciousness with which
he is concerned.
It is rightly pointed out that there is a difference between Husserl and Descartes,
in that the latter was not concerned with an investigation into the various meanings
of existence. But Husserl is concerned with that, and seeks to pass on from a
theory of knowledge to a theory of being. But he preserves the ontologism which
comes down from Plato. It is upon being that he keeps his attention fixed. But
there is this further to be said, that not only things but even Wesenheiten also
exist for the mind only, and that means that they are exposed to the process of
objectifi-cation. Behind this lies a different sphere, the sphere of the spirit.
Spirit is not being, but the existent, that which exists and possesses true existence,
and it is not subject to determination by any being at all. Spirit is not a principle,
but personality, in other words the highest form of existence.
Those idealists who have taught that God is not being, but existence and value,
have simply been teaching, though in a distorted and diminished form, the eschatological
doctrine of God. God reveals himself in this world and he is apprehended eschato-logically.
This will become clearer in the last two chapters of this book. I stand by a philosophy
of spirit, but it differs from the traditional 'spiritualist' metaphysics. Spirit
is understood not as 1 See Levinasse: La Morie de I'intuition dans kphenomlnologie
de Husserl.
103
substance, nor as another nature comparable with material nature. Spirit is
freedom, not nature: spirit is act, creative act; nor is it being which is congealed
and determined, albeit after a different fashion. To the existential philosophy
of spirit the natural material world is a fall, it is the product of objectification,
self-alienation within existence. But the form of the human body and the expression
of the eyes belong to spiritual personality and are not opposed to spirit.
Ontological philosophy is not a philosophy of freedom. Freedom cannot have
its source in being, nor be determined by being: it cannot enter into a system
of ontological determinism. Freedom does not suffer the determining power of being,
nor that of the reason. When Hegel says that the truth of necessity is freedom
he denies the primary nature of freedom and entirely subordinates it to necessity.
And in no degree does it help when Hegel asserts that the finite condition of
the world is consciousness of freedom of the spirit, and the ultimate aim is the
actualization of freedom. Freedom is represented as the outcome of a necessary
world process—as a gift of necessity. But then, it has to be said that in Hegel
even God is an outcome of the world process; he becomes within the world-order.
The choice has to be made—either the primacy of being over freedom, or the primacy
of freedom over being. The choice settles two types of philosophy. The acceptance
of the primacy of being over freedom is inevitably either open or disguised determinism.
Freedom cannot be a kind of effect of the determining and begetting agency of
anything or anybody; it flees into the inexplicable depth, into the bottomless
abyss. And this is acknowledged by a philosophy which takes as its starting point
the primacy of freedom over being, freedom which precedes being and all that belongs
to it.
But most of the schools of philosophical thought are under the sway of determined
and determining being. And that kind of
104
philosophizing is in the power of objectification, that is of the ejection
of human existence into the external. 'In tht. beginning was the Logos.' But in
the beginning also was freedom. The Logos was in freedom and freedom was in the
Logos. That, however, is only one of the aspects of freedom. It has another aspect,
one in which freedom is entirely external to the Logos and a clash between the
Logos and Freedom takes place. Thus it is that the life of the world is a drama,
it is full of the sense of tragedy, the antagonism of diametrically opposed principles
occurs in it. There is an existential dialectic of freedom: it passes into necessity,
freedom not only liberates, it also enslaves. There is no smooth development in
the process of reaching perfection. The world lives in stresses of passion, and
the basic theme of its life is freedom. The philosophical doctrines of freedom
give little satisfaction for the most part. They shrink from coming into contact
with the mystery of it, and fear to penetrate into that mystery.
There was real genius in Boehme's teaching about the Ungrund. It was a vision
rather than a rational doctrine. Boehme was one of the first to break away from
the intellectualism of Greek and scholastic philosophy, and his voluntarism is
a revelation of the possibility of freedom for philosophy. He reveals an interior
life and process within the Deity itself. It is an eternal birth of God, a self-begetting.
The denial of this theogonic process is a denial of the life of the Godhead. Franz
Baader also says the same.1 It was Boehme's view, as it was that of Heraclitus,
that the life of the world is embraced by fire, which is the fundamental element.
Streams of fire flow through the cosmos: there is a conflict between light and
darkness, between good and evil. The contradictory, suffering, and flamingly tragic
character of the life of the world is accounted for by the fact that before being
and deeper than being lies the Ungrund, the bottomless abyss, irrational mystery,
primordial freedom, which is ntet derivable from being.
1 See Franz von Baader's Complete works: Vol. XIII. Vorlesungen und Erlauterungen
zu Jacob Boehme'sLehre. p. 65
105
I reproduce here what I wrote in my essay on 'The Doctrine of the Ungrund
and Freedom in Jacob Boehme'. 'The doctrine of the Ungrund answers the need which
Boehme felt to come to grips with the mystery of freedom, the emergence of evil,
the conflict between light and darkness', Boehme says: 'Ausser der Natur ist Gott
ein Mysterium, verstehet in dem Nichts; denn ausser der Natur ist das Nichts,
das ist ein Auge der Ewigkeit, ein ungriind-lich Auge, das in Nichts stehet oder
siehet, denn es ist der Ungrund und dasselbe Auge ist ein Wille, verstehet ein
Sehen nach der Offenbarung, das Nichts zu finden.'1
The Ungrund, then, is nothingness, the groundless eye of eternity; and at
the same time it is will, not grounded upon anything, bottomless, indeterminate
will. But this is a nothingness which is 'Ein Hunger zum Etwas'* At the same time
the Ungrund is freedom.3 In the darkness of the Ungrund a fire flames up and this
is freedom, meonic, potential freedom. According to Boehme freedom is opposed
to nature, but nature emanated from freedom. Freedom is like nothingness, but
from it something emanates. The hunger of freedom, of the baseless will for something,
must be satisfied.
'Das Nichts macht sich in seiner Lust aus der Freiheit in der Finsternis des
Todes offenbar, denn das Nichts will nicht ein Nichts sein, und kann nicht ein
Nichts sein.'4
The freedom of the Ungrund is neither light nor darkness, it is neither good
nor evil. Freedom lies in the darkness and thirsts for light; and freedom is the
cause of light.
'Die Freiheit ist und stehet in der Finsternis, und gegen der finstern Begierde
nach des Lichts Begierde, sie ergreifet mit dem ewigen Willen die Finsternis;
und die Finsternis greifet nach dem Lichte der Freiheit und kann es nicht erreichen
denn sie schliesst sich mit Begierde selber in sich zu, und macht sich in sich
selber zur Finsternis.'5
1 See Jacob Boehme's Sammtliche Werke edited by Schiller. Vol. IV. pp. 284-5.
Vom dreifachen Leben des Menschen.
a Ibid. Vol. IV. p. 286. 3 Ibid. Vol. IV. pp. 287-9.
4 Ibid. Vol. IV. p. 406. 5 Ibid. p. 428.
106
I
Apophatically and by way of antinomy, Boehme describes the mystery which comes
to pass within that depth of being which makes contact with the original nothingness.
Fire flames up in the darkness and the light begins to dawn. Nothingness becomes
something, groundless freedom gives birth to nature. For the first time perhaps
in the history of human thought, Boehme saw that at the basis of being and superior
to being lies groundless freedom, the passionate desire of nothing to become something,
the darkness in which fire and light begin to kindle into flame. In other words
he is the founder of metaphysical voluntarism which was unknown alike to mediaeval
thought and to the thought of the ancient world.
Will, that is, freedom, is the beginning of everything. But Boehme's thought
would seem to suggest that the Ungrund, the ungrounded will, lies in the depth
of the Godhead and precedes the Godhead. The Ungrund is indeed the Godhead of
apophatic theology and at the same time, the abyss, the free nothingness which
precedes God and is outside God. Within God is nature, a principle distinct from
him. The Primary Godhead, the Divine Nothingness is on the further side of good
and evil, of light and darkness. The divine Ungrund, before its emergence, is
in the eternity of the Divine Trinity. God gives birth to himself, realizes himself
out of the Divine Nothingness. This is a way of thinking about God akin to that
in which Meister Eckhardt draws a distinction between Gottheit and Gott. Gott
as the Creator of the world and man is related to creation. He comes to birth
out of the, depth of Gottheit, of the ineffable Nothingness. This idea lies deep
in German mysticism.
Such a way of thinking about God is characteristic of apophatic theology.
Nothingness is deeper down and more original than some-thing. Darkness, which
is not in this case evil, is deeper down and more original than light, and freedom
deeper and more original than all nature. The God of kataphatic theology, on
107
the other hand, is already some-thing and means thinking about what is secondary.
'Und der Grund derselben Tinktur ist die gottliche Weisheit; und der Grund
der Weisheit ist die Dreiheit der ungriindlichen Gottheit, und der Grund der Dreiheit
ist der einige unerforsch-liche Wille, und des Willens Grund is das Nichts.'1
Here indeed, we have the theogonic process, the process of the birth of God
in eternity, in eternal mystery, and it is described according to the method of
apophatic theology. Boehme's contemplation goes deeper than all the affirmations
of secondary and rationalized kataphatic doctrines. Boehme establishes the path
from the eternal basis of nature, from the free will of the Ungrund, that is groundlessness,
to the natural basis of the soul.2 Nature is secondary and derivative. Freedom,
the will, is not nature. Freedom is not created. God is born everywhere and always,
he is at once ground and groundlessness. The Ungmnd must be understood above all
as freedom, freedom in the darkness.
'Darum so hat sich der ewige frei Wille in Finsternis, und Qual, sowohl auch
durch die Finsternis in Feuer und Lichte, und in ein Fremdenreich eingefuhret,
auf dass das Nichts in Etwas erkannt werde, und dass es ein Spiel habe in seinem
Gegenwillen, dass ihm der freie Wille des Ungrundes im Grunde offenbar sei, denn
ohne Boses mochte kein Grund sein.'3
Freedom has its roots in nothingness, in the meon, it is in fact the Ungmnd.
'Der frei Wille ist aus keinem Anfange, auch aus keinem Grunden nichts gefasset,
oder durch etwas geformet. . . Sein rechter Urstand ist im Nichts.'4 Here Nichts
does not mean a void; it is more primary than being, since being is secondary.
From this the primacy of freedom over being follows. The freedom of the will contains
within it both good and evil, both love and wrath. Light and darkness alike are
also contained in it. Free
1 See Jacob Boehme's Sdmmtliche Werke edited by Schiller. Vol. IV. Von der
Gnadenwahl. p. 504.
2 Ibid. Vol. IV. p. 607. » Ibid. Vol. V. Misterium Magnum, p. 162. «Ibid.
Vol. V. p. 164.
108
will in God is the Ungrund in God, the nothingness in him. Boehme gives a
profound exposition of the truth about the freedom of God, which traditional Christian
theology also recognizes. His teaching about the freedom of God goes deeper than
that of Duns Scotus.
'Der ewige Gottliche Verstand ist ein freier Wille, nicht von Etwas oder durch
Etwas entstanden, er ist sein Selbst eigener Sitz und wohnet einig und allein
in sich Selber; unergriffen von etwas, denn ausser und vor ihm ist Nichts, doch
auch Selber als ein Nichts. Er ist ein einiger Wille des Ungrundes, und ist weder
nahe noch feme, weder hoch noch niedrig, sondern er ist Alles, und doch als ein
Nichts'.1
To Boehme, chaos is the root of nature, chaos, that is to say, freedom. The
Ungrund, the will, is an irrational principle. In the Godhead itself there is
a groundless will, in other words, an irrational principle. Darkness and freedom
in Boehme are always correlative and coinherent. Freedom even is God himself and
it was in the beginning of all things. It would appear that Boehme was the first
in the history of human thought to locate freedom in the primary foundation of
being, at a greater and more original depth than any being, deeper and more primary
than God himself. And this was pregnant with vast consequences in the history
of thought. Such an understanding of the primordial nature of freedom would have
filled both Greek philosophers and mediaeval scholastics with horror and alarm.
It reveals the possibility of an entirely different theodicy and anthropodicy.
The primordial mystery is the kindling of light within dark freedom, within nothingness,
and the consolidation of the world out of that dark freedom. Boehme writes marvellously
about this in Psychologia vera: 'Denn in der Finsternis ist der Blitz, und in
der Freiheit das Licht mit der Majestat. Und ist dieses nur das Scheiden, dass
die Finsternis materialisch macht, da doch'auch kein Wesen einer Begreiflichkeit
ist; sondern finster Geist und Kraft, eine Erfullung
1 Ibid. Vol. V. p. 193.
109
der Freiheit in sich selber, verstehc in Begehren, und nicht ausscr: denn
ausser ist die Freiheit.'1
There are two wills, one in the fire and the other in the light. Fire aftd
light are basic symbols in Boehme. Fire is the beginning of everything, without
it nothing would be, there would be only Ungrund. 'Und ware Alles ein Nichts und
Ungrund ohne Feuer'.2 The transition from non-being to being is accomplished through
the kindling of fire out of freedom. In eternity there is the original will of
the Ungrund which is outside nature and before it. The philosophical ideas of
Fichte and Hegel, Schopenhauer and E. Hartmann emanated from this, although they
de-Christianized Boehme. German idealist metaphysics pass directly from the idea
of Ungrund, of the unconscious, from the primordial act of freedom, to the world
process, not to the Divine Trinity as in Boehme. The primary mystery of being,
according to Boehme, consists in this, diat nothingness seeks something.
'Der Ungrund ist ein ewig Nichts, und machet aber einen ewigen Anfang, als
eine Sucht; denn das Nichts ist eine Sucht nach Etwas: und da doch auch Nichts
ist, das Etwas gebe, sondern die Sucht ist selber das Geben dessen, das doch auch
Nichts ist bloss eine begehrende Sucht.'3
In Boehme's teaching freedom is not the ground of moral responsibility in
man. Nor is it freedom that controls his relations to God and his neighbour. Freedom
is the explanation of the genesis of being and at the same rime of the genesis
of evil: it is a cosmological mystery. Boehme gives no rational doctrine expressed
in pure concepts of the Ungrund and of freedom. He uses the language of symbol
and myth, and it may be just for that reason that he succeeds in letting in some
light upon that depth the knowledge of which is not attainable in rational philosophy.
Boehme had a vision of the Ungrund and that vision became a
1 See Jacob Boehme's Sammtliche Works edited Schiller. Vol. VI. p. 14
2 Ibid. Vol. VI. p. 60.
8 Ibid. Vol. VI. Mysterium pansophicon. p. 413.
110
fertilizing element in German metaphysics, which tried to rationalize it.
German metaphysics, as contrasted with Latin and Greek, was to see an irrational
principle in the primary fount of being, not reason, which floods the world with
light as the sun does, but will, act. This comes from Boehme, and beneath the
surface his influence is to be traced in Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Schopenhauer.
The possibility of a philosophy of freedom was brought to light, a philosophy
which rests upon the primacy of freedom over being. Hegel does not remain true
to the philosophy of freedom, but in him also the principle enunciated by Boehme
may be seen; he too is bent upon what lies beyond the boundaries of ontologism.
Kant must be counted as a founder of the philosophy of freedom.
Everything leads us to the conclusion that being is not the ultimate depth,
that there is a principle which precedes the emergence of being and that freedom
is bound up with that principle. Freedom is not ontic but meonic. Being is a secondary
product and it is always the case that in it freedom is already limited, and even
disappears altogether. Being is congealed freedom, it is a fire which has been
smothered and has cooled: but freedom at its fountain head is fiery. This cooling
of the fire, this coagulation of freedom is in fact objectification. Being is
brought to birth by the transcendental consciousness as it turns to the object.
Whereas the mystery of primary existence with its freedom, with its creative fire,
is revealed in the direction of the subject. Glimpses of the elements of a philosophy
of freedom can already be seen in the greatest of the schoolmen, Duns Scotus,
although he was still in chains. The influence of Boehme is of fundamental importance
in Kant. It is also a basic theme in Dostoyevsky, whose creative work is of great
significance in metaphysics.
The world and man are not in the least what they look like to the majority
of professional metaphysicians, wholly concentrated in as these are upon the intellectual
side of life and the process of knowing. It is only a few of them who have broken
through towards the mystery of existence, and philosophers belonging to particular
academic traditions least of all. Being has been understood as idea, thought,
reason, nous, ousia, essentia, because it was indeed a product of reason, thought,
idea. Spirit has seemed to philosophers to be nous, because out of it the primordial
breath of life was drawn and upon it lay the stamp of objectifying thought. Kant
did not bring to light the transcendental feelings, volitions and passions which
condition the objective world of appearances. I am not referring to psychological
passions nor psychological volitions, but to transcendental, which condition the
world of phenomena from out of the noumenal world.
Transcendental will and passion are capable of being transformed, and turned
into another direction, they can reveal a world within the depth of the subject,
in the mind before it is rationalized and objectified. And then being itself may
appear to us as cooled passion and congealed freedom. Primary passion lies in
the depth of the world, but it is objectified, it grows cold, it becomes stabilized,
and self-interest is substituted for it. The world as passion is turned into the
world as a struggle for life.
Nicolas Hartmann, a typical academic philosopher, defines the irrational in
a negatively epistemological manner, as that which became part of knowledge. But
the irrational has also a different, an existential meaning. New passion is needed,
a new passionate will, to melt down the congealed, determinate world and bring
the world of freedom to light. And such a passion, such a passionate will can
be set aflame on the summits of consciousness, after all the testing enquiries
of reason. There is a primary, original passion, the passionate will, which is
also the final and ultimate will. I call it messianic. It is only by messianic
passion that the world can be transformed and freed from slavery.
Passion is by nature twofold, it can enslave and it can liberate. There is
fire which destroys and reduces to ashes, and there is fire
112
which purifies and creates. Jesus Christ said that he came to bring down fire
from heaven and desired that it might be kindled. Fire is the great symbol of
a primordial element in human life and in the life of the world. The contradictions
of which the life of the world and of man is made up are akin to the fiery element,
which is present even in our thinking. Creative thought, which experiences opposition
and is set in motion by it, is fiery thought. Hegel understood this in the sphere
of logic. But the flaming fiery basis of the world, to which men but rarely break
through because of their dull prosaic everyday life and to which men of genius
do break through, gives rise to suffering. Suffering may ruin men, but there is
depth in it, and it can break through the congealed world of day-to-day routine.
Fire is a physical symbol of spirit. According to Heraclitus and Boehme the
world is embraced by fire, and Dostoyevsky felt that the world was volcanic. And
this fire is both in cosmic life and in the depth of man. Boehme revealed a longing,
the longing of nothingness to become something, the primordial will out of the
abyss. In Nietzsche, the dionysiac will to power, although it was expressed in
an evil form, was the same fusing and flaming fire. Bergson's elan vital, although
it is given too academic a form and smacks of biology, tells us that the metaphysical
ground of the world is creative impulse and life. Frobenius, in the more restricted
sphere of the philosophy of culture, speaks of alarm, the grip of emotion, and
shock as creative springs of culture.1 Shestov always speaks of a shock as a source
of real philosophy. And in very truth shock is a source of strength in perceiving
the mystery of human existence and of the existence of the world, the mystery
of destiny. Pascal and Kierkegaard were people who had been subject to shocks
of that kind. But their words were words of horror and almost of despair. But
if it is in a state of horror and despair that man moves on his way, yetTiorror
and despair are not a definition of what the world and man are in their primary
1 See L. Frobenius: Le Destin Jes civilisations.
113
reality and original life. The primary reality, the original life is creative
will, creative passion, creative fire. Out of this first source suffering, horror
and despair do indeed arise. In the objective world and in appearances we already
see the cooling process, and the realm of necessity and law. Man's answer to the
call of God should have been creative act, in which the fire was still conserved.
But the fall of man had as its result that the only possible response took the
form of law.
In this the mystery of divine-human relations is hidden, and it is to be understood
not in an objectified, but in an existential manner. But the creative passion
is preserved in man even in his fallen state. It is most clearly seen in creative
genius, and it remains unintelligible to the vast masses of mankind, submerged
as they are in the daily dull routine. In the depth of man is hidden the creative
passion of love and sympathy, the creative passion to know and give names to things
(Adam gave names to things), the creative passion for beauty and power of expression.
Deep down in man is a creative passion for justice, for taking control of nature:
and there is a general creative passion for a vital exulting impulse, and ecstasy.
On the other hand, the fall of the object world is the stifling of creative passion
and a demand that it shall cool down.
The primary reality and original life shows itself to us in two forms: in
the world of nature, and in the world of history. We shall see later on that these
two forms of the world, as appearances, are linked with different sorts of time.
While life in nature flows on in cosmic time, life in history moves forward in
historical time. To metaphysics of the naturalistic type being is nature, not
necessarily material, but also spiritual nature. Spirit is naturahzed and understood
as substance. That being so, history which is preeminently movement in time is
subordinated to nature, and turned into a part of cosmic life. But the fundamental
position of his-toriosophy, in opposition to the predominating naturalist philosophy,
consists in just this, that it is not history which is a part of
114
nature, but nature which is a part of history. In history the destiny and
meaning of world life is brought to light.
It is not in the cycle of cosmic life that meaning can be revealed, but in
movement within time, in the realization of the messianic hope. The sources of
the philosophy of history are not to be found in Greek philosophy but in the Bible.
Metaphysical naturalism, which regards spirit as nature and substance, is static
ontologism. It makes use of the spatial symbolism of a hierarchical conception
of the cosmos, not of symbols which are associated with time. But on the other
hand to interpret the world as history, is to take a dynamic view of it, and this
view understands the emergence of what is new.
Here there is a clash between two types of Weltanschauung, one of which may
be described as cosmocentricism and the other as anthropocentricism. But nature
and history are under the power of objectifiestion. The only possible way out
from this objectification is through history, through the self-revelation in it
of meta-history. It is not found by submerging it in the cycle of nature. The
way out is always bound up with a third kind of time, with existential time, the
time of inward existence. It is only a non-objectified existential philosophy
which can arrive at the mystery and meaning of the history of the world and of
man. But when it is applied to history existential philosophy becomes eschatological.
The philosophy of history, which did not exist so far as Greek philosophy
was concerned, cannot fail to be Christian. History has a meaning simply because
meaning, the Logos, appeared in it; the God-man became incarnate, and it has meaning
because it is moving towards the realm of God-Manhood. The theme of what in a
derivative sense is called 'being' is concerned with the encounter and the reciprocal
action between primordial passionate will, primordial creative act, primordial
freedom, and the Logos, Meaning. And these are flashes of freedom, will, longing
and passion shining through by the power of the Logos-Meaning, through the acquisition
of spirituality and a sense of spiritual
115
freedom. Passion in cosmic life is irrational in character and subconscious,
and it has to be transformed and become supra-rational and supra-conscious. We
are told about the destructive nature of passion, and men assign a supremacy over
the passion to reason and prudence. But the victory over evil and enslaving passions
is also a passionate victory, it is the victory of radiant light, the light of
a sun, not of objectifying reason. Is the absence of passion a mistake in nomenclature,
or is it a mistaken idea? The spiritual sun is not dispassionate. The seed springs
up out of the earth when the sun rays fall on it.
The latest attempt to construct an ontology is the work of Heidegger, and
he claims that his ontology is existential.1 It cannot be denied that Heidegger's
thought displays great intensity of intellectual effort, concentration and originality.
He is one of the most serious and interesting philosophers of our time. His chasing
after new phrases and a new terminology is a little irritating', although he is
a great master in this respect. In every metaphysical question he rightly takes
the whole of metaphysics into view. One cannot but think it a revealing and astonishing
thing that the latest ontology, at which this very gifted philosopher of the West
has arrived, is not a theory of being, but of non-being, of nothingness. And the
most up to date wisdom on the subject of the life of the world is expressed in
the words 'Nichts nichtet'. The fact that Heidegger raises the problem of nothingness,
of non-being, and that as contrasted with Bergson, he recognizes its existence,
must be regarded as a service which we owe to him. In this respect a kinship with
Boehme's teaching about the Ungrund may be noted.2 Without nothingness there would
be neither personal existence nor freedom.
But Heidegger is perhaps the most extreme pessimist in the history of philosophical
thought in the West. In any case his pessimism is more extreme and more thorough-going
than Schopenhauer's, for the latter was aware of many things which
1 See his Sein und Zeit. a See Heidegger: Was ist Metaphysik?
116
were a consolation to him. Moreover, he does not in actual fact give us either
a philosophy of being, or a philosophy o(Existenz, but merely a philosophy ofDasein.
He is entirely concerned with the fact that human existence is cast out into the
world. But this being cast out into the world, into das man, is the fall. In Heidegger's
view the fall belongs to the structure of being, being strikes its very roots
into commonplace existence. He says that anxiety is the structure of being. Anxiety
brings being into time.
But from what elevation can all this be seen? What intelligible meaning can
one give it? Heidegger does not explain whence the power of getting to know things
is acquired. He looks upon man and die world exclusively from below, and sees
nothing but the lowest part of them. As a man he is deeply troubled by this world
of care, fear, death and daily dullness. His philosophy, in which he has succeeded
in seeing a certain bitter truth, albeit not the final truth, is not existential
philosophy, and the depth of existence does not make itself felt in it.
This philosophy remains under the sway of objectification. The state of being
cast out into the world, into das man, is in fact objectification. But in any
case this essay in ontology has almost nothing in common with the ontological
tradition which descends from Parmenides and Plato. Nor is it a matter of chance,
it is indeed full of significance, that this latest of ontologies finds its support
in nothingness which reduces to nothing.
Does this not mean that it is necessary to reject ontological philosophy and
go over to an existential philosophy of the spirit, which is not being but which
is not non-being either?
In the next chapter we go on to discuss the problem of the individual and
the universal, perhaps the most difficult problem of all.
117
CHAPTER IV
I. The reality of the individual and the reality of the 'common . The controversy
about universal*. The common and the universal. The common as objectification.
2. Collective realities and individual realities. Genus, individual, and personality.
3. The mistakes of German idealism. Personalism
The controversy between the realists and the nominalists on the subject of
universals is regarded as characteristic of mediaeval philosophy. But it is an
everlasting controversy and is constantly being revived in new forms. It is being
renewed even in existential and personalist philosophy. In this dispute the issue
cannot be decided in the sphere of logic, and each side can bring plenty of arguments
to the support of its position. The process of thinking has in itself a tendency
towards the realism of concepts and readily comes under the sway of the 'common'
which is established by itself. That which the subject alienates from itself begins
to appear to it as an objective reality. To find a way out of the controversy
which thus arises is possible only through an egress beyond the bounds of abstract
thought; that is, by way of an integral act of the spirit which makes a choice,
and establishes values. Thought sets up a wrong statement of the problem; it is,
so to speak, in bondage to itself. The ex-teriorization which is brought about
by thought is in fact an act of self-absorption. There is here a paradox of pure
thought which has ceased to be a function of existence. It is only existentialist
and voluntarist thought which can acknowledge the primacy of the
118
uulivulual over the common, and the sovereign value of per-lonulif y as the
existential centre.
I )uns Scotus thought that the single and individual was the sole nul of creation
and the most important of things. But this cannot lie discovered by abstract thought.
As a matter of fact the three Ifuding scholastic trends in the controversy about
universals state ihr ijiiestion in the wrong way. Some say universalia sunt ante
rem, "i, universalia sunt realia. The product of thought is projected nilo
tilings. This is a typical result of objectification. Others say: tiiili't-rsalia
in re. This is an interior degree of objectification. But it must be admitted
that conceptualism contains a greater measure nl truth than realism and nominalism.
A third group say: uni-t'malia sunt post rem. In this case thought regards itself
as entirely imprudent upon the empirical object world and speaks of what lakes
place as the result of the objectification of human existence. I lie fundamental
error is the confusion of the universal with the i uuimnn.
Tins confusion of the universal and the common already exists lu Aristotle.
In consequence of it, universals assume the character of bring, which dominates
over what is individual, although it IMS no concrete existence. The universal
is quite certainly not the 11 >mmon, it is not the product of abstracting thought
and by no means stands in opposition to what is individual. There may be an antithesis
between universalism and individualism as philosophical 11 ends of thought, but
not between the universal and the individual. The concrete universal may be individual
and individuality. The individual can include the universal.
The common, the generic, suppresses the individual and cannot impart any content
to it. But the universal certainly does not mipprcss the individual. On the contrary
it raises it to the fullness ol existential content. The common is abstract and
exists only in thought, which tends to self-alienation. The universal is concrete
•nd is within actual existence as that which gives it qualitative value and fulfilment.
119
God is the most exalted of universals and at the same time He is the concretely
individual. He is personal. God is the one true and admissible hypostatization
of the universal. It is false to admit an ideal being outside creatures, and to
make the creatures subject to this ideal being.1 The concept is common and abstract,
and to the concept the common and abstract is the primary reality, while the individual
acquires a secondary, derivative significance. This view is characteristic of
objectifying thought. Hence it is that for the theory of knowledge the problem
is ever posed anew—how is the apprehension of reality possible through a concept,
seeing that in reality everything is individual and unique? Do the abstract and
universal concepts of the subject correspond with objective reality?
Hegel aimed at knowledge of the concrete universal (not of the common) but
he does not provide it. His philosophy only brings to light the complexity of
the problem and points to a new way of stating it. The realism of concepts which
goes back to Greek philosophy, and which took control of the philosophy of the
Middle Ages, was indeed the real source of rationalism, in spite of the fact that
the reverse is usually supposed to be the case, as a result of the illusions of
consciousness, the illusions of objectifica-tion.
Another side of this rationalism was the empiricism which was born of nominalism
and recognized only rationalized and secondary experience. Consistent nominalism
has never been thought out to the end. It ought to analyze not only the universal,
but the individual also, and it cannot make a halt at any sort of concrete reality.
No kind of concrete wholeness exists for nominalism, no concrete unity or concrete
image. It is opposed to personalism no less than the realism of concepts when
this ktter is transferred to the collective entities. Nominalism and empiricism
give rise to a false atomism. The antithesis of nominal-
1 Festugiere: Contemplation et vie contemplative selon Platan, a most remarkable
book on Plato.
I20
ism is integral intuition, the intuition of wholeness, thinking in terms of
images, in which the intellectual is combined with the emotional.
Realism and nominalism, rationalism anr empiricism are products of one and
the same direction of the spirit towards self-alienation in the sphere of objectifying
thought. What is in actual fact real, Is the individual image, even to think about
which individual images are necessary. Aristotle has been considered the source
of moderate realism (by Thomas Aquinas, for example). But this moderate realism,
which endeavours to rescue the individual, has all the same been based upon the
deduction of the partial from the general, and has postulated the identity of
rational thought with the forms of reality. To thought which issues from the fundamental
conceptions of Greek philosophy the species has been more primary than the individual,
man in general has been more primary than the concrete man, than Socrates, for
instance. The partial exists through the species. Thus, for Platonism it is knowledge
of the common only that is possible. In opposition to this stands the theory of
knowledge according to which that which is individual is known, not by perception
through the senses, which are common to all, but by spiritual intuition, which
is unique and personal.
The realism of concepts gave rise to the reaction of extreme nominalism, which
recognized the existence of universals only in words (Roscelin), the verbalism
of Occam. But Occam was obliged to deny even the reality of the individual. It
is existential personalism alone which can be set over against the erroneous and
illusory solutions .of the problem of the relation between the universal and the
individual. According to existential personalism, the universal exists, but it
exists as a qualification of personality. At the same time personalism breaks
open the closed circle of individual consciousness in empiricism. In that case,
the onto-logical method of deducing the truth of a thing from its concept is rejected.
Ontologism in reality means not the primacy of being
121
but the primacy of concept. This is one of the paradoxes which arise from the
illusions of consciousness.
As opposed to Platonism and scholastic realism, as opposed to all forms of
rationalism, what is true is not that the world of the senses is individual and
unique, while the world of ideas, the noumenal world is the world of the common
and the universal; the truth is that in the phenomenal world of the senses everything
is brought into subjection to the common, to the species, to law, whereas in the
noumenal world everything is individual and personal. Pantheism was the logical
conclusion of the realism of concepts. Personalism ought to be the logical conclusion
of the theory of knowledge which unmasks the illusions of objectifica-tion and
of the dominance of the 'common'. According to Spinoza, God loves not individuals
but eternal entities. But it is impossible to love eternal entities. It is precisely
individual people who are loved by the Christian God.
Philosophical thought, having passed through Kant, ought to have arrived at
a statement of the problem of the irrational and at a limitation of the application
of concepts in knowledge. That which is individual is irrational, and the concept,
whose attention is always directed towards the common, fails to grasp it. Kant
himself had a notable doctrine of the specification of nature, which has been
left in obscurity. Kant discloses a law of specification. Capacity for judgment
is the possibility of thinking of the paitial through the common.1 The principle
of teleology specifies general laws. In this way the possibility of getting to
know what is individual is opened up. But all the same it is above all the tragedy
of human knowledge which is revealed in Kant's philosophy. Knowledge rationalizes
its subject matter and turns it into the common'. But the actual reality itself
is individual and irrational. This means also that rational knowledge- objectifies,
and in objectification the truly existent thing and the truly existent person
disappear.
1 See Kant: Kritik der Urteihkraft.
122
Neo-Kantians of the type of Windelband and Rickert rely upon the problem of
the irrational. Miiller-Freienfells, a representative of the philosophy of life,
says that the common is a product of the rationalization of what is individual.1
Bergson, who follows a different path from that of Kant and the Kantians, arrives
at the conclusion that reason does not take knowledge of life, and movement is
unattainable by it. The intellect fabricates.2 Bergson is here enunciating the
same theme that I express in terms (if objectification, though he makes use of
a different terminology. 1 le finds a way out towards reality. His thought is
interesting: the same things which were discovered by the ancient Greeks as species
are discovered by present day Europeans as laws. This may throw light upon the
shackling of generic being by laws.
And what is intuition? Is it a vision of essential substances or a vision of
individualities? The schools of philosophy are divided on the question. To Husserl,
as to the Platonists, intuition is the vision of essential substances. This raises
the age-long question, is the noumenal world individual, multiple and susceptible
of movement, or is it single and immovable; do multiplicity and movement belong
only to the phenomenal world? But if the phenomenal world, as the subject-matter
of knowledge, is born of rationalization and conceptualization of a generalizing
kind, it is precisely in it that what is individual and creatively free disappears,
and the common is left supreme. The real problem of knowledge, however, consists
in this: is it possible to arrive at universal knowledge of the individual, or
does such knowledge refer only to the common?
Thinking about the individual is of a different character from thinking about
the common, and what distinguishes it is precisely the fact that in it there is
none of that division and of that loss of wholeness which accompany all objectifying
knowledge. It is existential thinking, it reveals the. apprehended reality as
subject
1 See Muller-Freienfells: Philosophie der Individualitat.
2 See L'Evolution creatrice.
123
not as object. This, in turn, is bound up with the relevance of intuitive
images in knowledge. Intuition, however, must be understood not passively, as
for instance in Lossky, to whom objective reality is immediately present in the
process of cognition, but creatively and actively. Intuition is not only intellectual
in character, an element which is emotional and volitional also enters into it.
It is a passionate break-through of the will towards the light, towards truth
as a whole. Then the universal is revealed in the concrete and individual without
crushing it and turning it into a means. Truth is not common and abstract, truth
is concrete, it is individually personal. Indeed, the whole pure Truth is a living
Personal Being, it is the incarnate Logos.
Genus has two meanings; it is used in a natural and biological sense, and
also in a logical sense. The two meanings are connected with each other. The generic
in the field of logic is adjusted to the generic in the sphere of nature and corresponds
to it. The genus crushes the individual, although it is from the bosom of the
genus that the individual emerges. In the logical scheme, the generic crushes
what is individual. Life in the phenomenal world is a generic process, it is life
shared in common. We shall see that hurran personality is a break-through and
a rupture in this natural world, in which the generic and the common play a dominating
part.
There is a dualism running through the life of the world, it is not continuous
and all of a piece. Present-day physics and notably the quantum theory, give a
special meaning to discontinuity. Neither the philosophy nor the science of our
day recognizes that evolutionary monistic philosophy of the nineteenth century
which was bound up with the idea of continuity. The individual person is a discontinuity,
an interruption. Number is already an interruption. But the generic process of
life which subordinates individuality to itself and crushes it, points to a tendency
towards continuity, and in the sphere of logic this finds expression in the power
of the common. As I have said many times, the common is the off-
124
spring of objectification and finds both biological and logical expression.
The individual becomes a part of the genus, while personality is given a normative
character.
Simmel speaks of the dualism of the stream of life and of individual form;
and Jaspers refers to the position of spirit between chaos and form. This is one
and the same theme, expressed in different ways. The danger of the philosophy
of life lies in the fact that it may regard the stream of life as the primary
reality; that is to say, it may regard the generic and the common as primary,
while it looks upon what is individual as secondary and derivative. Existential
and personalist philosophy, on the other hand, does not acquiesce in thinking
of what is individual as a part of the universal. It does not consent to the subordination
of the personal to the common. In its view the individual includes the universal.
In actual fact, being is always a generic principle; there is for being no
primogeniture, no primordial status assigned to personality. And in the apprehension
of being the logos is adjusted to the generic and the common; it finds itself
in difficulties in apprehending the individual and personal. Consciousness itself
is understood as a generic process. Such is the 'consciousness in general' of
German idealism. Prince S. Trubetzkoy uses the expression 'metaphysical socialism'
to indicate the generic character of consciousness.
Reality has a logical ideal foundation, that is to say a foundation which
is generic, universally common, 'objective'. But in reality, the universally common,
the ideal, the generic, the 'objective' proceeds from the subjective work of the
reason, from a process of objectification. Deeper than the ideal logical foundations
of world reality, lies the act through which all reality exists. The generic logical
process is a process of socialization and the form of social relations among men
sets its stamp upon the very categories of logical thought. The compelling power
of logic is a social compulsion. A conflict goes on in the world between freedom
and generic being, between spirit and necessity. Man ought
125
to be dependent not upon generic nature, not upon the object, but upon spirit.
But the paradoxical and conflicting character of the relations between the individually
personal and the generic, objective nature of the world, cannot be resolved wida-in
the confines of this world and the limits of conceptual logical thought.
The question of what are known as collective, suprapersonal realities and
communities, or collective 'symphonic' personalities, is one of great difficulty
and it still remains an unsolved problem. It is, of course, connected with the
controversy about realism and nominalism, but present-day thought, which is steeped
in sociology, raises the question from entirely new angles. The conflict is carried
on not so much in the sphere of logic as it was in mediaeval philosophy, as in
the sphere of sociology. And it is quite understandable that the question should
become particularly acute in the realm of sociology.
The question of the sense in which collective communities exist and represent
realities, and whether it is possible to recognize the existence of collective
personalities cannot be decided by rational, conceptual knowledge. The decision
presupposes a choice, a line taken by the will, an act of moral appraisal.1 The
choice of the will and the establishment of a hierarchy of values create realities.
The act of volition is objectified, the chosen qualities are hypostatized. Man
lives in the midst of realities which are created by himself. What presents itself
to him as most objectively actual and in the highest degree real, is the objectification
of the subject's intention, the hypostatization of its qualitative states.
Man's inclination for self-alienation and self-enslavement
1N. Mikhailovsky, a sociologist of the seventies of the last century, expressed
some very true thoughts about the subjective method in sociology; he fought for
individuality, and exposed the organic theory of society which is hostile to the
individual. But his mind was not trained in philosophy; he was a positivist, and
was unable to provide a basis for his point of view.
126
is one of the most astonishing things in the life of the world. To the man
who has made for himself an idol out of the nation or the State, the nation and
the State are realities immeasurably greater and more 'objective' than man, than
personality; in any case realities which are more primary and more dominant. All
nationalists and Statists are like that. The nation and the State do, of course,
represent a certain degree of reality in world life, but their overwhelming grandiose
and compelling 'objectivity' is created by the 'subjective' state of society,
by the beliefs of the people, by the objectification of a state of mind.
The supremacy of society over the human person is a fact which is both not
open to doubt and objectively coercive to those who are overwhelmed by a view
of human existence from outside, or by an idolatrous attitude towards society
as the highest thing in their scale of values. Such is the point of view of sociologists
of the type of Durkheim. In exactly the same way one might assert the absolute
supremacy and dominance of the world as a whole, the cosmos, over man and his
interior life, and thus fall into an idolatrous attitude to the cosmos.1
In all these cases the nation, the State, society or the cosmos are regarded
as primary totalities and realities in relation to which man is nothing but a
subordinate part. The genus is a greater and more primary reality than the individual,
and this alike in the sphere of logic and in the realm of biology. Such is the
'objective' 'eccentric' way of regarding the world, society and man. It is impossible
to confute those who have taken a firm stand upon such a point of view and solidly
established themselves in projected realities. The cosmic whole, society, the
nation and the State are linked with powerful human emotions. And the most difficult
thing of all is to refutejudgments which are born of such emotions when they are
exteriorized and turned into objective realities. The realism of concepts when
transferred to sociology is protected by the emotions, passions and wills of men
and women and of 1 See my Slavery and Freedom. An Essay in Personalist Philosophy.
127
social groups. A radical change of thought is needed if judgments in this
field of thought are to be changed.
The way in which Marx (who naively considered himself a materialist) applied
logical realism in the mediaeval sense to his conception of class as a primary
reality on a deeper level than society or than man, is astounding. The idea of
the proletariat in Marx is not a scientific but a messianic idea. He fought passionately
and with indignation for the liberation of the working class from the oppression
and slavery which is its lot in capitalist society. And he objectified his passionate
emotions, he hypostat-ized the oppression and the revolt of labouring men, he
turned moral judgments into ontological judgment. The labouring class exists as
an empirical reality within capitalist societies and Marx said a great deal that
is true about its position. But it certainly does not exist as a reality that
can be apprehended by the mind; in the Marxist sense it does not exist as a universal.
In the same way there exist no similar realities of the cosmic whole, society,
the nation or the State; they are objectifications and hypostatizations of ancient
emotions, desires and passions.
Collective realities are the outcome of objectification in various degrees,
of the projection into the external of states of consciousness and the arranging
of them in hierarchical order. Existentially, at the deeper, subjective level,
which does not belong to the objective natural and social world, I do not accept
the mastery and dominance of the genus over the individual, or of the nation,
State or society over human personality. I do not want to make a corresponding
objectification; I take my stand upon a different scale of values, one in which
human personality, unique, unrepeatable and irreplaceable is the highest value
of all. Spirit, which reveals itself in the depth of the subject, makes its judgments
in a different way, and establishes realities in another fashion, than nature
and society, which have revealed themselves in the object. The collective group
mind, which always objectifies, distorts human judgments about realities.
128
Logical realism may be a form of social suggestion and a state of hypnosis.
And human personality is called upon to wage a heroic struggle for its emancipation.
The fight for personality is a fight on behalf of the spirit. Nor is there a greater
foe of spirit and spiritual freedom than objectified collective realities. And
this foe is so much the more terrible in that it pretends to be spirit. It is
an astonishing thing that again nominalism, having reached its triumph in positivism,
has led to new forms of the realism of concepts, for example, in sociology. At
the present time man experiences real social slavery. The socialization and nationalization
of slavery is taking place.
Collective realities may be regarded as individualities, but not by any means
as personalities; they have no existential centre and are not capable of experiencing
suffering and joy. The existential subject, whether of the cosmos, of society,
of the nation or of the State, can be sought only in existing man, in the qualitative
character of personality. The universal is found in what is individual, the suprapersonal
in the person. Man is a microcosmos and a microtheos. It is in the depth of man
that world history works itself out and society is assembled and dissolved. But
the micro-cosmic nature of man undergoes a process of exteriorization, it is projected
into the external, its qualities are hypostatized, and realities are objectified
which have no existential centre.
There are no such things as nations, States and societies existing as collective
common realities which stand on a higher level than personality and turn it into
a part of themselves. But there is such a thing as, for instance, 'Russianness'
which exists as a qualitative factor uniting like to like among people and charging
the life of personality to the full with concrete content. There is that community
and communion among men and women without which personality is unable to realize
itself, and there are functions of the State which are necessary to the corporate
life of men.
Man is both a cosmic being and a social being. Personality realizes itself
in both cosmic and social relations. But projection
129
into the external, and alienation from self, the state of affairs in which
nature and society are represented as acting upon man from without, and with compelling
force, are evidence of the Fall of Man. There is nothing universal outside human
personality and above it, but the universal does exist within it. And when this
universal is transcendent, it is still all the while within man and not outside
him.
Leibniz would not allow the action of monad upon monad, acting from without.
There was a measure of truth in this. But a solution of the problem of interaction
in the spirit of occasionalism is external and unsatisfying. The monad is not
bottled up in itself, it does not lack windows and doors.
But the fall of the monads at once finds expression in then-seclusion from
true communion and unity and in their excessive exposure to coercive action from
without. The monad loses its character of a microcosm as a result of alienation,
the projection into the external of that which ought to be within, and is subjected
to the forcible action of nature and society in their capacity of forces established
as external things. The sun no longer shines from within man. Nature has become
the object of external technical activity on the part of man. Nature as subject
is to him a hidden thing. Personality is empty unless it is filled with supra-personal
values and qualities, unless by means of creative acts it moves outwards and upwards
beyond its own confines, unless it triumphs over itself and in so doing realizes
itself.
But man has an unconquerable disposition to idolatry and servitude; he inclines
to alienate the depth of his own proper nature and to turn it into a reality which
stands over him and issues its orders to him. A certain element of truth about
the alienation of human nature and its projection into the external was revealed
to Feuer-b'ach, but it is truth which is related not to God, but to human powers
and qualities which are represented as realities external to man.1 In objectification,
in the self-alienation of spirit, the genus
1 There are flashes of genius in Feuerbach's Das Wesen des Chnstentums.
130
and the generic dominate over what is individual and personal. Sham universals
and a false 'common' are accepted not by way of abstraction from sensuous experience
as the empiricists suppose, but by way of exiling into the external that which
is interior and a datum in the spiritual experience of man.
As part of the problem of collective realities the question of the Church
is one of especial difficulty. In what sense is the Church a reality? The Church
as an objective reality which stands at a higher level than man is a social institution,
and in that sense is the objectification of religious life; it is an adaptation
of spirit to social conditions. But in its depth the Church is the life of the
spirit, it is spiritual life. It is a miraculous life which is not subject to
social laws; it is a community, a brotherhood of men in Christ. It is the mysterious
life of Christ within a human communion, it is a mysterious entering into communion
with Christ. In this sense the Church is freedom and love, and there is no external
authority in it, there is no necessity and no coercive force. What is in it is
freedom enlightened by grace. And this is what Khomy-akov calls sobomost. Sobornost
is not a collective reality which stands higher than man and issues its orders
to him. It is the highest spiritual qualitative power in men; it is entering into
the communion of the living and the dead. This sobomost can have no rational juridical
expression. Each must take upon himself responsibility for all. No one may separate
himself from the world whole, although at the same time he ought not to regard
himself as part of a whole.
The whole tragic character of the history of the Church lies in this its two-sided
nature. The Church is not a personality, it is not an ontological reality in relation
to which human personality would be a subordinate part. The Church as an ontological
reality which stands above man, is the objectification of inward sobomost; it
is a projection of it into the external. There is no existential centre of the
Church except Christ himself. The expression 'Church consciousness' is merely
a metaphorical phrase
131
like the expression 'national consciousness' or 'class consciousness'. The
objectification of the Church has been a source of slavery; it has also given
rise to the clericalism which has been so destructive to spiritual life.
The traditional way of putting the problem about the visible and the invisible
Church which arises in course of disputes between the Orthodox and Roman Catholics
on the one hand and the Protestants on the other, is mistaken. The distinction
between 'visible' and 'invisible' is a relative one, and the marks of visibility
and invisibility change in accordance with the volitional acts of those who form
the judgment. In the celebration of the Mystery of the Eucharist there are signs
which are outward and visible to sensuous perception. But at the same time there
is no doubt that the sacrament of the Eucharist is invisible, and is accomplished
in a mysterious sphere which is hidden from the phenomenal world, a sphere which
is accessible to faith alone, which draws aside the veil from things which are
invisible. The Church is visible, it has a whole series of visible marks: the
sacred building constructed of stone, the act of worship which is expressed in
human words and action, the parochial meetings, the authority of the hierarchy
which is very similar to hierarchical authority in the State. But the mysterious
presence of Christ in the Church is invisible, it is not offered to the perception
of the senses, it is discovered only by faith.
The Church is a visible reality, but this visible reality has a symbolic character
and in it there are given only signs of a different reality, which is spiritual.
The noumenal side of the Church is real spirit, not nature and society; it is
the Kingdom of God which cometh not with observation. The phenomenal side of the
Church, however, is the objectification and symbolization of spirit. The Church
as spirit is a reality which exists within human beings, not outside them and
not above them as objective universals do. In this sense the Church is an illuminated
and transfigured world, an illuminated and transfigured society.
132
I repeat, the question of the supreme value of personality, of the supremacy
of what is personal and individual over the common, and the controversy about
universals, are not open to intellectual and rational solution; a solution is
to be found only through the moral will which establishes values, only through
volitional choice. The secret of personality, the existential mystery, is revealed
only in the creative life of the spirit as a whole. It is a spiritual conflict.
False objectified universals, false collective realities must be overthrown in
the combat which the spirit wages.
The establishment of value is of the first importance in the matter of judgments
about reality. People regard such and such a thing as a reality, and even as the
highest value, because they had already chosen it as a value beforehand. The State
is accepted as an ontological reality because people see a high value in it, because
they love the principle of authority. This phenomenal natural world, this 'objective'
world they look upon as absolutely real. They bow with reverent submission before
the grandiose scale of it, before its coercive power, because they are tied to
it and adjusted to it by the whole structure of their minds. Man always lives
not only in the 'empirical' world but also in the world of 'ideas', and the ideas
by which it is determined are of a character which is above all concerned with
value.
Up to the time of birth the soul has been united with the universal mind.
The union of soul and body gives rise to a relation with the world of sense, but
the recollection of ideas remains. Philosophy does not know what this particular
man here is, but only what man in general is. Such was the doctrine of Platonism.
It was not a doctrine of achieved personality, but of achieved race, aclu'eved
society. The individual soul emanates from the universal foul.
Plato's influence upon European thought has been enormous and decisive. The
distinction between the world of ideas, the
133
noumenal -world, and the phenomenal world of the senses was a great discovery.
But the secret of personality was not revealed. It was not revealed in Indian
philosophy either, to which the existence of the separate soul is an illusion.1
In Atman the individual ego loses itself. There is an identification of all souls
with the universal soul. Such is the meaning of tat twam asi. It is true that
Jainism admits the existence of a plurality of souls and gives an appearance of
preserving individuality, but the prevalent teaching is otherwise.
Mediaeval scholastic philosophy, and Thomist philosophy in particular, found
great difficulty in the problem of individuality. The individualization of matter
in reality indicated the denial of the individual. As a matter of philosophy Aweroes
was in the right. The quarrel with him was on religious grounds, since the Christian
faith demanded individual immortality. Form was universal. This meant that only
what is universal could be founded on the basis of spirit; what is individual
could not be so grounded. Plurality and, therefore, individuality were regarded
as belonging to the world of the senses only.
The most astonishing thing is the fate of German metaphysics in regard to
this question. It began as a philosophy of the ego, of the subject, and arrived
at the denial of the individual ego, it arrived at a monism in which personality
disappears. In Fichte the individual ego is merely a part of the great whole.
Personality disappears in the contemplation of the end. The ego from which Fichte
starts on his philosophical journey is not an individual ego. To him the individual
man is an instrument of reason. This constitutes the difference between Fichte
and Kant who alone among the great idealists in German philosophy came close to
personal-ism. Hegel was a most extreme anti-personalist. To him to think
1 The reservation must be made that not all the theories of Indian philosophy
have been monistic and denied what is individual. Vaiseshika is a pluralist ontology.
Ramanuja came near to theism. But a monistic interpretation of the identity of
Atman and Brahman and of the illusory character of a pluralist world has been
predominant.
134
meant to bring the universal into form.1 Religion was to Hegel the self-consciousness
of the absolute spirit in the finite. Religion was not a relation of man to God
but the self-consciousness of God in man. It might be said that the philosophy
of Hegel enhances man immeasurably in making him the source of the self-consciousness
of God, and at the same time completely degrades him by denving all independence
to human nature. This is characteristic of monism. Schopenhauer was also an anti-personalist,
though in a different way.
German idealism sacrificed the soul in the interests of absolute spirit. The
absolute spirit crushes the personal spirit, it devours man. And there ought to
be a revolt of man, a rebellion of the human soul against the absolute spirit.
The philosophy of absolute spirit began with the proclamation of the autonomy
of human reason. It ended in the denial of human personality, in its subjugation
to collective communities and objectified universals. Philosophical thought has
disclosed a very complex dialectic in the relations between die individual and
the common, between personality and universals. A dialectic in the relations between
personality and society is to be found in Plato, Rousseau, Hegel, Feuerbach, Max
Stirner, Marx, Nietzsche, Dostoyevsky, K. Leontiev and Kierkegaard. The political
dieorists, Rousseau and Marx, who were inspirers of revolution, constructed ideologies
which are highly unfavourable to personality, to the very statement of the problem
of personality. Dostoyevsky and Kierkegaard enunciated the problem of personality
and personal destiny more trenchantly than anyone else.
I have already written enough about the distinction between die individual
and personality.2 I repeat that die individual is a naturalistic and sociological
category. The individual is born widiin the generic process and belongs to the
natural world.
1 See Hegel's small logic in his Enzyclopadie ancl the great Science of Logic.
2 See a book by Ch. Baudouin which has recently been published, Dhouverte
de la Personne.
135
Personality, on the other hand, is a spiritual and ethical category. It is
not bom of a father and mother, it is created spiritually and gives actual effect
to the divine idea of man. Personality is not nature, it is freedom, and it is
spirit. It might be said that personality is not man as phenomenon, but man as
noumenon, if such terminology had not too much of an epistemological flavour about
it.
Of the individual it may be said that he is part of the race and of society,
but an inseparable part of it; whereas personality is not to be thought of as
a part of any whole whatever. It is outside the world, it is spiritual and it
invades the natural and social order with a claim to be its own end and the supreme
value, with a claim to be a whole and not a part. Human personality is a break
with the world order. It is an integral form, it is not constituted from parts,
and it has mutual relations with other forms, social and physical. But man is
spiritual personality, whereas other forms may not be personalities. Totality,
wholeness, the supremacy of the whole over the parts—such ideas have reference
to personality only.
The natural world, society, the State, the nation and the rest are partial,
and their claim to totality is an enslaving lie, which is born of the idolatry
of men. Collective substances (aggregates) are not real. The fact is that the
soul within its own thought imparts a unity to them. The soul of man consolidates
realities which bring it into subjection to necessity and into a state of servitude.
It is true that such a whole as, for instance, society, is not only the sum of
its parts and a social union of human beings, it also possesses properties which
do not exist in men and women taken separately. The atomic doctrine of society
is an error. But this truth has no sort of bearing upon our subject of personality.
The universal, the cosmic, the social, are within human personality. The separate
man is a cosmic and social being to start with; he is already a whole world.
Human personality is not to be thought of in the abstract and
136
in isolation. It is a cosmic and social being, not because it is determined
by nature and society in the sense of having a cosmic and social content bestowed
upon it from outside, but because man bears within him the image of God and is
summoned to the Kingdom of God. In the process of its self-realization personality
ought to carry on a campaign against the objectification which enslaves it, against
the estrangement and exteriorization which creates the order of nature and brings
men into subjection to itself as part of it.
The existence of personality with its infinite aspirations, with its unique
and unrepeatable destiny is a paradox in the objectified world of nature. It is
placed face to face with a world environment which is alien to it, and it has
tried to accept that world as a world harmony. The conflict of human personality
with the world harmony, the challenge of the world harmony, is a fundamental theme
in personalist philosophy. No one has stated it with such power and trenchancy
as Dostoyevsky. The world and world harmony must be brought to an end for the
very reason that the theme of personality is insoluble within the confines of
the world and history, and because the world harmony in this aeon of the world
is a mockery of the tragic fate of man.
The supreme value of personality, the supreme truth of per-sonalism cannot
be demonstrated as a proposition of objective ontology, it is affirmed by the
moral will which assumes that value is a choice on the part of freedom. The supremacy
of freedom over being is the supremacy of ethics over ontology. Personality is
an exception. The apprehension of personality is the apprehension of an exception.
But the exceptional apprehension of the individual may be unconditional and absolute.
It is a passionate apprehension and the revelation which is granted to it is not
of an object but of the subject.
137
PART THREE
|
