- Plato (420-348 B.C.).
Plato starts with man and the world, distinguishing between knowledge
and opinion. The objects of knowledge are the abstract and universal;
the objects of opinion are the concrete and particular. These objects
are not just ideas in the minds of men or impressions in men's senses
as in modern philosophy but they have objective reality. As the objects
of sense are real so are the objects of the mind, but are more real
because they are universal and necessary, unchanging and eternal.
One of these Ideas or Forms, the idea of the Good, Plato elevated it
above the other Ideas, calling it beyond being (Greek, epekeina
ousia). He compares it to the sun as the source of all being and
the knowledge of all. In a course of lectures, Plato seems to have
identified the Good with the One of Parmenides. It seems fairly
certain that, in spite of the reverential language he often used of
it, Plato did not regard the Idea or Form of the Good or the One as
God in the ordinary meaning of the word. The rational soul for him
was the supreme directive, organizing principle, and he believed in a
World-Soul animating the material universe. In the Timaeus he
presents the myth of the divine artisan, a Demiurge or Craftsman,
shaping the world out the pre-existent material; the Demiurge, like
the World-Soul, organizes the world according to the pattern which he
contemplates in the world of Ideas or Forms.
- Aristotle (384-322 B.C.).
Plato's pupil, Aristotle, modified his teacher's view of reality.
Like Plato he begins with man and the way he thinks, but he modifies
that by introducing what he called Categories; there are ten in
all: substance (ousia, in the sense of individual thing),
quantity, quality, relation, place, date, position, state, action,
passivity. He believed that these represent not only the ways in which
the mind thinks about the external world, but also the modes in which
things objectively exist in that world. He was, unlike Plato, a
realist and accepted the reality of the material world as we know it.
Furthermore, he sharply criticized Plato's theory of Ideas or Forms.
He agreed with Plato that there must be Ideas or Forms in the sense of
universals common to all particulars of a class, and also that they
must be objectively real and not mere concepts in the mind; he even
described them as "secondary substances" (deuterai ousiai).
But he objected to Plato's belief that they are "separate from,"
transcend, particulars. His contention was that they are actually
present in particulars; in fact, the individual substance
(ousia in the primary sense) is a compound (sunolon) of
the subject, or substratum (hupokeimenon, or hule), and
the Form. In harmony with this his veiw of man differs from Plato's.
So far from being disparate entities, he held that body and soul
constitute a composite unity, the body being as matter to the soul and
the soul as form for the body. As regards God, he took Plato's
thought that the soul is immortal and self-moving, the source of
motion and change in all that is not soul, and expanded it into the
conception of an eternal Mind which, itself unmove, is the Prime Mover
of all that exists. Aristotle conceived of God as pure Form,
self-thinking thought, and the unmoved mover of all things, the
ultimate and final end of all things. Accordingly he presented
arguments from motion for the existence of God. He argued that an
unmoved or prime mover is required as the cause of a series of moved
movers, imparting motion without itself being moved. Furthermore,
since motion is eternal (for time is eternal, and time is nothing but
a measure of motion), the first mover must be eternal. Also a supreme
Form is required as absolute perfection, the Form of the Good, who
moves the world by being loved or desired. His activity consists in
pure thought, that is, thought which has thought as its object.
- Plotinus (205-270 A.D.).
Plotinus taught that God is the One; all the rest of reality consist of
a series emanations or hypotheses from the One. There are three of
these: the first necessary emanation is Nous (mind or
intelligence); the second emanation is Psyche (soul) or
World-Soul; and at the periphery of reality is Hyle (matter),
the material world. Man belongs partly in the the realm of the
World-Soul and partly in the material world. God, the One, is
absolutely transcendent; it is beyond all thought, a being, ineffable
and incomprehensible. Neither essence nor being can be predicated of
the One, not because it is less than anything but because it is more.
Plotinus sets the ultimate God, the One, beyond being. This does not
mean that the One is nothing or non-existent; rather it means that the
One transcends all being of which we have experience. The concept of
being is drawn from the objects of our experience, but the One
transcends all these objects and consequently also the concepts
that are found in those objects.
- Augustine (354-430 A.D.).
Augustine came to the Christian faith because of the inability of
Manicheism, a Persian religion, to solve satisfactorily the problem of
evil. The Manicheans taught that there are two Gods, one of Light or
Good, the other of Darkness or Evil, eternally coexisting and at war
with each other. But they could not explain this eternal conflict
to Augustine's satisfaction. When he met some Christian Neo-platonist,
they were able to explain the conflict without resorting to a dualism
but with the concept of evil as privation of being. Their concept of
immaterial being broke the hold of Manicheanism and provided him with a
transition to the Christian faith. Augustine's Christian solution of
problem of evil was that evil was the result of man's choice of evil
in disobeying God; this wrong choice of the first man, Adam, resulted
in evil coming into the world and Adam's sin was passed to the whole
human race as a corrupt sinful nature. God ultimately solves this
problem through the grace of God which liberates the will of the elect
from the sinful nature. The unelect are condemned at the final
judgment to hell. God is neither unable to overcome evil nor is he
not all-good. God will overcome evil and in his own good time when
God's good purposes are accomplish. Evil is allowed to occur because
creatures with free will like God himself is the good to be
accomplished. Augustine interpretation of predestination as a divine
determinism creates the problem of reconciling it with free will.
- Anselm (1033-1109 A.D.).
Anselm, the disciple of Lanfranc, was born at Aosta in Italy (A.D.
1033), entered the monastery of Bec in Normandy (A.D. 1060), succeeded
Lanfranc as Abbot (A.D. 1078), and as Archbishop of Canterbury (A.D. 1093).
He died in A.D. 1109. He is famous for his struggle with the English kings
and for his "ontological" argument for the existence of God. Anselm is
Augustinian in orientation and approach, starting out from the same first
principles, and sometimes he has been called the Second Augustine. Like his
predecessors, Anselm makes no rigid distinction between philosophy and
theology, but, like them again, his formula: fides quaerens intellectum
["faith seeking to understand"], implies an difference between faith (theology)
and undertanding (philosophy). Like
John Scotus Erigena
(about A.D. 810-877), Anselm had an enormous confidence in the ability of
human reason to arrive at the truth, for, among other things, he will
demonstrate the necessity of Trinity by necessary reasons. Yet, unlike
Erigena, who seems to be a philosopher handling the problems of a religious
metaphysics, Anselm gives the impression of a theologian using metaphysics
to solve problems of Christian doctrine. He assumes that revelation and
reason are in perfect accord. These two are manifestations of the one and the
same Supreme Intelligence and cannot possibly contradict each other. Hence,
his point of view is diametrically opposed to the point of view expressed by
the phrase: credo quia absurdum est ["I believe because it is absurd"].
Indeed, Anselm saw the relation between faith and reason as expressed by the
Augustinian expression: credo ut intelligam ["I believe in order to
understand"]. This conviction impels him to search everywhere for arguments
to support the doctrines received by revelation. As a theologian, it was his
chief concern to find a simple and conclusive argument in support of the
existence of God and of all of the doctrines concerning the Supreme Being.
Mere affirmation did not satisfy him; he demanded proofs. This demand was
continually before his mind; it caused him to forget his meals, and it pursued
him even during the solemn moments of worship. He comes to the conclusion
that it is a temptation of Satan, and seeks deliverance from it. But in vain.
After a night spent in meditation, he discovers what he has been seeking for
years; the incontrovertible argument in support of Christian doctrine, and he
regards himself as blessed in having found, not only the proof of the
existence of God, but his peace of soul. This proof is known as the
Ontological Argument for the existence of God and is presented in the
Proslogion, his most celebrated work. Anselm presents the
ontological argument in two different ways:
- God is "that than which nothing greater can be conceived." This is
idea of an absolutely prefect being, and since perfection implies existence.
Hence God exists. This idea implies that the object of the thought exists,
for if this idea is just an idea in the understanding, then a greater idea can
be formulated of a greater being, namely of one existing not only in the
understanding but also in reality.
- God is that which cannot be conceived not to exist. This appears to
be just a negative statement of the first way, but it is really a stronger
formulation of the argument. It allows one to maintain the absolute
inconceivability of the divine non-existence. It allows one to assert that
the phrase "the non-existence of the divine" contains a contradiction, and
that the conclusion "God exists" is a necessary truth.
The first way of putting the argument was criticized in Anselm's time by
Gaunilo, a monk of Marmoutiers in Touraine, claiming that on the same ground it
can be argued that a perfect island exists, since if it did not exist then any
other island, really existing, would be more perfect than the perfect island
in our understanding, and this would be a contradiction. Anselm answered by
repeating the argument in its strict form, as given in the second way above.
This seems to be Anselm's true form of the argument. Later Kant also
criticized the first way of putting the argument. Kant said, "Existence is
not a predicate." Nothing is added to the value of an entity by saying that it
exists; there is not a penny more in value in a real hundred dollars than in a
possible hundred dollars. Judging by the way Anselm answered Gaunilo, Anselm
would probably have answered Kant that while Kant's analysis fits the case of
all contingently existing beings it does not fit the case of the divine being,
whose essence and existence are inseparably connected. God's being is
necessary being, not contingent. God is that being that which cannot be
conceived not to exist. If we can so much conceive of God, we must assert
that He exists, and He must exist. And if we are conceiving, by our own
admission, a being which may exist in our understanding alone, we are not
conceiving God. In this unique case existence follows from conceivability.
Since among the criteria of conceivability is consistency, the issue shifts
for Anselm from God's existence to the problem of His nature. God's
perfections are like human perfections; with this difference, however,
that they are essential to Him, which is not the case with us.
Man has received a share of certain perfections, but there is no necessary
correlation between him and these perfections; it would have been possible for
him not to receive them; he could have existed without them. God, on the
contrary, does not get His perfections from without; He has not received them,
and we cannot say that He has them; He is and must be everything that these
perfections imply; His attributes are identical with His essence. Justice, an
attribute of God, and God are not two separate things. We cannot say of God
that He has justice or goodness; we cannot even say that He is just; for to be
just is to participate in justice after the manner of creatures. God is
justice as such, goodness as such, wisdom as such, happiness as such, truth as
such, being as such. Moreover, all of God's attributes constitute but a single
attribute, by virtue of the unity of his essence. In the rest of the
Proslogion God is shown to be self-existent, creator, sensible
though not a body, omnipotent, compassionate, passionless, all-knowing,
supremely just, supremely compassionate, omnipresent but not existing in space
and time, eternal, and unitary. The consisency of these ideas, and especially
those which seem most paradoxical such as God's relation to time and space,
are further explored in the Monologion. In this work Anselm
sets forth his reflections on the Trinity whose image is the rational mind.
There is certain natural consonance, then, that unites man and God. And man's
soul being immortal, eternal blessedness is man's goal.
But Anselm is not content with spiritualizing theism; he enumerates the
difficulties which he finds in this conception of God. God is a simple
being and at same time eternal, that is, diffused over infinite points of
time; He is omnipresent, that is, distributed over all points of space.
Shall we say that God is ominipresent and eternal? This proposition
contradicts the concept of the simplicity of the divine essence. Shall we say
that He is nowhere in space and nowhere in time? But that would be equivalent
to denying His existence. Let therefore reconcile these two extremes and say
that God is omnipresent and eternal, without being limited by space or time.
But there is also another serious difficulty: In God there is not change and
consequently nothing accidental. Now, there is no substance without
accidents. Hence God is not substance; He transcends all substance. Anselm
is alarmed at these dangerous consequences of his logic, and he therefore
prudently adds that, though the term "substance" may be incorrect, it is the
best we can apply to God and that to avoid or condemn it might perhaps
jeopardize our faith in the reality of the Divine Being. But the most
formidable theological antinomy is the doctrine of the trinity of persons in
the unity of the divine essence. The Word is the object of eternal thought;
it is God in so far as He is thought, conceived, or comprehended by Himself.
The Holy Spirit is the love of God for the Word, and of the Word for God, the
love which God bears Himself. But is this explanation satisfactory? And does
it not sacrifice the doctrine which it professes to explain to the conception
of unity? Anselm sees in the Trinity and in the concept of God insurmountable
difficulties and contradiction, which the human mind cannot reconcile. In his
discouragement he is obliged to confess, with Erigena, Augustine, and the
Neo-Platonists, that no human word can adequately express the essence of the
All-High. Even the words "wisdom" (sapientia) and "being"
(essentia) are but imperfect expressions of what he imagines to be the
essence of God. All theological phrases are analogies, figures of speech, and
mere approximations.
- Aquinas (1225-1274 A.D.).
Aquinas attempted to synthesize Aristotelianism with the Christian
faith. The theology of the Christian faith that Aquinas inherited
was a form of Augustianism. When confronted with Aristotelianism,
Aquinas devised an arrangement where the exercise of reason to
discover the truths of reason in philosophy is supplemented and
corrected by the truths of revelation in theology which are accepted
by faith. In philosophy reason obtains knowledge of God by the
via negationis, the way of negation, and by the via
eminentiae, the way of perfection. By the way of negation we can
know what God is not and by the way of perfection we can know what God
is. This knowledge can be had only if we first know that God exists;
therefore, Aquinas advanced five ways, the quinque viae, to
prove the existence of God:
(1) by motion in the world,
(2) by efficient cause in the world,
(3) by contingent beings in the world,
(4) by degrees of truth, goodness, nobility and the like in the world, and
(5) by goals directed beings acting to achieve ends.
There are certain "transcendantals," which go beyond definition
by genus and difference, and apply to everything that is; they are
attributes of everything. These are ens, unum, verum, bonum, res,
aliquid (being, unity, truth, goodness, thing, distinction).
When the transcendentals are applied by the principle of analogy,
a knowledge of the nature of God is approximated. This analogy is
the analogy of proportionality. By this principle, we are led to
expect that in the measure as God's being exceeds ours so will
the attributes of God's being exceeds ours. Thus God is perfect
and unchanging, utterly simple and unitary, hence indestructible,
absolute truth and goodness, not related to the world, yet everything
is related to him. Since the divine mind contains the archtypes of all
existence, simply in knowing himself God is able to know at once all
that is, was, or will be. God's existence and essence are identical,
hence he can not fail to exist; he is necessary being, not contingent
being as in those things in which essence and existence are not
identical. God is pure actuality (actus purus), with no
admixture of potentiality; thus his being is from himself and not from
another.
- Descartes (1596-1650 A.D.).
The French philosopher Rene Descartes was the founder of modern
epistemological rationalism. His method of doubt, whereby the truth
of every idea was doubted that did not meet the criterion of "clear
and distinct" ideas, led many of the intellectuals of the
Enlightenment to question the metaphysical and theological views
of the medieval period, in order to rebuild philosophy, religion,
literature, art, political and social life on a new basis, reason.
Using this method of doubt, Descartes rejected sense perceptions
because they are unreliable and are subject to deceptions. He
found that there is only one thing that he could not doubt, his
own existence. He took this fact as his first truth. Since his
existence was implied by his own thinking, he concluded that he
existed as a thinking being or substance. Upon further rational
investigation, he found that the mind has clear and distinct ideas
of duration, of number, of causality, and of a perfect being, God.
Descartes accepted these ideas as innate. The idea
of God, for example, as a perfect being could not come from sense
perceptions, since they could not be acquired from an imperfect
world. Similarly for such attributes of God as eternity, omniscience,
and omnipotence. And since every effect has a cause and the effect
could not be greater than the cause, then there must be a God,
who caused the idea of God to appear in the human mind. Using
this form of the ontological argument, Descartes concluded that
God does exist. The mind also contains the idea of an external
world. Does the external world exist? Of course it does, because
a perfect Being would not deceive man. The same argument guarantees
the reality of extension, motion, and the principles of geometry;
that is, these clear and distinct ideas and their reality comes
from God. Descartes also considered whether the ideas arrived
at by pure reason would agree with the physical world and he concluded
that the God who made and sustained man and the universe had caused
them to agree.
- Spinoza (1632-1677 A.D.).
The contribution to modern philosophy of the Jewish philosopher, Baruch
Spinoza, was his development of the implications of Cartesian method.
Descartes had defined God as a self-subsistent infinite substance in contrast
to Mind and Body, which are finite, created substances: Mind is thinking
substance and Body or matter is extended substance. He defined a substance as
that which can exist by itself. Starting from this definition of substance,
Spinoza argued in famous work, Ethics, that there is only one substance
and that it is the whole of reality. If God is defined as absolute infinite
being, then there can be only one God, that is the whole of reality, and this
Being exists necessarily, eternal, not temporal, its essence implying its
existence. This Being is its own cause, causa immanens and causa
sui. And, he argued, an absolutely infinite being will have an infinite
number of attributes. Of this infinite number of attributes men know only two,
thinking and extension. These attributes are modes of this infinite Being or
Substance. It is clear then that what we call things, including our individual
selves, cannot be substances, because they do not exist independently.
Spinoza called them "modes." Thus we, human selves, are modifications of this
one substance.
Thus God and substance mean the same thing. Therefore, the goal of philosophy
and religion are the same. The goal of man can thus be called either wisdom
or "the intellectual love of God." But this identification also allows us to
speak of God or Nature (Deus sive Natura) when speaking about the whole
of reality. And nature then must be understood in two ways. One of these is
the Natura naturata ("nature natured"), that is, as the reality which
follows by necessity from the nature of God. The other way of understanding
nature is as the Natura naturans ("nature naturing"), that is, God as
free cause, as eternal and infinite essence. The former way of thinking of
nature is found within the latter way which is its principle and fundamental.
The result of this way of viewing the universe leads to a reality which could
not have been otherwise, each thing being the result of its causes or its
reasons; and a God who could not have been otherwise, whose freedom comes from
lack of dependence on any other thing. This has the consequence that miracles
are not possible, since God cannot violate the order that he has decreed.
- Leibniz (1646-1716 A.D.).
The German philosopher, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, was born in Leipzig, the
son of a professor of moral philosophy, who died in 1652. Leibniz was his
own teacher, learning Latin at eight and Greek shortly thereafter. He received
his doctorate in law from Altdorf in 1666, where he was offered a
professorship. In 1667 he entered the service of the Elector of Mainz whom
he representd throughout Europe. In Paris he met Arnauld, Malebranche, and
Christian Huygens. On a mission to London he met Oldenburg, Boyle, and Dell.
He exhibited his calculating machine (which in addition to arthemetical
operations extracted square root) before the Paris Academy and the Royal
Society of London. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1673.
In the same year he entered the service of the Brunswick family and moved
to Hanover in 1676 to take charge of the Ducal library. He attempted to
bring about a reconcilation of Catholicism and Protestantism. In 1700
the Berlin Academy of Science, which he planned, came into being and he
was elected president for life. His work on the infinitesimal calculus began
after 1673. He published his first paper on differential calculus in 1684
and on the intergal calculus in 1686. Newton and Leibniz independently
had invented the calculus, although Newton's method was not published until
1693. Most of Leibniz' writing was done between 1690 and 1715, part of it
in correspondence. He wrote his Theodicy at the request of
the Queen of Prussia in 1710 and the Monadology for Prince Eugene of
Savoy. Despite his many publications, much of his work remained in manuscript
form at the time of death in 1716.
The philosophy of Leibniz was built upon the basic ontological unit which he
called the "monad". He consided it to be primarly a center of force.
This departed radically from Descartes for whom extension was primary. Leibniz
came to this conclusion on the grounds that the concept of the "atom"
as the "smallest particle of matter" was meaningless. As long as
matter is considered as characterized by extension, atoms are divisible. Thus
the atoms of matter are not indivisible. Leibniz considered the fundamental
ontological units as extensionaless and characteristized by force (on the
grounds that laws of motion so demanded). The monads are simple substances
out of which everything is made. Since they lack extension they are not in
space and since they lack parts they cannot be degenerated into something
simpler. The term "monad" had been used earlier by the Pythagoreans
and by Giordano Bruno, but Leibniz' use of the term was different.
Leibniz considered these monads as the centers of feeling, perception,
and appetition. Everything has an inner state. That inner state's awareness
of itself Leibniz called "apperception". Its awareness of other
things he called "perception". In the 17th century the term
"perception" meant the more general relation of "taking
account of" as well as our meaning of perception as "mirroring"
an object. Leibniz identified the two meanings, producing the doctrine
that each monad "mirrors" the entire universe and hence is a
microcosm.
Out of this imaginative view of
matter there emerges Leibniz' conclusions with respect to space and time.
Space is the "order of possible co-existences" while time is the
order of the possibles that cannot co-exist, but which must exist successively.
There are different times because each monad is in the process of development.
Thus time and space are relative. Sometimes Leibniz speaks as though space and
time have only a phenomenal existence resting upon the perception of the
monads. But the phenomenal is "well-founded phenomenon"
(phenomenon bene fundatum).
From this derivative reality of space and time there follows the Principle
of Identity of Indiscernibles. That is, if time and space are derivative
there will be a distinction between two things only if they have different
properties, and if they have the same properties they will be the same thing
and identical. From this follows the Principle of Sufficient Reason.
This principle holds that nothing takes place without a reason; for any
occurrence, a being with sufficient intellegence and knowledge will be able
to give a reason sufficient to explain why it is as it is and not otherwise.
This principle follows from the idea of the consistency of development in time.
These two principles are related to the Law of Continuity which based
on the model of the mathematical infinite, according to which there are no
breaks in the series "but everything takes place by degrees".
If this law is accepted as an ontological principle along with the Principle
of the Identity of Indiscernibles, there follows that there will be a graded
hierarchy of monads, from those who are very close to insentience to the one
monad who is perfect being, that is God. In Leibniz' language of perception
the hierarchy runs from monads whose perception are almost totally confused
to the monad all of whose perceptions are distinct. In terms of Leibniz'
language of appetency, the heirarchy runs from almost totally passive to
actus purus.
Leibniz used this distinction of grade to distinguish between the soul and
the body. Instead, using the unworkable dualism of Descartes, Leibniz views
the soul as a monad of higher grade controlling a colony of monads of lower
grade. This provides an analogy for the relation between God and the world.
God is not only suggested by the Law of Continuity, but is
demanded by a teleological argument beginning from the assumption that
monads are windowless. "The monads have no windows by which anything
may go in and out." By this declaration Leibniz meant that each
monad is a simple substance and acts out the law of its own being without
any interaction with other monads. But all these laws are in harmony
according to a Law of Pre-established Harmony. So the universe
presents the appearance of interaction without there being any in reality.
Thus there must be God who pre-established this harmony. Leibniz also
presents a cosmological argument for God, which begins with the Principle of
Sufficient Reason, and concludes that the sufficient reason for the
existence of the total universe must be a being containing his own reason
for existing. Leibniz also advanced beyond Anselm's ontological argument.
Leibniz notes that Anselm's ontological argument is valid only if it can
be shown that the concept of "perfect being" is a possible concept.
Then Leibniz attempts to show that the idea of a perfect being is possible.
He draws a difference between properties that are perfection and those that
are not. Properties that are perfection can have superlative degree, and
must not rule out any other positive quality. Properties such as
"goodness", "wisdom", "knowledge" are
perfections, admitting the idea of a superlative, and of compossible existence.
Hence the idea of a perfect being is a possible idea. Since God is not a
contingent being, the case in which the idea of God is possible, although
God does not exist, is ruled out; and since the concept is possible, it is
concluded that God exists.
If, then, God is a perfect being, and the creator of the world, then God will
choose to create the best possible world and must assume that He has done so.
But the best possible world is not a perfect world. It will have a balance
of good and evil, but will not be without evil, for the problem of consistency
also confronts God in choice of worlds. The principle of the in-compossibility
of possibilities entails the conclusion that the world will have evil -
metaphysical, moral, and physical - but God will choose that possible world
with the most fortunate combinations or compossibility of
"possibles". And this is interpreted to mean the combination
allowing the largest number of "possibles" to be actualized
together. Implicit in this is Leibniz' solution to the problem of theodicy
or the problem of the goodness of God in light of the evil in the world.
- Kant (1724-1804 A.D.).
Kant held that knowledge is a product of both sense and understanding.
He points out that "thought without content are empty; and intuitions
without concepts are blind" (Note: intuitions are sense experience).
In other words, concepts without percepts are empty and percepts
without concepts are blind. He held that the concepts that thought
contributes to experience are regulative concepts only, having no
applicability beyond the reach of possible experience. The attempt to
extend concepts beyond experience, which Kant called the "dialectic,"
leads to contradictions, which he called the
Antinomies of Reason. Kant lists four of these:
(1) The world has a beginning in time, and is limited in space, or it
does not have a beginning in time and is not limited in space;
(2) Everything is compound consisting of parts, or nothing exists
anywhere but the simple, or what is composed of it;
(3) There is freedom in the world, and not everything takes place
according to the laws of nature, or there is no freedom in world and
everything takes place according the laws of nature;
(4) There exists an absolutely necessary being belonging to the world,
or the cause of it, or there nowhere exists such an absolutely
necessary being.
Kant held that there are equally compelling reasons for any of these
four positions and their opposites. Hence this situation is not
acceptable. Kant proposed that the way to avoid this situation is to
refrain from posing questions whose answers would require going beyond
possible experience.
The fourth antinomy explains Kant's treatment of the traditional
arguments for the existence of God. He divided these arguments
into Cosmological, Physico-Theological, and Ontological. Kant
argued that the first two arguments depend on the Ontological
argument, and that it is invalid.
(1) The Cosmological argument, also called the argument from the
contingency of the world, has the following form: "If anything exists,
an absolutely necessary Being must also exist. But I exist.
Therefore an absolutely necessary Being exists." Kant argues that
this argument makes a leap from contigent being to necessary being;
thus it depends upon the Ontological argument.
(2) The Physico-Theological agrument, usually called the Teleological
argument or the argument from Design, concludes from order, beauty,
and fitness of the world to a sublime and wise intelligence as their
cause. Kant argues that this argument can reach its conclusion only
by using the Cosmological argument and it in turn uses the Ontological
argument.
(3) The Ontological argument holds that to deny the existence of the
most real Being (ens realissimum) is to utter a contradiction.
Kant argues that this follows only if existence is taken as a
predicate, a property, attribute, or a characteristic similar to all
others, such as "whiteness". But existence "is evidently not a real
predicate or a concept of something, that can be added to the concept
of a thing." A hundred real dollars contains not one penny more than
a one humdred possible dollars; the dollars are not at all increased
by existence since it is outside the concept of dollars. Since
existence is not real predicate, one can deny the existence even of
the most real Being without contradiction.
Thus Kant dismissed the traditional arguments
in his Critique of Pure Reason. But if the existence of God
cannot be proved, it "also cannot be disproved by merely speculative
reason." Although Kant pronounces the efforts of natural theology to
be "null and void", he does not close the door altogether on God. In
his Critique of Practical Reason Kant, while giving no positive
proofs, suggest that practical reason affords grounds for accepting
God, freedom, and immortality as postulates. There is, therefore, a
certain primacy of the practical reason of the second Critique over the
purely theoretical reason of the Critique of Pure Reason. Where
pure reason must either be silent or fall into dialectical illusions
like the antinomies, practical reason can affirm postulates.
- Whitehead (1861-1947 A.D.).
The British philosopher Alfred North Whitehead opposed
the current philosophy of static substances having qualities which he held
to be based on simply located material bodies of Newtonian physics and
the "pure sensations" of Hume. This 17th century philosophy is
based upon "bifurcation of nature" into two unequal system of
reality on the Cartesian model of mind and matter. Instead, Whitehead
argued that there is only one reality; whatever appears, whatever is given
in perception, is real. For Whitehead the world is a process in which
there is a interrelated scheme of actual events, like a table,
a rainbow, the life of a man, the explosion of a star, no one of which
can be understood apart from its relation to other events.
There are actual and possible events. Over and above the actual
events there is a vast realm of possible events, of all things that could
be. Any real event is a actualized possibility. The realm of the possible
is in contact with the realm of actual, so that the possible enters into
the actual. This raises the question: Why does the world actualize this
particular set of possible events? Why this world rather than another?
Whitehead believed that it is necessary to postulate such metaphysical
factor to explain why this particular universe. He therefore postulates
an agent which causes to emerge from the timeless realm of the possible
this particlar cosmos. This agent is God, whom Whitehead calls "the
Principle Of Concretion." God's function is to impose a limit upon the
limitless number of possible events. Thus God determins an actual course
of events which, "metaphysically speaking, might have been otherwise."
Now it may be asked: Why is it that God makes concrete or actual this
set of possibilities which is our world? What reason can be offered for
God's having selected this world to actualize rather than another?
Whitehead answers that there is no reason. The universe is ultimately
irrational. "God is the ultimate limitation, and His existence is the
ultimate irrationality. For no reaon can be given for just that
limitation which stands in His nature to impose. God is not concrete,
but He is the ground of concrete actuality."