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PARERGA AND PARALIPOMENA: SHORT PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAYS |
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[b]CHAPTER 5: A Few Words on Pantheism[/b]
§ 68
The controversy that is at the present time carried on among professors of philosophy between theism and pantheism could be given allegorically and dramatically by a dialogue that might be held in the pit of a playhouse in Milan during the performance. One of the speakers, convinced that he is in the large famous marionette theatre of Girolamo, admires the skill with which the director has made the marionettes and guides their play. But the other says: 'Not at all! We are in the Teatro della Scala; the director and his associates are themselves playing and are actually concealed in the characters whom we see before us; and the poet himself is also in the play.'
But it is amusing to see how the professors of philosophy flirt with pantheism as with forbidden fruit and have not the heart to grasp it. I have already described their attitude in this matter in my essay 'On Philosophy at the Universities', [1] where we were reminded of Bottom the weaver in Midsummer Night's Dream. Ah, the life of a professor of philosophy is indeed a hard one! First he must dance to the tune of ministers and, when he has done so really well, he can still be assailed from without by those ferocious man-eaters, the real philosophers. These are capable of pocketing him and of running off with him in order to pull him out occasionally as a pocket-Punchinello for the purpose of merriment and diversion during their expositions.
§ 69
Against pantheism I have mainly the objection that it states nothing. To call the world God is not to explain it, but only to enrich the language with a superfluous synonym for the word world. It comes to the same thing whether we say' the world is God' or ' the world is the world'. Indeed if we start from God, as if he were the given thing to be explained, and therefore say: 'God is the world', then there is to a certain extent an explanation in so far as it traces the unknown to what is better known; yet it is only a verbal explanation. But if we start from what is actually given and thus from the world, and then say: 'the world is God', it is obvious that with this nothing is said, or at any rate that ignotum is explained per ignotius. [2]
And so pantheism presupposes theism as having preceded it; for only in so far as we start from a God and thus have him already in advance and are intimate with him, can we ultimately bring ourselves to identify him with the world really in order to dispose of him in a seemly manner. Thus we have not started dispassionately from the world as the thing to be explained, but from God as that which is given. But after it was no longer possible to dispose of this God, the world had to take over his role. This is the origin of pantheism. For from a first and impartial view, it will never occur to anyone to regard this world as a God. It must obviously be an ill-advised God who could think of no better amusement than to transform himself into a world like the present one, into such a hungry world, in order to endure in it grief, misery, privation and death, aimless and immeasurable, in the form of countless millions of living, but troubled and tormented beings, all of whom exist for a while only by devouring one another. For example, we see such misery in the shape of six million Negro slaves who on the average receive daily sixty million cuts of the whip on their bare bodies, in the shape of three million European weavers who suffer hunger and poverty or feebly vegetate in stuffy attics or cheerless and dreary workshops, and in many other forms. What a pastime indeed for a God who as such must be accustomed to something quite different!*
Accordingly, if we take the so-called progress from theism to pantheism seriously and not merely as a masked negation, as previously suggested, it is a transition from the unproved and hardly conceivable to the absolutely absurd. For however obscure, indefinite, and confused the concept may be which we associate with the word God, two predicates are nevertheless inseparable from it, namely supreme power and the highest wisdom. Now it is a positively absurd idea that a being endowed with these qualities should have put himself in the position previously described; for our position in the world is obviously not one in which an intelligent being, let alone an all-wise one, would place himself. Pantheism is necessarily optimism and is therefore false. Theism, on the other hand, is merely unproved and even if it is difficult to conceive that the infinite world is the work of a personal, and consequently individual, being, such as we know only from animal nature, it is nevertheless not exactly absurd. For that an almighty and also all-wise being should create a tormented world is still always conceivable, although it is not known why he should do so. Therefore even if we attribute to him the quality of the highest goodness, the inscrutable mystery of his decree and decision is the refuge by which such a: doctrine still always escapes the reproach of absurdity. On the assumption of pantheism, however, the creating God himself is the endlessly tortured who on this small earth alone dies once every second and does so of his own free will, which is absurd. It would be much more correct to identify the world with the devil, as has in fact been done by the venerable author of Theologia Germanica in that he says on page 93 of his immortal work (according to the restored text, Stuttgart, 1851): 'Therefore are the evil spirit and nature one, and where nature is not overcome, there also is the evil foe not overcome.'
Obviously these pantheists give to Samsara the name God; the mystics, on the other hand, give the same name to Nirvana. Of this, however, they relate more than they can know; this the Buddhists do not do, and so their Nirvana is just a relative nothing. The Synagogue, the Church, and Islam use the word God in its proper and correct sense. If there are among the theists some who understand by the name God Nirvana, we will not argue with them over the word. It is the mystics who seem to understand it in this way. Re enim intellecta in verborum usu faciles esse debemus. [3]
The expression 'the world is an end in itself', which one often hears at the present time, leaves open the question whether it is to be explained by pantheism or mere fatalism. But at all events it admits of only a physical, not a moral, significance of the world since, on the assumption of the latter, the world always presents itself as the means to a higher end. But this very notion that the world has merely a physical, and no moral, significance is the most deplorable error that has sprung from the greatest perversity of the mind.
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[b]Notes:[/b]
1 [See volume I, page 186.] * Neither pantheism nor Jewish mythology is enough; if you undertake to explain the world, then keep your eyes solely thereon.
2 ['What is unknown is explained by what is even more unknown.']
3 ['If the matter itself is correctly understood, we will not raise any difficulties over the words used.']
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