Spotlight - Joseph Contrad

              by Artur Wielgus

He further elaborates on this task in his other book, “Experience and God”, published by Oxford University Press in 1968.  In Introduction on page four he observes, “…the problem of truth in religion is intimately connected with the issues of metaphysics.” Further on page 20 he says, “Religion is the ultimate fulfillment of human existence.” On page 72 professor Smith states, “Revelation is not incompatible with experience because the special occasions of revelation are special occasions of encounter.” “God was revealed through the medium of Christ, as he notes on p. 80.
Concerning the direct experience of God, Professor Smith compares rationalistic and mystical approaches on page 81.  “Whereas the mystical way involves the immediate
Experience of God as the culmination of the process of preparation, the rationalistic approach excludes the idea that God can be experienced, but claims instead that God can be known as the result of an inference.”
He describes other important factors in the quest for God existence on page 91. “The joint working of the three media – holy persons, historical events and the order and arrangement of nature – leads to the normative disclosure of God upon which the Hebraic tradition was founded.”
Importance of example of other important and influential people is as important as experience. Professor Smith observes on page 118... “Instead of ‘exist’, Peirce preferred to say ‘real’ and it is wise to follow him in this respect.”

P. 119 If we are to hold, as we must, that in God there can be no intelligible distinction between essence and existence because the two are not disrupted as in finite beings, it becomes difficult to understand how existence can be separated from God and made into a special object of proof. Neglect of this point in the past had led to a discussion of the proofs for God solely in terms of the meaning of “exists”, with little or no attention paid to the nature of God.

To avoid confusion, we must speak of the “reality” or the “being” of God rather than of existence. P 120 The shift from “existence” to “reality” or “being” in discourse about God does not mean, as is sometimes supposed, that critical discussion about whether or not there “is” God becomes impossible. On the contrary, such discussion continues, but on a new foundation. The most recent discussions of the ontological argument show an understanding of this point in the remark that the reality of God is a question of necessity or impossibility, but not of contingent “existence”.
Here he reiterates arguments for existence of Absolute Being. P. 122 The formula, (introduced by Anselm) “that than which nothing greater can be conceived” identifies God with the “Absolutely Exalted” or a fullness of Being which cannot be surpassed by any other reality. For the ontological approach, God is understood as the summit of being, of power, of truth, of love. Reflection on the meaning of this idea is to result in one crucial rational apprehension, namely, that if God is correctly expressed in or described by the formula “that than which nothing greater can be conceived”, it is necessary that God be real. A reality embodying a perfection surpassed by no other reality. P. 124 We cannot say that Anselm’s argument finds it proper locus exclusively within Christian revelation, because the formula upon which the argument rests is philosophically universal. Anselm’s famous argument represents a reflective excursion aimed at discovering the logical implications of a twofold experience- the funded experience  of the tradition in which he stood and his own personal repossession of that experience through reflection on the nature of the supremely worshipful being. What Anselm discovered is that the fund of experience from which his reflection set out is intrinsically intelligible. Anselm understood that only the two together, experience and the pattern of intelligibility, can lead to the desired result of an experience critically supported. If we take either the experience or the pattern separately we are left with two abstract results: an argument without religious import or an experience without philosophical support. P. 125 from the standpoint of logical validity, the principal objection to Anselm’s argument has always been that the claim to existence is a peculiar claim and that it requires for its support something more than logical consistency and the direct apprehension of a necessary connection between ideas. It has been objected that existence can be known only in and through experience or encounter and that it can never be elicited from ideas alone unless those ideas themselves are already the expression of a direct experience. The more familiar way of expressing this point is to say with Kant, that existence is not a predicate. P. 127, “…it is necessary to cite the fact that the ‘existence’ claimed in this one case of God is peculiar because it is not, and was never intended to be, existence in the sense appropriate to finite beings. Thus it is correct to say, against Kant and others, that the objection to the argument based upon the inappropriate concept of existence is not conclusive.”
P. 129, Thus it is legitimate to hold that the ontological approach begins with a definition of God if it is also remembered what stands behind this definition. It is neither an arbitrary stipulation nor a hypothetical construction, but the expression of a historically conditioned or revealed belief.
P. 130, “… no one ‘directly experiences’ the necessity of the divine existence; that is the matter for thought alone.  What is directly encountered is the Absolutely Exalted itself and what is discovered through reflection is that the God encountered is neither a finite, contingent, nor accidental reality, but one whose existence is necessary.
P. 131, ‘Thus in the ontological approach reason does not provide the first encounter from which the fact of God’s reality ultimately derives; experience has the priority because it furnishes the meaning with which the argument begins. But reason does provide rational support because it carries the self along from that starting point to the place where it sees that the reality intended is a necessary reality…”

Professor Smith states on p. 132, “…the necessity of the divine existence is not a matter of encounter but of rational apprehension”.

The Cosmological Approach
P. 134 The starting point of the cosmological approach is neither God nor the self, but the world of nature and certain of its features.
The arguments from change, from efficient causation, from contingent existence and even the argument from degrees of being, all exhibit a common pattern: they begin with empirical premises and they conclude that, if the fact asserted in these premises is to be explained, a necessary Being is required.
P. 135 The approach means that we reach God by showing that existing things are dependent for their beings and for certain aspects of their natures upon a necessary ground that is beyond any of them. The argument from the existence of something (whether it be the cosmos itself or some existent being within the world) which has sometimes been called the cosmological argument differs from the others in that it singles out existence itself as the fact with which to begin rather than a particular attribute of that existence.  How it is possible that what may not exist (i.e. what exists and might not have existed) comes to exist at all?
P. 137, “…the cosmological arguments depend not upon the ontological argument as such, but upon the basic principle implicit in the ontological approach, namely that a necessity of thought determines a corresponding reality. This should not be taken to mean that the cosmological arguments are identical in form with the ontological, for they are not, but it does call attention to their dependence upon the general demand for intelligibility and the further principle that whatever is demanded by thought for explaining a fact is itself to be counted among the real.
P. 138, what in fact exists and might not have existed does not bear the reason or ground of its existence within itself but in another.  Finite or contingent existence is not self-supporting.  God as the necessary existent is not identical with the world or with any of its proper parts.
“…total intelligibility demands a necessary existent; otherwise the contingent existences remain unexplained.”
P. 139, Contingent existence individually and the world as a system do not contain within themselves the ground of their own existence, but the cosmological arguments are actually arguments from God to God and not solely from the world to God as they appear to be. But it should not be concluded that the arguments are simply void and useless; the cosmological approach makes a unique contribution in that the arguments and particularly the argument from the fact of existence itself, make explicit the insufficiency of finite existence.  “…finite existence is neither self-explanatory nor self-supporting.”
P 140, Finite existence is not explained and supported by what has no more than notional or hypothetical status.
P. 141, “… there must be a point of identity between the God known through the cosmological argument and the god known through the Christian tradition”.
Ontological approach starts with the idea or definition of God whereas the cosmological way begins with the world and reaches God only at the end of the argument.
P. 157, at points, where human existence touches its own ground, the reality of the divine is encountered (in experience, e.g., in the awareness of the limit of human life and the anticipation of death and the ultimate destiny of the self).

In the introduction to the Royce book, “The World and the Individual”, First Series, published by Dover Publications, N.Y. 1959, Professor Smith says, “...large metaphysical questions are the life blood of philosophy.

It is a faith seeking understanding, which leads man to prove the existence of God.

© Art Wielgus 2008

Visit our websites: author-me.com, enskyment.org, innisfreepoetry.org.