Awakening

Intrinsic Value of the Divine Self, Morality, and Creativity   

 

·       “The Imitation Game proposed by Turing (1950) was originally a game of female impersonation: the aim of the game for the (male) querant is to pass for (that is, be judged by the questioner to be) female. The Turing test replaces the male querant with a computer whose aim is to pass for human. This simplified setup (Turing's actual proposal involves an additional complication, a third participant or foil besides to the querant and questioner) can be used to explain the metaphysical character of the dispute as a dispute about essence. In the original (man-woman) Imitation Game, notice, however good the impersonation, it doesn't make the querant female. Something else is essential: it's the content of their chromosomes (not their conversation) that makes the querant female or not. Different proposals for what that essential something is in the case of thought, then, represent different metaphysical takes on the nature of mind. In the Turing test scenario these different [proposed essences] represent further conditions necessary to promote intelligent-seeming behavior into actual intelligence, and sufficing for intelligence, or mentation, even in the absence of such behavior.”

And now look at the proposed essences below:

·       “Dualistic Essentialism: Stimulus -> [(the right) conscious experiential processes] -> Response
Physicalist Essentialism: S -> [(the right) physical processes] -> R
Cognitivist Essentialism: S -> [(the right) computational processes] -> R
Behavioristic In-essentialism: S -> [whatever works] -> R

Dualistic theories propose a conscious experiential essence; physicalistic (or "mind-brain identity") theories propose a physical (specifically, neurophysiological) essence; and cognitivistic theories a procedural or computational essence. Behaviorism, in contrast, doesn't care what mediates the intelligent-seeming S -> R connection; behavioristically speaking, intelligence is as intelligence does regardless of the manner of the doing (experiential, neurophysiological, computational, or otherwise). Behaviorism, thus construed, "is not a metaphysical theory: it is the denial of a metaphysical theory" and consequently "asserts nothing"; at least, nothing positively metaphysical.” Behaviorism, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Introduction

What do we really know? I am sitting here as one of 7.4 billion people and innumerous other living beings known and unknown, visible and invisible, on this planet, in “the milky way which is part of a massive supercluster of galaxies that forms one of the largest known structures in the universe,”[1] and reflecting what is this all about? How can I get out of the maze? I see some directions and so much unseen. I experience (erleben) my existence from inside out and from outside in, being puzzled why I am here and why I die, wondering what course of action I should take and how I should live. I am blessed with having a self, an awareness about existence, which seems so unique to me compared to other animals. I can master animals and know them, their direction, their habitats, their anatomy, instincts, and mode of awareness. I have a feeling for every living being, even if I am thrown in a crude dominant Darwinian discourse that it is all about survival, natural selection, competition and symbiosis, and survival of the fittest. Scientism has made my life meaningless and absurd. Accordingly, life as such is an automatic self-organization founded by dead particles. I am a chance event. A chance event opens its eyes to existence and look at all the chance events alive and dead. I feel despair and absurdity. I seek refuge in sciences and philosophy, in pleasure, career, and family. I know what happiness is. I was told about it. It is wining my survival, my genes, with the least casualties. It is creativity and curiosity at the disposal of genes. But I don’t know why a chance event has to create and care about genes, and what the ethics of creativity is. I can talk about love, because I feel it, but the love of a chance event is tears of despair. My freedom to question and to act is delusional. I am determined by causal effect of physical events. I ask myself “how can I get out of this nightmarish maze?” The best hope is that in one or two hundred years even my memory would be gone. I am a bursting bubble, soon to be forgotten and fade out.

I lived in this nightmare as an educated atheist person most of my life up to 2005.

In this reflection, I wish to ponder the intrinsic value of the self, the moral, and the creative process. I will argue that the history of the present is disenchanted about the self through externalism and nullity of the self. By "externality," I mean that in our time the self (the divine consciousness and intuition) has been turned into a “subject”, which basically means an empty mask imprinted by determinate cultural-social-historical practices or genome structure. This externalization is a reaction to two variations of internalizations. The first one was ancient perception of the self as a soul-substance and the second one was the autonomous subject of Western Enlightenment. In the first case, we have a deviation from the divine soul-being-in-the-world to extreme asceticism and denial of the world. And in the second version, we identified the self merely with reasoning and sense impressions (Descartes, Hume, Locke, Kant). I will argue that we have to re-connect to our Source, by dwelling in the intrinsic value of the divine-self-being-in-the-world, the ethical, and the creative. By “intrinsic” I mean, what we desire for its own sake, not for any further result, even if this intrinsic approach will bring about good consequences too. I think this way of looking at these three sources of existence: the self, the ethico-political, and the creative is an antidote to nihilism and a key to a fulfilling life.


Our internal disposition is the very medium through which we can connect to the universe and God, provided that we keep the mirror clean to receive the message undistorted. To keep it clean physically, to keep it clean nutritiously, not to drown it in alcohol and drugs and meat, to keep it clean morally, not to darken our soul with lies, empty ambitions, cognitive and emotional dissonance, fame, honor, wealth, and desire for immortality, to keep it clean creatively, not to seek any career out of insecurity and then annex a creative life to it as the byproduct of a hedonistic or cynical life style, but the reverse, to posit ethical creativity (as creativity can become evil) at the center and organize our career and other aspects of our life around it.


The outline of this reflection is like this: First, I will sketch a phenomenology of awakening to faith, as that which turns the “chance event of a speck of dust” into an essential, teleological, and meaningful connection to the divine light. Second, I will quote chapter three of Ueland’s If You Want to Write as a clear example of the intrinsic value of creativity and its relation to joy and happiness (eudaimonia, flourishing). Third, I will discuss briefly the intrinsic value of the ethical and quote some passages from different religions about the intrinsic value of morality. Fourth, I will surmise a sketch of intellectual perception of the self, in analytical and continental tradition, and will critically evaluate them.

Phenomenology of Awakening

Before my own awakening since 2005, I loved watching the movie Awakenings and crying uncontrollably. I didn’t understand why I couldn’t help crying while watching this movie. Something about it touched me deeply, strangely I could identify with the catatonic protagonist of this film. This is a short plot of the movie:

Awakenings is a 1990 American drama film based on Oliver Sacks's 1973 memoir of the same title. It tells the true story of British neurologist Oliver Sacks, fictionalized as American Malcolm Sayer (portrayed by Robin Williams). The film was nominated for three Academy Awards, directed by Penny Marshall.

In 1969, Dr. Malcolm Sayer is a dedicated and caring physician at a local hospital in the New York City borough of The Bronx. After working extensively with the catatonic patients who survived the 1917–1928 epidemic of encephalitis lethargica, Sayer discovers certain stimuli will reach beyond the patients' respective catatonic states; actions such as catching a ball, hearing familiar music, and experiencing human touch all have unique effects on particular patients and offer a glimpse into their worlds. Leonard Lowe (Robert de Niro) proves elusive in this regard, but Sayer soon discovers that Leonard is able to communicate with him by using a Quija board.

After attending a lecture at a conference on the subject of the L-Dopa drug and its success with patients suffering from Parkinson's Disease, Sayer believes the drug may offer a breakthrough for his own group of patients. A trial run with Leonard yields astounding results: Leonard completely "awakens" from his catatonic state. This success inspires Sayer to ask for funding from donors so that all the catatonic patients can receive the L-Dopa medication and experience "awakenings" back to reality.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Awakenings#Plot

It is no more strange to me that existentially I identified myself with a catatonic patient. I was locked into my soul. I could feel Leonard Lowe. The experience of my own awakening later was similar to Leonard Lowe awakening from catatonic states.  And it is up to me to keep "awakening" going.

After the event of 2005, which was an encounter with the divine, when I became disillusioned with philosophy and lost interest in Marx, Russell, Wittgenstein, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Foucault, and philosophy in general, I went through a deep depression for a few years. I couldn’t read philosophy and basically have no ideas to discuss. My wife, Marianne, used to ask me “what happened to you? I fell in love with you when you talked so much passionately about philosophy and everything.” I couldn’t explain it to her. I felt startled and fallen in a state of awe. After a few years ups and downs, the first effects of my awakening was a kind of paralysis by depression. It was similar to Heidegger’s calling of conscience and anxiety in the face of nothing:

"Unsettledness (not-being-at-home) is the basic kind of Being-in-the-world, even though in an everyday way it has been covered up. Out of the depths of this kind of Being, Dasein [human being] itself, as conscience, calls. . . . The call whose mood has been attuned by anxiety is what makes it possible first and foremost for Dasein to project itself upon its ownmost ability-to-be. The call of conscience, existentially understood, makes known for the first time what we have hitherto merely contended: that unsettledness pursues Dasein and is a threat to the lostness in which it has forgotten itself.” (Being and Time, p.322)

And:

"When Dasein understandingly lets itself be called forth to this possibility, this includes its becoming free for the call – its readiness for the potentiality of getting appealed to. In understanding the call, Dasein is in thrall to [hörig] its ownmost possibility of existence. It has chosen itself. . . . But in the appeal, das Man-selbst [the public self] gets called to [angrufen] the ownmost Being-guilty. Understanding the call is choosing; but it is not a choosing of conscience, which as such cannot be chosen. What is chosen is having-a-conscience as Being-free for one’s ownmost Being-guilty. “Understanding the appeal” means “wanting to have a conscience”. (334)

And:

"The authentic understanding which ‘follows’ the call is not a mere addition which attaches itself to the phenomenon of conscience by a process which may or may not be forthcoming. Only from an understanding of the appeal and together with such an understanding does the full Experience of conscience let itself be grasped. If in each case the caller and he to whom the appeal is made are at the same time one’s own Dasein themselves, then in any failure to hear the call or any incorrect hearing of oneself, there lies a definite kind of Dasein’s Being." (324)

However, my experience was fundamentally different because even though the longing was mine-- I have been longing for the meaning of my existence all my life before the experience of 2005 and after that-- but unlike what Heidegger says “the caller and one to whom the appeal is made are [were not] at the same time one’s own Dasein (human existence) themselves”, the longing was mine and God was and is "to whom the appeal is made" and the response was not coming from myself and this had startled me in fear and trembling. And after experiencing it, it shattered everything that I knew. I fell into deep depression (anxiety and fear happened at the time of encounter) for a few years after the experience. And the response was not from my inner desires and constitution, I psychologized myself for a long time but eventually I accepted the externality of the experience, which had shocked me. I couldn’t reconcile this experience with the philosophy of Russell, Wittgenstein, Marx, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Foucault. I sank into silence in a state of awe and lack of motivation.

Obviously, Heidegger doesn't want to admit God into his phenomenological picture of the self and awakening of conscience, instead he posits the impersonal Being.  His transposition of Cartesian "I" with Being, i.e., Being precedes the self, not the reverse, is valuable.  However, we need to recollect that Being is God as such.

Now I understand why the movie Awakenings made me cry so hard. I felt suddenly I had been awakened from the state of catatonic existential nihilism that, I assume, all of the above-mentioned thinkers are afflicted with, as somehow I have been there myself.

Change is difficult, especially if one is congealed in one’s identity.  In or out of philosophy, all my friends were atheists, except for my wife, thanks God, whom I met after the experience.  It took a long time I “recovered”, and through teaching world religions I reconciled with religions and re-connected with God, the one who called me.  In the course of ten years, I felt a change in my whole psyche.  I gradually came back to teaching and everyday activity.  I started praying.  I stood in silence and awe conversing with God that now I knew existed.  I cried often in gratitude to the ineffable Merciful.  Something in my body along with my psyche changed, something internal, and gradually I felt the culmination of psychosomatic effect of faith.  I couldn’t help crying every now and then, as if I recollected a forgotten love.  When I heard that “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself,’[2]” it was alien to me.  I didn’t understand how I can love my God, leave alone with all my heart, all my mind, and all my strength.  But when in one of the darkest times of my life, intellectually as well as spiritually, God came to my help and showed me how I was going astray, a deep well of gratitude and love overflew in me. This experience is enormous and unbelievable, but it is to me the best phenomenological evidence for two things: first, the human essence (fitrah) is divine; second, it is a clear evidence of the existence of God.  Only through this awakening, I could go through a qualitative psychological change in which I felt a genuine love for God, with all my heart, all my mind, and all my strength.  I could re-establish my relation with my first son, things in my personal life changed, I felt love for every living being and my neighbor more than ever.  Every time I am focused on God, the energy of my brain ascends, a sense of indescribable exaltation.  And it happened and happens every single time that I focus and concentrate on God in gratitude and prayer, whether I am walking or sitting.  I say these things in my reflection to let people know about my experience of awakening, because people are looking for “evidence”.  And this is an absolute and clear evidence, which helped me to overcome my catatonic akrasia (weakness of will) and transformed my habits. I quit smoking weed, drinking alcohol, coffee, and eating meat.  I feel I don’t need any extra stimulant.  I am drunk with God.  But this “evidence” is internal to me and shows and will show itself through my life and the way I will live externally.  

I don’t want to impress anyone, though I hope to save life because I love life.  What I want to say is that the experience of gratitude to the Source and love of God, this phenomenological experience has an intrinsic value, I don’t want anything out of it, I want it for its own sake, not for the sake of any result.  It is bliss as such.  We have forgotten about the intrinsic value of our divine soul, of having a moral life, and of creativity.

The Intrinsic Value of Creativity

I use to teach Brenda Ueland’s book If You Want to Write in a course on Creativity. The best way to convey my point about the intrinsic value of creativity is to let you read chapter three of this easy, honest, and fluent book (and hope you read the whole book):

CHAPTER III

Why a Renaissance Nobleman Wrote Sonnets

Now perhaps the thoughts, "There is no money in it," and "It may never be published," you find dry up all the springs of energy in you, so that you can't drag yourself to a piece of paper.

I have experienced this often. I have cleared it up for myself in this way:

At the time of the Renaissance, all gentlemen wrote sonnets. They did not think of getting them in the Woman's Home Companion.   Well, why write a sonnet at all then?

Now one reason is (and this is very fine and com­ mendable) the hope of getting it in the Woman's Home Companion. But there are many other reasons more important. And incidentally unless you have these other reasons, the sonnet won't have much vitality and the Woman's Home Companion will send you a rejection slip.

A Renaissance nobleman wrote a love sonnet for a number of reasons. A slight and very incidental reason may have been that he wanted to show people he could do it. But the main reason was to tell a certain lady that he loved her: (although they also wrote beautiful sonnets then about all sorts of things:  sonnets that were prayers, that were indignant business letters, that were political arguments).

But say the nobleman wrote a sonnet to tell the lady that he loved her. His chest was full of an uncomfortable pent-up feeling that he had to express. He did it as eloquently, beautifully and passionately as he could, on paper.

And although his sonnet was never published in any magazine, and he never got a cent for it, he was not unrewarded any more than a person who sings a beautiful Bach choral is unrewarded and needs to be paid for it,­ any more than the little ten-year-old girls who produced the plays had to have fifty cents an hour and the regular union rates.

One of the intrinsic rewards for writing the sonnet was that then the nobleman knew and understood his own feeling better, and he knew more about what love was, what part of his feelings were bogus (literary) and what real, and what a beautiful thing the Italian or the English language was.

If you read the letters of the painter Van Gogh, you will see what his creative impulse was. It was just this: he loved something-the sky, say. He loved human beings. He wanted to show human beings how beautiful the sky was. So he painted it for them. And that was all there was to it.

When Van Gogh was a young man in his early twenties, he was in London studying to be a clergyman.

He had no thought of being an artist at all.  He sat in his cheap little room writing a letter to his younger brother in Holland, whom he loved very much. He looked out his window at a watery twilight, a thin lamp ­post, a star, and he said in his letter something like this: "It is so beautiful I must show you how it looks." And then on his cheap ruled note paper, he made the most beautiful, tender, little drawing of it.

When I read this letter of Van Gogh's it comforted me very much and seemed to throw clear light on the whole road of Art. Before, I had thought that to produce a work of painting or literature, you scowled and thought long and ponderously and weighed everything solemnly and learned everything that all artists had ever done aforetime, and what their influences and schools were, and you were extremely careful about design and balance and getting interesting planes into your painting, and avoided, with the most stringent severity, showing the faintest academical tendency, and were strictly modern. And so on and so on.

But the moment I read Van Gogh's letter I knew what art was, and the creative impulse. It is a feeling of love[3] and enthusiasm for something, and in a direct, simple, passionate and true way, you try to show this beauty in things to others, by drawing it.

The difference between Van Gogh and you and me is, that while we may look at the sky and think it is beautiful, we don't go so far as to show someone else how it looks. One reason may be that we do not care enough about the sky or for other people. But most often I think it is because we have been discouraged into thinking what we feel about the sky is not important.

And Van Gogh's little drawing on the cheap note paper was a work of art because he loved the sky and the frail lamppost against it so seriously that he made the drawing with the most exquisite conscientiousness and care. He made it as much like what he loved as he could. You and I might have made the drawing and scratched it off roughly, well, that would have been a good thing to do too. But Van Gogh made the drawing with seriousness and truth.

This is what Van Gogh wrote about people like all of us, whose creative impulse is confused (and not simple as his was) and mixed up with all sorts of things such as the wish to make an impression (not just to tell the truth) and to do what critics say artists should do, and so on.

He said:

"When I see young painters compose and draw from memory/ and then haphazardly smear on whatever they like also from memory -then keep it at a distance and put on a very mysterious, gloomy face to find out what in Heaven's name it may  look  like,  and  at  last and finally make something from it, always from memory it sometimes disgusts me, and makes me think  it  all very tedious and dull.

"They cannot understand that the figure of a laborer, -some furrows in a plowed field, a bit of sand, sea and sky, -are serious objects, so difficult but at the same time so beautiful, that it is indeed worthwhile to devote one's life to the task of expressing the poetry hidden in them." To show that the creative impulse of Van Gogh, a great genius, was simply loving what he saw and then wanting to share it with others, not for the purpose of showing off, but out of generosity, I will tell you a few things he said. I want to show you that what he had in him is just what you all have in yourselves and should let out. 

For I must remind you again and again that that is the whole purpose of this book.

Van Gogh said:

"My only anxiety is what I can do . . . could I not be of use and good for something? . . . And in a picture I wish to say something that would console as music does."

He said:

"We take beautiful walks together. It is very beautiful here, if one only has an open and simple eye without any beams in it. But if one has that it is beautiful every where."

He said:

"Painters understand nature and love her and teach us to see her."

And this:

"When we drove back from Zundert that evening across the heath, father and I got out and walked awhile; the sun was setting red behind the pine trees, and the evening sky was reflected in the pools; the heath and the yellow and white and gray sand were so full of harmony and sentiment, -see, there are moments in life when everything within us too is full of peace and sentiment, and our whole life seems to be a path through the heath, but it is not so always."

And this:

"What has changed is that my life was then less difficult, but as to the inward state that has not changed.   If there has been any change at all, it is that I think and believe and love more seriously now what I already thought and believed and loved then."

This:

"Oh, while I was ill there was a fall of damp and melting snow, I got up at night to look at the country. Never, never had nature seemed to me so touching and so full of feeling."

And this:

"In a few years I must finish a certain work. I need not hurry myself; there is no good in that-but I must work on in full calmness and serenity, as regularly and concentratedly as possible, as briefly and concisely as possible.

"The world only concerns me in so far as I feel a certain debt and duty towards it and out of gratitude [4]want to leave some souvenir in the shape of drawings or pictures, -not made to please a certain tendency in art, but to express sincere human feeling."

You can see how Van Gogh's simple impulse is in all of us. But in us it is clouded over and confused with notions such as: will the work be good or bad? or would it be Art? or would it be modernistic enough and not academical? and would it sell? would it be economically sound to put the time in trying to do it?

Well, Van Gogh was one of the great painters. During his life he made only 109 dollars in all on his paintings. They are now worth hundreds millions dollars.  He had a terribly hard life-loneliness, poverty and starvation that led to insanity. And yet it was one of the greatest lives that was ever lived-the happiest, the most burningly incandescent. And see, a few words he has written in his letters, these many years after his death, have changed my whole life!

And one of the most important of these intrinsic rewards is the stretched understanding, the illumination. By painting the sky, Van Gogh was really able to see it and adore it better than if he had just looked at it. In the same way (as I would tell my class), you will never know what your husband looks like unless you try to draw him, and you will never understand him unless you try to write his story.

I tell you these things because of my own difficulties. One great inhibition and obstacle to me was the thought: will it make money? But you find that if you are thinking of that all the time, either you don't make money because the work is so empty, dry, calculated, and without life in it. Or you do make money and you are ashamed of your work. Your published writings give you the pip.

Another great stumbling block and inhibition to me was the idea that writing (since I wanted to make a fortune and dazzle the public)[5] was something in which you showed off, were a virtuoso, set yourself up to be something remarkable.

But at last I understood from William Blake and Van Gogh and other great men, and from myself-from the truth that is in me (and which I have at last learned to declare and stand up for, as I am trying to persuade you to stand up for your inner truth)-at last I understood that writing was this: an impulse to share with other people a feeling or truth that I myself had. Not to preach to them, but to give it to them if they cared to hear it. If they did not-fine. They did not need to listen. That was all right too. And I would never fall into those two extremes (both lies) of saying: "I have nothing to say and am of no importance and have no gift"; or "The public doesn't want good stuff."

When I learned all this then I could write freely and jovially and not feel contracted and guilty about being such a conceited ass; and not feel driven to work by grim resolution, by jaw-grinding ambition  to  succeed, like some of those success-driven business men who, in their concern with  action  and  egoistic  striving,  forget all about love and the imagination, and become sooner or later emotionally arthritic and spiritually as calcified and uncreative as mummies.[6] (I understand these things because I have experienced them, though on a small scale. I try not to rail against what I have not experienced myself.)

Yes, it has made me like working to see that writing is not a performance but a generosity.

I find that I wrote this to someone three years ago:

"Forgive me, but perhaps you should write again. I think there is something necessary and life-giving about 'creative work' (forgive the term)[7] . A state of excitement. And it is like a faucet: nothing comes unless you turn it on, and the more you tum it on, the more comes.

"It is our nasty twentieth century materialism that makes us feel: what is the use of writing, painting, etc., unless one has an audience or gets cash for it? Socrates and the men of the Renaissance did so much because the rewards were intrinsic, i.e., the enlargement of the soul.

"Yes we are all thoroughly materialistic about such things. 'What's the use?' we say, of doing anything unless you make money or get applause? for when a man is dead he is dead.' Socrates and the Greeks decided that a man's life should be devoted to 'the tendance of the Soul' (Soul included intelligence, imagination, spirit, understanding, personality) for the soul lived eternally, in all probability.

"I think it is all right to work for money, to work to have things enjoyed by people, even very limited ones; but the mistake is to feel that the work, the effort, the search is not the important and the exciting thing. One cannot strive to write a cheap, popular story without learning more about cheapness. But enough. I may very well be getting to raving."

And so now I have established reasons why  you should work from now on until you die, with real love and imagination and intelligence, at your writing or whatever work it is that you care about. If you do that, out of the mountains that you write some mole hills will be published. Or you may make a fortune and win the Nobel Prize. But if nothing is ever published at all and you never make a cent, just the same it will be good that you have worked.

The Intrinsic Value of Morality

What if I had the ring of Gyges, which made me invisible, what would I do?  Am I not tired of this duality between what I am and what I show, what I am and what I or they think I should be, between means and goals?  Externalization of the ethical turns us into calculating machines, everything turns into means to achieve certain goals.  We suffer from holding onto an ethics which is not owned by us but basically is implanted in us in fear of punishment or for the sake of external benefits.  The nihilism of Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud tell us that whether our comportment in the world should be based on will-to-power (Nietzsche), class-consciousness (Marx), or harmonizing our ego with the clash between pleasure principle and reality principle, the id and superego (Freud).  One of characteristics of the soul is that if we are convinced that we are “nothing but” will-to-power, relations and modes of production, or sexual libido, then we will become that and loosen up our ethical codes and fall into internal bleeding, dissonance, and suffering, because, according to thousands years religious scriptures, and from my own personal experience, the human essence is divine and it has an internal compass and direction or telos to God, and whatever bars one from attaining this direction, will cause suffering for that person and subsequently for others, in this world and in the world to come. 

I mentioned the following in another note and will repeat it as it is related to the notion of intrinsic value of the ethical:

Given this upheaval of spiritual ruin, emptiness, and alienation, I noticed something strange happens to the soul of the individual: in the course of time, it gradually transforms and decays to a kind of ethically loose and unstable person, who can’t hold onto a genuine commitment to anything but the principle of an aesthetic or other kinds of pleasure or will to power – under the shadow of a vague humanism. However, one constantly experiences a sense of despair that one tries to drown it in alcohol or drug, career or pleasure, relationship, family, magic and sorcery, something that one hopes to stop or solace him or her from thinking about “why am I here?”. “What is the meaning of my existence?”: this question occurs only to human beings. No action or distraction can overcome the despair of not knowing the answer to this question (or feeling disconnection from “reality”). As Kierkegaard puts it:

“This comes to the fact that despair is a qualification of spirit, that it is related to the eternal in human. But the eternal s/he cannot get rid of, no, not to all eternity; s/he cannot cast it from him or her once for all… The self which s/he despairingly wills to be is a self which s/he is not… what s/he really wills is to tear his or her self away from the [divine] Power which constituted it. But notwithstanding all the efforts of despair, that Power is the stronger, and compels one to be the self s/he does not will to be… This is the situation in despair. And however thoroughly it eludes the attention of the despaired, and however thoroughly the despaired may succeed in losing himself or herself entirely, and losing himself or herself in such a way that it is not noticed in the least—eternity nevertheless will make it manifest that his or her situation was despair , and it will so nail one to oneself that the torment nevertheless remains that one cannot get rid of oneself, and it becomes manifest that one was deluded in thinking that one is succeeded. And thus in one eternity acts, because to have a self, to be a self, is the greatest concession made to human, but at the same time it is eternity’s demand upon him or her.” 

However, the atheistic faith (yes, “faith”, because atheism also is a religion) can’t accept it. God is dead; we are utterly a natural phenomenon made of atoms and dead particle; science had proven it; the universe and reality is indifferent to me. The way I comport myself in the world, my ethos and ethical practices, have nothing to do with the universe. The implosion of hydrogen atoms in stars has no ethics. Thus ethics is disconnected from the universe and from the universal meaning of my existence as a dependent soul/body (as one) originated from the universe. Ironically, we gave ourselves the contingent (accidental) quality of conscious awareness and love--at the disposal of survival of genes-- and deprived our origin, the universe, from even having this simple awareness that we crown ourselves with, turning it into dead particles. For example, in Marxism, consciousness and love are the superstructures based on modes of production of homo economicus; or in evolutionary biology they are mediums of survival of selfish genes. Consequently, we became alien to ourselves and created a breach between the way we conduct ourselves in the world, our ethical practices, and the meaning of our existence in the world, as there is no universal meaning to our being here, life as such is a subclass of dead and ethics now is a pragmatic and practical issue for its consequences.

In Bentham and Mill’s utilitarianism, maximizing pleasure for the most as the result of actions or general practices, became the measure of the ethical. Utilitarianism is a consequentialist theory of ethics, following Darwin’s The Origin of Species and the development of sciences, it hopes to turn moral problems into measurable calculus of the amount of pleasure. Consequently, the notions of efficiency, and cost and benefit analysis, became the hallmark of our ethical discourse.

The other major feature of 19th c. existentialism is Nietzsche who through his genealogy of morality, basically gave rise to moral relativism of our time. He confronted Mill’s utility-pleasure principle with his will-to-power and prioritized the aesthetic of existence to the ethical, and cancelled out the religious by his declaration of the death of God: “It is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that existence and the world are eternally justified.” (The Birth of Tragedy)

Marx as well introduced another hiatus between the ethical and spiritual by calling them the superstructure whose foundation is based on economic modes of production. I hold that Marxism’s secularism is also a variation of nihilism for these reasons: 1) Human beings need a sense of connection or integration in the universe or the divine. 2) Marx’s materialism still implies that life is a subclass of dead. 3) Marx holds the Enlightenment ideal of self-sufficiency of rational human being unto itself. 4) Similar to liberal secularism, not only Marxism separates the ethical from the spiritual, but also it doesn't have any coherent ethical theory. Remember Marxism holds that ethics as well as spirituality is a superstructure based on material condition of life. So, he suggests by changing material conditions of life (relations of production) through political action we can change the whole social moral-spiritual apparatus. I argue that this lack of ethics-connected-to-our-spiritual-needs gives rise to nihilism. 

Axial Age sages, Socrates, Euripides, Upanishad’s Mystics, Jeremiah, Amos, Ezekiel, Lao Tzu, Confucius, Buddha, and then Jesus, and Mohammad share a non-consequentialist message: they all hold that justice and morality are for harmony with God, Dao, or Heaven (T’ien) and are good for their own sake (have intrinsic value) and subsequently also have extrinsic value (good consequences). In Western Enlightenment, Immanuel Kant comes closest to this non-consequentialist approach. However, he along with other rationalists put all his faith in reason alone, which is the point of excess in our historical pendulum swing and detrimental to the divine balance of our soul.

Kantian Western Enlightenment of the sovereignty of reason has an interesting and strange ethical theory, which is a heroic attempt to show that our wired in and innate (a priori) law of reason defies inconsistency in ethical issues and falls into cognitive dissonance and contradiction if it can’t universalize its own moral actions, i.e., I shouldn’t find myself in cognitive dissonance if everyone does the same thing that I morally do. This Kantian theory can’t explain why this inconsistency should be avoided. Kant appeals to a sense of “reverence” for the law of reason within. We all understand the kind of shame and guilt we feel, when we realize we are inconsistence. Maturity of divine conscience is a movement from the shame we experience under the dictum of social norms only to the shame we experience if we violate our own divine nature and lose the integrity of our own conscience. 

The experience of faith and studying religions helped me to see that for all major religions, from Taoism to Islam, to be moral has an intrinsic value because our everyday conduct is not disconnected from the divine.  Religions advocate and urge us to experience a sense of wholeness which is for the sake of the experience of wholeness itself (it has intrinsic value).  None of them say that we have to be moral for its consequences only, i.e., in each action we do something to our own souls. 

I end this part by bringing some quotations from
different religions about the ethical:

Islam: From the Quran

“It is not righteousness that ye turn your faces towards East or West; but it is righteousness- to believe in God and the Last Day, and the Angels, and the Book, and the Messengers; to spend of your substance, out of love for Him, for your kin, for orphans, for the needy, for the wayfarer, for those who ask, and for the ransom of slaves; to be steadfast in prayer, and practice regular charity; to fulfill the contracts which ye have made; and to be firm and patient, in pain (or suffering) and adversity, and throughout all periods of panic. Such are the people of truth, the God-fearing.” [2:177]

Say: the things that my Lord hath indeed forbidden are: shameful deeds, whether open or secret; sins and trespasses against truth or reason; assigning of partners to God, for which He hath given no authority; and saying things about God of which ye have no knowledge. [7:33]

“The Day whereon neither wealth nor sons will avail, but only he (will prosper) that brings to God a sound heart” [26:88-89]

O you who believe! be maintainers of justice, bearers of witness of God's sake, though it may be against your own selves or (your) parents or near relatives; if he be rich or poor, God is nearer to them both in compassion; therefore, do not follow (your) low desires, lest you deviate; and if you swerve or turn aside, then surely God is aware of what you do. (4:135)

O you who believe! Be upright for God, bearers of witness with justice, and let not hatred of a people incite you not to act equitably; act equitably, that is nearer to piety, and be careful of (your duty to) God; surely God is Aware of what you do. (5:8)

And if two parties of the believers quarrel, make peace between them; but if one of them acts wrongfully towards the other, fight that which acts wrongfully until it returns to God's command; then if it returns, make peace between them with justice and act equitably; surely God loves those who act equitably. (49:9)

Bible (Old and New Testaments)

He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. (Ecclesiastes 3:11)

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, (Ephesians 2:8)

 

 For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them. Romans 2:14-15

But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving. Ephesians 5:3-4 

He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. Ecclesiastes 3:11

Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality. 1 Corinthians 6:9 

Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. Galatians 5:19-21

 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”  Matthew 22:37-40 

Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law. Romans 13:8-10  

 And he said, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.” Mark 7:20-23

Lao tzu

Free from desire, you realize the mystery. Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations… Tao flows through all things, inside and outside, and returns to the origin of all things. … The Tao is great, The Universe is great, Earth is great, Human is great. These are the four great powers…


From Hua Hu Ching (Lao Tzu’s oral teachings)


In ancient times, people lived holistic lives. They didn’t overemphasize the intellect, but integrated mind, body and spirit in all things. ..... Simply avoid becoming attached to what you see and think. Relinquish the notion that you are separated from the all-knowing mind of the universe. Then you can recover your original pure insight and see through all illusions. Knowing nothing, you will be aware of everything. Remember: because clarity and enlightenment are Within your own nature, they are regained without moving an inch.


He who trusts to his abundance of natural virtue is like an infant newly born, whom venomous reptiles will not sting, wild beasts will not seize, birds of prey will not strike. The infant's bones are weak, its sinews are soft, yet its grasp is firm. All day long it will cry without its voice becoming hoarse. This is because the harmony of its bodily system is perfect.

Temper your sharpness, disentangle your ideas, moderate your brilliancy, live in harmony with your age. This is being in conformity with the principle of Tao. Such a man is impervious alike to favor and disgrace, to benefits and injuries, to honor and contempt. And therefore he is esteemed above all mankind.


He who acts in accordance with Tao, becomes one with Tao. He who treads the path of Virtue becomes one with Virtue. He who pursues a course of Vice becomes one with Vice. The man who is one with Tao, Tao is also glad to receive. The man who is one with Virtue, Virtue is also glad to receive. The man who is one with Vice, Vice is also glad to receive.


He who is self-approving does not shine. He who boasts has no merit. He who exalts himself does not rise high. Judged according to Tao, he is like remnants of food or a tumor on the body--an object of universal disgust. Therefore, one who has Tao will not consort with such.


Perfect Virtue acquires nothing; therefore, it obtains everything. Perfect Virtue does nothing, yet there is nothing which it does not effect. Perfect Charity operates without the need of anything to evoke it. Perfect Duty to one's neighbor operates, but always needs to be evoked. Perfect Ceremony operates, and calls for no outward response; nevertheless, it induces respect.

Ceremonies are the outward expression of inward feelings.

If Tao perishes, then Virtue will perish; if Virtue perishes, then Charity will perish; if Charity perishes, then Duty to one's neighbor will perish; if Duty to one's neighbor perishes, then Ceremonies will perish.

Confucius

Confucius remarked: Heaven is author of the virtue that is in me. The power of spiritual forces in the Universe—how active it is everywhere! Invisible to the eyes, and impalpable to the senses, it is inherent in all things, and nothing can escape its operation. What is God-Given (Given by T’ien or “heaven”) is what we call human nature. To fulfill the law of our human nature is what we call the moral law [Tao]. The cultivation of the moral law is what we call culture. Our central self or moral being is the great basis of existence, and harmony or moral order is the universal law in the world.


Confucius remarked: “The life of the moral person is an exemplification of the universal moral order…. The life of the vulgar person, on the other hand, is a contradiction of the universal moral order.” Confucius remarked: “To find the central clue to our moral being which unites us to the universal order, that indeed is the highest human attainment…”,


Confucius remarked: “There are people who seek for the abstruse and strange and live a singular life in order that they may leave a name to posterity. This is what I never would do. There are again good people who try to live in conformity with the moral law but who, when they have gone half way, throw it up. I never could give it up. Lastly, there are truly moral people who unconsciously live a life in entire harmony with the universal moral order and who live unknown to the world and unnoticed by others without any concern. It is only people of holy, divine natures who are capable of this…” Confucius said: In the morning hear the Way; in the evening die content.


“Fix your mind on truth, hold firm to virtue, rely on loving kindness, and find your recreation in the Arts.” Confucius, The Analects


“The Master said, at fifteen I set my heart upon learning.
At thirty, I had planted my feet firm upon the ground.
At forty, I no longer suffered from perplexities.
At fifty, I knew what were the biddings of Heaven.
At sixty, I heard them with docile ear.
At seventy, I could follow the dictates of my own heart; for what I desired no longer overstepped the boundaries of right.” Confucius, The Analects of Confucius


“Tsze-Kung asked, “Is there one word with which to act in accordance throughout a lifetime?” The Master said, “Is not reciprocity such a word? What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.” Confucius, The Analects

“Coarse rice to eat, water to drink, my bended arm for a pillow - therein is happiness. Wealth and rank attained through immoral means are nothing but drifting clouds.”
Confucius, The Analects

Upanishads

Three thousand years ago, Nachiketas seeks wisdom of life from the King of Death (Yama), narrated in Katha Upanishads.

Death says: Take horses and gold and cattle and elephants; choose sons and grandsons that shall live a hundred years. Have vast expanses of land, and live as many years as you desire. Or choose another gift that you think equal to this, and enjoy it with wealth and long life. Be a ruler of this vast earth. I will grant you all your desires. Ask for any wishes in the world of mortals, however hard to obtain. To attend on you I will give you fair maidens with chariots and musical instruments. But ask me not, Nachiketas, the secrets of death.


Nachiketas: All these pleasures pass away, O End of all! They weaken the power of life. And indeed how short is all life! Keep thy horses and dancing and singing. Human cannot be satisfied with wealth. Shall we enjoy wealth with you in sight? Shall we live whilst you are in power? I can only ask for boon I have asked. When a mortal here on earth has felt one’s immortality, could he wish for a long life of pleasures, for the lust of deceitful beauty? Solve then the doubt as to the great beyond. Grant me the gift that unveils the mystery. This is the only gift Nachiketas can ask….


Death: There is the path of joy, and there is the path of pleasure. Both attract the soul. Who follows the first comes to good; who follows pleasure reaches not the End… There is the path of wisdom and the path of ignorance. They are far apart and ends to different ends. You are, Nachiketas, a follower of the path of wisdom: many pleasures tempt you not. Abiding in the midst of ignorance, thinking themselves wise and learned, fools go aimlessly hither and thither, like blind led by the blind…. Not even through deep knowledge can the Atman [the divine self within] be reached, unless evil ways are abandoned, and there is rest in the senses, concentration in the mind and peace in one’s heart.”

Theories of the Self

My hypothesis is that: We should draw a clear distinction between good and bad or evil, put it simply, between the greed, the excess, the insecurity, the apathy, the destruction, the self-centeredness, the hedonism and cynicism, in a word between all these because of disconnection from the Source as the source of evil, and the connection to the Source as the nodal point of the intrinsic value (not just for worldly or otherworldly consequences) of good, of moral behavior, of right livelihood, of love, care, openness, meaning, and hope.


After clearly drawing this line, we should let go of our linear way of seeing good and bad, or what is called “moralistic mendaciousness” (moralistic falsification), to be able to see how the good might turn into bad and the bad might turn into good. We are inclined to divide the world, issues, ideas, principles into “my way” and “your way”, between either my view is completely wrong or your view is completely wrong. We are inclined to think that either Plato was right or wrong, either essentialism was wrong or right, either religions were wrong or right, either secularism was wrong or right. We can’t see how the excess in each one (right) gives rise to the other one (wrong).


In this sketch of theories of the self, I wish we pay attention to the zigzag way humanity proceeds. We learn by bringing faith in certain generalizations, by pushing certain ideas or reactions (logically and practically) to its limit and learning by falling, by reaching a dead-end. As we are now in one of the most dreadful moments of our historical time, it is high time to learn from our past.


For example, we should keep in mind that the self or soul was considered for a long time, whose origin is not clear, as a “substance” distinct from material world. Human beings endowed themselves with such divine capacities and turned to this view to quench their desire for immortality. However, amidst the mist and the foggy intuition of eternality of the soul, the silhouette of a strange truth showed up: strikingly, a divine voice told us how little we know (Socratic ignorance, aporia [hoplessness], and wisdom), and alluded to the intrinsic value of the self and the ethical: to put it simply, it told us that if we don’t become love, if we don’t do good, if we lose empathy to apathy and nihilism, if we fall into abyss of identity or non-identity, if we disconnect from our divine source, our eternal soul will burn in our self-afflicted, self-created hell. However, we turned this message into a prison of identity and in excessive self-righteousness commit all sorts of atrocities in its name.



In zealous fear of a curse and desire for immortality, we lost track of the message of justice and love (Socratic and Jesus message: What if you gain the whole world and lose your soul?) and to secure our place in heaven, we created a hell on the earth. Hence, in the name of our immortal soul and our gods, we started killing each other. It is difficult to separate the chaff from the wheat, it is difficult to see the truth amidst falsity, so our basic reptilian reflex is to throw the baby (the shimmering shining divine truth) out with the bathwater (the taint of falsehood) by falling into false dichotomies: either having an eternal soul is true, or it is completely false, either morality has some intrinsic value or it has only consequential values, either the universal concept of the self has certain validity, or only the particular and contextual have values, whether the self is carved from within or it is constructed from without, either we are in the world, or out of the world, either God is in the world or out of the world, either aesthetic-sensual pleasure is the best way to live, or the path of God and moral virtues deny life in sheer asceticism. We constantly move back and forth within false dichotomies and moralistic mendaciousness.

Plato

In philosophy, through Socratic elenchus (logical refutation), Plato argued that the strata of soul (reason, spirit, appetites) have to come in harmony and attain wisdom, courage, moderation, and justice. He clearly argued that these virtues have intrinsic values, that they constitute the structure of the soul. If we violate this structure we simply lose our soul to the principle of pleasure, ambition, fame, honor, and wealth. Is it not true that ALL religions say the same thing in different ways? Where did we go wrong?


It seems somewhere along the tripartite soul, the reason (wisdom), the spirit (courage), and the appetite (desires), we have a tendency to overdo something. The spirit is moral indignation. It is necessary for rectifying wrong. If I see Donald Trump is bringing the worse in American population to the fore, the racial hatred, religious bigotry, misogyny, hedonism, consumerism, and excess, I need moral indignation to show that he is wrong. Spirit is thus necessary to implement the words of wisdom and to balance desires. But if wisdom itself gets congealed in moral indignation, then we would be inclined to draw sharp boundaries and don’t know when to stop, we take a few step to repel evil with criticism and attack, and we turn into evil when we don’t know how to apply wisdom to repel evil with good, to simmer down, to open a space of return, to let the good of every individual comes out of the mess of selfish desires.


Plato’s theory of ascent of the soul to the Form of Good to me is true, but in overdoing dividing practices, a tendency to disregard body and desires altogether for attaining God and Good, and not to know how to set limits for moral indignation of the spirit, the truth turns into falsity. Plato transposes this stratification to the city-state, in which similar to the soul there are rulers (wisdom, reason), guardians (soldiers, spirit), and laborers and farmers (appetites and desires) and creates a hierarchical and aristocratic system as the most just and harmonious society. But then the slaves, the laborers and farmers, similar to the caste system of ancient Hinduism, have to stay in their designated class and don’t attempt for social mobility. Somewhere along the track, it is most likely, the moral indignation that urges us to hold the balance and defy the excess goes out of hand and rises a system of exclusion.


Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy puts it best:

“This [Plato’s] ‘reductive’ view of human nature militates not only against present-day intuitions, it should also militate against Plato's own moral psychology, in that all human souls consist of three parts, a rational, a spirited, and an appetitive part, whose health and harmony constitute the soul's and the state's happiness. Why, then, reduce the third class to animal-like creatures with low appetites, as suggested by the comparison of the people to a strong beast that must be placated (493a–c)? This comparison is echoed later in the comparison of the soul to a multiform beast, where reason just barely controls the hydra-like heads of the appetites, and then only with the aid of a lion-like spirit (588c–590d). Is Plato thereby giving vent to anti-democratic sentiments, showing contempt for the rabble, as has often been claimed? He can be cleared of the suspicion that the workers are mere serfs of the upper classes, because he explicitly grants them the free enjoyment of all the customary goods that he has denied to the upper classes (419a): “Others own land, build fine big houses, acquire furnishings to go along with them, make their own private sacrifices to the gods, entertain guests, and also, of course, possess what you were talking about just now, gold and silver and all the things that are thought to belong to people who are blessedly happy.” But apart from such liberties, the members of the third class are quite neglected in Plato's ideal city; no education is provided for them. There is no suggestion that they participate in the guardians' musical and athletic training, and there is no mention that happiness for the third class cannot just consist in obedience to the rulers' commands. Plato seems to sidestep his own insight that all human beings have an immortal soul and have to take care of it as best they can, as he not only demands in the Phaedo but is going to confirm in a fanciful way in the Myth of Er at the end of Republic book X.”  

    

It seems Plato also loses the balance and moderation between this world and the other world (the heaven of original Forms) and confounds the fact that the path to the other world, the world of Forms, the ideal as Real, the Heaven, goes through this world: how I serve and love people around me and in the world and how I serve and love my own soul and body is the foundation of justice, wisdom, moderation, and courage.  

“There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. We love because God first loved us. Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.” (John: 18-20).

To show how good turns into bad by excess, let’s ask this question: But then, in its rightful demand not to prioritize pleasures of the world to cultivation of the soul and to virtues and love, how did Christianity turn into a rigid asceticism and severe rejection of the body in some of its fractions?  The Quran contends: “After those We sent Jesus, son of Mary: We gave him the Gospel and put compassion and mercy into the hearts of his followers.  But monasticism was something they invented—We did not ordain it for them—only to seek God’s pleasure, and even so, they did not observe it properly.  So, We gave a reward to those of them who believed, but many of them were lawbreakers.” (57: 27).  And what happened to Muslims who believe: “Whoever kills a person [unjustly]…it is as though he has killed all mankind. And whoever saves a life, it is as though he had saved all mankind.” (Qur’an, 5:32)

I think this email exchange sheds some light on these questions:

[“In Islam the only important relationship is with God - you have to be polite, nice, good to people, because God will punish you, not because of anything divine in the person as there is in Christianity - for Islam then people are ways to a mean. It makes sense in this case that Islam is so legalistic, so many rules as to how to treat others. It is still closer to Protestantism in this sense - it is a very individualistic religion at its heart even if the prayer is done in community - that community is a means to an end - the end is a singular relationship with God. You also didn't answer my question about feelings towards others when you pray but I guess that makes sense if the only relationship that matters is God. So I'm not sure if this is miscommunication or just a basic difference in understandings.”

My response: “I really don't read the Quran that way, I agree that so many Muslims have become legalistic and just do things out of fear of Hell and hope for Heaven.  I do hope for heaven too, but the way I read Quran is to see communion with God through communion with people, to care about elders, orphans, the poor, the destitute.  There are numerous verses in the Quran about these.  Remember Rumi and Attar also were Muslims and they see Love as the key to God, love of people, of individuals, of children, of the poor, of everyone.  
My hypothesis is that ANY religion can turn into a dry legalistic approach in which goals justify means.  However, my readings of religions as well as Socrates and Euripides, Upanishads, Jeremiah, Amos, Ezekiel, and Jesus and Muhammad is a rejection of instrumental or consequentialist thinking.  I agree that the Quran sometimes is read in a way as if it is all about the consequence: the punishment or reward, the hell or heaven.  But I can gather so many verses that God clearly shows that glorifying God is heaven, and a joy in itself (have intrinsic value).  It took a long time I understood this.  And also it is in the Quran that all humans have fitra, which means they have a divine nature: “So direct your face toward the religion, inclining to truth. [Adhere to] the fitrah of God upon which God has created [all] people. No change should there be in the creation of God. That is the correct religion, but most of the people do not know. (30:30).  Fitrah is the divine nature that all humans share.

So it is said, similar to the Old and New Testament, that if one kills one innocent person it is as if he or she has killed the whole humanity.  It is in connection to others and loving others and praying to God in good faith and deeds that we become heavenly. 

But to add one more point, I think Muslims have to read Jesus's parables and reflect on them.  Muslims along with Christians believe that Jesus will come again before the Day of Judgment.  Why?  Well, Muslims and all religions have to reflect again about Jesus's message.  Jesus brings back everything to the soul of the individual and called for dealing with one's own sins rather than judging others, loving the enemy, and in the spirit of love implementing God's commands.  I was delighted to see that the Quran mentions "to repel evil with good" repeatedly and unpredictably in different places.  This was the message of Jesus.  Humanity has to go a long way to understand and be able to implement it. 

"Good and bad deeds are not equal. Repel evil by that which is better, and then the one who is hostile to you will become as a devoted friend. But none is granted it except those who are patient and none is granted it except one having a great fortune." Surah Fussilat 41:34-35

"Those who are patient, seeking the countenance of their Lord, and establish prayer and spend from what We have provided for them, secretly and publicly, and repel evil with good, for those will have the good end." Surat ar-Ra’d 13:22

"Those will be given their reward twice for what they patiently endured and they repel evil with good, and they spend from what We have provided them." Surat al-Qasas 28:54

"Repel evil with what is better. We are most knowing of what they describe." Surat al-Mu’minun 23:96

"They are those who spend in charity during ease and hardship and who restrain their anger and pardon the people, for God loves those who are good." Surat Al-Imran 3:134]


By bringing these examples I wish to make a methodological point clear. We react harshly to a mistake and move all the way to the other side and commit the same or other set of mistakes and get entangled in a set of problems from which we escaped at the outset.

Descartes

In reaction to Plato’s universalization of the essential self, which means attaining certain universal reality for the soul of human beings, from the beyond and inscribed in the soul of particular individuals who tend towards universal Good, Cartesian modern philosophy rejected the priority of the universal Good to all the other universal concepts including the soul and posited the “I” or essential self as the most certain. 

Descartes relied on only rational deductive scrutiny (and this is the beginning of Western Enlightenment) to found the ground of all knowledge. Hence, in his methodical doubt, he put in question and liquidated everything, including God and mathematics (and not deductive reasoning), to take the reasoning of a knowing, experiencing, reasoning subject as the most certain upon which the truth of God and the world as such can be proven. This is the beginning of the invention of “the sovereign individual”. Descartes posited this disembodied soul or mind as a substance distinct from the body and prior to or the ground of understanding God and the world.

This is a huge shift from the universal Good or God which is external AND internal to our minds and indeed constitutive to our existence to. . . taking our reasoning power as the ground upon which the universal Good is invented or contemplated. It is difficult for us in the West to grasp this difference fully, because we are floating in the secularism of Enlightenment as an ideology which holds that our reasoning by itself is sufficient to understand ourselves and the world. What else should we seek in the consciousness of the individual? A mystery? A constituting God? Human knowledge is self-sufficient and can understand everything including its own self. So the message written on Delphi temple “Know Yourself” has seemingly achieved its purpose in our time by passing Socrates ignorance (We Know Nothing), and the other message written on the Delphi temple “Nothing in Excess”, and in 21st century we arrived at who we are: we are only an animal with certain genome pattern, we are a program, a software, a machine, an electrical circuit, a robot, etc.

As Thomas Nagel in Mind and Cosmos puts it:

Any evolutionary account of the place of reason presupposes reason’s validity and cannot confirm it without circularity. Eventually the attempt to understand oneself in evolutionary, naturalistic terms must bottom out in something that is grasped as valid in itself—something without which the evolutionary understanding would not be possible.


This reasoning can be applied to all those who try to explain away the human subjectivity and consciousness just by means of consciousness and reasoning alone.


It is difficult for us to see how we have gradually developed a nihilistic perception of the self through Descartes, Hume, Kant, Darwin, Mill, Russell, Wittgenstein, Quine, Davidson, Searle (natural biology), Putnam, etc. and in Continental philosophy through Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Heidegger to postmodernity…in the same line of reasoning to show that the self can be rationally and scientifically (Neo-Darwinism) totally be explained and understood by reason as such.


The major argument against the circularity that through reasoning we will totally explain reasoning is practical success: accordingly, as sciences have been successful to understand the source of so many diseases and could give rise to our technological advance, then it is very likely we can fully understand (as some like Daniel Dennett claim we did) consciousness and the self totally. The problem with this kind of reasoning is that it doesn’t consider the fact that the very industrial revolution and evolution and technological advance is responsible for the destruction of 20% of species of this planet, modern slavery, colonialization, consumerism, destruction of environment, global warming, and the coming mass extinction. Surely, we were so successful in destroying ourselves. This is another circular reasoning based on another shortsighted understanding of “success”.

Postmodern Subject

As the total explanation of the soul-consciousness of the individual failed in modernism and also in Neo-Darwinism (they could find some necessary conditions but not sufficient conditions), postmodernism emptied out the pretension of knowing autonomous subject by dissolving it into cultural-social practices.


In this note I don’t want to discuss the nihilism embedded in postmodernism. However, if one looks at the Contents of Nick Mansfield’s interesting book, Subjectivity: Theories of the Self from Freud to Haraway, one can see how the divine essential self whose acknowledgment is the only way to escape nihilism has now been reduced to social-historical practices. So, the self is an empty statue which is carved out from outside in, this is the continental version of behaviorism as externalization:

1.      Free and autonomous individual

2.     Freud and the split subject

3.     Lacan: the subject is language

4.     Foucault: The subject and power

5.     Femininity: From female imaginary to performativity

6.     Kristeva and abjection: Subjectivity as a process

7.     Masculinity: Saving the post-Oedipal World

8.     Radical sexuality: From perverse to queer

9.     Subjectivity and ethnicity: Otherness, policy, visibility, colonialism

10.  Deleuze and Guattari: Rhizomatics

11.   The subject and technology

12.  The subject and postmodernism

In the conclusion of the book, Mansfield writes:


Why did the modern era become the era of the subject? Why, in the last few centuries, did the self become the focus of the most serious and esoteric theory? Why did this theory conclude that there was no spontaneous subjectivity, but an obscure and shifting impersonal matrix of relationships, politics and bodies that determined our selfhood? It would be reassuring to find answers to these questions, even though Western intellectual life—like so much of the West’s thrilling yet gruesome history—is littered with discredited ultimate answers, ridiculed total theories and murderous final solutions.

All these theories resist to admit the divine essence of the self. What they reject is the autonomous subject of the modernity which is based on a self-sufficient consciousness devoid of God. Postmodernity couldn’t fill the gap that it opened. All it did, it turned the self into a force of negation to stress that the self is not complete and can’t have a thorough knowledge of itself, on the contrary, knowledge itself is constructed by contingent historical practices. Postmodernity rejects the absurdity and nihilism of the sovereign individual, but substitute arbitrariness and contingency of social-cultural practices in its place, with the exception of Heidegger, who indeed holds that Being precedes the subject, but in deciphering the ontology of Being, he couldn’t arrive at divine. So, none of these thinkers could escape nihilism; however, they opened a space for the realization of our divine essence.

Behaviorism

This externalization of the self, that social historical practices create a subject has its equivalent in analytical tradition variations of holism (Davidson or Quine), which dissolves the self completely in interaction with the world and in the case of Quine in a variation of behaviorism.


For example, Davidson, similar to Buddhism (!) holds:

“Just as knowledge of language cannot be separated from our more general knowledge of the world, so Davidson argues that knowledge of oneself, knowledge of other persons and knowledge of a common, ‘objective’ world form an interdependent set of concepts no one of which is possible in the absence of the others.”[8] IEP

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy gives a good chart to make sense of behaviorism:

“Views commonly styled "behavioristic" share various of the following marks:

·       allegiance to the "fundamental premise ... that psychology is a natural science" and, as such, is "to be empirically based and ... objective".

·       denial of the utility of introspection as a source of scientific data;

·       theoretic-explanatory dismissal of inward experiences or states of consciousness introspection supposedly reveals;

·       specifically antidualistic opposition to the "Cartesian theater" picture of the mind as essentially a realm of such inward experiences;

·       more broadly antiessentialist opposition to physicalist or cogntivist portrayals of thought as necessarily neurophysiological or computational;

·       theoretic-explanatory minimization of inner physiological or computational processes intervening between environmental stimulus and behavioral response;

·       mistrust of the would-be scientific character of the concepts of "folk psychology" generally, and of the would-be causal character of its central "belief-desire" pattern of explanation in particular;

·       positive characterization of the mental in terms of intelligent "adaptive" behavioral dispositions or stimulus-response patterns.”

   

The problem with this way of thinking, similar, to all views we talked about so far, is that they see only some necessary conditions of the construction of the self and not the sufficient condition, and they fall into a false dichotomy: either consciousness or behavior. They exclude consciousness as excessive and not needed to explain behavior. Wittgenstein also showed affinity with behaviorism in his famous comparison of subjective feelings to having a “beetle in the box whom no one can see”[9]. None of these thinkers’ points are invalid but are incomplete. They realize the interconnection of language with collective behavior and so decide to dismiss a nucleus self, and henceforth also the divine endowment for having a self (in contradistinction to Descartes’s “thinking subject”). To arrive at necessary and sufficient condition for having a self as being-in-the-world, we need to incorporate both the divine nucleus self (soul, fitrah, divino natura), not the thinking substance, and being-in-the-world.


These externalist theories try to show us that we are just what we do in relation to the world, even though they have contradictory views about these interactions. For example, Heidegger obviously understands our connection to the world differently from Davidson or Quine, but what all of them share is that they see the self as such constructed in relation to externalities, basically from outside in basically or mostly. About Quine’s behaviorism, SEP writes:

To standard behaviorist concern about the empirical credentials of alleged private entities and introspective reports, Quine adds the consideration that talk of "belief", "desire", and other intentional mental states is so logically ill-behaved as to be irreconcilable with materialism and scientifically unredeemable. In the final analysis, however, the behaviorism Quine proposes is methodological. His final metaphysical word is physicalism: "having construed behavioral dispositions in turn as physiological states, I end up with the so called identity theory of mind: mental states are states of the body" (Quine 1975: 94); yet, his anti-essentialism here (as elsewhere) lends his physicalism a behavioristic cast.  

Conclusion

The point is to keep the balance between the intricate relationship between the inner and outer, between being-in-the-world and the intrinsic value of the divine self.  It is not difficult to see how in the course of four centuries after Descartes, through the theory of autonomous subject-- a self-sufficient, enclosed reasoning power onto itself-- we fell into ethical relativism and nihilism.


This goes through a waves of pendulum swings back and forth:

1)     From the essential and universal Good and God to essential and universal self or “I” or the mind.

2)    From the essential and universal Cartesian mind to autonomous subject—or the sovereign individual (the emergence of “individuality”).

3)    From the emergence of individuality as the universal autonomous subject to a rejection of autonomous self in postmodernity.

4)    From rejection of the universal autonomous self, we arrive at the priority of the particular individual, released from the binding force of human species and the universal Good and God. It is like cutting the binding string that connects the pearls or beads together and the pearls suddenly become “free”, measureless and directionless.

5)    From the fetishism of the particular individual we arrive at priority of socio-historical practices, language, and power relations, and for evolutionary biology: genes, which seal masks of self or subjectivity upon individuals who don’t share any communal nature with other members of species, but “historical ontology”. 

6)    From the priority of the external forces (society, history, language, the world) we dissolved the divine or any universal human nature into variations of behaviorism and postmodern subjectivity: the domination of externality over internality. 

7)    From the domination of externality over internality, from determinate social-historical contingent practices, we oscillated all the way to “anything goes” of ethical relativism.  So rape, murder, cannibalism, and indulgence in the principle of pleasure can be justified according to certain cultural practices and relations of power.  This is the dominance of a crude nominalism.  Everything is just an empty shell of a “name”, including wisdom, justice, moderation, and courage. 

History showed all these externalist theories gave rise to nihilism.  An emptied self, a chance event constituted by arbitrary practices, cannot help us to overcome despair.  The only way to overcome this nihilism of autonomous subject and the nihilism of postmodernity is a return to the divine self.  By experiencing God, one realizes that the love of God is the disposition of the soul and the centerpiece of its cultivation.  This validation of the self as divine overcome nihilism and superimposes the intrinsic values of the soul, the ethical, and creativity.

Within this pendulum swings, we have the contemporary rejection of the universal self along with rejecting the divine self and glorifying the particular.  Yes, the love of particular is one of the foundations. Without love and mercy for a concrete living being, even an ant, I can't talk about the universal love.  But let’s not make the same mistake as contemporary intellectual history, at least since 19th century.  We are oscillating beings; we walk like a drunkard on the line of history.  Western reaction to Platonic excess on universal love left the universal all the way out, calling it a mere "name" (nominalism), rejecting the essential in human being and in anything.  Consequently, the love of particular became all that we have.  This gave rise to brute historicism and ethical relativism, it nullified the universal divine essence in each particular individual and made love all sensational and physical central, fell into hedonism and its little humanism and the worship of the world became all that there is.  Ironically, this disconnection from the universal divine ended up to two world wars, power games, cold wars, modern slavery and colonization, worship of money, property, sex, and pleasure, lasciviousness, corruption, and let's just enjoy this particular one life.  We lose balance constantly and the effect is detrimental.  In the name of love of the universal we killed the concrete, and in the name of love of particular we disconnected ourselves from the divine and again killed the concrete!    

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[1] American Scientific July 2016

[2] Luke 10:25-37 New International Version (NIV): The Parable of the Good Samaritan

²⁵ On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

²⁶ “What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”

²⁷ He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’^[a]; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’^[b]”

²⁸ “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”

²⁹ But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

³⁰ In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. ³¹ A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. ³² So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. ³³ But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. ³⁴ He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. ³⁵ The next day he took out two denarii^[c] and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’

³⁶ “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”

³⁷ The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”

Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”

[3] Or it can be a feeling of hate and abhorrence too.  Though the work of the men who have worked from Jove seems to be greater than those who have worked from hate.

[4] The italics are mine. And you see he worked from love and generosity. Yet the world treated Van Gogh about as badly as it could treat anyone. As the result of poverty and starvation he went insane and died. A pseudo-artist who worked for fame to impress the world, would have felt very much aggrieved indeed.

[5] Remember though that any motive that makes you feel like writing is fine. Use it. Start. If you want to dazzle the public, try it. Good luck to you. In my case it was an inhibition and resulted in nauseous work and I just want to explain that after a while the public-dazzling motive may give out and your results disappoint you. But if egotism and exhibitionism started you working I am grateful. It was the greatest of blessings. For by working you will pass through it and tap a greater and more exuberant motive.

[6] They will be uncreative in business as well as in everything else.  For of course the creative power is expressed in business as well as in other things. I know a business man whose every sentence has more life, creative vision and generosity in it than those of many artists. But the trouble with business expressing the creative power freely and prodigally as Art does, you cannot be recklessly generous in business, giving higher and higher wages and all your products freely  and  lovingly  to  the   public.

[7] To say the word "creative"" has always embarrassed me. So many unctuous people have over-used it.  But I have to use it. It is what I mean.

[8] Against the dogmas of empiricism, in “On the Very Concept of Conceptual Scheme” Davidson tries to show the inherent interconnection of conceptual scheme and experiences in the world.  SEP puts it this way: “The first two dogmas are those famously identified by Quine in ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’ (first published in the Philosophical Review, in 1951). The first is that of reductionism (the idea that, for any meaningful statement, it can be recast in the language of pure sensory experience, or, at least, in terms of a set of confirmatory instances), while the second is the analytic-synthetic distinction (the idea that, with respect to all meaningful statements, one can distinguish between statements that are true in virtue of their meaning and those that are true in virtue of both their meanings and some fact or facts about the world). The rejection of both these dogmas can be seen as an important element throughout Davidson's thinking. The third dogma, which Davidson claims can still be discerned in Quine's work (and so can survive the rejection even of the analytic-synthetic distinction), consists in the idea that one can distinguish within knowledge or experience between a conceptual component (the ‘conceptual scheme’) and an empirical component (the ‘empirical content’) — the former is often taken to derive from language and the later from experience, nature or some form of ‘sensory input’. While there are difficulties in even arriving at a clear formulation of this distinction (particularly so far as the nature of the relation between the two components is concerned), such a distinction depends on being able to distinguish, at some basic level, between a ‘subjective’ contribution to knowledge that comes from ourselves and an ‘objective’ contribution that comes from the world. What the Davidsonian account of knowledge and interpretation demonstrates, however, is that no such distinction can be drawn. Attitudes are already interconnected — causally, semantically and epistemically — with objects and events in the world; while knowledge of self and others already presupposes knowledge of the world. The very idea of a conceptual scheme is thus rejected by Davidson along with the idea of any strong form of conceptual relativism. To possess attitudes and be capable of speech is already to be capable of interpreting others and to be open to interpretation by them.

[9] According to Wittgenstein on the object-designation model -- where the object is supposed to be private or introspected -- it "drops out of consideration as irrelevant" (Wittgenstein 1953: §293): the "essential thing about private experience" here is "not that each person possesses his own exemplar" but "that nobody knows whether other people also have this or something else" (§272). So, if "someone tells me that he knows what pain is only from his own case" this would be as if everyone had a box with something in it: we call it a `beetle'. No one can look in anyone else's box, and everyone says he knows what a beetle is only by looking at his beetle. -- Here it would be quite possible for everyone to have something different in his box. One might even imagine such a thing constantly changing. -- But suppose the word `beetle' had a use in these people's language? -- If so, it would not be used as the name of a thing. The thing in the box has no place in the language-game at all; not even as a something: for the box might even be empty. -- No, one can `divide through' by the thing in the box; it cancels out, whatever it is. (§293)