A
Reflection on Truth, Certainty, and Faith
“We shall show them Our signs in every region
of the earth and in themselves, until it becomes clear to them that this is the
Truth. Is it not enough that your Lord witnesses everything?” (41:53)
My brother, Amir, asked me: “when
you were Marxist, you were so sure, how can you be so certain about your
religious belief now?” I try to respond
to his question in this reflection.
My initial response is this: I
realize that it is not that much important that one passionately follows what
rings true to one, it is more important that one is not entrenched in an
ego-identity. Most of us continue doing
what we do, because change is difficult.
My role model in this regard is Wittgenstein. Early Wittgenstein wrote Tractatus
Logico-Philosophicus, in a strict atomistic view and a picture theory of
the correspondence of atomic propositions to the world. Late Wittgenstein’s Philosophical
Investigations, is a radical critique of atomistic understanding of
language. One might argue, well if in
his first work, Wittgenstein was sure that he revealed ultimate truth to the
extent that he quit his education in Oxford, how could he dare to write his now
famous Philosophical Investigations with the same certainty? The point is that no faith or certainty
should create an ego-identity who evades truth, with the rationale that after all
change is difficult.
We are all one way or another
immersed in our situation and take our perception and emotions as true. We open our eyes as thrown into a situation,
a culture, a way of life, and a zeitgeist.
If we are lucky, we strive to make sense of our lives and search for the
truth. If you remember, we followed
sciences and philosophy from childhood.
We didn’t have a spiritual guidance.
We had to find our way by our own effort and through trial and
error. And we had a deep feeling for
justice and political change. Marxism
seemed to be the best choice. It was
called ‘scientific philosophy’, and it quenched our political-spiritual thirst
for justice. I didn’t understand its
philosophy fully, but I was sure about its sense of justice. Dialectical materialism seemed liberating,
because it grounded consciousness and ethics in relations of production and
material conditions of life. I didn’t
understand that a subtle hedonistic-well-being was the ultimate meaning-goal of
life for materialists. This is the only
life, let’s enjoy it, at best, in peace and socialism. We all know this rationale. “Let’s enjoy this one life” is the common
current now in a secular world—devoid of spirit. I passionately followed Marxism, because I
think now Marxism hijacks the noblest spiritual feelings in human beings,
a desire for justice and empathy, and takes them to the spiritual desert of
hedonistic socialism: self-actualization and principle of pleasure, including
aestheticism. This is also now a common
coinage: self-actualization. So, at best
we have three things coming together: subtle hedonism-aestheticism,
self-actualization, and socialism.
Everything changed for me when I
was on death row and facing my pending death.
I was two years on death row and my spiritual quest has started since
then. I asked myself: “can you find
dialectical materialism a satisfying response to your existential-spiritual
thirst now that you are going to die young?”
I didn’t find it satisfactory.
So, after my verdict changed from death sentence to 8 years in prison, I
started studying philosophy in prison and then in the US. During years studying philosophy for the last
25 years, I went through so many changes and made so many mistakes. At each point, I lived my philosophy
passionately and paid the price. So, the
second part of my response to you is that: I can’t help it, I always live my
thoughts passionately. However, given my
youth and lack of experience and knowledge, my certainty about Marxism is not
comparable to my faith in God now.
Simply because I am now 57 years old (2017) and studied philosophy for
decades and had spiritual experiences that completely changed my perspective
about life. I couldn’t elaborate my
faith in Marxism deeply then, but I have written and will write thousands of
pages to show how faith in God is possible and necessary. In the following, I will try to answer the
philosophical aspect of your question: we constantly make mistakes,
scientifically or spiritually, we are always absorbed in our condition of existence
and emotions, and even astute rational thinking for a life cannot be a
guarantee that one might not be in wrong.
How can we be philosophically and spiritually sure about anything? What is “truth” after all and how can we
believe (holding-as-true) anything?
After so much ups and downs and
self-reflection, I could finally create a wedge into my eyes and shift my
outlook to see behind and beyond its domination. I was living in that congealed perception for
too long to be able to see the other side.
Ethical-spiritual sickness is like mental sickness. Severely mentally ill, such as bipolar or
schizophrenics can’t realize that they are sick. For a long time, psychiatrists and ordinary
people thought that these patients are in denial. However, later they realized that the problem
of lack of self-observation is indeed part of sickness. It is now called anosognosia, which means
without-disease-knowledge, or not-being-aware-of-disease, which is a
neurological disorder. But
I don’t think it is only a neurological disorder. It seems that more or less all humans are in
the state of anosognosia. It is not
difficult to imagine that when one is immersed in a situation or state, it is
difficult and sometimes impossible to separate oneself from that state and see
oneself clearly as others can see us, or as we can see others, or more
importantly as God sees all sub specie aeternitatis (from the
perspective of the eternal).
However, it seems there is
something more to this self-blindness. I
try to sketch it as I can envision. Even
if one might be in the state of lethargic ennui and acedia, toxic guilt,
lifelessness, depression, lack of motivation, or feeling-thinking life is
absurd, still there is something about human beings that they would like to
stick to their self-perception, whatever it is, even if it is killing them,
rather than admitting that they are in a special sense “blind” and their
overwhelming feelings and declarative assertions might be fictitious and
delusional through and through. In a
sense, we worship our self-perception and assume it carries an all-embracing
truth about reality, and “I” am the center of this truth. It reminds me of a psychopath who killed his
own mother because she criticized his girlfriend. His sentence was life in prison. He killed two of his parole officers, who
were interviewing him, with a hidden knife.
Then he was condemned to death.
In an interview, I saw him saying: “I proved I am the master of my
life. I forced them to kill me.”
One might call it our childish
narcissism. But I see it as our
essential blindness to our position in the world. How can I be sure that my certainty now is
not another self-deception and indulgence?
Should I adopt skepticism as my major disposition? As Chomsky once put it, radical skepticism is
a theory, in practice we all know what to do and do it. We might be wrong but we learn through trial
and error. How can I find a measure to
keep me alert about self-deception, because after all I can’t live without
certain self-interpretation and taking it as true? It doesn’t matter how many times I examine my
views scientifically, at the end, as Kuhn puts it, I form a dogmatic adherence
to whatever I came to believe based on experiment and scientific
consensus.
In a sense, history of philosophy
is this impassionate self-examination, which in so many points go astray. However, now, in twenty first century, we
have come to some understanding about ‘truth’, whether in analytic or
continental traditions, whether through Wittgenstein, Gödel, Quine, or Kant,
Hegel, Nietzsche, Sartre, Foucault, or Heidegger. It seems so obvious now, after the puzzle is
solved, that we can’t prove our axioms, postulates, or presuppositions. We postulate as truth certain propositions
and build up a theorem or theory based on them.
As long as the theory consistently works, which means it is not
self-defeating or self-contradictory AND practically gives result, we take it
as true. Pierce, James, Dewy, Rorty call
it pragmatic conception of truth. Truth
is what works. Foucault says knowledge
is for cutting, not for understanding.
Thomas Kuhn basically excludes the pursuit of Truth as the major
motivation of sciences: the mechanism works from interactions of institutional
elements to form experientially and dogmatically what is held-as-true (belief)
and gives results. Nietzsche is sure
that our physiology and will-to-power is the measure of truth. In his Politics of Truth, Foucault
writes: “Critique is to question truth on its effects of power and to question
power on its discourses of truth.” In
objection, Popper posits truth as a regulatory principle for sciences.
Marx was also so sure that
material conditions of life determine consciousness. He was so sure he could find a scientific
description for historical development based on relations of production. Now,
we know that science doesn’t work like this.
Even though Marx’s economic analysis is insightful, his
philosophical-spiritual view is flawed through and through and, in other
reflections, I argued that why it is fundamentally nihilistic. As well, Popper showed well how Freud and
Marx invented a religion rather than a science.
In twenty first century, still we are dealing with mind-body
dualism. The question of consciousness
is not resolved. Despite all the
self-complacent declarations of AI and cognitive science industry that we are
about to make an artificial consciousness, we don’t know what consciousness
is. Chomsky and Nagel are raising new
questions about evolutionary theory and consciousness. They are accused of new mysterianism.
So, the first lesson of 21
century is about limitation of knowledge.
In his paper, Science, Mind, and Limits of Understanding (https://chomsky.info/201401__/),
Chomsky questions the dream of Western Enlightenment that principally we are
able to know ‘everything’. We can’t,
because of the inherent limitation of human understanding, the relation between
scope and limitation. Even though
Chomsky and Popper and others still follow Socratic spirit that truth has a
regulative value and gives us a direction, none of them believe that capital
T-Truth is achievable. In a sense, as
long as human knowledge goes, we can’t be one hundred percent sure about our
scientific perception of the world. By
definition, science is refutable.
Now, all these philosophical and
scientific discussions happen within the sphere of a special worldview: it is
looking at the world like an alien is looking into our anatomy. It is a reductive microscopic or analytic
investigation of how things work based on certain theory or hypothesis. The measure as always is “if it works”. So many take our technological advance as the
measure of veracity of our scientific views.
But now that we are on the verge of six mass extinction and the Working Group on
the Anthropocene (WGA) voted to formally designate the epoch Anthropocene
and presented the recommendation to the International Geological Congress on 29
August 2016, we ought to ponder our handy measure of truth as “if it works” and
reevaluate it, because it seems depending on our worldview, we can make things
work in different ways. In another word,
we ought to evaluate whether our sciences are grounded in a spiritually barren
and nihilistic worldview or not. In a sense,
ethical-spiritual truth ought to precede scientific truth. And it doesn't mean rising a new censorship for sciences, but creating a new science. I believe that to see the world from the
point of view of a subject against the world of objects is destructive, regardless
of the fact that how creative it has been.
Heidegger fundamentally changed
the direction of questioning and in a genuine and rigorous way criticized the
problem of subjectivism and the history of Western philosophy. Since Descartes, we took our subjectivity as
the most certain and the measure of truth.
For a few centuries now, we have been looking at how things happen from
an inside (a subject) to an outside (object).
Empiricism has been transfixed on the disjunction-conjunction of our
senses and the world. If we could figure
out how our senses, dissimilar to reality, grasp the reality as such, then we could
arrive at the truth of perception. Reading
Heidegger’s philosophy feels like awakening from an addiction or dream. We have been addicted to dismantle all the
systems from inside and to see how they work and build up similar
structures. It has been working all
along, so why should we doubt it? We can
see how neurons in brain interact and give rise to consciousness. This seems so self-evident. Our anatomic physiology and atomic physics take
it for granted that we can see the working of a system by analyzing the
components that make it tick. Find how
the particles in atom work and you arrest the nexus of reality. As Max Planck put it: reality is what can be
measured. Mathematics is the essence of reality. And mathematics is a property of
self-grounding ego cogito. The
“I” became the self-positing and self-proposing ground of all being. Kant’s Copernicus Revolution, to posit the
subject as the center of knowledge rather than empiricism’s tradition of the
relation of dissimilar subject-object, enclosed the whole world into the prison
of phenomenal (what appears to us) vs. noumenal (what is in itself). We were then ensnared in the delusion of
autonomous subject. The history of
thinking seems like constant entrapping ourselves into dead ends. But this is the way we learn. We are excessive beings and can’t see the big
picture. We are self-blind. We overdo everything until we knock our heads
against the limit and come back to our senses and try to find some
equilibrium.
Let’s now briefly reflect on
Heidegger’s holistic philosophy.
Heidegger, phenomenologically shows that the subject (an inside) is not
standing against the world of objects (outside). Moreover, not only we are not understanding
the world from encountering-additions of objects but also the world (having a
world) is the condition of possibility of understanding objects in the
world. If we can let go for a moment of the
addiction of seeing truth as correspondence of our statements to the state of
world, then the world, the Open, the horizon of possibility of statements and
objects come into light. How can I see
an object if it is not in this open space to which I can attend and thus
discover the truth or untruth of my statements?
If I am at home and think that the statement ‘there is a world out of my
home’ corresponds to the fact that there is a world out there, the condition of
possibility of this statement is the openness in which this relationship can
interplay. The traditional way of
thinking (Cartesian way), posits the essence of truth in the subjectivity of
subject and logical possibility. So, it
seems obvious that it is logically possible that my home can be in a vacuum,
and if I open the door it is possible to imagine that there is no world out
there. A moment reflection shows that
even analytically the word ‘home’ presupposes the world. Indeed, being-in-the-world is the ontological
condition of possibility of imagination.
Reducing ‘truth’ to subjective logical possibility, disregards the fact
that we are not a brain in a vat. Not
only thinking and being come together (i.e., it is fallacious to say, “I think,
therefor I am”), but also Being and the Open in which everything is free to act
and become is the condition of possibility of propositional truth. We are
grounded in the world, and the world is grounded in Being, which in a holistic
sense is not rule-governed or rule-described, as it is the condition of
possibility and the horizon against which rules can be perceived. This is a miracle: each single concept is
(and implies) an indicator and a directive sign to “language”, “the world”,
“Being”, and “freedom” as such. And the
world and Being can’t be grasped through any concept once for all. This is called ontological difference between
Being and the entities we perceive in the world. Heidegger shows that the condition of
possibility of ontological truth resides in the Open: “All working and
achieving, all action and calculation, keep within an open region within which
beings, with regard to what they are and how they are, can properly take their
stand and become capable of beings said.” (On the Essence of Truth,
Basic Writings, p.122).
We understand ‘truth’ as
‘accord’. True gold is the measure and
then we measure different kind of mixtures to that original and authentic
gold. My words accord to who I am or I
am a liar and conceal it. Foucault’s
statement that “knowledge is not for understanding, but for cutting” must
accord to real function of knowledge in order to be true. Regardless of the fact that Foucault holds
that all values and knowledges are ontologically posited in historical
discourses at the disposal of power. So,
in a circular way he defines knowledge as power and disregards the ontological
horizon of everything existing, power included.
What is this ontological possibility of everything existing? It is so simple that it falls on our blind
spot. We are like fishes in water who
can’t see the water as the condition of our existence. It is relatedness and freedom as such. This freedom and relatedness is not only a
property of human beings. It is the
freedom “for what is opened up in an open region” (p.125). A tree is free to grow and gives fruit. I am free to move around and graciously eat
that fruit to survive. There is an open
region of relatedness between me and that tree.
We are both free to appear in the open, to be. Then I am free to examine and discover
flowers and fruits. And in this
uncoveredness and unconcealment of fruits and leaves and my movement and
statements about the fact that “the fruits are not ripe” the essence of truth
reveals itself as a domain of relatedness and freedom in terms of letting be. Being lets beings (including me and the tree)
be so that in our relation we can arrive at disclosedness of fruits, leaves,
roots, hands, homes, life, death, and our awe of being-in-the-world:
“Here ‘existence’ does not mean existentia
in the sense of occurring [an actual object] or being at hand [an
instrument]. Nor on the other hand does
it mean, in an ‘existentiell’ fashion, man’s moral endeavor on behalf of his
‘self’, based on his psychophysical constitution. Ek-sistence, rooted in truth
as freedom, is exposure to the disclosedness of beings as such. Still uncomprehended, indeed, not even in
need of an essential grounding, the ek-sistence of historical man begins at
that moment when the first thinker takes a questioning stance with regard
to the unconealment of beings by asking: what are beings?” (p.126)
There is a major difference
between freedom-to-be of trees and animals, the gift given to existence, and
freedom of human beings to be and to be free: a distinctive relatedness to Being
as a whole as such. The moment I open my
eyes the miracle lightens up—as it happened for Helen Keller when she grasped
“general concept” in language in her blind, deaf, mute state of being— through
which I simultaneously pre-ontologically recognize the Open, Being, the world,
the whole, the core of my existence as a longing-belonging for and to the
Truth, as the horizon against which I ontologically and thematically recognize
myself and objects in the world.
[“We shall show them Our signs in every region
of the earth and in themselves, until it becomes clear to them that this is the
Truth. Is it not enough that your Lord witnesses everything?” (41:53)]
Now, if you ask me how can I be
one hundred percent sure about anything, I can say this much: I came to see the
pendulum swing of philosophical and scientific discourses in the course of history. To make it simple, it looks like a swing
between Chomsky, Kierkegaard, and Heidegger. Chomsky focuses on the innate and inherent capacities and Heidegger brings the world
into this ek-static (standing-outside) capacity. Kierkegaard experiences the mystical and religious as deeply personal and subjective [thus, his 'truth is subjectivity'], to which Heidegger is blind. We can join interesting parts of all of
these views; however, by itself none of them gives us absolute
methodical-philosophical certainty. They
give us insights, and in the case of Heidegger and Kierkegaard, a spiritual-mystical
awareness. This is all I can say.
Now if I want to answer your
question: how sure can I be of my faith in God now? By myself, I couldn’t. You know I was working on writing my
dissertation on Nietzsche-Foucault philosophy.
I was far from religions and faith, though postmodern philosophy can
have a liberating effect, which usually ends up to nihilism. The liberating effect of postmodern
philosophy and its nihilism were not satisfactory to me. I didn’t know where to go and what to
do. By myself, I couldn’t form any
universal certainty, but aesthetic fashioning myself in some ways that pleased
me; Nietzsche-Foucault call it ‘self-creation’, which is a hopeless way to say
that we really don’t know what is the point of living, so let’s do whatever it
feels okay to us, because there is no answer to the question who is creating
who, and what does “creation” mean here?
It is oxymoron to talk about certainty and faith in Foucault’s
philosophy.
It is a fact that Heidegger’s
philosophy and his conception of Being has a resonance of Godhead in Meister
Eckhart and late Heidegger talks about the Fourfold of the earth, the sky,
mortals, and divinities:
“Mortals dwell in that they await
the divinities as divinities. In hope
they hold up to the divinities what is unhoped for. They wait for intimations of their coming and
do not mistake the signs of their absence.
They do not make their gods for themselves and do not worship
idols. In the very depth of misfortune
they wait for the weal that has been withdrawn.” (Poetry, Language, thought,
p.150)
Heidegger’s philosophy is deeply
spiritual and awakens a deep understanding of God, for those who can hear. However, none of these could create faith in
me. So, am I now one hundred percent
sure about religious truth? This is a
long story and I will elaborate the details in my memoir, but to make my point,
I can say this much: it happened to me. This is Kierkegaard's notion that religious truth is subjective and deeply individual and personal. It is a happening to a soul who longs for divine. God responds to those who call God hopelessly
and sincerely, not for gain or at the time of misery only. God responded to me; I was startled in fear
and trembling in encountering God's signs. I thought I was losing my
mind. It took twelve years investigation
and teaching philosophy and world religions that everything fell into place and
made sense to me. I have seen it, heard
it, experienced it, and then based on the given guidance, God helped me to cultivate
myself through knowledge and philosophy, and it became my destiny and
mission. Later, I learned that the Quran
and Bible call it divine grace or in Farsi we say: عنایت الهی I
am a believer now, in the original sense of "belief": to hold dear, desire, care,
love. However, all these are empty claims if my faith
is fruitless. Real faith brings fruits
and encourages one to do good and gives a helping hand to others. I hope I can show my faith, not in words but in action.
Also, I think scriptures and the Quran by themselves are enough to bring faith in God. The problem is that I was ignorant of this tradition. I never read scriptures with understanding. Teaching World Religions cemented my faith in God. This is a general problem with all atheists. They are quick to reject without doing their empathetic investigation. In another reflection, I wrote about Russell's response to a student's question: "Professor Russell, what would you say to Lord, if after death God asks you: why did you not believe in me?" Russell responded: I would say, "Lord you didn't give me enough evidence." I imagined that God would say: "I sent numerous scriptures through thousands of years; but you never read them or put your heart in them." Now in the age of internet, we can easily read and have access to all variations of scriptures and the Quran. Most translations and so many analyses of the verses are now available online. We don't have any more excuses. However, God is merciful and if a lost soul like me is yearning for the Source desperately, God would guide that person. God is the most forgiving, the most merciful.
To end this letter, I should say
God guided me to explore God’s signs and this disclosure of God’s signs also
strengthened my faith, to the extent that one can see God as the poet of existence
and everything in the horizon and in ourselves is a poesis of God:
“We shall show them Our signs in every region
of the earth and in themselves, until it becomes clear to them that this is the
Truth. Is it not enough that your Lord witnesses everything?” (41:53)
