A Post-Modern Appraisal
Post-modernism is not an Indian phenomenon. Both at the level of art and philosophy Indians are actually following developments in the West. Scientifically and technologically India is as modern (or post-modern) as any country in the West. But philosophically the development from the pre-modern to the modern and post-modern is an European phenomenon. It is not necessary that the cultures of India or China must follow developments in the West. It is not true that what happens in Europe will happen in India ten or more years later, though cultural interaction is not excluded. Modernity and post-modernity have their significance and relevance as reactions to the dominance of Greek patterns of thinking in the West. These developments, however, are interesting for us in India in two ways. An attention to post-modernism can save us from falling into pre-modern and modern ways of thinking. Secondly, in the limited area of Christian theology, post-modern developments are relevant and important because the ‘official’ Christian – more exactly, Catholic – philosophical and theological discourse remains predominantly pre-modern and culturally Greek. Post-modernity may then come in as a breath of fresh air, a movement towards liberation, especially in theological thought. But we cannot fully understand post-modernity without starting from pre-modernity.
The Pre-Modern Phase
At the beginning, the theological reflection of the Fathers of the Church was largely a commentary on the Scriptures, though their worldviews may have been influenced by current philosophical patterns, primarily Platonic. In the Middle ages, they began commenting on brief statements – sententiae – that outlined the content of the faith, being an intellectual reflection on the affirmations of faith summarized in the Creeds. We see the same movement in India where commentary on the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita turns later to the sutras which become foundational texts of the different schools. Theology remained the queen of the sciences, guided by faith. Philosophy, guided by reason, was the handmaid of theology. In the writings of Thomas Aquinas and the later Scholastic theologians, the philosophy of Aristotle offers the framework for a Christian philosophy. Though a certain autonomy of reason was recognized, faith controlled reason.
1. Some in the Catholic church do not wish to be free of the Greek cultural yoke, even considering it as ‘part of the faith’. In a famous speech on “Faith, Reason and the University: Memories and Reflections” at the University of Regensburg, on September 12, 2006, Benedict XVI said: “In the light of our experience with cultural pluralism, it is often said nowadays that the synthesis with Hellenism achieved in the early Church was a preliminary inculturation which ought not to be binding on other cultures. The later are said to have the right to return to the simple message of the New Testament prior to that inculturation, in order to inculturate it anew in their own particular milieux. This thesis is not only false; it is coarse and lacking in precision. The New Testament was written in Greek and bears the imprint of the Greek spirit, which has already come to maturity as the Old Testament developed. True, there are elements in the evolution of the early Church which do not have to be integrated into all cultures. Nonetheless, the fundamental decisions made about the relationship between the faith and the use of human reason are part of the faith itself; they are developments consonant with the nature of faith itself.” (italics mine)
But though faith dominated reason, reason controlled faith since it provided the theory of knowledge and metaphysics that guided thinking. The human mind and reality was said to be in correlation. What is real can be thought. Only what can be thought existed. This was the principle of ‘adaequatio intellectus et rei’ (correspondence between thought and being). The world of ‘being’ is real because it can be thought. God is the Supreme Being, the first and starting point of beings. God can be reached by our intellect or reason through analogy. The relation between God and the universe was understood in terms of causes. God is the efficient cause of the universe. Aristotle projected his ‘physics’ on his ‘metaphysics’ and the Scholastic theologians projected this ‘metaphysics’ on theology. Concepts like ‘form’ and ‘matter’, ‘substance’ and ‘accidents’, and the causal scheme (efficient, final, formal, material and instrumental) were freely used to understand spiritual and transcendent realities.
The Turn to Modernity
If pre-modern thought focused on being or reality which can be known as it is because it corresponded to the intellect the moderns turned the focus on the knowing subject. They were less sure of the object out there. They were sure of the knowing subject because they can be conscious of it. Descartes famously said: “I think (I am conscious); therefore I am.” Being follows consciousness. With the development of science consciousness itself is limited to the capacity to touch and measure material objects. We can only speculate on realities that are beyond the reach of human consciousness or reason. Reason becomes the measure of everything. Faith is dislodged from its throne. God is no longer the Uncaused Being who causes other beings, but is the Cause of Godself (causa sui), thus introducing a sort of duality – cause-effect – in the Supreme Being itself. Kant will go a step further to suggest that consciousness structures being, imposing its own categories on what it knows. We cannot have any ‘objective’ knowledge of reality. The phenomenology of Husserl will further sharpen the role of the subject in knowing by suggesting that we only perceive the phenomena on which we chooses to focus; our ‘intentionality’ determines what we ‘see’. In the early modern period there is still some interest in God, but as knowable by reason. So we see the development of natural theology, where God is subject to reason. Faith is no longer relevant.
In late modernity this process leads to atheism. One the one hand, scientific and technological reason becomes immanentist. It wishes to understand reality as it is on its own terms without bringing in any transcendent causes beyond the control of scientific reason. It is only one more step to say that an unnecessary transcendent cause does not exist. On the other hand, in the context of the rising affirmation of the dignity and freedom of the human self, God is seen as an enemy of such freedom and is denied by existentialists like Sartre. Nietzsche can then proclaim: “God is dead!” Structuralism, focusing on the structures of language and the text as conveyers of meaning, downgrades the role of the author(s), who become irrelevant to the process of communication. The domination of reason and the marginalization of faith becomes complete.
The Emergence of Post-Modernity
Five kinds of developments challenge the paradigms of modernity. Heidegger suggests that reality is something ‘given’ – ‘Dasein’. We cannot go behind and beyond it. So he sounds the death knell of ‘natural theology’ which claimed to speak about God from the point of view of reason. He calls it ‘onto-theology’. He does not himself explore the idea of God. But he makes it clear that there is no natural, rational approach to God. God is not a being nor the first in a chain of beings. God is not a cause in the usual sense. Therefore a philosophy of God is not possible. Heidegger has influenced most of the European philosophers who come after him.
The second development is the suggestion of Thomas Kuhn that scientific reason is not as objective as it pretends to be. Scientists interpret their data in terms of a paradigm that guides their vision of reality. If data that do not quite agree with the paradigm are encountered, in the beginning it is the paradigm that holds the ground. But when such data become considerable then the paradigm itself changes accommodating the new data. Kuhn calls such paradigm shifts as scientific revolutions. The idea that scientific observation and reasoning provide us an objective knowledge of reality is no longer true.
Thirdly, there is a growing realization that our knowledge is conditioned by the context in various ways. Karl Marx showed how socio-economic structures and the position of the knower in these structures condition his/her knowledge. This approach will be further developed by thinkers like Michel de Foucault. Sigmund Freud demonstrated how the unconscious influences what we know and do. The influence of the unconscious is actually manifested through symbols that need to be interpreted.
This leads us to the fourth development, namely the role of symbols in the process of knowing. Paul Ricoeur and Hans-Georg Gadamer lead the hermeneutic turn in the theory of knowledge. Symbols arise not only from reason but also from imagination and emotion. A symbol is not abstract and ‘universal’ like a rational concept. It has a richness of meaning that is open to multiple interpretations. As Ricoeur says: “A symbol give rise to thought”. Symbols are conditioned by a twofold context, that of the sender and that of the receiver of a communication. Gadamer will speak about the ‘fusion of horizons’. Unlike a concept, a symbol has a double level structure. The word ‘cow’ may present a concept gives us knowledge of a particular animal. But when the cow is experienced in a pastoral community as the giver of milk that nourishes life and health, the term ‘cow’ can become a symbol of motherhood and health. The number of cows that a person has can indicate his/her wealth. The ‘cow’ has become a symbol. The sun gives us light and warmth that is necessary for life and growth. The sun can become the symbol of divine power. Unlike the concept that denotes, a symbol can further connote other meanings. This connotation is possible only in a context and has to be interpreted in a context. Thus the context becomes crucial in symbolic communication. Myths that are encountered in the context of religion are symbolic narratives. The story of creation that is found in many scriptures does not claim to give a historical account of what really happened but the meaning of an event, showing the dependence of creation on a creator. While concepts may be adequate to point to material objects, only symbols can convey the significance of relationships, events, etc. While concepts are univocal, symbols and their interpretations are pluralistic, dependent on the contexts in which they are created, communicated, received and interpreted.
2. In this section I am drawing upon many years of reading and reflection. See my book Making Harmony. Living in a Pluralist World. (Chennai/Delhi: IDCR/ISPCK, 2003), Chapter 4: “Can Truth be Many?” Of immediate help were the following books: John D. Caputo, Philosophy and Theology. (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2006) and Peter Jonkers and Ruud Welten (eds), God in France. Eight Contemporary French Thinkers on God. (Leuven: Peeters, 2005)
3. See Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986)
4. Paul Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil. (New York: Harper-Row, 1967)
5. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method. (London: Continuum, 1975)
Finally life is an interplay of freedoms and relationships. It cannot be set in a framework of metanarratives, that seek to provide a structured vision of a whole that does not respect free interaction that can lead to the unexpected. Even language that structures thought is a continuing interplay of signifiers and signified that leads to a chain of meanings, as Derrida has shown.
Post-modernity, therefore, loosens up the rigid rational and conceptual structures of modernity. It goes beyond the ‘either-or’ dichotomy of Greek thought. A multi-linear process of interpretation replaces unilinear logic. It respects the freedom and unpredictability of people. It makes relationships that go beyond causal connections possible. This does not mean that reason, concepts, logic and language are no longer necessary. The symbols do give rise to thought. Hermeneutics has to use a language to present its interpretations. But reason is no longer in total control. It is at the service of free self-expression and communication. In pre-modernity faith dominated reason. In modernity reason evacuated faith. In post-modernity reason and language are at the service of the person who freely communicates. A person can reach out beyond the limits of reason and language through symbol and imagination-emotion. The distinction between faith and reason remains. But the person in freedom dominates both.
Some Post-Modern Philosophers and God-talk
All the post-modern philosophers after Heidegger agree that onto-theology is no longer possible. Conceptual reason cannot reach out to a Transcendent. One cannot prove rationally God’s existence or action. But while post-modernity does not speak about God (theology), it keeps its possibility open. This is what we see in the post-modern philosophers. Some choose to be atheist. But others, who are believers in God, Jews and Christians, seek to experience a God beyond being.
For Emmanuel Levinas, I become aware of myself as subject when I experience myself as the ‘thou’ of the other. Somewhat like the ‘Dasein’ of Heidegger, I discover myself as related. It is not that I possess the other, but feel responsible for the other. It becomes an ethical relationship. God is the great Other. God is a trace. I do not encounter God directly, face to face. Like Moses in the cave I can notice a trace after God has passed by, looking at God’s back, so to speak. That trace is opening me up to infinity. He says, “I approach the infinite as I forget myself for my neighbor who looks at me… by sacrificing myself.” Levinas had lived through the horrors of the Holocaust. He had been in prison, a refugee, etc. It is when one is totally helpless that one senses God passing by and one seeks to respond. The other becomes the trace of the Other.
Jean-Luc Marion has a book titled: God without Being. God is not an entity, a ‘being’ (like other beings). He distinguishes between and ‘idol’ and an ‘icon’. An ‘idol’ is something that I have fabricated, whereas an ‘icon’ draws my gaze into the infinite. The ‘icon’ is the intentional gaze of the other in me. It is something ‘given’, received, but not always understood, which draws me beyond myself. It is infinitely open, a mystery. Christ can be seen as an ‘icon’ of God (cf. Col 1:15), gazing at me like the blinding sun, drawing me beyond himself to the Father.
Jean-François Lyotard is known as the father of post-modernism. He is critical of all meta-narratives, whether they are sacred like St. Augustine’s ‘The City of God’ or secular like Karl Marx’s ‘Classless society’. But commenting on St. Augustine’s Confessions, he shows how, though Augustine is speaking to God, actually it is God speaking through Augustine, whose conversion consists precisely in letting God speak through him. When God does so Augustine is no longer in control of the relationship.
Jacques Derrida was considered an atheist. But he does speak about God as difference open to infinity, displacing significance without end. He speaks of God as death and war to indicate precisely that God is the contrary of all that is specific, limited, constituted, definitive, categorical. It is a kind of absolute apophatism. As his mother lay dying, not being able to be with her, he kept a diary, later published as Circumfession – a kind of echo of St. Augustine’s Confessions. He evokes a ‘pure hope’ that cannot be named or that may have different names rather than God. A commentator calls it “a real prayer to a virtual God”.
6. E. Levinas, Collected Phlosophical Papers (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1979), p.72.
7. Cf. Johan Goud, “This Extraodinary Word. Emmanuel Levinas on God” in God in France, pp. 96-118.
8. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991)
9. Cf. Ruud Welten, “The Paradox of God’s Appearance. On Jean-Luc Marion.”, in God in France, pp. 186-206.
10. Cf. Chris Doude can Troostwijk, “Phrasing God. Lyotard’s Hidden Philosophy of Religion”, in God in France, pp. 165-185.
What we see in these four representative authors is that while their rational philosophies cannot reach out to God, God is reaching out to them. God is not an object, nor are we objects before God. What we see is an encounter between two subjects in freedom. We cannot go to God rising up from the world as in the tradition of analogy. But God comes to us in mysterious ways and we can respond to God. We can talk about God, but God is always receding as an intellectual object. Our relation to God is open ended. We do not know who is God, but God is there as the Great Unknown. Our response can only be awe and wonder. Our talk about God, because we cannot stop talking, is always (rationally) ambiguous, provoking constant interpretation. God seems to be manifested particularly in our limit experiences – when we have reached our limits of thought and action.
In the Christian tradition God comes to us in Jesus Christ, precisely in his kenosis, where God seems absent, as Jesus experiences on the cross. Jesus is the symbol of God. The danger is that we reduce God to Jesus, whereas should lead us to transcendence. He dies experiencing God as empty, but rises again. Any experience that takes us beyond ourselves can direct us to God. This will put an end to natural theologies like theism, creationism, pantheism and panentheism (process theology).
Indian ‘Post-modernism’
It may surprise us to know that Indian thinking was ‘post-modern’ more than 2,500 years ago. The Upanishads speak of Atman-Brahman beyond name and form. It is more than apophatism, which is approach from below. It is fullness – poornam. The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad says: “But the Spirit is not this, is not this. He is incomprehensible, for he cannot be comprehended. He is imperishable, for he cannot pass away. He has no bonds of attachment, for he is free; and free from all bonds he is beyond suffering and fear.” Sankara will develop this later as advaita. The Atman grasps us: we can only empty ourselves. Ramana Maharishi used to ask a simple question: “Who am I?” that can lead to infinite difference in the manner of Derrida.
11. Cf. Rico Sneller, “God as War. Derrida on Divine Violence” in God in France, pp. 143-164.
12. Juan Mascaro, The Upanishads. (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1965), p. 142.
About 1500 years ago, the Buddhist Madhyamika tradition, pioneered by Nagarjuna, also presented a post-modern vision. The goal of life is emptiness – beyond all name and form, all thought and speech. Madhyamika actually spoke of two truths: the phenomenal and the real. One can philosophize about the phenomenal, but one falls silent before the real. The Nirvana is samsara at the phenomenal level, but the samsara is open to nirvana in vertical transcendence. Raimon Panikkar would call it tempiternity – eternity in time.
Conclusion
We are not called to give up the world, but transcend it. What is transcendent is also immanent, because it is a vertical transcendence, not a horizontal one. So we have the Bodhisattvas and Jivanmuktas living in the world in mutual interdependence. God is known especially in kenotic suffering. God does not come as an answer, but as question – as God appeared to Job. It is call to commitment to surrender, to self-emptying, to live for the others. Total kenosis will lead us to total fullness – poornam – in the unknown and unknowable Absolute.
What would all this mean in India today for philosophy and theology. Theology should become, not a search for an unknowable Absolute, but a quest for realization responding to its traces in the world – the poor and the suffering. It would be a continuing search, ever open to change, without being conditioned by missionary or Marxist meta-narratives. It would be plural, depending upon each ones’ living experiences and circumstances. It would be symbolic and hermeneutical. Theology and philosophy would be different ‘language games’ in the manner of Wittgenstein. As searches for wisdom they would be in dialogue. They would make space for each other. Theology would be free of metaphysics (onto-theology). It would be philosophical in the sense it would be a hermeneutical and ethical discourse. Philosophy can be at its own level, opening up a space for theology, but no longer providing a framework for it.
13. Cf. John P. Keenan, Grounding Our Faith in a Pluralist World – with a little help from Nagarjuna. (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock, 2009.)
Michael Amaladoss, S.J.
Institute of Dialogue with Cultures and Religions, Chennai.