Quote:
quote:Originally posted by Raw_Power:
Pantheism, to me, are simply renaming the universe god and worshipping it. What’s the point of this?
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In this post I'm going to paraphrase the start of Chapter Two in a book called
Pantheism by Michael Levine, where he address this very point.
Levine would argue that first of all you have to specify which form of pantheism you are referring to, because in fact there are a few distinct types. There is one thing each has in common, and it is the idea that all things exist as elements in unity with each other, and that the all-inclusive unity is in some sense divine. Let's call this the pantheists' definition of their beliefs.
This definition is quite different from the one it's commonly given by critics. For instance, the most common criticism made of pantheism is that it merely says "God" is the same as "universe", which is nothing more than renaming one thing as another. This argument was originally put forward by Schopenhauer, who labeled the linguistic equivocation as "redundant" because it "says nothing".
But is Schopenhauer's definition of pantheism the same as that of the pantheists themselves? Short answer: no.
Schopenhauer is using a definition quite of his own. Here are his own words on the subject:
Quote:
quote:The chief objection I have to pantheism is that it says nothing. To call the world "God" is not to explain it; it is only to enrich our language with a superfluous synonym for the word "world". It comes to the same thing whether you say "the world is God," or "God is the world." ... if you start from "God" as something that is given in experience, and that has to be explained, and then say, "God is the world," you are affording what is to some extent an explanation... but it is only a verbal explanation.
If however, you start from what is really given, that is to say, from the world, and say, "the world is God," it is clear that you say nothing, or at least you are explaining what is unknown by what is more unknown... Hence Pantheism presupposes Theism; only in so far as you start from a god... can you end by identifying him with the world; and your purpose in doing so is to put him out of the way in a decent fashion.
In other words you do not start clear from the world as something that requires explanation; you start from God as something that is given, and not knowing what to do with him, you make the world take over his role This is the origin of Pantheism.
Taking an unprejudiced view of the world as it is, no one would dream of regarding it as a god. It must be a very ill-advised god who knows no better way of diverting himself than by turning himself into a world such as ours, such a mean, shabby world.."
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There are some immediate, and fatal, objections to make about what he has said.
First of all, "Pantheism presupposes Theism" is utterly mistaken, in reality pantheism denies theism.
Second, claiming that pantheists "start from a god" and "end by identifying him with the world" is also inaccurate. Levine cites a specific example in Spinoza's
Ethics (a text which produced one of the best known forms of pantheism) where he specifically denies an identity-relationship between "the world" and "God" (
Ethics, I, Proposition XXIX). Or in his terms,
natura naturans =/=
natura naturata.
And so it is to most pantheists in reality. "God" is NOT a synonym for "the world", it's actually short-hand for describing a PROPERTY of the unity, which is the fact that it is divine in some way. As for "God" and "the world", they are still distinct entities. But what they have in COMMON is that they are referring to the same thing, this thing in common is the meaning of "unity".
The unity is definitely not "formal", in other words some kind of perceived classification. This would be the same as claiming two orangutangs share in a unity because they're members of one single species, and that human beings also share in a unity with organgutangs because we belong to one larger category such as hominids. In THIS sense we could claim a unity among all things in the world because ultimately there must be an ultimate genus in which all things belong. Namely, existence.
And this is NOT the sense what pantheists refer to when they say "unity". Levine cites MacIntyre denying such a notion of unity when he says
Quote:
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quote:Because existence is not a genus. To say that something exists is not to classify it at all... The notion of a unity that includes all that exists - or even all that exists and all that does not exist - is a notion devoid of content.
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Clearly therefore Schopenhauers arguments are actually directed at a fictional pantheism, the definition he attacks is a distorted misrepresentation of what pantheism really is.
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