Voices on the content of this blog entry:
Robert Lawrence Kuhn (from Closer to Truth):
thoughtful, original construction - to me, shows the vast richness and importance of the problem/issue - though i do not view it high in the hierarchy of competing ultimate explanations ;-) - but what do I know?
Paul Draper (American philosopher, most known for his work in the philosophy of religion):
Although I don't find the deductions convincing, the general view is interesting. I need to add it to my taxonomy of theisms/deisms. The view seems to be the opposite of emergent theism/deism, according to which the world evolves until it eventually becomes or produces God. Here, God devolves or transforms itself into the world. … I will call it demergent deism.
Bill Vallicella (from the blog Maverick Philosopher):
Mainlaender's ideas are indeed very interesting.
And Joseph Schmid (from the YouTube channel Majesty of Reason)
This is fascinating!!
In the 50s and 60s of the last century there was a movement of the so-called God-is-dead theology, also known as theothanatology, theos (God) and thanatos (death).
I think the best and most plausible theory that God is really and literally dead can be reconstructed from the pessimistic philosophy of the German philosopher and poet Philipp Mainländer (1841 – 1876).
This is what I would like to present here in concentrated form.
Mainländer makes a bold claim:
“God is dead and his death was the life of the world.”
His specific reasoning for this statement is as follows: Mainländer makes a bold claim:
“God is dead and his death was the life of the world.”
“1) God wanted non-being;
2) His essence was the obstacle to His instant entry into non-being; [“Had God’s will directly achieved its end, then worldless non-being would presently prevail; and since nothing outside God can act on him, only God’s own being could have impeded his will.” (comment by Sebastian Gardner - Post-Schopenhauerian Metaphysics: Hartmann, Mainländer, Bahnsen, and Nietzsche)]
3) this essence had to disintegrate into a world of multiplicity whose individual essences all strive for non-being; [“Only the finitization of God’s being will allow the end of non-being to be achieved.” (comment by Sebastian Gardner - Post-Schopenhauerian Metaphysics: Hartmann, Mainländer, Bahnsen, and Nietzsche)]
4) in this striving they impede each other mutually, they struggle with each other and in this way weaken their force;
5) God’s whole essence passed into the world in a modified form, as a particular sum of force;
6) the whole world, the universe, has one objective: non-being, and achieves it through continuous weakening of its sum of force;
7) every individual, through weakening of its force, will be brought to a point in its developmental course where its striving for annihilation can be fulfilled.” synkretic.com/issues/the-philosophy-of-redemption
This argument can be supported by deductions, which Mainländer himself does not make, but which can be reconstructed from his philosophy. At least the deductive argumentation structure lies dormant in his work, which I now bring to light.
In my opinion, all the following premises can be substantiated with solid and, above all, plausible arguments, even if one would not necessarily agree with them.
It is also important to note that the deductions are partly dependent on each other. Two fundamental premises are also explained at the end of the presentation of the deductions.
The first deduction:
A 1. The universe began to exist a finite time ago.
A 2. The beginning of the universe could only have been initiated by an act of God.
B 1. A literal creation from nothing is impossible. Or, to put it bluntly: “Claiming God can create something from nothing with sufficient power makes about as much sense as claiming to be able to throw up a skipped lunch with a sufficiently strenuous dry heave.” (lost internet source)
B 2. However, the transformation of a transcendent substance into mundane things is possible.
C 1. God is absolutely simple (simplicitas): “inactive, extensionless, undifferentiated, unfragmented (simple), motionless, timeless (eternal)” (Mainländer). Otherwise, He would not be the first and most original principle. This is also the view of Classical Theism (Augustine, Anselm of Canterbury, Thomas Aquinas), which dominated Western theological thought for a long time and is still hotly debated and defended today: “The classical theist holds that nothing could be an ultimate explanation or cause unless it is absolutely simple or non-composite.” (https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2013/10/why-is-there-anything-at-all-its-simple)
C 2. Accordingly, He has no parts to offer for transformation. Rather, He would have to give Himself completely for this purpose. In fact, in His simplicity, He is “so much of one piece” (as if flawlessly and seamlessly made from one piece) that He would be entirely the power (potentia) that would serve to transform. This means: Everything that is in God is God “in His entirety”. There is nothing inherent in God that is different from Him “in His entirety”. He is, so to speak, an extra-worldly, undifferentiated, and structureless “blob”(-monad) “overfilled” with primordial Being. His “blobness” is completely rounded or absolutely homogeneous. If “you” “take” a “little” of it, “you” inevitably “take” “all” of it, figuratively speaking.
D Therefore, God has completely transformed Himself into the universe. In other words: The “infinite” existence has subjected itself to total finiteness. Or: God's absolute existence has been completely limited by Himself to the existence of individual things.
The only way to avoid this conclusion is to play the MYSTERY CARD or to make an APPEAL TO MYSTERY or philosophical MAGIC. As long as we want to argue conceptually clear and distinct (clare et distincte), that is, philosophically, we should in any case favor those theories that give us a rational explanation, and not those that can only point to mystery.
And if anyone wants to avoid admitting a mystery by saying that it does not follow from the idea of simplicity that God cannot create out of Himself without becoming other than Himself, you must answer: 'From simplicity it follows very well what has been said here. You seem to be tacitly or unspokenly assuming a literal creatio ex nihilo, or still a mystery.' The former is an impossibility, the latter is simply unnecessary*.
The appeal to mystery should be a very last resort, to be considered only in specific cases where rational clarification seems to be in principle impossible.
“Aristotle insists that in every change (whether movement in space or alteration in quality or size) something remains the same, the man, for example, or the gold. This is taken to be a necessary truth: it is part of the very concept of change that something or other undergoes it.” (J. L. Ackrill - Aristotle the Philosopher)
According to Mainländer, God is definitely not an unchanging subject, just with a new state after His transformation. There is nothing that remains the same. Since this fact is very significant, here is the whole thing again in other words (and then even a third time):
“Aristotle holds, then, that there are three principles involved in the analysis of any change -- the underlying subject of change, its (prechange) lack of a character, its (post-change) character.“ (J. L. Ackrill - Aristotle the Philosopher)
Mainländer's God cannot undergo any change by gaining or losing states or properties, if only for the reason that He is a simple unity, excluding any potential and attributive inner multiplicity. Nor is His “change” one in which He could be said to be simultaneously present. The transition from transcendence to immanence is a perfect one. At the moment of transition, God has disappeared and in his place there is suddenly something mundane. And God was the very other compared to the world, which can then at best be understood as an imperfect, fragmented “echo” or “reverberation” of His defunct transcendence (“all-pervading breath sighed out by a godhead which perished”):
“[T]he transcendent domain […] is toto genere different from the immanent.” www.synkretic.com/issues/the-philosophy-of-redemption
And:
The simple unity “has fragmented itself, changing its essence entirely and completely into a world of multiplicity.”
“[T]he transition from the transcendent to the immanent domain, was precisely this first motion.”
“[T]he transcendent domain and its simple unity have vanished without a trace in our world, in which only individual wills exist and beside or behind which nothing more exists, just as before the world only the simple unity existed.”
And:
“The immanent domain followed on the transcendent, something has become which previously was not.” www.synkretic.com/issues/the-philosophy-of-redemption
The otherness of God might be described in the following way:
“[T]he transcendent domain […] is toto genere different from the immanent.” www.synkretic.com/issues/the-philosophy-of-redemption
And:
The simple unity “has fragmented itself, changing its essence entirely and completely into a world of multiplicity.”
“[T]he transition from the transcendent to the immanent domain, was precisely this first motion.”
“[T]he transcendent domain and its simple unity have vanished without a trace in our world, in which only individual wills exist and beside or behind which nothing more exists, just as before the world only the simple unity existed.”
And:
“The immanent domain followed on the transcendent, something has become which previously was not.” www.synkretic.com/issues/the-philosophy-of-redemption
The otherness of God might be described in the following way:
“God is infinite being, whereas any creature is merely a finite being. And there cannot be a greater gap between beings than infinite on one side and finite on the other. But even infinite being and finite being are exactly similar to one another in one tiny respect, a tiny respect which secures the whole of natural theology: each is a being. They do not share being, though creatures participate in God’s being as effects participate in their causes, and as images participate in their exemplars. But we who think about beings have one simple concept—the concept of being—and we can correctly apply this very concept both to God and to creatures, to infinite being and finite being.” (Ward, Thomas. Ordered by Love: An Introduction to John Duns Scotus)
And:
John Duns Scotus “thinks that we really can isolate in our thinking a concept of being as such, being with no determining features added on to it. This concept of being is the fundamental intelligible link between God and creatures, by which we are able, really able, to leap in thought out of the realm of the world and into God Himself. Creatures are beings. God is the cause of creatures. Whatever is in the effect is also in the cause. So God is a being.” (Ward, Thomas. Ordered by Love: An Introduction to John Duns Scotus)
Perhaps one should say more cautiously: The things of the world are not-absolute-nothingness (otherwise I would not be able to experience them even if they were only hallucinations) and God is or rather was not-absolute-nothingness (otherwise, there would be no contingent world = finite, limited world). Not-absolute-nothing or no-absolute-nothingness is the common ground of the two. But it is not some kind of third thing residing somehow above God and the things of the world. It is just an almost empty (but not entirely empty) word or concept or term to be “used the same way for both God and creatures” (Ward, Thomas). The univocity applies here only to the word and concept of God and the things of the world, not to a thing. Thus, God is still total otherness.
And God's infinity, perhaps, only means negatively, that he is not a finite – that is, limited in any form (internally or externally) – being.
God is not a finite not-absolute-nothingness.
Or, God is non-finite no-absolute-nothingness which is the explanation for the existence of our world, negative theology at its best.
The infinite might be only that which is not bounded by something else.
When God transforms Himself, every fiber of His nature will be limited and bounded by something else (e.g. by internal substance and property structures and externally by other substances), so to speak. The boundaries and the bounded God would also have a more figurative meaning.
Theoretically, one could also attribute immutability to Mainländer's God. Indeed, in the way described below, Mainländer's God cannot change:
When God transforms Himself, every fiber of His nature will be limited and bounded by something else (e.g. by internal substance and property structures and externally by other substances), so to speak. The boundaries and the bounded God would also have a more figurative meaning.
Theoretically, one could also attribute immutability to Mainländer's God. Indeed, in the way described below, Mainländer's God cannot change:
“Divine immutability also follows from divine simplicity. When a thing undergoes a real change (as opposed to a merely Cambridge change), it changes in some particular respect while remaining the same in other respects. For example, a substance loses one of its attributes while remaining the same substance and while retaining its other attributes. But that presupposes that the changing thing is composed of parts, some of which remain while another or others are lost. Since God is simple or noncomposite, then, he cannot change.” (Edward Feser - Five Proofs of the Existence of God)
But God can disappear completely if He wants to.
Alternative first deduction (more of an abduction):
A 1. The universe had an absolute beginning a finite time ago.
A 2. Such a beginning could only have been established by an act originating in God.
A 3. The universe, then, has its origin in God.
B 1. God can only create something out of His own substance (contra: creatio ex nihilo et non se Deo, i.e. against: creation out of nothing and not from God).
B 2. In the case of the coming into being of the universe, this is to be understood as the transformation of something divinely transcendent into something worldly immanent.
B 3. The possibility of God's total transformation is not out of the question.
C 1. God can never create anything other than that whose activity, from the very first moment, always takes a very definite course and leads to a very definite outcome, be it (the created thing) in contact with other inner-worldly things or not. So, “nothing can ever happen otherwise than it does”. (Galen Strawson - Nietzsche’s Metaphysics?) For in creating a well-ordered and regular universe (whose order is evident both in natural things and in things that make decisions) He cannot dispense with efficient causes (determinism) and/or final causes (teleologism or finalism), i.e., the principle of sufficient ground or reason must be the metaphysical principle underlying all creation throughout. In the strongest case, God Himself would be both the immediate causa efficiens and causa finalis of the preservation and motion of the universe as a whole.
Here is another approach: created things, not excluding the intellect and the will of man, cannot violate the scholastic principle agere sequitur esse or operari sequitur esse. This principle means: action follows from being or action is according to being (the character of the agent), depends on it.
Here are some explanations:
“The basic idea is that what a thing does necessarily reflects what it is.” (Edward Feser - Five Proofs of the Existence of God)
And:
“In every case the particular being, of whatever type, will react according to its special nature, whenever causes act upon it. This law, to which all things in the world are subject without exception, was expressed by the scholastics in the formula operari sequitur esse [“that is, the effects of every being follow from its nature”]. According to it, the chemist tests substances by means of reagents, and a man tries out another man by means of tests which he applies to him. In all cases the external causes will necessarily call forth that which is hidden in a being; for this being cannot react otherwise than according to its nature.” (Schopenhauer, Arthur. Essay on the Freedom of the Will)
And:
“A formal cause is the nature of a thing, that which makes it the kind of thing it is. For example, being a rational animal is the nature of a human being. The characteristic attributes and activities of a thing flow or follow from its nature—as, for instance, the use of language flows from our nature as rational animals. The principle agere sequitur esse basically says that these attributes and activities cannot go beyond that nature, any more than an effect can go beyond its efficient cause. Hence, a stone cannot exhibit attributes and activities like nutrition, growth, and reproduction, because these go beyond the nature of a stone. Anything that could do these things wouldn’t be a stone in the first place.” (Edward Feser - Five Proofs of the Existence of God)
Through its creation, every thing necessarily acquires a form (causa formalis, nature, essence, constitution, essentia), from which it cannot easily “break out”, at least not of its own accord.
The following consequence is unavoidable:
“[P]eople cannot be supposed to change themselves in such a way as to be or become truly or ultimately morally responsible for the way they are, and hence for their actions.” (Galen Strawson - The Impossibility of Moral Responsibility)
C 2. God's wisdom or intellect strictly forbids (even if only analogously so) coexistence with or alongside a world creation in which everything that happens happens necessarily, i.e. happens without any real alternatives. This is intuitively plausible. For it seems very strange, perhaps even irrational, to think of a God alongside a creation pervaded by total necessity.
A 1. The universe had an absolute beginning a finite time ago.
A 2. Such a beginning could only have been established by an act originating in God.
A 3. The universe, then, has its origin in God.
B 1. God can only create something out of His own substance (contra: creatio ex nihilo et non se Deo, i.e. against: creation out of nothing and not from God).
B 2. In the case of the coming into being of the universe, this is to be understood as the transformation of something divinely transcendent into something worldly immanent.
B 3. The possibility of God's total transformation is not out of the question.
C 1. God can never create anything other than that whose activity, from the very first moment, always takes a very definite course and leads to a very definite outcome, be it (the created thing) in contact with other inner-worldly things or not. So, “nothing can ever happen otherwise than it does”. (Galen Strawson - Nietzsche’s Metaphysics?) For in creating a well-ordered and regular universe (whose order is evident both in natural things and in things that make decisions) He cannot dispense with efficient causes (determinism) and/or final causes (teleologism or finalism), i.e., the principle of sufficient ground or reason must be the metaphysical principle underlying all creation throughout. In the strongest case, God Himself would be both the immediate causa efficiens and causa finalis of the preservation and motion of the universe as a whole.
Here is another approach: created things, not excluding the intellect and the will of man, cannot violate the scholastic principle agere sequitur esse or operari sequitur esse. This principle means: action follows from being or action is according to being (the character of the agent), depends on it.
Here are some explanations:
“The basic idea is that what a thing does necessarily reflects what it is.” (Edward Feser - Five Proofs of the Existence of God)
And:
“In every case the particular being, of whatever type, will react according to its special nature, whenever causes act upon it. This law, to which all things in the world are subject without exception, was expressed by the scholastics in the formula operari sequitur esse [“that is, the effects of every being follow from its nature”]. According to it, the chemist tests substances by means of reagents, and a man tries out another man by means of tests which he applies to him. In all cases the external causes will necessarily call forth that which is hidden in a being; for this being cannot react otherwise than according to its nature.” (Schopenhauer, Arthur. Essay on the Freedom of the Will)
And:
“A formal cause is the nature of a thing, that which makes it the kind of thing it is. For example, being a rational animal is the nature of a human being. The characteristic attributes and activities of a thing flow or follow from its nature—as, for instance, the use of language flows from our nature as rational animals. The principle agere sequitur esse basically says that these attributes and activities cannot go beyond that nature, any more than an effect can go beyond its efficient cause. Hence, a stone cannot exhibit attributes and activities like nutrition, growth, and reproduction, because these go beyond the nature of a stone. Anything that could do these things wouldn’t be a stone in the first place.” (Edward Feser - Five Proofs of the Existence of God)
Through its creation, every thing necessarily acquires a form (causa formalis, nature, essence, constitution, essentia), from which it cannot easily “break out”, at least not of its own accord.
The following consequence is unavoidable:
“[P]eople cannot be supposed to change themselves in such a way as to be or become truly or ultimately morally responsible for the way they are, and hence for their actions.” (Galen Strawson - The Impossibility of Moral Responsibility)
C 2. God's wisdom or intellect strictly forbids (even if only analogously so) coexistence with or alongside a world creation in which everything that happens happens necessarily, i.e. happens without any real alternatives. This is intuitively plausible. For it seems very strange, perhaps even irrational, to think of a God alongside a creation pervaded by total necessity.
However, some Calvinists and universalists (advocates of an “all will be saved” doctrine) would have no trouble reconciling the existence of God and fatalism. Calvin's doctrine of predestination, however, is generally regarded as absurd. If Calvin's followers were given a truth potion that would also take away all fear of God, they would have to realise that Calvin's doctrine is completely at odds with common sense, especially with regard to suffering in the world and in hell. This leaves the (also heretical) heavenly universal salvation as the only reasonable alternative. But even this alternative is ruled out, since the universal salvation aims at a paradise, a paradise as “a multitude of pure noble beings”, which is to be achieved by a world process, and it is clear that “an omnipotent God” could have had such a paradise “without process, i.e. immediately” (Mainländer).
D Therefore, when we put all the above considerations together, it seems very likely that God has completely transformed Himself into the universe.
The second deduction:
1. God has turned into either (x) a temporally limited universe or (y) a temporally infinite and everlasting one.
1.1 If the latter (y) is the case, then God has turned into something inferior in terms of mode of existence. Even if God were to transform into a timeless eternal universe, that universe would be ontologically less perfect than His original Oneness or Unity.
i) However, God's perfect wisdom forbids (if only analogously so) the irrevocable and irreversible “entry” into an inferior permanent existence.
1.2 If the former (x) is given, then the course of the temporally limited universe ends either in a miraculous restoration of the “perished” God, who would have gained nothing by the restoration process and would therefore still be exactly the same afterwards, or in absolute nothingness (nihil negativum).
ii) However, God does not do anything superfluous or pointless.
2. Therefore, God's essence has been transformed into a certain sum of individual forces, all of which, without being aware of it, are directed towards the same goal, namely non-existence or nirvāna, understood as the complete absence of God and the complete absence of our entropic universe and, in general, of any possible world (creatio ad nihilum).
Now, one might say that nothingness is also a conceivable or possible world, containing only emptiness. But this is not the case. On this point, a remark by David Bentley Hart:
“[A]n empty world, conceived as merely one possible state of reality among others, is not nonexistence, but only a kind of existing thing devoid of qualities (whatever that might mean).” (The experience of God : being, consciousness, bliss / David Bentley Hart.)
The third deduction:
I. God “did not have the power not to be all at once.” (Mainländer, Romuss translation) He could not erase Himself from existence without leaving a trace of His past Being or His “Having-Been-Ness”. That is to say, absolute nothingness could not be achieved without an “intermediate step” (principium durationis), without a certain delay.
II. This is because the annihilation of His own Existence, an Existence which was in a sense identical with His Omnipotence, presupposed this Omnipotence concurrently (concursus). In other words, the Almighty would theoretically have had the power to destroy something created in one fell swoop. But when it comes to Himself as the Uncreated, He reaches His limits in this respect, for His immediate annihilation would at the same time (simul or simultaneus) require or necessitate His full existence as the Annihilator.
It is not clear that this argument of mine really works. I have my doubts.
But here are more arguments:
Omnipotence is not omnipotent towards itself. Here is Philipp Mainländer in his own words:
God's “power was [...] an omnipotence in the sense that nothing lying outside Him constrained it. But it was no omnipotence with respect to His own power, or in other words, His power was not to be annihilated by itself, the simple unity was unable, by means of itself, to cease to exist. [...] God’s omnipotence was constrained by nothing other than itself, that it was no omnipotence in relation to itself.” synkretic.com/issues/the-philosophy-of-redemption
And, finally, that something opposed the direct path to absolute nothingness was the heritage of Divine Subsistence. Where something existed entirely through itself, it was impossible for it to immediately cease to exist (Thorsten Lerchner - Mainländer-Reflexionen. Quellen, Kontext, Wirkung. Translated by myself).
“God’s own essence as Übersein was the obstacle that precluded at least the instantaneous execution of the one pre-worldly act.” (ANTHONY K. JENSEN - The Death and Redemption of God: Nietzsche’s Conversation with Philipp Mainländer)
God is in some sense himself the means to some desired end. A means cannot be nothing. And God can only use himself as a means to something.
Just because God cannot immediately and instantaneously “reach” absolute nothingness does not mean that it is “unattainable”.
III. Therefore, God had (even if only analogously so) no choice but to turn into a world that slowly but surely decays, grows weaker and weaker and fades away, and that, once gone, leaves literally nothing behind, not even the potential for being itself (or beyond-being). God as the Non-Finite first had to become finite so that the finite could dissolve into nothingness. No way around it.
There is no need for a world sustainer:
“There is no longer a divine agency that could ensure the continuity of the world. God could only give creation a 'first impulse', which was accompanied by His 'suicidal explosion'. The reason that the world exists temporarily at all and does not collapse immediately, as the essential finiteness and weakness of creation would suggest” (Thorsten Lerchner - Mainländer-Reflexionen. Quellen, Kontext, Wirkung, translated by me), has been outlined above.
Finite existence persists because everything draws on the residual power that is bundled in the “remains” of the Dead Deity. For a limited time, Mainländer can do without a Divine Sustainer because finite things have limited self-sufficiency. The first “impulse” “still lives on” (Mainländer); it is stored in things. But it becomes weaker and weaker. (Thorsten Lerchner - Mainländer-Reflexionen. Quellen, Kontext, Wirkung)
Basically, all things in the world have an impetus towards absolute nothingness. But they prevent each other from reaching that goal. So you could say that the surrounding things are in a sense sustaining me by preventing my body from reaching the telos of nothingness.
Mainländer thinks especially of the phenomenon of “gravity, which does not stop striving and urging its way to an unextended central point (although it would negate itself and matter if it were ever to reach this point); gravity would not stop even if the whole universe were gathered up into a ball.” (The World as Will and Representation Volume 1, §56)
Basically, all things in the world have an impetus towards absolute nothingness. But they prevent each other from reaching that goal. So you could say that the surrounding things are in a sense sustaining me by preventing my body from reaching the telos of nothingness.
Mainländer thinks especially of the phenomenon of “gravity, which does not stop striving and urging its way to an unextended central point (although it would negate itself and matter if it were ever to reach this point); gravity would not stop even if the whole universe were gathered up into a ball.” (The World as Will and Representation Volume 1, §56)
The quotation, however, comes from Schopenhauer, but he strongly influenced Mainländer in this respect. Here is a summary of Mainländer's position:
“Should any solid ever reach the mathematically precise center of the earth, it would be utterly crushed into a simple extensionless point. It would in that state also be absolutely motionless—not a single electron could spin away from that ideal center of gravity. That is to say, were any solid successful in its gravitational conatus, as Aristotle might put it, it would be immediately annihilated. So, everything that goes by the name “matter” is a conglomerate of forces that, were it not resisted by counter-forces, would immediately self-annihilate.” (Anthony K. Jensen — The Death and Redemption of God: Nietzsche’s Conversation with Philipp Mainländer)
It's not that far-fetched when you think of black holes:
“People regard black holes as troubling, because they are the enemy you cannot defeat. They always win in the end. It's no different than the guy in the black cloak with the scythe—it's Death triumphant. We now believe that in the long run most of the mass in the universe is going to end up being eaten by a black hole. Thee and me and all that we know will probably be swallowed by one of these dragons in the long run. And if you don't think that's disturbing, well, maybe you've been watching too many horror movies.” (Gregory Benford, Physicist and Author University of California, Irvine)
“If you stick your finger down in there, you ain't getting it back.” (David Brin, Physicist and Author)
“Right at the heart of a black hole is the center nugget, which we call the singularity, and there we don't know what goes on.” (Roger Blandford, Astrophysicist, Stanford University)
“It's this monstrous, mysterious thing that, I don't know, eats everything.” (Andrew Hamilton, Astronomer, University of Colorado, Boulder)
“When something falls into a black hole, it is no longer accessible to our world.” (Brian McNamara, Astronomer, Ohio University)
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/blackhole/explained.html
The question that arises is why there must be a human race in the universal entropic process. Because metaphysical entropy seems to bring nothing but suffering to humankind.
The answer is twofold.
Physically speaking, human beings are the best at increasing entropy:
“When something falls into a black hole, it is no longer accessible to our world.” (Brian McNamara, Astronomer, Ohio University)
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/blackhole/explained.html
The question that arises is why there must be a human race in the universal entropic process. Because metaphysical entropy seems to bring nothing but suffering to humankind.
The answer is twofold.
Physically speaking, human beings are the best at increasing entropy:
“[W]e find that each higher species in the evolutionary chain transforms greater amounts of energy from a usable to an unusable state. In the process of evolution, each succeeding species is more complex and thus better equipped as a transformer of available energy.” (Jeremy Rifkin – ENTROPY: Into the Greenhouse World)
More importantly, human beings could represent the ultimate principle of duration (principium durationis), both in a psychological and in a metaphysical sense. And duration derives from God's metaphysical inability to cease to exist immediately. Thus, human beings could be the true expression of the result of God's impossibility to pass directly into non-being. Why is that?
The following explains why:
Duration (span of time) in the real sense of the word may exist only as a duration that is experienced and brought into the reflective consciousness. The first billion years of the universe, for example, seem to us an almost unbelievable length of time. But let's use an idealistic argument to suggest that this unimaginably long time may have passed in the blink of an eye or in no time at all:
When we think about the whole development of the universe, picture it in our minds and marvel at the long periods of time, we pretend that we have somehow been there at those times. We take experienced periods of time (years, months, weeks; days, minutes) from our own lives and project them onto the corresponding imaginary periods of the cosmic past, enlarging the whole thing in our imagination until it becomes somehow overwhelming. We must remember, however, that there was no consciousness to carry out these mental operations at that time. In fact, in our overwhelming imagination, we are deluding ourselves about gigantic periods of time.
Nietzsche thinks along similar lines:
“You think you will have a long rest until you are born again - but make no mistake! There is “no time” between the last moment of consciousness and the first glimmer of new life – it is over as quickly as a lightning strike, even if living creatures measure it after billions of years and cannot even measure it. Timelessness and succession go hand in hand as soon as the intellect is gone.” (Nietzsche’s notebook of 1881: The Eternal Return of the Same / By Daniel Fidel. 11 [318]
Nietzsche seems to mean rebirth as the repetition of one's own course of life in the great cosmological system of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same.
His philosophical idea is that in the absence of intellect or mind, timelessness and succession are in a sense indistinguishable.
Or: Think of falling asleep during a film, waking up at some point and realizing that the film is already over. The length (duration) of the film has escaped us, it seems like no time has passed during the film.
Or: Think of falling asleep during a film, waking up at some point and realizing that the film is already over. The length (duration) of the film has escaped us, it seems like no time has passed during the film.
For Aristotle, and for Mainländer too, the existence of time depends on two factors: the occurrence of changes that are independent of a subject, and a subject that can perceive these changes.
Just as motion exists only in things, so time exists only in relation to the human mind. Time is therefore rooted in the human “soul”, which experiences time as a sequence of minutes, hours and days, and which can project its experience into the past, present, and future. In other words, human beings have a sense or notion of time by which they perceive changes in the world and record them in the form of numbers.
Aristotle's view may be somewhat limited:
“Time, in this interpretation, cannot exist as time without soul because there is no possible account of time in which it does not involve a subject with an awareness of time. This awareness of time is, for Aristotle, more or less tantamount to the ability to count. In view of later developments, this may be the single most remarkable deficiency in Aristotle’s theory. Is human temporality really only the capacity to measure years, and days, and hours? There is little here of the human experience of time, of memories and expectations, of hopes and disappointments, of historical experience and future projects.” (Johannes Zachhuber – Time and Soul)
However, the human experience of time, of memories and expectations, of hopes and disappointments, of historical experiences and future projects, still presupposes the existence of human beings. And if there were no human or human-like beings needed in the whole cosmic process, which is heading towards extinction, it would seem that God could directly achieve nothingness, which He actually cannot because it is justified to assume the retarding, delaying or duration factor. But a cosmic process, without anyone being aware of it, would only have an apparent, pseudo or sham duration (span of time). It would just look in our retrospective, somewhat artificial imagination like it had taken a very, very long time. Real, authentic duration exists only in those who have time consciousness. So, for the metaphysically unavoidable authenticity of duration to exist, there must be at least humanlike beings.
I. God enjoys being (if only analogously so) the most perfect and blissful being: “because we can conceive no more complete and better being than that of a simple unity.” (Mainländer) https://www.synkretic.com/issues/the-philosophy-of-redemption
II. Thus, the following is true: “If the Eternal be conceived as in complete and perfect bliss, happily static and statically happy, there is no reason in logic or in life why he should ever be moved to engage in creation.” (Brasnett, Bertrand R. – The Suffering of the Impassible God)
III. God has the absolute freedom to end his existence, or more precisely to end his beyond-existence, “or” not to do so and to “continue to exist” timelessly (real libertarian freedom of will, decision, or choice), whereby, strictly speaking, “continuing to exist” or “remaining in supra-existence” is not a positive (real) option for which a specific decision would have to be made, since supra-existence is already given. “Remaining” would thus be something more like a mere shadow of what is actually given, namely the 'shadow-casting' option of non-existence. It would be more of a negative option to not put an end to existence.
In Mainländer's words:
“[O]nly one deed was possible for God, and specifically one free deed, because He was subject to no compulsion whatever, because He was able to forgo that deed as well as carry it out, namely, to enter absolute nothingness, the nihil negativum, i.e., to annihilate Himself completely, to cease to exist.” https://www.synkretic.com/issues/the-philosophy-of-redemption
IV. If God should “ever” be moved to create, it would only be for the reason of ceasing to be.
V. Non-being can only be achieved by accepting a temporary creation.
VI. There is a creation, i.e., a world, as the sum of a multitude of dynamic individuals.
VII. Consequently, God – despite His perfection and unclouded 'bliss' – out of an incomprehensible (still will-free) 'selflessness', which knew no inner or outer constraints and was free from any pressure to act, decided (will-generation) to give preference to absolute non-existence, or to act in favor of absolute nothingness, no matter how much this transcendent self-abnegation or self-denial may ultimately cause most people to be utterly confused or perplexed because it infinitely exceeds and “blows up” all concepts and ideas that humans have or can have of an immanent self-abnegation.
One can only come to the following conclusion:
“So why the primal unity fractured itself, why the one became many, remains a mystery for us.” (Frederick C. Beiser - Weltschmerz)
This is a justified appeal to mystery. For:
Genuine metaphysical free choice is not fully intelligible in itself, much less to the human mind. Because: “[T]here is an arbitrary dimension to choices that are free in the libertarian sense.” (John Kronen and Eric Reitan - God's Final Victory)
Freedom of indifference seems to involve a random, contingent element. But in the case of God, his choice does not fall outside His control, for there was nothing outside Him:
“God was in absolute solitude, and nothing existed besides Him. He was unable to be motivated from without, but only by means of Himself.”
https://www.synkretic.com/issues/the-philosophy-of-redemption
Additional remarks:
“God is sometimes said to possess the properties of being a perfect being and also of having deliberately created the universe. But to deliberately create anything, so it is claimed, requires having some sort of lack, and that is incompatible with being a perfect being. Therefore, if God is defined as possessing both properties, it becomes logically impossible for God to exist.” (Theodore M. Drange - Nonbelief & Evil: Two Arguments for the Nonexistence of God)
To a certain extent, this confirms Mainländer's point. If God is defined as possessing and exercising both qualities, it becomes logically impossible for God to continue to exist. For if he creates, it is either out of lack or out of the absolute freedom to cease to be. The former is excluded. Ergo, he no longer exists. It is not a lack to completely nullify oneself as a perfect being. For a perfect being could not have become more perfect, there was no potential for improvement, and the choice of non-existence does not indicate a defect in the being. It simply points to the fact that it may be “better” not to be at all than to be in perfect transcendence.
It could be argued that the transcendent exercise of the one and only positive free choice of absolute non-existence is the expression of an even greater perfection. For God's continued existence might seem to be a sign of weakness and lack of freedom. Some might say that it is better to exercise freedom than not to exercise it. But then God had to cease to exist, in the sense of an inner compulsion. (The theists, by the way, get into a similar kind of trouble, but for the opposite reasons.) The question is where the mentioned greater perfection is to be found. Certainly not in this world, and even less so in the absolute nothingness that follows because perfection is linked to existence. And the absolutely ephemeral and fleeting, the moment of God's exercise of freedom, can hardly be called a perfection. Moreover, the exercise of freedom is the negation of God's perfect Oneness and Being. From God's perspective, the possible nothingness was not valued at first, it was a neutral but fully understood possibility (if only analogously so). It is only in the act of choosing that the act of valuing nothingness as good takes place (and vice versa). And in that moment God disappears. Here everything coincides. In Mainländer's theology, there may be a mixture of divine voluntarism and divine intellectualism that no human being can grasp. So the objections are probably pointless.
On human suicide, Bentley Hart has this to say:
“One cannot even choose nothingness, at least not as nothingness; to will nonexistence positively, one must first conceive it as a positive end, and so one can at most choose it as the “good” cessation of this world, and therefore as just another mask of that which is supremely desirable in itself. In the end, even when we reject the good, we always do so out of a longing for the Good.” (Hart, David Bentley. That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation)
If we apply this to God, it should read:
God can choose nonexistence as the “good” cessation of Himself, and this is not just a mask of that which is supremely desirable in itself. For nothing is supremely desirable in itself in Mainländer's conception of divine transcendence. God may be the perfect being in terms of being, but it's up to Him to decide the value of Him existing or not existing anymore. We humans have no basis for presumption in this regard.
For Mainländer, God is not the Good by itself. A Dogma of the Catholic Church says:
“God loves Himself of necessity, but loves and wills the creation of extra-divine things, on the other hand, with freedom.”
And scholastic philosophy is based on this:
“God wills himself necessarily but does not will anything other than Himself necessarily, and all that He does will He wills with respect to Himself.” (Quoted by Johnson, Jeffrey D.. The Failure of Natural Theology: A Critical Appraisal of the Philosophical Theology of Thomas Aquinas. Original source: Gilson, The Spirit of Mediaeval Philosophy)
Mainländer has a different model of God. His God does not necessarily will himself, otherwise he could not abolish himself. He is originally without will, but can create one. In the case of the self-love mentioned above, it depends. Is it identical with willing oneself, or is it something else? If it is the latter, then Mainländer's God could also “blissfully indulge in self-love” and still “come to the unclouded realization” that summa summarum non-being would be better than, to put it bluntly, “indulging” or “wallowing” in eternally blissful self-love. This is not necessarily a logical contradiction.
Mainländer has a different model of God. His God does not necessarily will himself, otherwise he could not abolish himself. He is originally without will, but can create one. In the case of the self-love mentioned above, it depends. Is it identical with willing oneself, or is it something else? If it is the latter, then Mainländer's God could also “blissfully indulge in self-love” and still “come to the unclouded realization” that summa summarum non-being would be better than, to put it bluntly, “indulging” or “wallowing” in eternally blissful self-love. This is not necessarily a logical contradiction.
Jeffrey D. Johnson makes a good point against the Catholic model:
“How is it possible for God to will his own existence by the same undifferentiated and timeless act of willing the universe without the universe being eternal and necessary?” (The Failure of Natural Theology: A Critical Appraisal of the Philosophical Theology of Thomas Aquinas)
And God as Goodness itself is highly problematic:
“‘[G]ood’, unlike, for example, the predicate ‘blue’, is an attributive adjective: there is no such thing as being just good or bad, there is only being a good or bad so-and-so. The qualities that make something a good bed are different from those that make a good doctor, and so on. So it is only to be expected that being a good God is something quite different from being a good human being.
The distinction between attributive and predicative adjectives is a sound one – but when [some people] goes on to say that God is pure goodness, they seem to have forgotten altogether that ‘good’ is an adjective at all. The notion of pure goodness was introduced into philosophy by Plato, who places the Idea of Good at the summit of the metaphysics of his Republic. The notion was severely criticised by Aristotle, and it is odd to find it surviving in the predominantly Aristotelian context of Aquinas’ system.” (Anthony Kenny - Christianity in Review. A History of the Faith in Fifty Books)
For simplicity’s sake, we can say of Mainländer's God:
“God could not choose, either, to “improve” or become something yet “more-Godly” since God was already all there was that was possible. The only choice God had was what faced Hamlet: “zu bleiben, wie er war, oder nicht zu sein [to remain, as he was, or not to be].” Why God made the choice He did is ungraspable, but the result evident in the world today is transcendental proof of which path was taken. God willed not to be.” (ANTHONY K. JENSEN - The Death and Redemption of God: Nietzsche’s Conversation with Philipp Mainländer)
Freedom to cease to be must be part of divine perfection. For God could be metaphorically ”jaded by Existence and wishing for nothingness”.
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-28982-8_10
We can only imagine it in anthropomorphic terms: a God who existentially questions himself in absolute self-reflection, who questions his raison d'être and considers it questionable, contentious, and iffy, who finds his omnipotence highly immodest, who comprehends himself completely, who penetrates himself absolutely with his mind, and for whom, therefore, nothing profound can exist that would still be of interest, for whom everything is superficial and surface, including himself, of which he finally gets tired.
Here's another approach that's figurative and anthropomorphic:
If existential-philosophical experiences and existential contemplation make somebody a true human being, i.e., belong to his/her outstanding qualities, then they must occur all the more with God in absolute potentiation. The god of Mainländer would be like an Eastern existential philosopher. And God must indeed be a wise philosopher of the highest or infinite degree, simply because of his omniscience. And the western tradition with its hype of being has perhaps only led us on the wrong philosophical path. So, God did not destroy himself out of desperation or boredom, not even out of depression. These would be base motives.
Rather, he destroyed himself based on the plain realization that non-being or absolute nothingness is better than perfect-being. And this happened just as a wise man would sacrifice himself in complete serenity for the greater good.
Fifth deduction, serving as a supplement:
I. The origin of the world can be traced back to a being who is incomparable and singular, and who possesses supreme power and wisdom (if only analogously so).
II. Thus, the existing world can be understood as the creation of that being.
II. Thus, the existing world can be understood as the creation of that being.
III. The world cannot be a pantheistic creation, to which the following would apply:
“According to pantheism, the individual is nothing, a pitiful puppet, a mere tool in the hand of a simple Being hidden in the world. From this, it follows that no act of the individual is his/her act, but a divine act wrought in him/her, nor does he/she have the shadow of a responsibility for his/her acts.” (Mainländer, translation via DeepL)
IV. For there are three reasons against pantheism.
That individuality is real means, in Kant's language, that it is not a mere property of subject-dependent appearances, but an essential property of things in themselves. If individuality belongs exclusively to appearances, then our experiential common-sense judgement that things or living beings exist in themselves (independently of a recognizing subject) is simply wrong. But then there would be something terribly wrong with existence!
I experience myself not only as a mere individual, which would be sufficient to rule out pantheism, but also as a vibrant life. This includes sensual appetites, sensitivity, mental and physical resistance, emotional movements, dynamic willpower, spontaneity, intentionality, agency, etc. This cannot be wrong and must also apply to other living beings!
At least in the act of individual cognition, there is a certain individual and spontaneous power of action. If this power is not anchored in human nature, then it is an illusion, and humans, within the framework of pantheism, are mere “puppets” of an all-powerful mindless or intelligent “string-puller”. We would only be modifications of the pantheistic God: “[T]ables, chairs, rocks, trees, dogs, and cats and people [would be] mere modifications of the one big entity[.]” (www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2023/01/86512/)
But there can be no illusion of individual subjectivity. That is metaphysically impossible. Because cogito ergo sum. The illusion of subjectivity would still take place within subjectivity. A powerful genius malignus would not be able to simply implant conscious perception in another. The other individual, to continue the metaphor, would have to be the one in charge of the perception and its emergence into his/her consciousness. His/her being would have to will-to-see for consciousness to arise, assuming, of course, that we are really dealing with another and not the evil demon itself. The entry of perception into one's consciousness can only be an act of one's spiritual self. Or: To allow the perception to come into your consciousness can only be done by yourself or your nature, even if only in an unconscious way.
In scholastic monotheism, and in all forms of pantheism, I am in every conceivable way dependent on the Truly Real, on the Only One who exists through Itself. To repeat: in every way! Completely and absolutely ab alio! And if I am dependent in every way, then I do not really exist, but am, if anything, only something like the extended arm of the Transcendent Other.
If something is dependent in every respect on something else, then both 'somethings' form a unity, so that one can no longer speak of two 'somethings' as two real entities. The unity would represent numerically only one (unified) 'something', but with a multiplicity, or more precisely, a duality in it.
The absolute dependence of individual A on individual B [“The notion of total dependence, dependence in every respect”] annihilates the discrete and distinguishable individuality of A and integrates A into the remaining, now expanding, individual B.
More forcefully, one might put it this way:
“So if the creature is dependent on God both for its existence and for its nature, the creature collapses into God.” (https://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2016/10/creation-ex-nihilo-or-ex-deo.html)
The absolute dependence of individual A on individual B [“The notion of total dependence, dependence in every respect”] annihilates the discrete and distinguishable individuality of A and integrates A into the remaining, now expanding, individual B.
More forcefully, one might put it this way:
“So if the creature is dependent on God both for its existence and for its nature, the creature collapses into God.” (https://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2016/10/creation-ex-nihilo-or-ex-deo.html)
However, nature shows us an enormous number of real individuals, rather than just one big one. Nature cannot lie about this.
“According to stuff monism there is only one kind of stuff (e.g. material stuff), although there may be many things. According to thing monism there is strictly speaking only one thing. Spinoza is an exemplary thing monist.” (Galen Strawson - Nietzsche’s Metaphysics?)
Mainländer advocates a kind of stuff monism, if one understands stuff as powerful and relatively persistent patterns of motion (will-to-life).
Secondly: Pantheism involves a serious inconsistency, as it “teaches many individuals and at the same time a simple unity; for simple unity is utterly incompatible with multiplicity, if both are to exist at the same time. Either multiplicity or simple unity: there is no third. For if, according to pantheism, we are to think that God, the simple unity, is to be, for example, whole and undivided in John and at the same time whole and undivided in Greta, we feel in our brains exactly how something is to be bent there: for we cannot imagine, cannot think, such an easily made connection of words. It makes a mockery of all the laws of thought and tramples on our reason; it commits adultery with our mind.” (Mainländer)
The Divine Unity can express itself, manifest itself, reveal itself, or “incarnate” in one individual. But it cannot simultaneously do the same elsewhere, i.e., in another real individual. How could this be possible without violating the law of non-contradiction? Mainländer accuses Schopenhauer of such pantheistic inconsistency or contradiction. Schopenhauer says, for example, that the metaphysical One Will is completely (undivided) in a fly and at the same time completely (undivided) in a human being. So, where the One Will manifests Itself in action, there It is fully with Its Being. However, when It manifests Itself actively in a particular fly, then, according to the just criticism, as the par excellence of simplicity, It can only take this one direction of manifestation and no other, at least not in the sense of a juxtaposition. But a sequence is conceivable. In other words, as the ultimate simplicity, its “reserves of manifestation” are already exhausted with a single fly. A multiplicity of different manifestations can only exist one after the other, not side by side. Those who doubt that Schopenhauer's metaphysical Will is absolutely simple should bear the following in mind:
“Schopenhauer’s ‘Will’ is Plotinus’s One – undifferentiated power beyond comprehension.” (https://philipstanfield.com/tag/arthur-schopenhauer/)
The Platonists face a very similar problem:
“[H]ow could one Form (for example, the Form of beauty) be present in many (beautiful) things without being divided up among them? The presence of the Form in a multitude seems to mean destruction of the Form as a whole, as a unity.” (Dominic J. O'Meara - Plotinus - An Introduction to the Enneads)
Gerold Prauss (German transcendental philosopher) might be helpful in determining the “manifestation reserves” more precisely if one brings in his model of subjectivity. First, any theory of subjectivity needs a metaphysical foundation. (For Mainländer, there are many metaphysical foundations of subjectivity that go back to a vanished One.) Such a foundation might be the Pantheist God, or the Neoplatonic One, or Buddhist Karma. And especially these can be represented by a mathematical point, and this mathematical point can be represented by an imagined or drawn point.
So, how do we construct subjectivity from a metaphysical point? The only way is through extensions of that point. And there can only be four extensions. The temporal and three spatial.
Spatial dimensions are relatively easy to express by drawing. If that's not enough, the third dimension can be represented plastically.
What to do with the time extension? The temporal dimension may be illustrated as follows by Gerold Prauss:
“With a piece of chalk in one hand, in one motion I undertake to do what I do when I draw an ideal geometrical line; with the sponge in the other hand I immediately follow behind the piece of chalk, so that all that remains is the drawing of an ideal geometrical point and that it never becomes a drawing of an ideal geometrical line.” (Gerold Prauss - The Problem of Time in Kant. In: Kant’s Legacy: Essays in Honor of Lewis White Beck. Edited by Predrag Cicovacki)
To put it another way:
“Inspired by Gerold Prauss, Cord Friebe speaks of time as “extended in a point”. However, I find this an intriguing notion, worthy of closer attention. On the one hand, it seems to capture an important truth. Take my drawing a line on the blackboard. The result is a line of chalk extended in space but with no visible temporality. Only during my action of drawing it is there a perceived time sequence, instantly becoming lost at each and every moment of its proceeding.” (Truls Wyller - Kant On Temporal Extension: Embodied, Indexical Idealism)
Our interior is said to be an extension, specifically a dynamic extension, within the point. That sounds strange. How can something extended take place in something unextended? There is only an inside and outside the point. The outside of the point is given to the spatial. This is logical. Because if I want to draw a line with a pencil, I set at a dot and draw the line outside this dot. An image in the mind's eye is also already outside a point.
But we all know about being within a point. It is succession, temporality, flow of sensations, moods, and feelings. These are only temporal, not spatial:
Our interior is said to be an extension, specifically a dynamic extension, within the point. That sounds strange. How can something extended take place in something unextended? There is only an inside and outside the point. The outside of the point is given to the spatial. This is logical. Because if I want to draw a line with a pencil, I set at a dot and draw the line outside this dot. An image in the mind's eye is also already outside a point.
But we all know about being within a point. It is succession, temporality, flow of sensations, moods, and feelings. These are only temporal, not spatial:
“[T]he zero-dimension temporal shift from one quality to another—think of a feeling of pain one second, a feeling of pleasure the next—is surely more primitive than even the simple tracing of a line in one dimension (which involves a spatial as well as temporal shift).” (KARL AMERIKS - Kantian Subjects: Critical Philosophy and Late Modernity)
So, the most evident thing to be experienced in subjectivity is not nothing and not just some absolute, unextended static point. It must be some kind of extension.
What I'm getting at is this: a pantheistic god (the point) could only manifest in a single subjectivity consisting of only one temporal and three spatial extensions, all unified by himself as the non-extended point (God). In pantheism, there can only be one mind.
When we consider this universal pantheistic subjectivity or mind, it makes sense to be able to see several spatial objects or bodies in it. For the space within this subjectivity can be divided. And if something can be divided there, then it can also be shared. Only when I am able to cut a cake into pieces can I share it with others. So, we can fill the space of pantheistic subjectivity with discrete spatial things.
But can we fill the universal subjectivity with many temporal centres of consciousness or first-person perspectives?
The possibility of this would depend on whether one could conceptually divide the extension within the pantheistic point, and thus conceive of it as shareable.
But this possibility can only be denied. The rational model presented does not allow for such a possibility.
So, the question of how can one universal subject ground our personal, seemingly separate subjectivities must be answered on philosophical grounds as follows: There is no how because a universal subject that grounds our personal, seemingly separate subjectivities is not possible.
The Universal Subject has only one indivisible temporal extension. This extension can only be filled with one content at a time, such as pain. It is not possible to have at the same time pleasure that can be passed on to some other subject. There is no “space” for this. However, there would only be space for spatial bodies.
It is not possible to achieve a multiplicity of “relative subjects” through a philosophical modelling that assumes a primary primordial basic mind. In fact, God can only “create” one cosmic, universal mind within this framework. But He cannot divide parts of that universal mind into segments that have a distinct boundary, along with a sense of self-identity or I-ness.
It is not possible to achieve a multiplicity of “relative subjects” through a philosophical modelling that assumes a primary primordial basic mind. In fact, God can only “create” one cosmic, universal mind within this framework. But He cannot divide parts of that universal mind into segments that have a distinct boundary, along with a sense of self-identity or I-ness.
Mainlanders would deny that the problem of decombination can be solved. This problem is about how we get from an overarching consciousness or awareness (universal subject) to the array of human and animal consciousnesses (sub-subjects) that we actually find in the world:
“[T]he decombination problem”: in virtue of what do “big” conscious subjects (such as the universe) ground “little” conscious subjects (such as us)? (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/panpsychism/supplement.html)
Mainländer can absolutely not “affirm that the individual subject exists while simultaneously holding that its substance component is part of the one, undivided substance. This substance is in turn the substantive component of an all-encompassing, absolute subject.” (https://www.pdcnet.org/idstudies/content/idstudies_2021_0051_0001_0069_0101)
In summary: We do not have the possibility of many simultaneous temporal subjectivities, but we would have the possibility of many spatial bodies, but they would all have to have the same interior, which would be absurd. What is the solution? We have to get rid of the single universal pantheistic subjectivity or mind as the real unity.
And that is what Mainländer ultimately does:
His theory “consists in its not admitting any “real unity” now existent “in the world,” but only a “collective unity” of “real individuals”. The individual beings that compose the world are not absolutely independent, but “semi-independent”.” (T. Whittaker - review. In: Mind. A quarterly review of Psychology and Philosophy. XI (1886)
The real, semi-independent, semi-autonomous individuals (semi-discrete bodily powers) each provide the basis for the emergence of individual subjectivities. It is a radical emergence of mind from the unconscious metaphysical body, but unlike materialism, the body includes the mind virtually, virtualiter (here as quasi-divine power to generate mind when the right circumstances are present).
What is very important for Mainländer's philosophy is that the individual, whether a particular person, animal, plant or piece of iron, has at least “some shade of being in its own right” or “a trace of independence”. (JOHN N. DECK - ST. THOMAS AQUINAS AND THE LANGUAGE OF TOTAL DEPENDENCE)
Thirdly (taken from Schopenhauer's remarks on pantheism): “It would obviously have to be an ill-advised God who knew no better way to have fun than to transform himself into a world such as ours, into such a hungry world, where he would have to endure misery, deprivation and death, without measure and purpose, in the form of countless millions of living but fearful and tortured beings, all of whom exist for a while only because one devours the other. For example, in the form of six million Negro slaves who receive on average sixty million lashes a day to their naked bodies; and in the form of three million European weavers who vegetate feebly in stifling attics or desolate factory halls, plagued by hunger and grief, and so on. This in my eyes would be amusement for a God, who as such would certainly be accustomed to quite different circumstances! [...]
The real, semi-independent, semi-autonomous individuals (semi-discrete bodily powers) each provide the basis for the emergence of individual subjectivities. It is a radical emergence of mind from the unconscious metaphysical body, but unlike materialism, the body includes the mind virtually, virtualiter (here as quasi-divine power to generate mind when the right circumstances are present).
What is very important for Mainländer's philosophy is that the individual, whether a particular person, animal, plant or piece of iron, has at least “some shade of being in its own right” or “a trace of independence”. (JOHN N. DECK - ST. THOMAS AQUINAS AND THE LANGUAGE OF TOTAL DEPENDENCE)
Thirdly (taken from Schopenhauer's remarks on pantheism): “It would obviously have to be an ill-advised God who knew no better way to have fun than to transform himself into a world such as ours, into such a hungry world, where he would have to endure misery, deprivation and death, without measure and purpose, in the form of countless millions of living but fearful and tortured beings, all of whom exist for a while only because one devours the other. For example, in the form of six million Negro slaves who receive on average sixty million lashes a day to their naked bodies; and in the form of three million European weavers who vegetate feebly in stifling attics or desolate factory halls, plagued by hunger and grief, and so on. This in my eyes would be amusement for a God, who as such would certainly be accustomed to quite different circumstances! [...]
For however unclear, vacillating and confused may be the concept which we associate with the word God, still two predicates are inseparable from it: supreme power and supreme wisdom. That a being equipped with these should have got himself into the situation described above is a thoroughly absurd thought, for our position in the world is obviously one into which no intelligent being, let alone an all-wise one, would get himself.” (Arthur Schopenhauer - Parerga and Paralipomena, Volume 2. Chapter 5. Some words on pantheism. §69.)
If someone has the impression that this can also be used against Mainländer, it has to be said that for Mainländer “God” is completely abolished at the moment of his “fragmentation” or “finitization”, i.e., He “died”, whereas in pantheism God is still “alive”, only in the “new role” of a being who tortures itself.
By the way: A God who no longer exists can no longer be brought before a theodicy court. Moreover, all suffering is in a sense self-chosen:
“Everything which now is, once was in the simple premundane unity. Therefore, everything which is, figuratively speaking, took part in God’s resolution not to be, resolved in him to convert into non-being. The retarding element, the essence of God, made the instant carrying-out of this resolution impossible. The world, the process in which this retarding element is gradually eliminated, had to arise. This process, the general fate of the universe, was determined by the divine wisdom (we speak always figuratively), and in this divine wisdom everything which is determined its own individual life-course.
[…] Everything that affects me, all the blows and blessings of chance, are my work—I willed them. But I do not bring them about with gradual, uncognisable force in the world; rather, prior to the world, in the simple unity, I determined that they should affect me.”
https://www.synkretic.com/issues/the-philosophy-of-redemption
Finally, there is an ethical, less painful way to live. It is possible to acquire the appropriate dispositions to follow it. It is the way of the “Holy Spirit”: sexual abstinence and voluntary poverty (or what is the same thing: mere satisfaction of the basic necessities of life even in the midst of abundance). The Christian and ancient virtues are enough to be in harmony with the divine course in nature; while “Satan's” way (reckless hedonism) is “the wild [and highly painful] struggle of individual wills”. (T. Whittaker - Mainländer review. In: Mind. A quarterly review of Psychology and Philosophy. XI)
V. In addition, the following applies: The difference between classical theism and pantheism is “only an apparent one, a difference on the surface.” (Mainländer)
They both come to the same conclusion: “the dead individual which lies in the hands of an almighty God[:]” (Mainländer)
“When the individual acts, his action will be not his own but only the single universal substance [God] acting through him.” (Frederick C. Beiser - Weltschmerz)
In the end, the only thing that saved classical theism from a complete coincidence with pantheism was the concept of analogy: this concept was developed to allow one to formulate true statements about God. In this way, it was possible to relate God to His creation without identifying Him with it in a pantheistic way.
VI. That is to say, both in pantheism and in scholastic monotheism or classical theism, “nature lies and puts fool's gold into our hands instead of the real thing, when it shows us everywhere only individuals and nowhere a simple unity; then we lie to ourselves when we grasp ourselves in the innermost self-consciousness as fearful or defiant, blissful or suffering ego[.]” (Mainländer)
VII. But the world is a sum of individual forces, of real individuals.
VIII. Thus, God “cannot have chosen to remain in being or to merely alter his manner of being, else no world would have come into existence.” (Sebastian Gardner) That is to say: He cannot have chosen to exist as a (super-)Being alongside His creation, or merely to pantheistically modify or extend His unfathomable “mode of being”.
Augustine apparently stood on the threshold between theism and pantheism:
“Augustine (354–430) owes his overcoming of Manichaeism to a reading of Neoplatonic writings, which showed him a pantheistic-looking God “stretched out through the infinite vastness of all spaces”” (Bekenntnisse 1983: 181). (Martin Bollacher - Pantheism. Online Encyclopedia Philosophy of Nature/Online Lexikon Naturphilosophie)
IX. God undoubtedly has the power to “split” (metaphorically speaking) Himself into a sum of individual powers, real individuals.
X. God must therefore, in creating the world – His first and only act – have divided, split, caused a disintegration (“finitization” = becoming finite from not finite, in-finite; finiteness out of non finiteness) of Himself, otherwise the creation of the world with real individuals could not be explained.
The splitting, division or disintegration cannot have taken place only within Himself as a mere inner differentiation or inner complexification into a complex, yet individual and more or less uniform being – as into nature in the sense of deus sive natura, into the system of the cosmos as a being, a gigantic thing-in-itself, “the universe considered as one big lump” (https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2023/01/86512/) – but this one being must at the same time (or immediately afterwards) have split or disintegrated outwardly into two or more beings (two-ness, multi-ness), into two or more things-in-itself.
This whole, the inner and outer multiplication, is the “disintegration of simple unity into a world of multiplicity. All subsequent movements were only continuations of this first one, i.e. they could be nothing else but again disintegration or further fragmentation of ideas [individual patterns of motion]” (Mainländer)
Summarized conclusion of the fourth and fifth deductions:
Instead of dead individuals and a living God, there are living individuals and a dead God.
Here are four quotes to help explain B 1 from the first two deductions:
(1) “The Supreme does not create out of nothing. Ex nihilo nihil fit—out of nothing nothing comes. He produces from His Own eternal nature and eternal wisdom, wherein all things dwell in a latent condition, all contrasts exist in a hidden or non-manifest state.” (W. P. SWAINSON – JACOB BOEHME. THE TEUTONIC PHILOSOPHER)
(2) “Classical theists hold that God created the world ex nihilo, out of nothing. This phrase carries a privative, not a positive, sense: it means not out of something as opposed to out of something called ‘nothing.’ This much is crystal clear. Less clear is how creation ex nihilo (CEN), comports, if it does comport, with the following hallowed principle:
ENN: Ex nihilo nihit fit. Nothing comes from nothing.
My present problem is this: If (ENN) is true, how can (CEN) be true? How can God create out of nothing if nothing can come from nothing? It would seem that our two principles form an inconsistent dyad. How solve it?
It would be unavailing to say that God, being omnipotent, can do anything, including making something come out of nothing. For omnipotence, rightly understood, does not imply that God can do anything, but that God can do anything that it is possible to do.
God does not create out of pre-given matter, essences, or mere possibilia. But if God creates out of nothing distinct from himself, this formulation allows that, in some sense, God creates ex Deo, out of himself. Creating the world out of himself, God creates the world out of nothing distinct from himself. In this way, (CEN) and (ENN) are rendered compatible.” (Maverick Philosopher – Creation ex nihilo or ex deo)
(3) “If the world (as effect) emerges neither from sheer nothingness [...] nor from any pre-existent some-thing, it seems that the world must emerge ex deo – i.e. from God[.] [...] [Thomas] Aquinas seems to reject this conclusion when, for example, he castigates David of Dinant for teaching the ‘absurd thesis’ that God is prime matter. [...] As long as we are careful, however, not to assume that a material cause has to be some kind of physical ‘stuff’, there seems to be no reason why we cannot speak of God being the ‘material cause’ of the world: i.e., the innermost Cause that provides the whole substantial reality of the creature.” (Daniel Soars - Creation in Aquinas: ex nihilo or ex deo?)
(4)
“[I]t’s appealing to hold that there must be not only an efficient cause of the universe but also pre-existent stuff out of which the creator (say, God) created it. This gives us a ‘Pre-existent Stuff Principle’ (PSP) that is also quite attractive: necessarily, for anything that begins to exist, there is pre-existent stuff out of which it is made.
...
[T]he notion of ‘being made out of’ pre-existent stuff is fairly clear. The house that was built at t is made out of mortar and bricks that existed before t. At the moment when the zygote comes into existence, it is made out of particles that were previously found in its parents’ sperm and egg.
…
The Pre-existent Stuff Principle tells us that, necessarily, for anything that comes into existence, it comes into existence out of some pre-existing stuff.
…
If the universe has a beginning, then the PSP would require that the pre-existent stuff is non-spatial and non-physical, since all of space and all physical objects came into existence with the universe.
…
At least, if the universe (or multiverse) does in fact have a beginning, then the pre-existent stuff would have to be immaterial.
…
[T]he proclamation that God creates the universe ex nihilo is at odds with the PSP, and this presents a problem for the creation ex nihilo view. The first problem is simply that the PSP has (at least some) intuitive force; hence, creation ex nihilo doesn’t sit comfortably with such an intuition.
…
One alternative is to hold that God created the universe out of some stuff that was distinct from God. But this is a move unavailable to those Christians that agree with the Nicene Creed that God is the ‘creator of all things visible and invisible.’ A remaining alternative is then to hold that God created out of Himself—out
of some stuff that makes up His being.
…
If God
didn’t create ex nihilo, from what pre-existent stuff did He create? Two remaining
options are to say either that God created it from some immaterial stuff that
just happened to be lying around, or to say that God created it out of Himself.
…
Even though
the Creed says that God is the creator ‘of all things visible and invisible,’
we should at least grant that God Himself gets immunity from the claim—surely
we’re not committed to claiming that God created Himself.
…
The believer in God needn’t commit herself to the seemingly baffling claim that the universe was created without pre-existent stuff from which it was made. God could just as well have created it out of Himself.” (Michael Tze-Sung Longenecker - A Theory of Creation Ex Deo)
These four points can easily be adapted and applied to Mainlander's philosophy.
More on this topic: Plotinus, for example, is very concerned to ensure that the One remains undiminished as it gives rise to the world of multiplicity. The idea that the first metaphysical principle could perish or disappear was an impossible thought for the ancient Greeks. Their way of thinking confronted this possibility with a great, dogmatic (insurmountable) mental barrier. There is a German saying for this kind of mentality, taken from a poem by Christian Morgenstern: Weil … nicht sein kann, was darf nicht sein. For … that which must not, cannot be. [transl. by Max Knight] That's what you say when you don't want to acknowledge a fact because it goes against your interests.
The Plotinus expert Eyjólfur K. Emilsson states: “[S]omehow, everything is in the One but there it is totally indistinct and undifferentiated[.]” (Eyjólfur K. Emilsson – Plotinus) Wouldn't it be plausible to think that everything indistinct and undifferentiated in the One must be made distinct and differentiated if a real world of multiplicity is to come about, and that such making distinct and differentiating can only take place within the One? Shouldn't it then be that the One loses everything of itself because it is absolute simplicity?
God's Existence “portions” Itself by self-determination, self-limitation, and in a single stroke the created things come into being. However, the idea of dividing or limiting the Infinite (Non-Finite) in order to describe the creation of things inevitably leads to God limiting Himself without residue, so that He completely annihilates Himself. Why is this so? Because God is not only infinite (not finite) but also absolutely simple.
Let us take John Damascene's conception of God as an aid, quoted by Aquinas in ST. I. 13. 11:
“…for comprehending all in itself, [God] contains existence itself as an infinite and indeterminate sea of substance[.]”
From this sea, you can scoop up the things of the world, but you have to understand this sea as spaceless so that there can only be one instance of scooping up, so to speak. So concrete things or individuals are to be understood as finitizations of an infinite realm. But this infinite realm, because of its simplicity, cannot limit or finitize itself partially, but only totally, in its entirety.
This is a rational and (by philosophical standards) comprehensible explanation of the transformation of the basic unity into the world of multiplicity.
That is why, in the words of Sebastian Gardner, we must speak of “a vanished One possessed of absolute simple individuality” or “a One which is transcendent, pre-mundane, and defunct.”
I would now like to comment briefly on a few passages by David Bentley Hart from THE EXPERIENCE OF GOD BEING, CONSCIOUSNESS, BLISS. First the passages:
According to Bentley Hart, one can say in accordance with the philosophical tradition, “that created things exist by subtraction: that is, they are finite and somewhat diffuse expressions of an infinite and indivisible reality, and their individual essences are simply special limits graciously set to the boundless power of being that flows from God, special definite modes in which God condescends to share his infinitely expressive plenitude. Or—one more very venerable metaphor—God is the infinite “ocean of being” while creatures are finite vessels containing existence only in limited measure.”
The word subtraction comes from the Latin subtrahere and means as much as: carry off, take away. So, to carry off or take away from God, I guess. There is no other way to make sense. The boundless power of being and God should be identical, shouldn't they? Hart also uses the word condescend regarding God. What does the dictionary say: (1) to descend to a less formal or dignified level: UNBEND; (2) to waive the privileges of rank. Then it should read: God gives of his simplicity (which is his being) in sharing “to waive the privileges of rank”. Hart should not do things by halves with his metaphors, unless he is using them as window dressing. If we take the metaphors more seriously, on the verge of becoming literal, we come closer to what I want to argue.
The infinite “ocean of being” is in itself spaceless. The spatial vessels contain water from this ocean, which should be drained by now.
Schopenhauer clarifies the actual meaning of infinite and finite:
“Finite and infinite are concepts that have significance only in relation to space and time, in that both are infinite, i.e., endless, as well as infinitely divisible. If one still were to apply these two concepts to other objects, then the latter must be such as fill space and time and partake of their qualities. From this we are able to measure how great is the abuse perpetrated with these concepts by philosophasters and windbags in this century.” (Parerga and Paralipomena, Volume 2, Chapter 13, On philosophy and its method. §20 Annotations)
Now another section from Bentley Hart:
“And if [God's “particular spiritual intentions (acts of will and knowledge, that is) toward finite things”] somehow “determine” anything about who God is, it certainly could not be a passive determination in any sense, but an eternal act of self-determination or self-expression. More important, they would certainly add nothing new in the order of real being to God, since the “subtracted” reality of finite things is always already embraced within the infinitely fuller reality of divine being.”
However:
“[T]he One is […] neither determinate nor manifold[.]” (Dominic J. O'Meara – Plotinus: An Introduction to the Enneads)
“[T]he One is […] without form or determination[.]” (Dominic J. O'Meara – Plotinus: An Introduction to the Enneads)
A divine act of self-determination logically leads to self-abolition.
Hart again:
“In the end, the crucial question is whether any of the relations that finite contingencies have to God’s infinite absolute being require alterations in God himself; and the traditional assumption is that God is not like some finite bounded substance that undergoes change as a result of external forces but is the transcendent source of the actuality of all substances and forces, and so he does not receive anything from “outside” himself, for everything is always in him and already realized in his own essence in an immeasurably more eminent way.”
My argument most plausibly assumes a total alteration. And it is rationally stronger than Bentley Hart's.
His last paragraph:
“[W]e can observe the divine simplicity’s plural expressions and effects in contingent things, and from those abstract toward the reality of their unconditioned source. But, in the end, how that simplicity might be “modulated” within itself is strictly unimaginable for us. At that uncrossable intellectual threshold, religions fall back upon inscrutable doctrines, philosophers upon inadequate concepts, and mystics upon silence. “Si comprehendis, non est deus,” as Augustine says: If you comprehend it, it is not God.”
I have the impression that Hart left the question of an alteration in God somehow ambivalent. He has, of course, the clear tendency or conviction towards God's complete untouchability and perpetual intactness, but he is apparently aware of the more or less justified theoretical problems raised by the critics. But if God allows even the slightest touch on Him, the slightest modulation, then the game is over for God. Hart can only play the Mystery Card and may become angry and pushy when confronted.
He will not be able to deny the plausibility and not insignificant probability of the following points:
1. There is in fact a state of affairs wherein God exists alone, ontologically prior to creation.
2. The universe began to exist. So the past must be finite in duration.
3. The finite past must, therefore, stop at an eternal being from which the first temporal being should have originated.
3. God is unity itself.
4. All possible creation exists undifferentiated in God (ontologically prior to creation).
5. Creatio ex nihilo can only be understood as creatio ex deo.
6. If something that is not God comes out of God, then in order for the creatio ex deo to really make sense, something must happen to God in the coming out of that which is not God.
7. Since God is unity itself, His change does not allow for degrees. There is only an all or nothing.
The following quote mentions a theological problem in case one wants to assume that God has parts:
“There’s an objection—I’ll call it the ‘Injury Problem’—that I think poses a larger problem for the claim that God creates out of His proper parts. The objection is this: if the x’s are proper parts of God and God creates the universe out of the x’s, then God loses whatever functions or features the x’s conferred on God. And this would make God worse off or lessened. For instance, if Michelangelo created the statue of David not out of a block of marble but out of the flesh and bone in his right foot, Michelangelo would no longer be able to walk as he once did. It would seem that something just as injurious to God would take place if He were to create out of Himself. Perhaps we could reply that God creates out of parts that don’t really contribute to God’s properties or functions. But this response seems unappealing and ad hoc, for why did God have those parts in the first place and in what sense are they really parts of Him if they don’t really serve any function? A different response is to say that God could heal Himself—replace those parts from which He created the universe with new parts. But the problem (and the injury) would just be pushed back to where those parts were taken from.” (Michael Tze-Sung Longenecker - A Theory of Creation Ex Deo)
So, wouldn't creating from His parts diminish or weaken Him and ultimately destroy Him anyway? Because every part contributes to the whole. If even the smallest part is missing, the whole perishes.
Whether He is partless or has parts, creation entails the end of God.
At times, Mainländer seems to suggest that he assumes that God has parts, and speaks of two parts: “supra-essence”, “reposing in a particular supra-being” (Romuss translation). One cannot exist without the other if God is to exist. Both contribute to the unity of God. In creation, however, a part must be sacrificed through transformation. When this happens, God is also destroyed.
But this difference, as I would interpret it, only exists in relation to our mind. Without this hypothetical difference, God would be indistinguishable for us from absolute nothingness.
Here is the explanation of C 1 from the second deduction:
The idea that God cannot possibly create free beings goes back to Schopenhauer:
“Everything that is also is something, has an essence, a constitution, a character; it must be active, must act (which means to be active according to motives) when the external occasions arise that call forth its individual manifestations. The source of its existence is also the source of its What, its constitution, its essence, since both differ conceptually, but in reality cannot be separated. However, what has an essence, that is, a nature, a character, a constitution, can only be active in accordance with it and not in any other way; merely the point in time and the particular form and constitution of the individual actions are each time determined by the occurring motives. That the creator created human beings free implies an impossibility, namely that he endowed them with an existence without essence, thus had given them existence merely in the abstract by leaving it up to them what they wanted to exist as.” (§13. Some further elucidations on the Kantian philosophy Parerga and Paralipomena Short Philosophical Essays Volume 1 Arthur Schopenhauer)
“The truth, however, is that being free and being created are two qualities that cancel and thus contradict one another. So the claim that God has created beings and at the same time given them freedom of the will really means that he created them and at the same time did not create them. For acting follows from being, that is, the effects, or actions, of any possible thing can never be anything else but the consequence of its constitution, which itself is known only through the effects. Therefore, in order to be free in the sense here demanded, a being would have to have no constitution at all, in other words, be nothing at all, thus be and at the same time not be. For what is must be something; an existence without essence cannot even be thought. If a being is created, then it is created in the way it is constituted; thus it is created badly if it is constituted badly, and constituted badly if it acts badly, meaning, having bad effects.” (§9. Scotus Erigena Parerga and Paralipomena Short Philosophical Essays Volume 1 Arthur Schopenhauer)
So, one could say that God's freedom in a sense precedes his being. Basically, God's uncreated nature or being is his freedom.
More Schopenhauer:
“The penetrating intelligence of Augustine did not fail to notice a most serious difficulty, which is so hard to remove that, as far as I know, all later philosophers with the exception of three, whom for this reason we shall soon examine more closely, have preferred to steal around it quietly, as if it did not exist. But Augustine utters it with noble sincerity in a quite straightforward fashion right in the introductory words of his books On Free Will: “Tell me, pray, whether God is not the author of evil?” And then more extensively in the second chapter: “But the mind is troubled by the problem: if sins come from the souls which God has created, and those souls are from God, how comes it that sins are not, at a slight remove, to be thrown back upon God?” To this the interlocutor replies: ”Now you have put clearly what I have been racking my brain to think out.” This highly dubious consideration was taken up again by Luther and brought out with the full force of his eloquence: “But that God must be such that he subjects us to necessity in virtue of his freedom, even natural reason must admit.—If we grant that God is omniscient and omnipotent, then it follows obviously and incontestably that we did not create ourselves, do not live nor do anything through ourselves, but only through his omnipotence.—God’s omniscience and omnipotence are diametrically opposed to the freedom of our will.—All men are inevitably compelled to admit that we become what we are not through our will but through necessity, that we therefore cannot do what we please in virtue of a freedom of will, but rather do what God has foreseen and brings about through inevitable and irrevocable decision and will.” (Schopenhauer, Arthur. Essay on the Freedom of the Will Dover Philosophical Classics)
Classical theism, here exemplified by the popular Catholic philosopher Edward Feser, presents an implausible picture of human freedom in relation to creatureliness:
“Dr. Feser might say that human beings have free will in the same sense characters in a novel have free will. As he mentioned in Five Proofs,
Consider once again the analogy with the author of a story. Suppose it is a crime novel and that one of the characters carefully plots the murder of another, for financial gain. We would naturally say that he commits the murder of his own free will, and is therefore justly punished after being caught at the end of the novel. It would be silly to say: ‘Well, he didn’t really commit the murder of his own free will. For he committed it only because the author wrote the story that way.’ The author’s writing the story the way he did is not inconsistent with the character’s having freely committed the murder. It’s not comparable to (say) some further character in the story hypnotizing the murderer and thereby getting him to commit the crime—something which would be inconsistent with the murder having been committed freely. If we got to a point in the book where such hypnotism was revealed, we would say ‘Ah, so it wasn’t an act of free will after all.’ But we don’t say that when we reflect on the fact that the story had an author. It is perfectly coherent to say that the author wrote a story in which someone freely chooses to commit a murder.
As you can imagine, there are several problems with this. First, to say that “characters in this novel only behave according to the will of the author” might be silly, but it isn’t wrong. We call such a statement silly because most of us already know that all the characters in a novel are figments of the author’s imagination and do exactly what the author says. Fictional characters and mere figments of the imagination cannot truly have free will, but we pretend they do—suspend our disbelief—in order to enjoy fiction. To say that fictional characters have free will in the context of a story is to admit they do not have free will in reality. But Feser isn’t talking about fiction here, he is ostensibly talking about the world we live in. And if the real world is analogous to a story written by God, to say we have free will in the context of that “story” is to admit we don’t actually have it in an objective sense.
This is easy to understand by looking at how we criticize novels and other works of fiction. Take Star Wars, for instance. The character Jar-Jar Binks was notoriously annoying, loathed by nearly everybody who watched The Phantom Menace, and George Lucas was excoriated for writing such a stupid alien. It would not have made any sense for Lucas to defend himself by saying, “It’s not my fault! In the context of the story, Jar-Jar freely chose to act stupid and annoying, it wasn’t like he was being controlled by a Sith or anything!” Nobody would take such a defense seriously, because regardless of how characters within a story might be expected to react to other characters in that story, as a matter of what is true in the real world, everything the characters do is ultimately determinate upon the author’s will. The story might be constructed in such a way that its characters seem like they have free will, but by dint of being a story constructed by an author, that free will is ultimately an illusion. If it were not, no-one could ever criticize the plotting or characterization of any novel or script because the author would be able to blame all of his mistakes on the characters.” (Laird, Gunther. The Unnecessary Science: A Critical Analysis of Natural Law Theory.)
We cannot deny the principle of the sufficient reason:
“Common sense and science alike suppose that there are explanations for the existence of the things we encounter, the attributes things exhibit, and the events that occur.
Even when we don’t find an explanation, we don’t doubt that there is one, and we often at least do have an explanation of the fact that we don’t have an explanation of whatever it is we are investigating.”
“But does everything in fact have an explanation, even if it’s an explanation we haven’t discovered and never will discover? The thesis that this is the case is known as the principle of sufficient reason, or PSR for short.”
“That the world is as orderly and intelligible as it is would be a miracle if PSR were not true.”
“To reject PSR is to undermine the possibility of any rational inquiry.” (Edward Feser - Five Proofs of the Existence of God)
But then the principle of sufficient reason must also apply to human action:
“If it is necessary to posit a sufficient reason, or “ground” (Grund), for every event, then such a ground must be thought to exist for all of the will's choices as well. But if we can in principle always find a reason to explain the will's choice of a particular action, we are also capable of showing that the action in question had to be chosen and that its opposite was rejected with equal necessity. In this case, however, it is also shown that the will did not make a free, undetermined choice at all. In other words, if the principle of sufficient reason holds universally, then it must apply even to determinations of the will, but the existence of this kind of ground for the will's actions seems to be incompatible with the undetermined choice necessary for a conception of human freedom.” (Frederick Neuhouser – Fichte's Theory of Subjectivity)
Otherwise, there would be actions that would be incomprehensible and yet not really free:
“An act of pure spontaneity on the part of a rational being, if such a thing were possible, would also be a pure brute event, without teleology or rational terminus, rather like a natural catastrophe. The will in such an eventuality would be nothing but a sort of spasmodic ebullition, emptily lurching toward—or, really, just lurching aimlessly in the direction of—one chance object or another, without any true purpose.” (Hart, David Bentley. That All Shall Be Saved)
For Thomas Aquinas, God is the final cause of action:
“Since nature works for a determinate end under the direction of a higher agent, whatever is done by nature must needs be traced back to God, as to its first cause. So also whatever is done voluntarily must also be traced back to some higher cause other than human reason or will[.]” (https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1002.htm)
So, God cannot create truly free beings:
“This divine determinism toward the transcendent Good, then, is precisely what freedom is for a rational nature. Even God could not create a rational being not oriented toward the Good, any more than he could create a reality in which 2 + 2 = 5.” (Hart, David Bentley. That All Shall Be Saved)
After all:
“Do you think that Thomas' account of free will is an adequate response to (what may be called) Socratic determinism? i.e. that we act to that which seems most good, and that this is out of our control, ultimately. I don't see a way out of this within Aristotelianism.” (Internet find, source can no longer be determined)
Intellect, by its very nature, always seeks the best and finds, at worst, what seems best to its individual bearer and, at best, what is objectively best. And the will, by its very nature, is always directed towards what the intellect judges to be good in the sense of the best option.
Here are more insightful quotes from Bentley Hart:
“[I]f a rational creature—one whose mind is entirely unimpaired and who has the capacity truly to know the substance and the consequences of the choice confronting him or her—is allowed, without coercion from any force extrinsic to his or her nature, to make a choice between a union with God in bliss that will utterly fulfill his or her nature in its deepest yearnings and a separation from God that will result in endless suffering and the total absence of his or her nature’s satisfaction, only one truly free choice is possible. A fool might thrust his hand into the flame; only a lunatic would not then immediately withdraw it. To say that the only sane and therefore free natural end of the will is the Good is no more problematic than to say that the only sane and therefore free natural end of the intellect is Truth. Rational spirit could no more will evil on the grounds that it is truly evil than the intellect could believe something on the grounds that it is certainly false. So, yes, there is an original and ultimate divine determinism of the creature’s intellect and will, and for just this reason there is such a thing as true freedom in the created realm.” (Hart, David Bentley. That All Shall Be Saved)
“For those who worry that this all amounts to a kind of metaphysical determinism of the will, I may not be able to provide perfect comfort. Of course it is a kind of determinism, but only at the transcendental level, and only because rational volition must be determinate to be anything at all.” (Hart, David Bentley. That All Shall Be Saved)
“There must be a “why” in any free choice, a sufficient reason for making it, a general longing that makes each specific choice possible, as leading toward some kind of happiness.
You prove this every time you choose a salad at lunch rather than a plate of broken glass. I desire a particular work of art, say, because I have a deeper and more original longing for beauty, which that particular artwork can partially satisfy; and this ultimate horizon of desire for beauty gives me an index for that evaluation, judgment, and choice.” (https://www.abc.net.au/religion/david-bentley-hart-obscenity-of-belief-in-eternal-hell/13356388)
“What, then, of the claim that hell could be the ultimate free choice of a rational spiritual nature? It is meaningless. To the very degree that a rational creature might reject the one transcendent reality that can alone satisfy its deepest needs and desires, that creature is in bondage. An injured, damaged, and deluded person might behave in such a manner, but never a free person. Freely, sanely, deliberatively to elect misery forever rather than bliss would be a form of madness. To call that madness freedom, in order to soothe our consciences and to continue to reconcile ourselves to a picture of reality that is morally absurd, is to talk gibberish.” (https://www.abc.net.au/religion/david-bentley-hart-obscenity-of-belief-in-eternal-hell/13356388)
If there is no real choice between absolute good and absolute evil, provided that consciousness is not clouded and judgement is not corrupted, then any small choice, such as between over-sweetened chocolate pudding and an organic apple, cannot be a free choice. Why not? Because the lesser or insignificant choice always imitates the greater or important one, and the absolute good is always taken as the standard. If my blood values are not very good, if I have recently eaten a lot of chocolate, if I am watching my figure, if I like apples very much and know that they are healthy, if I have not eaten an apple for a long time, and so on, then in clear consciousness and without any disturbance of judgement I have to choose the apple. There is no real choice. There is only a definite action.
If you offer a homeless man a choice between 5 cents and $50, and have him say in a solemn tone that he will choose freely and without coercion, it is clear which choice he will make, a choice made of his own volition and yet within the nexus of necessity.
Accordingly, there can be no real and true alternatives in the world. Any alternative would be a mere fiction in the minds of people who think in speculative or hypothetical subjunctive ways. In human action, there are no alternatives:
“There must be a “why” in any free choice, a sufficient reason for making it, a general longing that makes each specific choice possible, as leading toward some kind of happiness.
You prove this every time you choose a salad at lunch rather than a plate of broken glass. I desire a particular work of art, say, because I have a deeper and more original longing for beauty, which that particular artwork can partially satisfy; and this ultimate horizon of desire for beauty gives me an index for that evaluation, judgment, and choice.” (https://www.abc.net.au/religion/david-bentley-hart-obscenity-of-belief-in-eternal-hell/13356388)
“What, then, of the claim that hell could be the ultimate free choice of a rational spiritual nature? It is meaningless. To the very degree that a rational creature might reject the one transcendent reality that can alone satisfy its deepest needs and desires, that creature is in bondage. An injured, damaged, and deluded person might behave in such a manner, but never a free person. Freely, sanely, deliberatively to elect misery forever rather than bliss would be a form of madness. To call that madness freedom, in order to soothe our consciences and to continue to reconcile ourselves to a picture of reality that is morally absurd, is to talk gibberish.” (https://www.abc.net.au/religion/david-bentley-hart-obscenity-of-belief-in-eternal-hell/13356388)
If there is no real choice between absolute good and absolute evil, provided that consciousness is not clouded and judgement is not corrupted, then any small choice, such as between over-sweetened chocolate pudding and an organic apple, cannot be a free choice. Why not? Because the lesser or insignificant choice always imitates the greater or important one, and the absolute good is always taken as the standard. If my blood values are not very good, if I have recently eaten a lot of chocolate, if I am watching my figure, if I like apples very much and know that they are healthy, if I have not eaten an apple for a long time, and so on, then in clear consciousness and without any disturbance of judgement I have to choose the apple. There is no real choice. There is only a definite action.
If you offer a homeless man a choice between 5 cents and $50, and have him say in a solemn tone that he will choose freely and without coercion, it is clear which choice he will make, a choice made of his own volition and yet within the nexus of necessity.
Accordingly, there can be no real and true alternatives in the world. Any alternative would be a mere fiction in the minds of people who think in speculative or hypothetical subjunctive ways. In human action, there are no alternatives:
“To a given man under given circumstances, are two actions possible, or only one?—The answer of all who think deeply: only one.” (Schopenhauer, Arthur. Essay on the Freedom of the Will)
Here the same in other words from another work by Schopenhauer:
“Freedom of will means (not in the verbiage of professors of philosophy, but) ‘that two different actions are possible for a given human in a given situation’. But the complete absurdity of this assertion is a truth as certainly and clearly demonstrated as can be any truth outside the realm of pure mathematics.” (Arthur Schopenhauer – On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason)
Mainländer compares the monotheistic God with a cat that has created a mouse, i.e., a determinate living being, to play sadistically with it. A wise God would hardly want to accept the role of a cat whose mouse creation has no real freedom and reacts only necessarily to His will:
“The individual is, as it were, a mouse that the cat has first created and then lets run as she, the cat, pleases, sometimes to the right, sometimes to the left, sometimes straight ahead, sometimes back. But the cat never loses sight of the mouse. Sporadically, she digs her claws into the flesh of the mouse to remind it that it is nothing. Finally, she proves it to it without any time for a reply: she simply bites off its head.” (Mainländer)
Indeed, the Bible does seem to represent somehow a feline image of God, although some mice are spared and even rewarded:
Jeremia 10,23: I know, O Lord, that the way of man is not in himself, that it is not in man who walks to direct his steps.
Proverbs 21,1: The king’s heart is in the hand of the LORD, like the rivers of water; He turns it wherever He wishes.
Exodus 4,21: The Lord said to Moses, “When you return to Egypt, see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders I have given you the power to do. But I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go.
Philippians 2,13: For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.
Romans 8,28: And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
Romans 8,29: For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.
Romans 8,30: And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.
Romans 9, 15: For he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.
Romans 9, 16: So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy.
Romans 9, 18: So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.
Genesis 6,6: And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.
Genesis 6,7: And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.
More: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Examples_of_God_personally_killing_people
Romans 8,30: And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.
Romans 9, 15: For he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.
Romans 9, 16: So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy.
Romans 9, 18: So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.
Genesis 6,6: And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.
Genesis 6,7: And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.
More: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Examples_of_God_personally_killing_people
Further general remarks on all points follow:
Western philosophy has made the mistake of thinking that whatever exists perfectly necessarily wants to exist or to remain existing. But it is not a logical contradiction, because it is only a question of value, that the perfect being, despite its perfection, can choose non-being. God may well “conclude” (in a non-conceptual, non-discursive and timeless way) that non-being is better than any form of being, even the divine one.
Absolute nothingness is not a positive comparative value to absolute being, it is simply its negation. Logically, nothingness cannot be something that possesses qualities of excellence, since, on the one hand, nothingness only points to the absence of everything (that is not nothing), and, on the other hand, all these qualities are already contained in God eminently, that is, with the highest degree of fulfillment.
However, the absolute best might still be worth nothing. That is to say: For the most perfect being, it might be “better” not to be than to be, in an unfathomable negative sense. Or: From the Absolute Being's standpoint, Its Negation and Absence may seem valuable. No logical contradiction here.
Buddhism, now culturally very influential (and that cannot be a mere coincidence, nor can it be meaningless), is definitely in line with Mainländer’s thinking, unlike Hinduism:
“There was a definite shift of values when Buddhism emerged from Hinduism. Even though both groups retained the concept of Nirvana, the definition of Nirvana shifted from being merged with ultimate reality to extinction.” (Yancey, George; Quosigk, Ashlee – One Faith No Longer)
Even Christianity, in certain respects and to a limited extent, namely the voluntary death on the cross of the Son of God, does not seem as far removed from Mainländer as some might think:
“[John] Donne […] wrote Biathanatos, a defense of outright suicide in which Jesus himself is chief among the exemplary suicides of the past. Biathanatos—so daring in its day that it could be published only after Donne’s death—is a tour de force of authentic intellectual passion. A fiercely brilliant scholar who once confessed a "sickely inclination" to become a biathanatos (that is, a suicide: the Greek word means “one dead by violence, especially self-inflicted”), Donne was paradoxically strengthened by his pathology to trace Christian martyrdom to its source in the suicide of God Incarnate. […]”
“[…] Christ” might be “a suicide by metaphysical definition, whether or not he is a suicide in some more ordinary sense of the word. That is, if Jesus is God Incarnate, then no one can have taken his life away from him against his wishes. His suicide is, in this regard, as deeply built into the Christian story as the doctrine of the Incarnation. Thus, for Thomas Aquinas, Jesus was the cause of his own death as truly as a man who declines to close a window during a rainstorm is the cause of his own drenching. Thomas strongly implies, moreover, that those who actually killed Jesus, or conspired to kill him, were less than fully responsible agents, that they were tools in the hand of God, a species of human rainstorm drenching God because God wished to be drenched. There is support for the latter view in the New Testament itself. From the cross, Jesus says of his executioners, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do" (Luke 23:34). Peter, preaching in the Temple after Jesus’ death, says, "Now I know, brothers, that neither you nor your leaders had any idea what you were really doing; but this was the way God carried out what he had foretold when he said through all his prophets that his Christ would suffer" (Acts 3:17–18).” (Jack Miles – Christ: a crisis in the life of God)
And cosmological proofs of God do not necessarily lead to a God who still exists:
“Even if valid, the first-cause argument is capable only of demonstrating the existence of a mysterious first cause in the distant past. It does not establish the present existence of the first cause. On the basis of this argument, there is no reason to assume that the first cause still exists — which cuts the ground from any attempt to demonstrate the truth of theism by this approach.” (George H. Smith – Atheism. The Case Against God)
“Indeed, why should God not be the originator and now no longer exist? After all, a mother causes a child but then dies.” (Peter Cole – Philosophy of Religion)
“This world […] is the production of old age and dotage in some superannuated deity; and ever since his death has run on at adventures, from the first impulse and active force which it received from him….” (David Hume – Dialogues concerning Natural Religion Part V)
Moreover, a postulated or even reasoned necessity of the existence of God probably does not exclude the possibility of His self-annihilation:
“What about the necessary existence of God? I have already suggested that what is metaphysically necessary is God’s initial existence. I see no reason to hold that God necessarily continues to exist. That is, I hold God had the power to bring a universe into being and then cease to exist, while the universe went on.” (Peter Forrest – Developmental Theism: From Pure Will to Unbounded Love)
“[T]he reasons given for believing that there is a necessary and simple being are only reasons for holding that, necessarily, at some time, there exists such a being. There is nothing incoherent in the idea that there was a first moment of Time, and that everything that was the case then was necessarily the case, including the existence of a simple being. That leaves open the possibility that this being might change or even cease to exist, contrary to classical theism.” (Peter Forrest – Developmental Theism: From Pure Will to Unbounded Love)
This depends on a certain conception of time:
“Here is a brief history of God. There is a first moment of Time, at which God exists but nothing else […]. God has the power never to act. If God had never acted, that one moment would have been, as it were, the whole of Time. In that case, strictly speaking, there would have been no Time. […] For Time, I take it, is characterized by the before/after relation between its parts. As it is, there is a succession of other moments. Brian Leftow has pointed out that if you are the only person at the counter, you are not a queue, and that Time is like a queue in that respect. But as soon as someone else comes along, there is a queue, and you are at the head of it (Leftow 2002). Likewise, if there are no other moments because God chooses to do nothing, then that moment is timeless. Yet if God acts, there is then at least one other moment, and so there is Time.” (Peter Forrest – Developmental Theism: From Pure Will to Unbounded Love)
Mainländer could be described as a kind of neoclassical theism:
“1. The classical conception is of God as necessarily existing at all times, whereas the neoclassical is of God as necessarily existing initially.
2. Both can make the claim to divine simplicity.” [“simplicity in the sense of being structure-free”] (Peter Forrest – Developmental Theism: From Pure Will to Unbounded Love)
So, many cosmological arguments (Kalam, Contingency) only lead to God as a starting point, but not to a still present God.
Mainländer could be described as a kind of neoclassical theism:
“1. The classical conception is of God as necessarily existing at all times, whereas the neoclassical is of God as necessarily existing initially.
2. Both can make the claim to divine simplicity.” [“simplicity in the sense of being structure-free”] (Peter Forrest – Developmental Theism: From Pure Will to Unbounded Love)
So, many cosmological arguments (Kalam, Contingency) only lead to God as a starting point, but not to a still present God.
That the universe had a beginning is now overwhelmingly supported by all the evidence from empirical and theoretical physics:
“The discovery that the universe is not static, but rather expanding, has profound philosophical and religious significance, because it suggested that our universe had a
beginning. A beginning implies creation, and creation stirs emotions.” (Lawrence M. Krauss – A universe from nothing: why there is something rather than nothing)
And:
“But as far as we can tell, in models that address entropy, there must have been a ‘beginning.’ There is a point for which there is no answer to the question, ‘What came before that?’” (https://www.buffalo.edu/news/releases/2022/08/005.html)
The advantage of Mainländer's conception is that one no longer has to worry about a transcendence coexisting with the world, whose influences would be incomprehensible to us. With Mainländer there is only one reality, the pure comprehensible immanence:
beginning. A beginning implies creation, and creation stirs emotions.” (Lawrence M. Krauss – A universe from nothing: why there is something rather than nothing)
And:
“But as far as we can tell, in models that address entropy, there must have been a ‘beginning.’ There is a point for which there is no answer to the question, ‘What came before that?’” (https://www.buffalo.edu/news/releases/2022/08/005.html)
The advantage of Mainländer's conception is that one no longer has to worry about a transcendence coexisting with the world, whose influences would be incomprehensible to us. With Mainländer there is only one reality, the pure comprehensible immanence:
“I […] consider the pure, immanent domain, totally freed from the spectre of transcendent essentialities, to be a second gift that I am making to the investigators of nature. How peacefully they shall be able to work in that domain!
I foresee (and I may say this, because the end result of my philosophy is the sole light which imbues my eyes and in them holds my entire will enchained): The complete separation of the immanent from the transcendent domain, the separation of God from the world and of the world from God will have the most beneficial influence on the course of humanity’s development. […]
I see the dawn of a beautiful day.” (www.synkretic.com/issues/the-philosophy-of-redemption)
Another advantage is that Mainländer's philosophy fits perfectly with the physical law of entropy. And this law is still generally accepted in physics today.
Entropy, as seen by the Intelligent Design crowd, could be understood as a teleological process:
“Entropy — the tendency for change to reduce overall order — is a teleological process. It is perhaps the overarching teleological process observable in nature.” https://evolutionnews.org/2017/08/does-nature-show-purpose-reply-to-a-materialist-philosopher/
This would have the following reason with Mainländer:
“The basic model employed by Mainländer—representing the world as the effect of a choice or decision, and to that extent as inherently purposive—is of course familiar from Leibniz and every other theist, while the evolutionary dimension recalls Schelling.” (The section on Mainländer from “The Oxford Handbook of Schopenhauer” by Sebastian Gardner)
The Simple Unity is neither personal like a human being nor impersonal like a piece of wood or stone; It transcends these categorical descriptions that we use in everyday life. But it seems analogously closer to a person than to a dead thing because it can freely and spontaneously (of its own accord) destroy itself without having to. The concept of person applied to God is largely empty, but not completely so. It is stripped of everything we understand by person in the mundane, empirical and human-psychological sense, but ultimately a highly abstract residue of personhood remains somehow. In some sense, it is even more of a person than we are because our freedom is not absolute, but is conditioned by our inner constitution (a worldly and transcendental – see comments above by Bentley Hart – determined constitution featuring parts) and by external circumstances.
Mainländer's God or Simple Unity is pure contingency. That is, it could no longer be. This must not be misunderstood. It is a contingency of whither or whereto, and not one of whence or wherefrom. That is, in all possible worlds, Mainländer's God would always be the absolute basic and starting condition. It is contingent in that it can “willfully and deliberately” cease to be, and to achieve this it can split or self-limit into something else. But it did not come into being and cannot disappear by random chance because it is logically the simplest (divine simplicity) and at the same time the 'mystically' richest (infinite fullness) being conceivable. It is pure, simple, undifferentiated, omnipotent, 'wise', 'self-aware' and creative freedom of choice to remain as it is or not to be, without any existential pressure to act, and therefore completely at ease, in peace and serenity.
For those who still believe in the impossibility of God’s irretrievable disappearance, should consider the following:
“God is whatever God is. I don’t think It is constrained by human interpretations of what it can or should be, can or should do.” (T Clark from The Philosophy Forum)
And:
“It is surely absurd for frail and fallible creatures like ourselves to put ourselves in the position of telling God what he should or should not do.” (Anthony Kenny - Christianity in Review. A History of the Faith in Fifty Books)
*If you want to be kind, considerate, and charitable to the Mystery Option and describe it in more detail, you should do so as follows. But let me say this in advance: The outcome (the alternative to God's self-destruction in creating the universe) may not be mysterious in every respect, but it will be baffling and puzzling enough to make it seem highly improbable.
“It is surely absurd for frail and fallible creatures like ourselves to put ourselves in the position of telling God what he should or should not do.” (Anthony Kenny - Christianity in Review. A History of the Faith in Fifty Books)
*If you want to be kind, considerate, and charitable to the Mystery Option and describe it in more detail, you should do so as follows. But let me say this in advance: The outcome (the alternative to God's self-destruction in creating the universe) may not be mysterious in every respect, but it will be baffling and puzzling enough to make it seem highly improbable.
If God had parts in the sense of untapped potential that He could actualize into a universe, then the universe would have been created as a quality in Him. He would not have to sacrifice those parts, an act that would hurt Him. He would simply reshape them. The disadvantage would be, as I said, that we would only be qualities or properties of God. Mainländer would call such a view pantheism.
What if God had no parts? Then He would always be supernaturally active, and the universe would be “created” in some unknown, strange way, assuming the term “created” still applies. It would be no different from creating a mirage. Why is that?
God, in this mysterious model, would be concerned only with himself, in an indivisible, unique, timeless act (this is the view of the Neoplatonists and many Scholastics). He would have no intention for anything other than himself. If he had an intention for something other than himself, then the ex deo in his creatio would have to be interpreted as meaning that he had to take something away from himself in order to make the other a reality. But I have already pointed out the fatal consequences.
So, God would be in His egotistic supernatural activity, with our world being co-eternally present as a by-product. This by-product would be like a kind of mirage. For this mirage would be at the same time something other than God and yet God himself. It is a paradox which has no solution in rationality and can only be elucidated mystically, if that is a possibility at all.
I would like to deepen the topic further based on some passages about Plotinus' One. It is well known in the history of philosophy that there is indeed a “paradox in Plotinus’ thought, whereby Nous (but also the One) is at the same time everywhere and nowhere.” (Pavlos E. Michaelides – PLOTINUS’ PHILOSOPHICAL EROS FOR THE ONE: HIS UNIO MYSTICA, ETHOS AND LEGENDARY LIFE) Mainländer might say this paradox “defies all laws of thought and reason” because it would violate the principle or law of non-contradiction.
What if God had no parts? Then He would always be supernaturally active, and the universe would be “created” in some unknown, strange way, assuming the term “created” still applies. It would be no different from creating a mirage. Why is that?
God, in this mysterious model, would be concerned only with himself, in an indivisible, unique, timeless act (this is the view of the Neoplatonists and many Scholastics). He would have no intention for anything other than himself. If he had an intention for something other than himself, then the ex deo in his creatio would have to be interpreted as meaning that he had to take something away from himself in order to make the other a reality. But I have already pointed out the fatal consequences.
So, God would be in His egotistic supernatural activity, with our world being co-eternally present as a by-product. This by-product would be like a kind of mirage. For this mirage would be at the same time something other than God and yet God himself. It is a paradox which has no solution in rationality and can only be elucidated mystically, if that is a possibility at all.
I would like to deepen the topic further based on some passages about Plotinus' One. It is well known in the history of philosophy that there is indeed a “paradox in Plotinus’ thought, whereby Nous (but also the One) is at the same time everywhere and nowhere.” (Pavlos E. Michaelides – PLOTINUS’ PHILOSOPHICAL EROS FOR THE ONE: HIS UNIO MYSTICA, ETHOS AND LEGENDARY LIFE) Mainländer might say this paradox “defies all laws of thought and reason” because it would violate the principle or law of non-contradiction.
The following passages from Plotinus detail the paradox:
“(A)… How, then, does Unity give rise to Multiplicity? By its omnipresence: there is nowhere where it is not; it occupies, therefore, all that is; at once, it is manifold- or, rather, it is all things.
If it were simply and solely everywhere, all would be this one thing alone: but it is, also, in no place, and this gives, in the final result, that, while all exists by means of it, in virtue of its omnipresence, all is distinct from it in virtue of its being nowhere.
But why is it not merely present everywhere but in addition nowhere-present?
Because, universality demands a previous unity. It must, therefore, pervade all things and make all, but not be the universe which it makes.” (THE THIRD ENNEAD. NINTH TRACTATE: DETACHED CONSIDERATIONS. Chapter 3)
And:
“The One is all things and no one of them; the source of all things is not all things; all things are its possession- running back, so to speak, to it- or, more correctly, not yet so, they will be.” (THE FIFTH ENNEAD. Second Tractate. THE ORIGIN AND ORDER OF THE BEINGS. FOLLOWING ON THE FIRST. Chapter 1)
Plotinus speaks of the One that pervades and occupies everything, and is at the same time outside of everything.
The activity of the One reminds me very much, metaphorically speaking, of the phenomenon of light-painting, or rather light-painting could serve as a more or less good analogy for understanding the One that gives rise to the multiplicity. Everyone is familiar with this on New Year's Eve, when one holds a burning or lit sparkler (the One) in one's hand and makes a rapid movement in the air, trying to imitate the drawing of a line or some other geometric figure, or even a letter or a number. Due to the limitations of our perceptive faculty, for a very short time we actually “see” a more complex structure (multiplicity), depending on what we have drawn in the air. The effect can also be captured using a camera with a longer exposure time. The “extended” letter or number in the air presupposes the “punctiform” burning sparkler, and one could, at least conceptually, distinguish the alphabetic character from the burning sparkler. But in and of itself, there is only the One Burning Sparkler.
(Actually, it doesn't have to be a sparkler to make the metaphor clear, it works in principle with almost any object that is moved quickly and incessantly.)
The following quote shows a similar picture:
“It has been suggested that the reason why every electron in the universe is identical is that there is only one, and that we perceive a cross-section of its track as it weaves backwards and forwards in time, and therefore think it many.” (Peter Atkins – The Creation)
Strictly speaking and ultimately, there is only the One, and yet somehow there is also the multiplicity of the universe. At least from a certain perspective, ours, we make a distinction, but this distinction is only conceptual, that is, in relation to our mind.
Everything is only the One's self-acting, the One acting upon itself, and this, in fact, includes our own subjective perspectives. Some might call it God's “dynamic stasis” (J. Elias Stone - Motum Dei Immobilis. In Defense of Aquinas's Doctrine of Divine)
And in an odd mystical way, the One is more than everything.
Again, if we were really something other than God, could we come out of Him without using Him up? It is sometimes said that we are not outside of him, but in him. But that clarifies nothing. What does that mean? In him. If we take it literally, we destroy divine simplicity.
It is no coincidence that a certain other metaphor or analogy to describe the emergence of the Many from the One is declared inappropriate in Plotinus' theory:
“Alternatively, one may think of Russian dolls or a telescoped antenna where what is somehow contained within the whole is separated out from it. There are certainly many texts in which Plotinus says that everything is contained within the One (see V.5.9; VI.4.2; VI.5.1.25–6). But none of these texts, or indeed no other that I know of, claims that anything is ever “outside” the One or separated off from it.
Thus, the relation between the One and everything else cannot be construed according to the above metaphors, where what is suggested is a two-phase process: first, everything is in the One, and second, everything is not in the One, but emptied out of or unfolded from it (III.8.8.46; III.8.10.6–7; V.1.3.9–12; V.5.5.1f.; VI.5.3.5; VI.9.5.37; VI.9.9.3).
Furthermore, a metaphor like that of the Russian dolls ignores a crucial disanalogy in the cases of containment. That is, though it is true that body is contained in Soul, Soul is contained in Intellect, and Intellect is contained in the One, the mode of containment is different in each case.” (Lloyd P. Gerson - Plotinus: Arguments of the Philosophers)
Schopenhauer is more honest on this whole subject than other neo-Platonists and more honest than the Scholastics. And you can use Schopenhauer because:
“The correspondences between Neoplatonism and Schopenhauer are striking, and one wonders if Schopenhauer was exposed to Neoplatonic ideas at an early age.” https://www.ljhammond.com/phlit/2003-09b.htm
And:
“Schopenhauer’s ‘Will’ is Plotinus’s One – undifferentiated power beyond comprehension.” https://philipstanfield.com/tag/arthur-schopenhauer
So:
“For Schopenhauer, our seemingly individual subjectivity is merely an epiphenomenon of the universal will, a form of its manifestation, not a fundamental or primary entity.”
“[I]ndividuality is akin to a thought that can simply be forgotten; a transitory experience arising and dissipating in something that always remains awake (i.e. conscious): the universal will itself.”
“[F]or Schopenhauer the existence of multiple individual subjects is an illusion, for “there is only one being” (W2: 321) in nature. Only the unitary, universal will is ultimately real, individual subjects being just something the will does. Individuals are experiential actions or behaviors of the will.” (All from: Kastrup, Bernardo. Decoding Schopenhauer’s Metaphysics)
Schopenhauer's One Will is “everywhere and nowhere”, “simply transcendent” (Mainländer), so that no one knows whether the individual being is a mirage of the One Will or whether it has the dignity of at least some trace of independence, some shade of being in its own right. And if the latter is true, then it is paradoxical because the One Will remains to be considered as the main explanatory and foundational factor.
Back to Plotinus:
And:
“Schopenhauer’s ‘Will’ is Plotinus’s One – undifferentiated power beyond comprehension.” https://philipstanfield.com/tag/arthur-schopenhauer
So:
“For Schopenhauer, our seemingly individual subjectivity is merely an epiphenomenon of the universal will, a form of its manifestation, not a fundamental or primary entity.”
“[I]ndividuality is akin to a thought that can simply be forgotten; a transitory experience arising and dissipating in something that always remains awake (i.e. conscious): the universal will itself.”
“[F]or Schopenhauer the existence of multiple individual subjects is an illusion, for “there is only one being” (W2: 321) in nature. Only the unitary, universal will is ultimately real, individual subjects being just something the will does. Individuals are experiential actions or behaviors of the will.” (All from: Kastrup, Bernardo. Decoding Schopenhauer’s Metaphysics)
Schopenhauer's One Will is “everywhere and nowhere”, “simply transcendent” (Mainländer), so that no one knows whether the individual being is a mirage of the One Will or whether it has the dignity of at least some trace of independence, some shade of being in its own right. And if the latter is true, then it is paradoxical because the One Will remains to be considered as the main explanatory and foundational factor.
Back to Plotinus:
“[I]t is certain that the presence of oneness in something entails the causal agency of the One and that the effect of the causal agency of the One is always oneness in the effect. Thus, for an individual to lose “the One” is for it to lose its oneness.” (Lloyd P. Gerson - Plotinus: Arguments of the Philosophers)
Individuals each show a unified character. An individual without unity would not be an individual. Now, where does this unity come from? How does the individual obtain its unity? Only God as the One can guarantee and establish unity. How does He do that? He bestows His own absolute and perfect unity or oneness upon the individual.
Considering that God is identical with His unity, the question arises whether He can give it to two individuals at the same time. Mainländer denies this, since it seems logically impossible. It is possible only if the two individuals are only seemingly individuals, that is, only if they are not genuine individuals.
Would the solution be that the One can give unity without using Itself? But that would turn the whole Platonic idea of participation on its head, and there would be the suspicion that the One does not have to be there “all the time”, and can also be “missing” “later” after having done the work of uniting.
What unity would the things of the world have if they had nothing to do with the unity of the One? Is it even possible to speak of unity without reference to the unity of the One in the Neoplatonic framework?
That things do not depend for their unity on a sustainer all the time is well argued here:
https://majestyofreason.wordpress.com/2021/07/31/so-you-think-you-understand-existential-inertia/
Individuals each show a unified character. An individual without unity would not be an individual. Now, where does this unity come from? How does the individual obtain its unity? Only God as the One can guarantee and establish unity. How does He do that? He bestows His own absolute and perfect unity or oneness upon the individual.
Considering that God is identical with His unity, the question arises whether He can give it to two individuals at the same time. Mainländer denies this, since it seems logically impossible. It is possible only if the two individuals are only seemingly individuals, that is, only if they are not genuine individuals.
Would the solution be that the One can give unity without using Itself? But that would turn the whole Platonic idea of participation on its head, and there would be the suspicion that the One does not have to be there “all the time”, and can also be “missing” “later” after having done the work of uniting.
What unity would the things of the world have if they had nothing to do with the unity of the One? Is it even possible to speak of unity without reference to the unity of the One in the Neoplatonic framework?
That things do not depend for their unity on a sustainer all the time is well argued here:
https://majestyofreason.wordpress.com/2021/07/31/so-you-think-you-understand-existential-inertia/
Mainländer elaborates:
“Pantheism is in complete logical contradiction because it teaches a simple unity behind the individuals; for, as we have seen, it is inconceivable that the world-soul should be fully contained at once in John and Greta. Modern pantheism, in order to get out of the dilemma, has thought of a clever way out by separating the efficacy or activity of the power from the power itself: i.e. the world-soul acts in the individuals without filling them. As if this violent separation, which has no basis in experience and is contrary to logic, were not a new quagmire! Where a thing acts, there it is: there is no actio in distans in any other way than a reproduction of force in real media. I speak a word, it shakes the air, it hits the ear of another, he repeats it, etc., etc.; and so, finally, my word spoken in Frankfurt can resound again in Peking, and we do indeed have an actio in distans, an effect at a distance, but not in such a way that I speak in Frankfurt and now, all of a sudden, a mandarin in Peking rushes to carry out my order.” (Mainländer)
The great theologian Thomas Aquinas also says:
“God is in all things […] as an agent is present to that upon which it works. For an agent must be joined to that wherein it acts immediately and touch it by its power; hence it is proved in Phys. vii that the thing moved and the mover must be joined together. [...] No action of an agent, however powerful it may be, acts at a distance, except through a medium. But it belongs to the great power of God that He acts immediately in all things. Hence nothing is distant from Him, as if it could be without God in itself.” (Summa Theologiae > First Part > Question 8)
But could it be that Thomas Aquinas, when pressed for further explanation, would have to accept a kind of metaphysical action from a distance? Hard to say. How else could he solve the problem raised by Mainländer? The main question is what the activity of God (exertion of power), the One, means, what exactly it consists in.
It cannot be something ontically third. It must either be equal to God (power itself) or equal to a property of the plural world (effect of the active causal power). If anything, it can only be the latter.
But if the former is accepted, then there must be a mysterious metaphysical or transcendental distance between the divine and the mundane. More precisely, if there is such a distance, “from where” do things in this philosophy derive their being and unity? From a metaphysical void?
There is no orthodox Christian distinction of essence (power itself) and energies (activity of the power as a medium) as a possible solution because we assume divine simplicity.
Plotinus made it easy for himself to avoid all problems:
But could it be that Thomas Aquinas, when pressed for further explanation, would have to accept a kind of metaphysical action from a distance? Hard to say. How else could he solve the problem raised by Mainländer? The main question is what the activity of God (exertion of power), the One, means, what exactly it consists in.
It cannot be something ontically third. It must either be equal to God (power itself) or equal to a property of the plural world (effect of the active causal power). If anything, it can only be the latter.
But if the former is accepted, then there must be a mysterious metaphysical or transcendental distance between the divine and the mundane. More precisely, if there is such a distance, “from where” do things in this philosophy derive their being and unity? From a metaphysical void?
There is no orthodox Christian distinction of essence (power itself) and energies (activity of the power as a medium) as a possible solution because we assume divine simplicity.
Plotinus made it easy for himself to avoid all problems:
“On one occasion, Plotinus implicitly opposes the principle of non-contradiction by pointedly calling the undivided presence of unity in everything “the most certain principle (bebaiotatê archê) of all” (VI 5, 1, 8f); this is what Aristotle had called the principle of non-contradiction (Met. 1005 b 11f., 171). Plotinus' formulation quoting Aristotle is thus a clear rejection of the principle of non-contradiction as the supreme principle of ontology and logic. […]
For Plotinus, the principle of non-contradiction is a principle of understanding and is primarily intended for the understanding of the separate individual things in the world of becoming; it is not suitable for the understanding of the structure of the intelligible being; in its place there is the principle of unity, which is undivided everywhere and in everything” (VI 5, 2). (Jens Halwassen - Plotin, my translation)
But who is this supposed to convince who has not yet embraced this mystical philosophy?
Be that as it may. If you would rather not accept the consequence of the most convincing version of creatio ex deo, which implies a dead God, a God who passes away with his act of creation, then only one version remains, which leads to pantheism, panentheism or divine simplicity theism. But neither pantheism or panentheism nor divine simplicity theism has good news for thinking creatures, for these remain without any power of their own, i.e. they are only puppets (panentheism, pantheism) or even puppets of illusion (divine simplicity theism).
Either a dead God and real individuals, or a living God with dead individuals? Or the impossibility of a literal creation from nothing?
Those who believe in reason as our only tool for general knowledge must prefer the dead God. Those inclined to the mystical and mysterious will be content with man's illusory agency. And those who have given up all rational consideration will have no problem with the absurd literal creation out of nothing.
Alternatively: We have the choice between ineffable mystery, magical intellectual gymnastics, and intuitive plausibility. Mainländer opts for the third one.
The old theologians opted mostly for mystery:
“Of all the great schoolmen, [Richard Cross in his book Duns Scotus on God] says, Scotus is ‘the least likely to appeal to mystery and the most likely to try to solve a problem by intellectual gymnastics’.” (Anthony Kenny - Christianity in Review. A History of the Faith in Fifty Books)
Addendum:
This is what evidence for the beginning of the universe might look like:
1) The universe is the set of all contingent things.
2) The set of all contingent things requires an explanation.
3) The explanation must be in the form of a necessary being. Necessary here means, in principle, that it cannot be explained by anything else, and it means being at least the “starting point” in all possible worlds.
4) So we have a necessary being to explain the universe.
5) A necessary being would have to be perfectly simple because anything that is not simple can be explained by something else.
6) Perfect simplicity requires omniperfection.
7) An omniperfect necessary being amounts to what is understood to be God.
7) Omniperfection may imply the freedom to cease to “be”.
8) Therefore, we do not know whether God as an omniperfect necessary being still exists.
9) There is a factual situation to be thought of in which God exists absolutely alone, ontologically prior to the creation.
10) All possible contingent creation exists undifferentiated in God, i.e., it is identical with God.
11) According to 5) God is a perfectly simple being, and according to 4) He is the Creator of the contingent universe.
12) Creatio ex nihilo can only be understood as creatio ex deo if one does not wish to throw all logic overboard.
13) If something that is not God – from an ontic understanding – somehow comes from God, then for creatio ex deo to really make sense, something must “happen” to God in His creative act; otherwise we are dealing with the impossible literal creatio ex nihilo.
14) Since God is perfect simplicity, His creative act out of Himself admits of no gradations. There is only “all” ex deo or “nothing” ex deo.
15) And since the contingent universe obviously exists, God can no longer exist, having completely consumed Himself in the act of creation.
16) The past of the universe must stop at the act of creation, which is God's (self-)destruction, and cannot go back any further.
17) Hence the universe began to exist. The past must be of finite duration.
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