The Presence of God and the Presence of Persons [1st ed. 2019] 978-3-030-25044-7, 978-3-030-25045-4

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-x
Introduction (James Kellenberger)....Pages 1-6
The Presence of Persons (James Kellenberger)....Pages 7-10
The Moral Import of Persons (James Kellenberger)....Pages 11-16
A Relationship to Persons (James Kellenberger)....Pages 17-22
An Affective Response to Persons (James Kellenberger)....Pages 23-27
The Recognition of the Inherent Worth of Persons (James Kellenberger)....Pages 29-40
The Presence of God (James Kellenberger)....Pages 41-46
The Religious Import of God (James Kellenberger)....Pages 47-50
A Relationship to God (James Kellenberger)....Pages 51-55
An Affective Response to God (James Kellenberger)....Pages 57-60
The Recognition of God (James Kellenberger)....Pages 61-65
The Presence of Persons and the Presence of God (James Kellenberger)....Pages 67-76
The Death of God and the Death of Persons (James Kellenberger)....Pages 77-85
Moral and Religio-Moral Implications (James Kellenberger)....Pages 87-92
Back Matter ....Pages 93-99

Citation preview

PALGRAVE FRONTIERS IN PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

The Presence of God and the Presence of Persons James Kellenberger

Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion

Series Editors Yujin Nagasawa Department of Philosophy University of Birmingham Birmingham, UK Erik J. Wielenberg Department of Philosophy DePauw University Greencastle, IN, USA

Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion is a long overdue series which will provide a unique platform for the advancement of research in this area. Each book in the series aims to progress a debate in the philosophy of religion by (i) offering a novel argument to establish a strikingly original thesis, or (ii) approaching an ongoing dispute from a radically new point of view. Each title in the series contributes to this aim by utilising recent developments in empirical sciences or cutting-edge research in foundational areas of philosophy (such as metaphysics, epistemology and ethics). More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14700

James Kellenberger

The Presence of God and the Presence of Persons

James Kellenberger Northridge, CA, USA

Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion ISBN 978-3-030-25044-7 ISBN 978-3-030-25045-4  (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25045-4 All quotations from the Bible and the Apocrypha are from the RSV. Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1952 [2nd edition, 1971] by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Revised Standard Version of the Bible, Apocrypha, copyright 1957; The Third and Fourth Books of the Maccabees and Psalm 151, copyright 1977 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Piotr Skubisz/Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Pivot imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

To Anne

Acknowledgements

Several of the chapters of this book use material from “The Death of God and the Death of Persons,” Religious Studies, vol. 16, 1980, which is used by permission. I am grateful to Lauriane Piette for her editorial support in the publication of this book.

vii

Contents

1 Introduction 1 2

The Presence of Persons 7

3

The Moral Import of Persons 11

4

A Relationship to Persons 17

5

An Affective Response to Persons 23

6

The Recognition of the Inherent Worth of Persons 29

7

The Presence of God 41

8

The Religious Import of God 47

9

A Relationship to God 51

10 An Affective Response to God 57 ix

x      Contents

11 The Recognition of God 61 12 The Presence of Persons and the Presence of God 67 13 The Death of God and the Death of Persons 77 14 Moral and Religio-Moral Implications 87 Bibliography 93 Index 97

1 Introduction

Abstract  In this chapter the book’s primary theme—the structural similarity between the experience of coming into the presence of God and the experience of coming into the presence of persons—is introduced, as is the secondary theme of the structural similarity between the “death of God,” a felt loss of the reality of God and his presence, and the “death of persons,” a loss of the sense of the inherent worth of persons and their presence. A main focus of this book is on persons, and this suggests an alignment with the philosophical school of personalism. However, as this chapter makes clear, the approach of this book is significantly different from personalism in its various forms. This introductory chapter concludes with a description of the subjects and concerns of the thirteen chapters that follow. Keywords  The presence of God · The presence of persons · The structural analogy between the experience of the presence of God and the experience of the presence of persons · The death of God and the death of persons · Personalism

© The Author(s) 2019 J. Kellenberger, The Presence of God and the Presence of Persons, Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25045-4_1

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2     J. Kellenberger

This book is about the presence of God and the presence of persons. The religious notion of the presence of God will be recognized by many who are acquainted with the traditions of Judaism and Christianity. The presence of persons will be less familiar. Yet the two are conceptually similar, as we will see. The two are related in that as we can speak of coming into the presence of God as is done in the Psalms, for instance in Psalm 95, so we can speak of coming into the presence of persons, although this is not a biblical notion. The first is a religious experience open to those in theistic traditions. The second is an experience open to human beings independently of religious commitment. A main thesis of this book is that the two experiences have a structural similarity that makes them analogous.1 In the nineteenth century and later the death of God became a plangent theme. In one of its meanings it too can be experienced. Another thesis of this book is that the experience of the death of God in this sense has a mirror experience that is the death of persons. Perhaps an initial word about the relationship between the concerns and the approach of this book and personalism is in order. Personalism is a school of philosophical and theological thought with both European and American roots that gives central importance to persons. In the past it has been suggested to me that I belong to this school. It is not clear to me, however, that this is an honor I can accept, though I too give central importance to persons, as this book’s discussion will make clear. Personalism is not a single well-defined set of principles, beliefs, and concerns. Rather it is a range of philosophical views, some metaphysical and some ethical, that relate in some way to persons and personhood (or “personality”). Cheikh Mbacke Gueye observes that “[d]efining personalism is a very difficult undertaking, if not an impossible one.”2 Various personalist principles or concerns that have been or are held by personalists can be identified: 1In an earlier book Relationship Morality I discussed coming into the presence of person but not coming into the presence of God and a fortiori not the structural analogy between the two. 2Cheikh Mbacke Gueye, “Introduction,” in Ethical Personalism, ed. Cheikh Mbacke Gueye (Frankfurt, Paris, Lancaster, UK, and New Brunswick, NJ: Ontos Verlag, 2011), p. 8 [electronic resource].

1 Introduction     3

Persons by their nature have dignity or inherent value. The dignity of persons provides a guiding principle for moral action. Persons should be treated as ends and not merely as means. (This principle and the first are accepted by virtually all personalists and emphasized by ethical personalists.) A concern with the concept of person. God as the Supreme Being is the Supreme Person. (Within the Christian tradition God may be imaged as a Father or as a Mother, as by Julian of Norwich; in the mystical apophatic tradition, though, God is beyond human conception.) God as a person is finite in power. (Although not held by all ­personalists, this view was espoused by the early American personalist E. S. Brightman [1884–1953], apparently in reaction to the traditional problem of evil.) The natural world is an order within the mind of God. (Held by E. S. Brightman. The debt to the idealism of George Berkeley [1685–1753] is clear. Berkeley is among the thinkers regarded as foundational to personalism.) All existence is the existence of minds or the existence of things in the experience of minds. (Held by G. H. Howison [1834–1918], another early American personalist. Again the debt to Berkeley’s idealism is clear.) Love is the proper response to other persons. (Enunciated by Karol Wojtyla [Pope John Paul II] in accord with Christian teaching. Wojtyla is counted as a personalist by many personalists, and love’s being the proper response to persons is accepted by many ethical personalists.) Insistence on a radical difference between persons (human beings) and nonpersons, such as nonhuman animals.3

3Thomas

D. Williams and Jan Olof Bengtsson, “Personalism,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, available 2018 at https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/personalism/; Thomas O. Buford, “Personalism,” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, available 2018 at https://www.iep.utm.edu/personal/; Kenneth Schmitz, “Personalism,” in New Catholic Encyclopedia Supplement 2010, ed. Robert L. Fastiggi, vol. 2 (Detroit, MI: Gale, 2010), pp. 893–897 [electronic resource]; Edgar S. Brightman, “An Empirical Approach to God,” The Philosophical Review, vol. 46, 1937, pp. 167–168 [electronic resource]; G. H. Howison, “The Right Relation of Reason to Religion,” in The Limits of Evolution and Other Essays, 2nd ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1904), p. 275 [electronic resource].

4     J. Kellenberger

The approach of this book is closest to what has been called ethical personalism, in contrast to ontological or metaphysical personalism. Ethical personalism emphasizes the inseparable dignity or inherent worth of persons and the moral necessity of not treating persons merely as means, as does this book.4 Yet there are differences. Ethical personalists deem it necessary to analyze the concept of person.5 In this book we use “person” without an accretion of analysis or any further definition, relying on our shared understanding of its commonly accepted meaning. Again, while this book shares with ethical personalism a recognition of the dignity or inherent value of persons, it is not committed to seeing that inherent value as a “guiding principle.” It is wrong to violate the inherent value of persons, but what violates the value of a person depends on many factors, including physical factors, cultural factors, individuals’ commitments and beliefs, and the relationships between persons. The inherent value of persons is more a negative test than a positive guideline for the treatment of persons. While in a prominent strain of religious sensibility in theistic traditions God may be imaged as a Divine Person in accord with the personalist view, this book recognizes that God in theistic traditions is also imaged and experienced as a Being beyond conception and human understanding in accord with a strain of religious sensibility that coexists with the other. In this book’s discussion we will have occasion to express reservations about the personalist principle that there is a radical difference between persons and nonpersons, a category that includes nonhuman animals as well as other beings that may have inherent value. Perhaps what most deeply divides the approach of this book from personalism is its concern with the experience of coming into the presence of persons. That experience, this book argues, is analogous to coming into the presence of God, as the loss of the experience of the presence of persons is analogous to the loss of the experience of the presence of God.

4In this book’s discussion we use “inherent worth,” “inherent value,” “intrinsic worth,” and ­“intrinsic value” interchangeably. 5Gueye, “Introduction,” in Ethical Personalism, p. 8.

1 Introduction     5

The underlying themes of this book—the close structural analogy between the experience of coming into the presence of God and the experience of coming into the presence of persons, some persons or all persons, and the close structural analogy between the experience of the death of God and the experience of the death of persons—are developed in the following chapters. Chapters 2–6 treat the presence of persons and the experience of coming into the presence of persons. This experience has four interconnected elements: an experienced awareness of the moral necessity of not treating persons merely as means, an awareness of a relationship to those persons into whose presence one has come, an affective response to them, and a recognition of their inherent worth. These four elements are discussed in Chapters 3–6. Chapters 7–11 treat the presence of God and the religious experience of coming into the presence of God. As coming into the presence of persons has four distinguishable but interconnected elements, so coming into the presence of God has four interconnected elements. The four elements of the one experience, as the book’s descriptive analysis brings out, are analogous to the four elements of the other experience. The four elements of the experience of coming into the presence of God are discussed in Chapters 8–11. Chapter 12 explores further respects in which the experience of coming into the presence of persons and the experience of coming into the presence of God are deeply analogous. In the first part of the chapter the experience of coming into the presence of persons is distinguished from the putative inference that there are other minds (an inference alleged to be necessary in response to the philosophical problem of other minds), and coming into the presence of God is distinguished from using the teleological or design argument (or any argument) to prove the existence of God. While these two patterns of inference have been alleged to be analogous, whatever analogy exists between them is very different from the analogy between the experiences of coming into the presence of persons and coming into the presence of God. Chapter 12 goes on to trace two important respects in which these two experiences are analogous. When the experience of coming into the presence of persons is coming into the presence of all persons the character of the

6     J. Kellenberger

experience is revelatory as the experience of coming into the presence of God is felt to be revelatory by the religious. The second respect in which the two experiences are analogous is that what prevents one from having the one experience may prevent one from having the other. Sometimes in both cases, it is argued, this may be self-deception, but in other cases not. The subject of Chapter 13 is the death of God and the death of persons. In one of its primary senses ‘the death of God” is the felt loss of a consciousness of God and his presence; parallel to this sense is the experience of a loss of the felt presence of persons. This chapter explores the depth of the analogy between the religious death of God and the moral death of persons. In Chapter 14, beyond those already identified, further moral and religio-moral implications of coming into the presence of persons, particularly the presence of all persons, are explored. The primary moral implication of coming into the presence of persons is a recognition of not treating persons merely as means (the ends principle), but there are other more particularized implications as well and several are examined in this chapter, including the possible implication of coming into the presence of all persons that war be renounced.

2 The Presence of Persons

Abstract  In this chapter the book’s concept of coming into the presence of persons is delineated. The meaning of “person” used in this book is the ordinary and commonly used meaning of “person,” but the category of coming into the presence of persons requires some commentary, and that is provided in this chapter. Though the experience of coming into the presence of persons phenomenally presents itself as a unified experience, that experience has four interlocking elements or aspects on the analysis developed in this book: (1) the attainment of an experienced awareness of the moral necessity of treating those persons into whose presence one has come not merely as means, (2) the attainment of an awareness of a primary relationship to them as persons, (3) coming to a sense of respect or sympathy for them as persons, or to some other response in the respect-love range, and (4) coming to a realization of the inherent worth they have by virtue of being persons. Keyword  The presence of persons Coming into the presence of persons in the sense to be elucidated in this book involves coming to a realization of the inherent worth of © The Author(s) 2019 J. Kellenberger, The Presence of God and the Presence of Persons, Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25045-4_2

7

8     J. Kellenberger

persons. But there are other elements as well. In fact, this experience has four interlocking but distinct elements. We come into the presence of persons when: (1) we attain an experiential awareness of the moral necessity of treating those persons into whose presence we have come not merely as means; (2) we attain an awareness of a primary relationship to them as persons; (3) we come to a sense of respect or sympathy for them as persons, or to some other response in the respect-love range; and (4) we realize the inherent worth that they have by virtue of being persons. To come into the presence of a person, or of persons, in this sense it is not necessary to come into their bodily presence. In fact it is not necessary to have others clearly in mind as individuals. For, in the sense of coming into the presence of persons of concern to us in this book one can come into the presence of a person, some persons, or ­persons generally. This idea of coming into the presence of person is, I believe, not difficult to grasp, although it initially requires a further word of elaboration. In fact once it is fully introduced the notion may seem recognizable to many. But because it is not a term used in common parlance what is meant by “coming into the presence of persons” requires more blocking in. First we should say that “person” in this context means what most of us commonly mean by “person,” those we meet in school or in the workplace, pass on the street, and see in the market are persons. Human beings are persons. Although there may be some persons who are not human beings (angels in some religious traditions are heavenly persons), for most of us the persons we encounter are human beings. Human beings are paradigmatically persons. Problems may arise if one tries to define person, especially if one tries to give an essentialist definition of person (in terms of rationality, say, or the use of language or some other attribute or set of attributes), but our effort does not require our propounding any such definition of person (which in any case may be a chimera). It requires only our shared commonly understood idea of persons, which allows us to answer such questions as “How many persons were in the room when you arrived?” The notion of the presence of persons is slightly more difficult. We may speak of the presence of persons in several senses, and the sense that is here intended should be distinguished from other senses. In one sense

2  The Presence of Persons     9

of presence human beings indicate their presence by saying the word “present” or “here,” as when school attendance is taken or as in answering a military roll call. In this sense one’s physical presence is acknowledged. In another sense we may speak of coming into the presence of a personage. When one is granted an audience with a queen, say, or a pope one enters into the presence of that important person or personage with a suitable deference determined by the formal royal or papal setting. One enters into the aura of the personage. Here the physical presence of the important person is necessary, but much more is involved. If a royal personage were travelling incognito one might unknowingly stand next to her or him without entering into her or his presence in this sense, although one would be in the important person’s physical presence. The sense of the presence of persons that we intend is different from both the physical presence of persons and the entered presence of a personage. It is like the physical presence of persons in that it allows entering into the presence of any or all persons—even oneself, but it does not require being in a person’s physical presence. It is like the presence of a personage in that entering into the presence of persons is in a way to be elaborated to enter into the aura of persons; but that aura is not a function of a formal setting, and again a physical presence is not necessary. When one enters the presence of another person or persons one enters the aura they have qua persons. One comes to a sense of their worth as persons, not their practical worth as a good carpenter or a good mathematician, but the inalienable inherent or intrinsic value they possess as persons, their “dignity” as it is sometimes put following Immanuel Kant. This sense registers as an awareness, a renewed awareness or possible a new awareness. And this awareness of value elicits or has as its affective dimension a felt response or reaction to persons. This affective response may not be dramatic but, as with all discoveries of value, it is more than indifferent. Perhaps what is meant here by coming into the presence of persons is most familiar to us when the persons are close to us, as family members or close friends. When parents look upon their newborn child or we see or meet those close to us we readily come into their presence as persons, into their presence as being the persons

10     J. Kellenberger

they are, although in this case it is not irrelevant that they are close to us in our affections. Their physical presence is not essential. A picture of the father or mother one has never seen may be sufficient. And while coming into the presence of those close to us may be the most recognizable instance of coming into the presence of persons qua persons, it is not the only instance that we may recognize in our experience. Many of us have been moved by pictures of those in famine conditions or other conditions of great need, or by written reports of their suffering and need. Here too one may be moved by a response that is a form of coming into the presence of persons in the sense that is important for this study. Coming into the presence of persons, then, is a matter of human experience. It involves an awareness we come to in our experience of others. In principle, as we will argue, it is not limited to those who are close to us or whose needs evoke our sympathy. As one may come into the presence of some persons, so one may come into the presence of all persons. Of course this potential of experience may not be realized by many: it is different from merely encountering others in the bustle of our daily lives. Nevertheless the potential of this experience as a general experience of the presence of persons exists. In its general form, or as an experience of the presence of several persons or another single person, it need not come as a shock of recognition. The awareness that it involves may take the form of a dawning realization that develops over time. But why should we not say that coming into the presence of persons is simply being moved by them, moved to sympathy as with famine victims or moved to affection as with family members? Although being moved by others is a signal element of coming into their presence, equating being moved by others with coming into their presence misleadingly eclipses the other elements of the experience: it eclipses for instance its cognitive element (an awareness of the worth of those into whose presence we have come). This element we have already delineated, but there is a moral element and a relational element as well, to which we will turn in Chapters 3 and 4 respectively. We will return to the affective element of the experience in Chapter 5 and to its cognitive element in Chapter 6.

3 The Moral Import of Persons

Abstract  The moral import of persons explored in this chapter is embodied in the ends principle, which enjoins that persons are to be treated as ends and not merely as means. Immanuel Kant’s recognition of this principle in his philosophical ethics is examined. Recognized by many moral philosophers, the ends principle is also embodied in ordinary pretheoretical moral behavior. Keywords  The moral import of persons · The first element The ends principle · Immanuel Kant

·

The first element of coming into the presence of persons is the experiential awareness of what registers as the validity and applicability of a moral principle: it is wrong to treat persons merely as a means. Although there might be some debate over the implications of this principle, nevertheless it is one that strikes most of us as having an apparent moral point. When one comes into the presence of persons one sees with undeniable immediacy the pertinence of this principle in relation to those persons into whose presence one has come. Often it is necessary to rely upon others as means to various ends. In modern settings © The Author(s) 2019 J. Kellenberger, The Presence of God and the Presence of Persons, Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25045-4_3

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12     J. Kellenberger

we rely upon others in their capacity as professionals to get the plumbing fixed or for medical attention, to name two instances, and in this way use others as means. These practices the principle allows. What it forbids is using others only as means. It forbids “using” people to gain some end with no consideration of them beyond their usefulness as a means to that end. As indicated, I believe that most of us are aware of this principle’s validity in one way or another so that without citing it we draw upon it when we make such moral judgments as “You were just using her” or “You may have got him to help you, but you had no regard for him or his feelings.” This principle may be called the “ends principle.” Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) formulated it as the “practical imperative.” In his statement it is: “Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person of in the person of any other, never simply as a means but always at the same time as an end.”1 As Kant formulated the principle it extends to all persons, including oneself, and not only to other persons.2 What would treating oneself as a means comes to? Perhaps degrading oneself for the sake of some cause would qualify. Another instance might be acting self-indulgently with no thought for one’s own moral well-being. On the other hand examples of not treating oneself merely as a means may be clear enough. Working hard for the end of one’s own increase would qualify. There is, I think, an important lack of symmetry between treating others merely as a means and treating oneself merely as a means. The immoral act of sacrificing others for one’s own end may well be treating others merely as a means, while the noble and generous act of sacrificing oneself for the sake of

1Immanuel

Kant, The Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, p. 429, trans. H. J. Paton, in H. J. Paton, The Moral Law, 3rd ed. (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1956), p. 91. 2Actually, as Kant put his principle it extends to all human persons (“humanity”). Paton observes in a footnote that, strictly, given Kant’s thinking, it should be in terms of “rational nature as such” and not in terms of “humanity.” Kant formulated the practical imperative in this way, Paton, suggests, because the only persons we are acquainted with are humans. Others, however, would say that the apparently broader phrase “rational nature as such” is too narrow, for it eliminates part of humanity, particularly if it is construed as “rational will capable of morality.” We will return to this point in Chapter 6. For the present we can observe that in a straightforward understanding of its meaning the principle applies to all persons, human or not.

3  The Moral Import of Persons     13

others may well not be treating oneself merely as a means. When this lack of symmetry is brought into consideration Kant’s formulation of the ends principle to include oneself can be seen to be absolutely right. In The Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals Kant also formulated what he called “the categorical imperative.” In its simplest statement it is: “Act only on that maxim which you can at the same time will to be a universal law.” Some moral philosophers see problems regarding how exactly we are to understand the categorical imperative, but clearly we use it, or something near to it, fairly regularly in moral reasoning. We do whenever we reason that what someone did was wrong because it obviously would be wrong if everyone did it. Some have thought that for Kant the categorical imperative and the practical imperative are different, but equivalent, expressions of the same moral law. In a sense, it can be argued, they are. While the categorical imperative and the practical imperative may have different ranges, where they both extend there they agree, it has been thought: although the categorical imperative may count as duties, or rule out as wrong, some actions to which the practical imperative or ends principle does not apply, still where they both apply they do not conflict. In this sense they are equivalent.3 At least this could be and has been maintained. Strictly, however, this issue is not part of our concern. Our concern is with the principle Kant formulated as the practical imperative, for it in some form is implicated in the experience of coming into the presence of persons. This principle is widely recognized among ethical thinkers, although its status and implications are debated. And this principle in some form and to some degree is pretheoretically incorporated into our moral lives, notwithstanding that many have not explicitly formulated it any more than they have formulated the grammar of their speech. For many the practical imperative or ends principle may be more a moral disposition than a principle that is consciously followed. When one comes into the presence of persons, as a part of that experience, one becomes newly aware that they are to be

3For

a development of this point see John E. Atwell’s, “Are Kant’s Two Principles Equivalent?” Journal of the History of Philosophy, vol. 7, 1969.

14     J. Kellenberger

treated as ends. The first element of coming into the presence of persons, then, is a vivified experiential awareness that this very basic moral principle applies to those persons into whose presence we have come by virtue of their being persons. The practical imperative or ends principle as an ethical principle, or the moral disposition that reflects what may be the principle’s deeper origin, does not rule out treating others as means; it rules out treating others only as means. As was noted, it allows calling a plumber to fix the plumbing, using the expertise of a computer technician to repair one’s computer, or drawing upon the abilities of medical practitioners and so on. What is not allowed is discounting the value these persons have as persons in contradistinction to their instrumental value. The value that persons have as persons is independent of their instrumental value. Even if they have no mechanical or intellectual expertise, as persons they are inseparable from their intrinsic value as persons. The practical imperative, or the moral disposition from which it proceeds, requires that all persons be treated as ends, as beings with inherent value. However, the way that persons are treated as ends can vary. Importantly it varies with the relationships we have to others. The way a parent is treated as a valuable person varies from the way a distant relative, of whom one knows but whom one has never met, is treated as a valuable person, and both vary from the way one treats a member of one’s city or community who lives miles away, whom one does not know and will never personally meet, is treated as a valuable person. As opposed to the continuous or regular attention given to those close to us, treating those we have not and will never meet as ends can be importantly embodied in a disposition to give aid or support when called upon. Treating others as ends is not being sentimental toward them. It can take the form of challenging others and encouraging them to do what they are reluctant to do. This is most evident, perhaps, in the loving care and encouragement parents give to their children, but it can also be a part of some friendships and be seen in group efforts to attain social justice for marginal or oppressed segments of society. The way we treat others as ends can be colored by our beliefs. Political beliefs can be acted upon by legislators purely for reasons of

3  The Moral Import of Persons     15

ambition or out of commitment to economic doctrine. Also, though, they can be acted upon out of a concern for the general welfare of those in their nation, a concern that may well rest upon a moral disposition to treat others as ends. In this case their support for legislation and the compromises they make to enhance the passage of legislative bills they deem proper will be both colored by their political beliefs and enlivened by a concern to treat those affected as ends. A young man who has become a committed Jehovah’s Witness may try to convert his Episcopalian parents because he loves them, cares, for them, and values them. He fears that if they do not convert they will not be “saved.” He values his parents as ends, but his way of caring is determined by his religious belief. Valuing another person as an end is not the same as accepting his or her opinions or commitments. The Episcopal parents of the young Jehovah’s Witness, who will certainly resist his efforts to convert them, will yet love him and treat him as an end in our imagined scenario. There can be an asymmetry in treating others as ends in human relationships. It is not that the reciprocation for a person’s treating the other in a relationship with respect for the other’s inherent value may be a disregard and even rejection of the inherent value of the first person, although this can happen. The asymmetry to be noted is between two ways of being treated as a person with value. This is evident in the Jehovah’s Witness example and in general in parent-child relationships and to a greater or lesser extent in the full range of human relationships. When one treats another person as an end one responds to the other person, or persons, as a person with inherent value. This response may be respect for the other as a person or it may be sympathy and compassion for her or him, or love. It is a response in what may be called the respect-love continuum. Human beings may treat their fellow human beings immorally. And they may treat their fellow human beings morally. If they endeavor to be moral in their treatment of others, they may do so from a commitment to morality per se with a respect for the principles of morality, or from a commitment to religious precepts, without a viable appreciation of the inherent worth of persons. But if they have experientially come to appreciate the inherent value that their fellow human beings

16     J. Kellenberger

have as persons, their moral or religio-moral treatment of them will be grounded in that appreciation and the necessity of treating them as ends. The first element of coming into the presence of persons is the experiential awareness of the moral necessity of treating those into whose ­presence we have come as ends and never as only means.

4 A Relationship to Persons

Abstract  In this chapter the second element of coming into the ­presence of persons is turned to: becoming aware of a relationship to them. The relationship one comes to or becomes aware of is of a primary sort and stands opposed to the relationship we have to a store clerk qua store clerk or the President of the United States qua President. It is a primary relationship, and it can take different forms. When one is moved to sympathy for persons by seeing their plight the relationship to them that one comes to is informed by that sympathy. In another setting one might come to respect for them (another response in the respect-love range), and the entered relationship to them is defined by respect for them as persons. The question is raised: If one appreciates the moral necessity of treating persons not merely as means, will one then be aware of the primary relationship one has to them as persons? If we are clear that a person or persons morally should not be treated merely as means, will we also be clear that we stand in this primary relationship in some form to that persons or those persons? The answer to this question, it is argued, is no, not necessarily. There is a distinction between being indifferent to persons qua objects of moral justice or as ends and being indifferent to persons qua objects of personal attitudes. © The Author(s) 2019 J. Kellenberger, The Presence of God and the Presence of Persons, Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25045-4_4

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18     J. Kellenberger

Keywords  A primary relationship to persons · The second element The second element of coming into the presence of persons is an awareness of a positive personal relationship to those into whose presence we enter. This element is related to the first but different from it. The relationship that figures here stands opposed to those relationships we have to others by merit of their standing or function. We have such official or quasi-official relationships to the President of the United States qua President and to the grocery clerk qua grocery clerk. While these relationships can be important for etiquette, for everyday prudential concerns, and even for the recognition of certain moral obligations, they remain impersonal relationships, Though these relationships are relationships we have to persons, they are not relationships that involve personal attitudes. A grocery clerk need not be regarded only as a grocery clerk, but to the extend that she or he is the relationship to her or him as a person recedes toward nonexistence. On the other hand the relationship that we come to have to those into whose presence we have come is a personal relationship that enables and is expressive of personal attitudes. The recognition or attainment of this relationship forms the basis of or finds expression in personal attitudes that are antithetical to indifference. This relationship is not identical with that defined by having respect for persons as ends, Rather, having respect for persons or sympathy for them or loving them are expressions of this relationship. When one is moved to sympathy by the plight of another or others and so enters their presence the primary relationship to them thereby attained is expressed by sympathy. Also, though, the recognition or attainment of a primary personal relationship to others, or to some others, may come without coming into their presence as persons. When it does this recognition may be expressed by negative personal attitudes, such as resentment or hate (come to perhaps by reading or seeing a news report). It is a paradox of personal relations that one who

4  A Relationship to Persons     19

hates another at least treats him or her as a person, while one who is simply indifferent to another does not.1 An awareness of a positive primary personal relationship to other persons is, of course, not unrelated to seeing them initially as persons. If it is destroyed or undermined then it becomes much easier to treat persons in ways that otherwise would be seen as inhuman and immoral. Thus when a nation goes on a war footing an effort may be made to dehumanize the enemy. Such an effort may involve substituting a derogatory epithet for a nationality or consistently characterizing the enemy as bestial, which instills the idea that in military actions those who are the enemy are to be seen as targets and no longer as persons. The same dehumanization may occur in various departments of life, but it is most obvious on a national scale during a war or the occupation or colonization of a territory. At this point let us raise a question: If one appreciates the moral necessity of treating certain persons not merely as means but as ends, will one then be aware of a primary relationship one has to them as persons? If we are clear that a person or persons morally should not be treated merely as means, will we also be clear that we stand in a positive primary relationship in some form to that persons or those persons? The answer to this question is no, not necessarily. And conversely it may be that one could appreciate one’s primary personal relationship to others in some form and yet fail to see the moral necessity of not treating them merely as means. On the one hand it is possible to appreciate that others, as persons, are subsumed under the principles of morality and justice and that it is necessary to treat them not merely as a means for the sake of the moral law, that is, out of a sense of duty; but such a recognition of our moral obligation to persons as persons requires no sense of kinship, concern, or comradeship with them. On the other hand it is possible to come to feel that the ends principle does not fully apply to

1This

observation has been made more than once. It was made by J. A. Brook, “How to Treat Persons as Persons,” in Philosophy and Personal Relations, ed. Alan Montefiore (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979), p. 69.

20     J. Kellenberger

certain others—slaves, serfs, immigrants—and at the same time to have a sense of comradeship with them as fellow workers or as comrades in suffering or shared need. What emerges is that there is an identifiable distinction between being indifferent to persons qua objects of moral justice or as ends and being indifferent to persons qua objects of personal attitudes. Overcoming each indifference involves attaining an awareness, and in the two cases what one becomes aware of is different. To come to the first awareness is to come to see that a moral principle applies to persons. To come to the second awareness is to come to see that one stands in a primary—positive or negative—relationship to them as persons, a relationship the recognition of which may find expression in concern or love or hate, but not in indifference to them as persons. The primary relationship to others that one comes to as a part of entering their presence may be a relationship of sympathy or of love, but not of hate. It is a positive primary relationship. When one enters the presence of others the form of the positive primary relationship entered will be defined by a response in the respect-love continuum. Characterizing this relationship further, following P. F. Strawson, we might say that to recognize this relationship to others is to recognize an involvement with others. Strawson speaks of an “Involvement or participation with others in inter-personal relationships,” and he contrasts this involvement with “the objective attitude (or range of attitudes).”2 We bring an “objective attitude” to the grocery clerk when we interact with the grocery clerk qua grocery clerk. Such an objective attitude opposes but does not exclude involvement: although having commerce with the grocery clerk is different from knowing and liking the grocery clerk, the two do not exclude each other. Strawson’s objective attitude embraces regarding others as objects of social policy or as objects of training or treatment. And, we should add, it includes or can include regarding others as objects of justice.

2P. F. Strawson, “Freedom and Resentment,” in Studies in the Philosophy of Thought and Action, ed. P. F. Strawson (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), p. 79.

4  A Relationship to Persons     21

“Involvement or participation with others,” on the other hand, for Strawson includes “resentment, gratitude, forgiveness, anger [and] the sort of love which two adults can sometimes be said to feel reciprocally for each other.” However, while Strawson’s distinction is helpful, it is not clear that the primary relationship that we are seeking to characterize necessitates involvement in Strawson’s sense. Involvement, for Strawson, seems to require personal acquaintance. There is a strong sense of “personal relationship” that we reserve for close personal relationships that are grounded in personal acquaintance. And so far as this sense is concerned it is right that individual acquaintance is required. But there are personal relationships in another sense, closer to the sense that we want, for which individual acquaintance is not required, which we as individuals might conceivably have and feel toward others, even all others. For this sense a personal relationship is indicated by a personal reaction or attitude, and for this sense Strawson’s “involvement or participation with others” is not necessary. Generals in charge of farflung theatres of operation can feel a comradeship with the troops in their command without being acquainted with each. Nationalists have a sense of comradeship with those of their nationality, although there are many they have not met. When we are moved to have sympathy for those who have suffered great loss from a natural disaster or are displaced as refugees—and so enter a primary relationship with them— typically we will be unacquainted with many of them. The notion of involvement may be of some help in characterizing the primary relationship to others that is attained when one enters their presence, only not in Strawson’s sense. Involvement in Strawson’s conception contrasts with “the objective attitude,” but so does involvement in a wider conception, which may provide more help. That wider conception of involvement is John Donne’s sense when he wrote that any man’s death diminishes him, and it does because he is “involved in Mankind.”3 In Donne’s sense of “involvement” his relationship of involvement can be, and is asserted to be, to all persons.

3John

Donne, Devotion XVII.

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One may come into the presence of all persons and so come to feel an ‘involvement” with all persons, all of “Mankind” (or humankind), as Donne says. If one comes to feel an involvement with all others through entering into their presence, one will become aware of, or attain, a relationship to them defined by respect or sympathy or love or some other attitude in the respect-love range. Also, though, one may come to this sense of involvement with a limited range of persons, such as those in one’s family or extended family, or those in one’s ethnic community, and this may be more common. The second element in coming into the presence of persons is an awareness of an involvement with—a positive personal relationship to—those persons into whose presence one has come.

5 An Affective Response to Persons

Abstract  The subject of this chapter is the third element of coming into the presence of persons. When one comes into the presence of persons one has an affective response to them of respect, sympathy, love, or another response in the respect-love continuum. These closely related responses are discussed and distinguished. Also in this chapter the tight connection between recognizing the inherent worth of persons and responding to them affectively is examined: an affective response to persons, it is argued, is in one way or another an integral part of the ­cognitive discovery of their inherent worth. Keywords  A positive affective response to persons The third element · Josiah Royce

·

The third element of coming into the presence of persons is the attainment of such an attitude as respect or sympathy or love for persons as persons. These attitudes or responses, along with others in the respectlove range, constitute the affective dimension of coming into the presence of persons. One or another of these attitudes is an affective response tied to the recognition of persons’ intrinsic worth. © The Author(s) 2019 J. Kellenberger, The Presence of God and the Presence of Persons, Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25045-4_5

23

24     J. Kellenberger

In The Religious Aspect of Philosophy Josiah Royce was concerned to distinguish between “the moral insight” and “the mere tender emotion of sympathy.” For Royce there is to be found at the heart of moral conduct “no sentiment, no gush of pity, no tremulous weakness of sympathy, but a calm, clear insight.”1 Put one way the moral insight, for Royce, is the recognition that one’s neighbor is a “self ” as much as one is oneself. While the insight lasts—and it is an ephemeral thing for Royce—“the illusion of selfishness vanishes” and we see clearly that “The Other Life is as My Life.” The way we come to the moral insight, for Royce, is through finally appreciating that others have experiences like our own. We realize that our neighbor, too, is “a mass of states of experiences, thoughts and desires just as real as thou art,” that our neighbor is in fact as real to us now as the experiences of “thy future self.”2 Royce is of course correct to insist upon a distinction between our recognition of a moral truth about others and our sympathetic feelings toward others. The insight or recognition, we may say, is cognitive, whereas feelings of sympathy or pity per se are not. Yet, at the same time, while we should appreciate Royce’s point, we should correct the impression it can create that a moral insight or discovery must be totally independent of our feelings. Some discoveries, to be sure, have no affective accompaniment or next to none. When we flick the light switch and the light does not come on we may feel disappointment or consternation. When we flick the light switch and the light does come on as usual we may feel nothing, but then it is strained to speak of a realization in this instance (as though we come to a realization that the lights work now as usual each time we turn them on). Still there are times we discover something or come to an awareness when it is not strained to speak of a realization and there is no affective accompaniment to the discovery. One finds that one has put one’s car keys in the left pocket and not the right

1Josiah Royce, The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1968), pp. 155 and 157. 2Royce, The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, pp. 155–157 and 161.

5  An Affective Response to Persons     25

pocket as one usually does. We discover that it is forty-five minutes past the hour, and not thirty, when nothing hinges on the fifteen minute difference. In these cases the realization one comes to is unremarkable and goes unremarked. Yet often even little discoveries can elicit an affective response. If one was looking forward to doing a particular task in those fifteen minutes one might feel disappointment at their loss. Finding that a favorite rose bush has bloomed may give one pleasure. Finding that a good friend is at the gathering where one had anticipated knowing no one may give one a feeling or relief and a release of tension. A recognition can have an affective side or concomitant that is more than a mere concomitant associated with it, and this can occur in several ways. For instance, facing one’s feelings can be the occasion for a discovery about oneself. One may come to realize that one harbors gender or racial prejudice through a scrutiny of one’s feeling and behavior. Again one may come to the realization that one romantically loves another by facing the depth and character of one’s feelings toward him or her. In these cases acknowledging the possibility of the affective state contributes to the discovery or realization. Another way that an affective response or state can be related to a discovery is that in some cases a lack of affection or the wrong feelings can be strong evidence that no recognition has taken place. This may be the case regarding Royce’s moral insight. Royce’s moral insight that the person next to us is like us in having experiences, thoughts, and desires just as we do, which Royce sees as seminal to morality or an enlivened morality, may have an affective accompaniment that is tied to it. Those who gain the insight would come to a feeling of acceptance or empathy toward others that flows naturally from the insight, and the absence of such a feeling toward others would be evidence that the moral insight had not been attained. However, perhaps the most significant relation between attaining an insight or realization and an affective response is that the latter can be an integral part of the former. This tight integral relationship holds between an affective response and the realization of the presence of persons and their intrinsic worth through coming into their presence. Integral to one’s coming into the presence of others is one’s response of respect, sympathy, or love for

26     J. Kellenberger

those others. An affective response in the range of respect-love is integral to the discovery of the intrinsic worth of persons in that it is a dimension or part of the discovery. It is through sympathy or a revivified respect or love for persons that one enters their presence and discovers their intrinsic worth. When the Ancient Mariner in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem looks upon the creatures of the sea that he had seen as “slimy things” and comes to see them anew as “happy living things” he does so with “a spring of love” from his heart. In coming into the presence of persons and realizing their inherent worth as persons an affective response in the respect-love continuum is similarly integral. It is not merely an accompaniment or a nonessential contributing factor; it is an integrated part of entering the presence of others and its associated discoveries. For W. G. Maclagan the recognition of the inherent worth of persons and a response of agape are “only different facets of the same experience,”3 Perhaps, though, in some cases the response will not be agape but another response in the respect-love range of affective responses. The responses in the respect-love range that play this role are strongly related to one another, though they are distinguishable. Respect is not respect for the rights of person (although respect for the rights of persons may be entailed). It is respect for persons qua persons, as opposed to respect for a person as an authority or as a person of accomplishments. Sympathy is an affective response in this range that may accompany coming into the presence of those in need. Love is at the apex of the responses along this continuum. At its highest it is agape, the love that is love of neighbor in the New Testament. These affective responses are so closely associated with coming into the presence of persons that one or another of them will not merely be a concomitant of the realization of the worth of persons, but an internal element of the realization itself. Though the affective response of one who has come into the presence of persons may be quietly expressed, the absence of an overt affective response in the respect-love continuum is evidence that the realization of the inherent worth of persons has not 3W.

G. Maclagan, “Respect for Persons as a Moral Principle I,” Philosophy, vol. 35, July 1960, p. 208.

5  An Affective Response to Persons     27

been made. And the utter absence of such a response, which is bound up with and an essential part of the discovery, means that protestations notwithstanding the discovery of the inherent worth of persons cannot have been made.

6 The Recognition of the Inherent Worth of Persons

Abstract  In this chapter the fourth element of coming into the ­presence of persons—recognizing or discovering the inherent worth of persons—is examined. The fourth element, it is shown, contains and orders the other three. Immanuel Kant and Josiah Royce offer an analysis of the basis for the recognition of the inherent worth of persons. For Kant it is rationality and for Royce it is having experiences as we ourselves do. Both of these analyses are criticized and contrasted with the view of Emmanuel Levinas. The question is raised of how the realization of the intrinsic worth of persons relates to an awareness that the ends principle applies to them. It is argued that an awareness that the ends principle applies to persons can exist independently of a realization of their intrinsic worth gained through coming into their presence, but the latter sustains the former. Keywords  The inherent worth of persons · The fourth element Emmanuel Levinas

© The Author(s) 2019 J. Kellenberger, The Presence of God and the Presence of Persons, Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25045-4_6

·

29

30     J. Kellenberger

The fourth element of coming into the presence of persons is the recognition of the value that persons have by virtue of being persons. In the previous chapter we saw how this recognition has an affective dimension. In this chapter our focus will be on its cognitive content. This recognition is the recognition of the inherent or intrinsic worth of persons, as opposed to their usefulness for certain purposes, be those purposes moral or immoral, exalted or prosaic. It is the recognition in a person or persons of a value that is inseparable from them qua persons. This fourth element serves as the keystone to the other three, holding them in their mutual relations. Or, more exactly, it contains the other three, ordering them. The fourth element of coming into the presence of persons is cognitive in that it is a recognition, an awareness. However, it does not come to one in isolation from the affective element of coming into the presence of persons. The affective response to those into whose presence one has come attends and is integral to the recognition of their inherent worth. That recognition is a seeing, but it is not a passive seeing. It is an affectively experienced awareness. When one comes to experience an awareness of the inherent value of other persons one comes to see that they deserve to be treated as ends, to be related to in a positive relationship defined by a response in the respect-love continuum, and to be affectively responded to with a response from that continuum. They do not deserve this by virtue of their accomplishments or potential, their reputation or social status, or by virtue of their winning something. Nor do they deserve it by virtue of a close relationship they may have to one (even though a close relationship may make it easier to come into their presence and recognize their inherent value). They deserve this treatment and response, one comes to see, precisely because, as one comes to see with undeniable clarity, they have the inherent value of persons. It is possible to affirm the value of some persons but to deny the inherent value of all persons: to affirm the value of, say, only those in one’s family or national or cultural group. As a counter to such an inclination one might offer the following argument:

6  The Recognition of the Inherent Worth of Persons     31

All persons are persons, and if any persons by their nature have inherent value as persons, as some clearly do, then all persons do. And so all persons have inherent value.

On the basis of this argument one could then say that the inherent value of all persons should be acknowledged. The problem with such reasoning is that its scope may be challenged. Those who deny the inherent value of those outside their group may do so because they deny their personhood. They may not deny that others physically are persons, only that they fully are persons with inherent value (as has been done in human history). The root cause of denying the personhood of others is the failure to come into their presence as persons.1 More effective than this argument is the reflection that as we have come into the presence of some strangers (as when we are moved by their need) so we may come into the presence of others, and in principle all persons. It is also possible for individuals to acknowledge the inherent value of persons, all persons, and disagree with one another about how the value of persons is recognized, or its basis. More than one philosopher has placed near the center of morality a recognition of the inherent value of persons. Josiah Royce and Immanuel Kant did. But they did not understand the recognition of the inherent worth of persons in the same way. Royce, as we have seen, spoke of a “moral insight.” For Royce, integral to our recognition of the worth of persons is an appreciation of their existence as conscious beings, as experiencers, who hate, love, and feel pain as one oneself does. Kant on the other hand regarded the realization of the inherent worth of others rather differently. For Kant, persons, as rational beings exist as ends in themselves. They are inherently valuable—have “dignity,” to use Kant’s term—because they are rational

1George

Nakhnikian has argued: “If I love myself as a human being, then I love anyone as a human being, and if I love anyone as a human being, then I love myself as a human being.” At least this is so, for Nakhnikian, if I am “(fully) rational.” George Nakhnikian, “Love in Human Reason,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy, vol. 3, 1978, p. 305 (Nakhnikian’s emphasis). But this reasoning is derailed by those who refuse to recognize others as fully being human beings.

32     J. Kellenberger

beings capable of morality.2 In Kant’s view only rational beings can be fully moral. In short, for Kant, the realization of the intrinsic worth of persons is through or identical with a realization of persons’ rationality and their consequent capacity to participate in the moral life. However, we might hesitate to accept either Royce’s or Kant’s construction of the moral perception of the worth of persons. In particular we might feel a certain reluctance to equate the recognition of persons’ intrinsic worth with the recognition of their rationality and capacity for virtue. In fact W. G, Maclagan, in reflecting on respect for persons, has strongly registered just this reluctance.3 Respect for persons is a personal attitude in the continuum of personal attitudes that, we have suggested, form the affective side of the recognition of the inherent value of persons. Maclagan’s concern is whether respect for persons as persons is the same thing as esteem for rational wills capable of virtue. Clearly, he believes, it is not. Even if a person has a completely corrupt will, a will incapable of moral action, he or she would still remain a person and be worthy of respect as a person. Similarly, even though demented and utterly irrational, so much so that she or he is not responsible for her or his actions, a person yet remains a person worthy of respect as a person. In the first case, which Maclagan considers, a bestial person has a corrupt will incapable of moral goodness; in the second case, which augments Maclagan’s considerations, a psychotic has a will incapable of moral action or of any action for which responsibility could accrue. Yet in each case the person remains a person worthy of respect. From such considerations as these Maclagan concludes that respect for persons does not square with esteem for rational wills capable of moral action. This reasoning is very forceful, for surely bestial persons and psychotics do retain their intrinsic worth as persons and remain worthy of respect as persons. (This does not deny that the person with a corrupt will deserves punishment or requires treatment, or that the psychotic should be committed to an institution for his or her protection and the 2Immanuel

Kant, The Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, p. 435, in The Moral Law, H. J. Paton, 3rd ed. (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1956), pp. 96–97. 3W. G. Maclagan, “Respect for Persons as a Moral Principle I,” Philosophy, vol. 35, July 1960, pp. 199–200.

6  The Recognition of the Inherent Worth of Persons     33

protection of others. It is, rather, to affirm that any proper disposition of these cases along these lines will respect their intrinsic worth as persons.) True, Kant might yet affirm that the person with a corrupt will and the psychotic conceptually, or “in theory,” are capable of morality by virtue of their yet being persons. In this way Kant could give a place to respect for them as persons compatibly with a construction for respect for persons as esteem for rational wills capable of virtue. But if Kant should say this, he would have to allow that at least sometimes we recognize beings as rational beings capable of virtue by seeing that they are persons and not the other way around. He would have to allow, that is to say, that we can come to see that beings are persons (and so, in his thinking, capable of rationality and virtue) independently of any manifested rationality or morality. So, even allowing this reply to Kant, it remains, as Maclagan suggests, that the deeper basis of the worth or persons is their being persons and not any manifested rationality or virtue. Similar comments hold for Royce’s construction of the inherent worth of persons. For Royce we come to appreciate the worth of others through the realization that they are experiencers like ourselves. However, at least sometimes this cannot be the way or our recognition. For we can recognize the humanity and personhood of a brain-damaged person whose brain has ceased to function at the higher levels, as we can recognize the personhood of a child who has from birth never emerged from a state of suspended animation. Of course Royce could make a point analogous to that we conceded to Kant, that these persons conceptually are capable of having experiences. While this point may be correct, still any who come to appreciate the intrinsic worth of such persons as persons will not do so by coming to appreciate that they have experiences like our own. Just to the extent that we are clear that such brain-damaged individuals are yet persons we should be clear that the recognition of others’ personhood is not contingent on recognizing that they too have experiences. Kant and Royce do not escape the imperious and seemingly evident demand for a quality that will identify the inherent worth of persons. For Royce it is having experiences as we ourselves do. For Kant it is rationality. Emmanuel Levinas, however, does escape this dubious demand. For him encountering transcendence in another person, the

34     J. Kellenberger

“gleam of … transcendence in the face of the Other” (le visage d’autrui ), is not a sensible experience.4 It is not had by virtue of an experience of a sensible quality by which transcendence is identified. Levinas speaks of a “metaphysical desire” that “tends toward … the absolutely other.”5 It is an “insatiable Desire,” but not a need or “hunger.” It is a desire or longing for what is beyond “egoism.”6 The transcendence that is desired is “expressed by the term infinity,”7 And the “revelation” of transcendence in the face of the Other is “speech.”8 In the ordinary perception of others and interactions with them we regard others in terms of how we will interact with them, whether they are fellow workers, store clerks, repair persons, or those we merely pass on the street. Levinas sees this as a part of the sensible experience of others. But what he in more than one place calls “the epiphany of the face” is utterly different.9 The transcendence of the face “cuts across sensibility.” It “cuts across the vision of forms.”10 The face of the Other “breaks through the form that nevertheless delimits it”; it “thereby invites me to a relation incommensurate with a power exercised [by me], be it enjoyment of knowledge.”11 Only this relation to the Other “introduces a dimension of transcendence, and leads us to a relation totally different from experience in the sensible sense of the term.”12

4Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingia (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1969), p. 24. Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority was originally published in French as Totalité et Infini: Essai sur l’ extériorité in 1961. 5Levinas, Totality and Infinity, p. 33 (Levinas’ emphasis). 6Levinas, Totality and Infinity, p. 63. 7Levinas, Totality and Infinity, p. 25. 8Levinas, Totality and Infinity, p. 193. 9Levinas, Totality and Infinity, pp. 51, 187, and 197. 10Levinas, Totality and Infinity, p. 193. 11Levinas, Totality and Infinity, p. 198. 12Levinas, Totality and Infinity, p. 193. In some ways Levinas’ “face to face” encounter is like Martin Buber’s idea of an “I-You” encounter. For Buber an I-You encounter or relationship with another person is very different from treating a person as a “thing among things.” But such an encounter is not an experience, although the other may be “beheld.” And in the resulting relationship there is a “unity.” Martin Buber, I and Thou, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Scribners, 1970), pp. 59, 61, and 70.

6  The Recognition of the Inherent Worth of Persons     35

For Levinas experience is essential for coming into the presence of “the face of the Other,” though it is not a sensible experience. Similarly, reverting to a central category of this study, experience is essential for coming into the presence of persons, although it is beyond a sensible experience of others, that is, beyond an experience of their sensible physical presence. But Levinas’ experience of the face of the Other is apparently a one-on-one experience of others. For Levinas speech is essential. So, if for speech face-to-face is essential, there cannot be an experience of “the face of the Other” in those beyond our immediate experience, in contrast to the possibility of coming into the presence of those we have not physically met. In the experience of “the face of the Other” one comes to a relation to infinity. This is not precisely a relationship to another person (or persons), but it is gained through an encounter with the “face” of other persons. Unlike Royce and Kant, Levinas does not make identifying a sensible quality necessary for the recognition of the intrinsic or inherent worth of persons, but he leaves unclear the congruence of the intrinsic worth of persons and his category of “transcendence.” Kant and Royce are clearer on the essential place of the intrinsic worth of persons, but unhappily they tie the recognition of the intrinsic worth of persons to sensible qualities that, as we have seen, persons with intrinsic worth may lack. Although there are differences regarding how the recognition of the intrinsic worth of persons is made, and regarding the analysis of the basis for that intrinsic worth, there yet remains for Kant and Royce, and for Levinas let us allow, the agreed upon recognition itself: the recognition that persons by virtue of being persons have an intrinsic worth. How does this recognition or realization relate to the awareness that persons should be treated as ends and not merely as means? That is, how does the realization of the intrinsic worth of persons relate to the awareness of an obligation to treat persons as ends? Earlier we saw that one might appreciate the validity of the ends principle and yet remain indifferent to persons as persons, as objects of personal relations. In fact, it

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has been suggested, to act out of a sense of duty is not to act for the sake of another.13 Is this true? Most of us, I suspect, would feel that there was a certain deficiency in human warmth on the part of a person who helped another person in need begrudgingly and solely out of a sense of duty. In a possible case we considered earlier in Chapter 4 others are treated as ends not begrudgingly, but they are treated as ends solely out of a sense of duty. C. P. Snow in his novel The Affair provides a rather different example of this sort. In Snow’s novel a young academic has been accused of scientific fraud and dismissed from his university post. At a certain point a senior colleague, Skeffington, who had thought him guilty, comes to believe him innocent in the light of new evidence. Skeffington is a man of principle and once convinced of his young colleague’s innocence, despite a personal dislike, sets about seeing that justice is done. Skeffington has no feeling of kindness toward the young academic. He does not perceive his value as a human being, as a person. He has no brotherly emotion toward him—only contempt, contempt for an inferior who has had the bad taste to become the victim of an injustice. Recognizing the applicability of the ends principle to certain persons may not follow upon entering their presence, but be a matter of consistently applying the ends principle; also, though, recognizing the applicability of the ends principle to certain persons is distinct from, and does not require having a personal attitude toward them. It of course allows having a personal attitude toward them, but the personal attitude may not be a positive one. As in Skeffington’s case it may be contempt. Skeffington and the sort of individual we imagined in Chapter 4 are distinguishable, for Skeffington is aware of a personal relation to the young academic whom he sees as a object of justice. Yet each, we might feel, exhibits a moral or human deficiency. We must, I think, respect Skeffington, and the individual who has no personal attitude toward others but acts justly toward them, as persons of principle, as

13J.

A. Brook, “How to Treat Persons as Persons,” in Philosophy and Personal Relations, ed. Alan Montefiore (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979), p. 71.

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just individuals. And yet it is precisely in regard to such actions as theirs that we quite correctly are inclined to say that acting out of a sense of duty is not acting for the sake of others. It rather is acting for the sake of a principle. What then should we say of Kant? Kant was acutely aware of the value of persons; but he also thought that morality required acting out of a sense of duty. Would Kant then rush to embrace Skeffington? I suggest that he would not or need not. While the intricacies of Kant’s moral thought are not altogether clear, his view can consistently be interpreted so that he would not sanction either Skeffington’s moral demeanor or that of the individual who acts for the sake of the moral law in the way the individual imagined in Chapter 4 does. To do so we must distinguish between two conceptions of sense of duty. We act our of a sense of duty in the first conception when we recognize the validity and applicability of the ends principle and treat others as ends only because the principle requires it. One can act out of a sense of duty in this conception without fully appreciating the inherent worth of persons or even while believing that those persons one treats as ends lack inherent worth. We act out of a sense of duty in the second conception when we recognize the validity and applicability of the ends principle, and so treat others as ends, but we recognize the validity and applicability of the ends principle precisely because we recognize the inherent worth of others. A sense of duty of this sort is grounded in a realization of the worth of person and is impossible without the ground of such an awareness. One following a sense of duty of this sort would not be acting for the sake of duty, but for the sake of those to whom one has the duty. When Kant says that for an action to have moral worth it must be done from duty, many understand him as meaning a sense of duty in the first conception, and this may indeed be his meaning. Still with a generous interpretation he can be read as meaning a sense of duty in the second conception. Contrary to treating persons as ends out of a sense of duty in either sense is treating them as ends in response to them as persons. This is the way of treating persons as ends that is embodied in the experience of coming into the presence of persons. The obligation to treat persons as persons is recognized, but a sense of obligation or duty is not the impetus of the action.

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Royce thought that “the beginning of the real knowledge of duty to others” lay in a reflective process that leads to an appreciation of the value of others.14 The relationship between a recognition of the validity of the ends principle and a realization of the inherent worth of persons seems to be this: the former is possible without the latter, but the latter sustains the former. One can recognize the ends principle as a valid principle on the basis of authority or on the basis of justice. However, to see why the principle ultimately is valid it is necessary to recognize the inherent value of those who are to be treated as ends.15 If persons have inherent worth, then we have a relationship to persons that is a relationship to beings with intrinsic or inherent worth. And to realize the inherent worth of persons is to realize that we stand in this relationship to them. In Kant’s terms, persons constitute a “kingdom of ends.” We might call this relationship “the worth relationship.” A sense of duty, I have suggested, can be understood as being grounded in a realization of the intrinsic value of persons—in a realization, that is to say, of our worth relationship to persons. Herbert Morris brings out a further significance of our worth relationship to others and its realization. Morris says that there is, or ought to be, a relationship to others of care, trust, and respect, as well as a recognition of responsibility to and for all persons. We can appreciate our responsibility to and for others, and that others are proper objects of justice, compatibly with having indifference or even contempt for them as persons.16 But to care for others, to have concern for others, or to love others, we must in some sense appreciate their intrinsic worth as persons. For Morris, an appreciation of the range and full demands of the ends principle requires an appreciation of the intrinsic worth of others, of our worth relationship to others.

14Josiah

Royce, The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1968), p. 155. should be clear, though, that the recognition of the inherent worth of persons is not sufficient to generate all of morality. For instance, it is not in itself sufficient to resolve issues relating to the tension between the allegedly conflicting prima facie claims of justice and mercy, nor does it in itself give us a means of resolving conflicts between other specific prima facie obligations. 16Herbert Morris, “Shared Guilt,” in On Guilt and Innocence: Essays in Legal Philosophy and Moral Psychology (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1976), p. 125. 15We

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A recognition of our worth relationship to others of course should be distinguished from a recognition of our primary personal relationship to others. If a person feels resentment toward others, he or she will be aware of a personal relationship to them (a negative one), but not of their inherent worth. On the other hand one’s awareness of one’s worth relationship to others will be reflected in an affective response or attitude toward them in the respect-love range of personal attitudes and such an attitude also expresses awareness of a personal relationship to them (a positive one). An awareness of the worth relationship to others requires an awareness of a personal relationship to them, but not the other way around. Respect or love or a personal attitude or response in the respect-love continuum expresses an awareness of the worth relationship to those persons toward whom one has such a response. Such a response to others expresses an awareness of their inherent worth as persons. As was argued, it is not possible to recognize the worth of persons without feeling respect or love or having any other such attitude toward them. Skeffington in the example above could not have recognized the inherent worth of the young academic as a person while feeling only contempt for him. W. G. Maclagan suggests that the recognition of the worth of persons and the response that expresses this recognition should be thought of as “integrated.” For Maclagan, as we noted in the previous chapter, the response is always agape and the recognition of the inherent worth of persons and agape are but different parts of a single experience. This thesis, as we have suggested, may be too strong. It may be that the response is some other affective attitude in the respectlove continuum, such as respect. It remains, however, that an affective response in the respect-love continuum is a dimension of the discovery of the inherent worth of persons and the discovery comes through such a response. It does not come through or with contempt for persons. At this point we can make out how the first three elements of coming into the presence of persons is contained in the fourth element, the recognition of the inherent or intrinsic worth of persons. To recognize the inherent worth of persons is (1) to recognize the validity and the applicability of the ends principle precisely because the intrinsic worth of persons is recognized, and it is (2) to recognize one’s worth relationship

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to persons, which entails or makes inescapable a recognition of a positive primary relationship to persons, which in turn is defined by (3) agape or another affective attitude in the respect-love range. In this way a realization of the inherent worth of persons (the fourth element of coming into the presence of persons) contains in itself a recognition of the ends principle (the first element), a realization of a personal relationship (the second element), and a positive affective attitude (the third element).

7 The Presence of God

Abstract  With this chapter the book turns to a consideration of the religious experience of coming into the presence of God and the thesis that coming into the presence of God is structurally similar to coming into the presence of persons. Though coming into the presence of God, like coming into the presence of persons, is a unified experience, as coming into the presence of persons has four interlocking elements so coming into the presence of God has four interlocking elements. Chapters 8–11 will present and examine the four elements of the experience of coming into the presence of God. In this chapter the Jewish and Christian scriptural tradition is consulted to show how the experience of coming into the presence of God is recognized in the Jewish and Christian traditions, and the religious experience of coming into God’s presence is distinguished from other religious experiences, such as prophetic experience and experiencing religious visions. Several initial points of analogy between coming into the presence of God and coming into the presence of persons are noted. For instance, as coming into the presence of God is different from reasoning from the “shadow” of God (seen in his creation) to the presence of God, so coming into the presence of a person is different from seeing the shadow of a person © The Author(s) 2019 J. Kellenberger, The Presence of God and the Presence of Persons, Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25045-4_7

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and reasoning that a person is nearby, which is reasoning to the physical presence of a person, not coming into that person’s presence. Keywords  Religious experience · The presence of God · The Psalms Structural analogy

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The subject of this book is the presence of God and the presence of persons. So far our concern has been with the presence of persons and the experience of coming into the presence of persons. With this chapter we turn our attention to the presence of God and the religious experience of coming into the presence of God. A main thesis of this book is that the experience of coming into the presence of God and the experience of coming into the presence of persons are structurally similar. As the previous chapters have sought to establish, the experience of coming into the presence of persons is an identifiable human experience. In this chapter and those following we will explore the experience of coming into the presence of God as it is found in several religious traditions. In this chapter we will note several similarities between the experience of coming into the presence of God and the experience of coming into the presence of persons, although the closeness of the analogy between the two experiences in its depth and details will emerge only in the discussions of the succeeding chapters. As there are four interlocking but distinct elements to coming into the presence of persons, so there are four analogous elements to coming into the presence of God (and again the numbering of them does not imply a temporal progression). When one comes into the presence of God, one attains an awareness of the religious necessity of treating God as an end and not as a means (or if one is religious a renewed awareness). Second, one attains an awareness of a primary relationship to God (or if one is religious this sense is enlivened). Third, one comes to a sense of reverence before God or another religious attitude in a continuum of religious attitudes, the apex of which is love for God (or if one is religious one’s religious attitude is vivified). And, fourth, one realizes that God is worthy of utter devotion and worship by virtue of his Being or godhead (or if one is religious this realization is strengthened).

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In Chapters 8–11 we will discuss these four interlocking elements of coming into the presence of God. The experience of God’s presence is by definition a religious experience. It is referred to in the foundational stories associated with various theistic traditions. In the form that is relevant to this study it is richly represented in the book of Psalms in the scriptures shared by the Jewish and Christian traditions. There we find expressed the sense of God’s presence in his Creation. For instance in Psalm 8 we find: O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is thy name in all the earth. (Ps. 8.1)

And in Psalm 19: The heavens are telling the glory of God, and the firmament proclaims his handiwork. (Ps. 19.1)

In Psalm 121 the Psalmist says: I lift up my eyes to the hills. From whence does my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth. (Ps. 121.1)1

Although the Psalmist finds God’s presence in the “firmament [that] proclaims his handiwork,” he is not offering a proto-teleological argument, or any argument for God’s existence. He is expressing his experience of God’s presence, which he finds in the majesty of Creation, in all 1Though

the Psalms have several authors, traditionally they are attributed to the Psalmist, David, “the sweet psalmist of Israel” (2 Sam. 23.1), and we will follow this tradition.

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of “heaven and earth,” but also in God’s keeping him in his “going out” and his “coming in” (Ps. 121.8), in the ordinary and daily events of his life. God’s presence is ubiquitous for him. He asks: Whither shall I go from thy spirit? Or whiter shall I flee from thy presence? (Ps. 139.7).

God is there in “the uttermost parts of the sea” and even in Sheol (Ps. 139.8 and 9). And yet because God can withdraw his presence, the Psalmist implores God: “Cast me not from they presence” (Ps. 51.11), The trope of the face of God is closely related to the presence of God, and the Psalmist asks God, “Hide not they face from me” (Ps. 27.9).2 For the religious with a sense of God’s presence, his being is as evident as sunlight. The experience, though, is not of God’s existence, but of his presence. The experience entails belief in God (in God’s existence), but does not presuppose it. One can come to belief in God through having for the first time an experience of coming into the presence of God. The religious experience of coming into the presence of God should be distinguished from consciousness-wrenching religious experience, prophetic religious experience, and having religious visions. Coming into the presence of God is a quiet experience, although its affective tone can vary. It can be marked by awe and wonder before God’s presence in the majesty of the heavens or in a humble aspect of nature, or God’s presence can be felt as a comforting presence, as well as being experienced with other affective attitudes.

2In

Deuteronomy part of the blessing to be given to the people of Israel is: The Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you. (Deut. 6.25) In this connection we should recall the significance for Emmanuel Levinas of “the face of the Other.”

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For the religious the felt presence of God can be nearly constant or a regularly recurring experience. Often the presence of God is experienced in prayer. At times the religious may have the sense of God’s response to their prayers as they pray, as in an instance reported by William James.3 More than one Christian religious writer has expressed the conviction that in prayer there can be a colloquy or dialogue with God.4 However, the sense of God’s presence in prayer need not be the sense that one has a dialogic response from God. The religious sense of God’s presence can be ubiquitous, found in prayer but also at any moment of the day. Natural settings can be the occasion for a heightened sense of God’s presence, so that religious persons come to feel, in William Wordsworth’s words, “a presence … and a spirit [that] rolls through all things.”5 Coming into the presence of God is closely analogous to coming into the presence of persons. As there is an affective dimension to coming into the presence of persons, there is an affective dimension to coming into the presence of God. One who comes into the presence of persons, or another person, and thereby attains a vivified awareness of the inherent worth of those persons, experiences an affective accompaniment in the respect-love range. It might be sympathy or compassion if those into whose presence one has come are in need. Or it might be respect for them as persons, or concern for them, or love. There is also a range of affective responses that might accompany a discovery of God’s presence. That range includes a sense of awe and mystery, reverence, praise, thanksgiving, and a deepening of faith, trust, and love, but not sympathy or compassion given the nature of God, for these responses imply a need or suffering on the part of the recipient.6 As with the affective 3William

James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: Modern Library, 1902), p. 69. these writers are St. Catherine of Siena (1347–1380), in her Dialogue; St. Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582), in her Way of Perfection and other writings; and St. Francis de Sales (1567–1622), in his Treatise on the Love of God. 5William Wordsworth, “Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey.” 6Traditionally God is not conceived as having needs or suffering. However, some theologians, such as Christopher Southgate and Dorothee Soelle, postulate God’s suffering, and their conception of God opens the possibility of an experience of the presence of God felt with compassion or sympathy. 4Among

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responses of coming into the presence of persons, sometimes one expression is prominent and sometimes another. One does not come into the presence of God by seeing his shadow and reasoning to his presence. This point is also a point of analogy between coming into the presence of God and coming into the presence of persons. One may detect the presence of another person near one by seeing his or her shadow, but this is only to detect the physical presence of another person, which is very different from coming into that person’s presence. There is no religious analogue to coming into the physical presence of persons. God, as spirit, has no physical presence. It is true that in some traditions the transcendent God can be incarnated in human form, as in Christianity, or take the form of an avatar, as in Hinduism. In such cases there would be the possibility of coming the physical presence of God or the Transcendent in its incarnated or avatar form without coming into the presence of God. (As perhaps happened when people in Nazareth interacted with the young son of Joseph, a Nazarene carpenter, before he began his ministry.) Coming into the physical presence of Jesus or of an avatar of Vishnu in this way would be very different from entering their presence as God or the Divine (or, for that matter, from entering their presence as persons) if only because an affective response is lacking. A related point of analogy is worth noting. In Chapter 2 we discussed coming into the presence of a personage and distinguished that from coming into the presence of persons. For one thing, coming into the presence of a personage, a royal personage for instance, is an experience importantly determined by a formal setting, while there is no required formal setting for coming into the presence of persons. In the religious sphere the same or an analogous distinction holds. In the religious sphere it is possible to experience God as a personage in a highly formal ritualistic setting. In such a setting a religious believer may have a social experience of God without experiencing the presence of God. The priestly vestments, the candles, the incense, the readings and responses, may combine to produce an aura that encourages or induces a religious participatory response that is not itself coming into the presence of God. This is not to say that the two experiences cannot merge or occur together, only that in a way analogous to coming into the presence of personages as opposed to persons they are different.

8 The Religious Import of God

Abstract  The first element of coming into the presence of God is an awareness of a religious requirement relating to God. It is felt by the religious as an inviolable religious requirement that is analogous to the ends principle: God is never to be treated as a means and is to be feared (with awe and reverence) and is to be worshipped. This is the religious import of God, analogous to the moral import of persons. Further details of the analogy between the religious requirement and the ends principle are discussed, and it is brought out how the apex in the respect-love continuum of affective responses to persons is the same as the apex in the religious continuum of affective responses to God: love, or agape, for persons and for God respectively. Keywords  The religious import of God · The first element Presence of God

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The first element of coming into the presence of God is an awareness of a religious requirement relating to God. It registers on the religious as an inviolable religious demand and is analogous to the ends principle: © The Author(s) 2019 J. Kellenberger, The Presence of God and the Presence of Persons, Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25045-4_8

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God is to be treated as an end embodying supreme value. God is to be feared (with awe and reference) and worshipped. As the ends principle forbids treating persons merely as means, the religious requirement expresses the religious necessity of not treating God as a means, of never treating God as a means. God can be treated as a means by those who believe in God, as he is by those who maintain religious belief solely or partly because they believe it has instrumental value. In the past some religious believers may have believed in God and followed religious practices in order to lessen their punishment in an afterlife. Today some may believe in God for the sake of prosperity in this life. (They would be different from those who pretend to believe for the sake of social acceptance by their group in that they would have mustered actual belief in God, or in God’s existence at least.) The religious requirement involved here, then, is not superfluous—no more than is its moral counterpart, the ends principle. As the way persons are treated as ends can vary with circumstances and relationships, so responding religiously to God in accord with his worshipful nature may be done in several ways. There are several ways of coming before God as an end in a worshipful demeanor that may be marked with any of several affective responses. In this chapter our focus is on the element of coming into the presence of God that is analogous to treating persons as ends, as opposed to the affective response of coming into the presence of God. Yet the active and behavioral response correlates with and marks an affective response. And there are several affective religious responses to God. The affective response of faith in God, or trust in God, is marked by an acceptance of what comes as God’s will, which in distinctive and subtle ways is behaviorally expressed in the life of a believer. The affective response of fear of God (awe and reverence before God) is marked by humility. These states, like other religious states or ways of being with their affective and dispositional sides, are traditional and may be found among the religious without their coming into the presence of God. However, coming into the presence of God for such believers would deepen those responses in their affective and dispositional dimensions. Another traditional response is devotion, which also would be deepened by a religious believer having the experience of coming into the

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presence of God. Devotion itself can take different forms. In a form with outward emphasis it is manifested in righteous behavior, high moral behavior toward others. In a form with inward emphasis it is manifested in contemplative prayer. An heroic outward orientation is seen in a religious life of committed service to others. Here we might think of Mother Teresa of Calcutta (Kolkata) or those who religiously pursue social justice for the oppressed. An heroic inward orientation is seen in the devoted religious who have taken up a cloistered life of contemplative prayer. For many religious believers, however, their devotion may not be heroic but imbedded in more ordinary lives and have neither an outward nor an inward emphasis. For many of the religious, including many who may have come into the presence of God, the religiousness of their lives and devotion may be nearly invisible. It is useful in this connection to recall Søren Kierkegaard’s portrait of the contemporary knight of faith in Fear and Trembling. He has the faith of Abraham (Kierkegaard’s exemplar of faith in Fear and Trembling ), but he carries it so lightly that he appears to be throughly ordinary and “bourgeois.”1 In a similar fashion many of the devoted religious may appear quite ordinary, even though they have come into the presence of God. There is a range of affective attitudes in the religious continuum and correlated with them a range of dispositional responses. At the apex of the religious continuum is love of God, as the apex of the affective continuum for persons is love of persons. In both cases that love is agape, a love that is not transactional and is freely and unconditionally given from the heart. And in each case that love has a necessary dispositional, behavioral side. Love of persons, like other affective attitudes in the person continuum, can be differently expressed in actions appropriate for different personal relationships. Love of God can similarly take different forms of expression (as with devotion to God). A primary form of love of God, recognized in the Christian tradition, is keeping

1Søren

Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, in Fear and Trembling and Repetition, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983), pp. 38–39.

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his commandments (1 Jn. 5.3). In the Christian tradition the two great commandments, which we are told contain all the others, are the commandments to love God and love our neighbors as ourselves (Mt. 22.37–40). Thus in this tradition one who keeps the commandment to love one’s neighbors, other persons, thereby loves God. Love of God in this way is continuous with love of persons because a part of loving God by keeping his commandments is loving persons, our neighbors. Here we see how the experience of coming into the presence of God and the experience of coming into the presence of persons are not only analogous, but from a religious perspective informed by a Christian sensibility are linked and continuous. As a further point of analogy between coming into the presence of persons and coming into the presence of God, we should note that just as the ends principle can be followed as a matter of moral principle without the grounding of an awareness of the inherent worth persons, so too the religious requirement can be followed as a matter of principle without the grounding of an awareness of God’s Being. Skeffington and the individual who acts only for the sake of the moral law illustrate the moral possibility. The religious possibility is illustrated by one who follows the religious requirement for the sake of religious tradition. Conversely, just as one can come into the presence of persons and act out of a sense of an awareness of the intrinsic worth of persons, so too believers can come into the presence of God and follow the religious requirement out of a sense grounded in an appreciation of the worshipful nature of God.

9 A Relationship to God

Abstract  The subject of this chapter is the second element of coming into the presence of God. When individuals come into the presence of God they enter a positive relationship to God or renew an existing positive relationship to God. As there can be negative primary relationships to persons, defined by for instance hate or disdain, so there can be negative relationships to God, defined by for instance rejection or defiance. Several of these negative relationships to God are discussed. Various positive religious relationships to God are possible in theistic traditions. In a theistic tradition such as Christianity, it is observed, a positive relationship to God may be defined by faith (trust), obedience, fear (awe and reverence), or by more than one of these religious responses to God. In this chapter a question is asked, analogous to the one asked in Chapter 4: If believers appreciate the religious necessity of not treating God as a means, will they then be aware of their positive primary relationship to God? The answer here too, it is argued, is: no, not necessarily. Keywords  A positive relationship to God · The second element Positive and negative relationships to God © The Author(s) 2019 J. Kellenberger, The Presence of God and the Presence of Persons, Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25045-4_9

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The second element of coming into the presence of God is an awareness of a personal relationship to God. Individuals, religiously committed believers and those who are not, may be in any number of personal relationships to God. Such relationships are reflected in attitudes ranging from faith and love to hate and resentment. As with personal relationships to persons, a personal relationship to God may be positive or negative. A positive personal relationship to God is compatible with, but distinct from, the relationship that a theologian has to God as s subject of study or the official relationship between God and the state that is affirmed when the divine right of rulers or the manifest destiny of a nation is enunciated. As we saw in Chapter 4, an awareness of a primary personal relationship to persons can be expressed through various personal attitudes contrary to indifference. So too with the awareness of a personal relationship to God by believers as well as an awareness of a relationship to God by those not religiously committed. Just as a personal relationship to a person can be realized through hate or contempt, a personal relationship to God can be realized through these and like affective attitudes. Søren Kierkegaard’s father when he was a child, out of loneliness and despair rose up and cursed God. Ivan Karamazov in Dostoyevsky’s novel embodies his attitude toward God in moral rebellion. In The Rebel Camus speaks of those who defy God more than they deny him. They enter into a dialogue with God, he allows, but not a “polite dialogue.”1 It may not be clear whether those with these reactions to God are religious believers (although some have thought so).2 It is clear, however, that they affirm an attitude toward God that exhibits a personal relationship and to this extent see themselves in a relationship with God. They are unlike Algernon Swinburne who in his poem “Hymn of Man” 1Albert Camus, The Rebel, trans. Anthony Bower (New York: Random House Vintage Books, 1956), p. 25. 2Norman Malcolm and D. Z. Phillips seem to have thought so. Norman Malcolm, “Is It a Religious Belief That ‘God Exists’?” in Faith and the Philosophers, ed. John Hick (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1964), pp. 106–107 and D. Z. Phillips, “Faith, Scepticism and Religious Understanding,” in Faith and Philosophical Enquiry (New York: Schocken Books, 1971), pp. 30–31. For both Malcolm and Phillips those with such reactions to God do not merely believe that there is a God, but believe in God.

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did not address God but rather used an apostrophe to God to deny God’s existence. And they are unlike the indifferent or lukewarm who hang back awaiting proof in the form of a logical demonstration or in the form of personal religious experience. They are also unlike those who already have a proof, or so regard themselves, but are indifferent toward God. Affectively they are closer to those with religious faith than to those who believe God exists but fail to have an affective response to the Divine. Still those who defy or reject God with their relationship to God of defiance or rejection are very different from those religious believers who have a faith relationship to God. Now let us ask a question analogous to one asked in Chapter 4. In Chapter 4 we asked: If one appreciates the moral necessity of treating persons not merely as means, will one then be aware of the primary relationship that one in some form has to them as persons? Here the question is: If believers appreciate the religious necessity of not treating God as a means, of honoring God and having a worshipful attitude toward God, will they then be aware of their primary relationship to God? The answer here too is: no, not necessarily. A believer who remains religious out of habit or convention and who sees the necessity of not treating God as a means but only because tradition demands it, could fail to be aware of any personal relationship to God. Conversely, a rebel like Ivan Karamazov might appreciate that he stands in a personal relationship to God and yet reject the religious requirement to not treat God as a means and to honor God. Defiance or rejection of God, as exhibited by Dostoyevsky’s Ivan Karamazov, or hate of God, animates a possible relationship to God that can be consciously entered. Those who enter such a relationship believe in God in a sense, in the sense of believing in God’s existence, as opposed to faith or trust in God (faith or belief in God).3

3John

Calvin (1509–1564) distinguished between “two kinds of faith.” In one kind one believes that God exists and believes to be true “that which he is told of Christ.” This kind of faith is of “no importance,” says Calvin. The other kind of faith, which is of vast importance for Calvin, occurs when one believes “not only that God and Christ exist, but also in God and Christ.” John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1536 edition, Chapter 2, in John Calvin: Selections from His Writings, ed. John Dillenberger (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971), p. 274.

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They are unlike those who deny that there is a God and so deny God’s existence, as Swinburne did, or militant atheists, such as Richard Dawkins and H. J. McCloskey, who are committed to disproving God’s existence.4 Yet, though thinkers like Dawkins and McCloskey deny God’s existence, still in their antipathy to belief in God they may be seen as having a kind of shadow relationship to God, in contrast with a relationship consciously taken up. Coming into the presence of God does not bring one to a relationship to God of defiance, rejection, or denial. It brings one to a personal relationship with God that, like religious affective responses to God, reside along a religious continuum. As coming into the presence of persons can bring one into a new relationship to persons, such as a relationship of sympathy, compassion, or love, so coming into the presence of God can bring one into a new relationship to God. Or, for believers, transfigure an existing relationship. There are various religious relationships to God in theistic traditions, such as obedience (to God’s commandments), faith (essentially trust in God), fear of God (awe and reverence), and love of God. These religious relationships to God embody an affective attitude or response that is correlated with the relationship’s behavioral side. A religious relationship of faith in God embodies the feeling of trust in God correlated with behavioral expressions of faith’s acceptance of what comes as God’s will, A religious relationship of fear of God embodies the affective response of awe and reverence before God correlated with behavioral expressions of humility before God. A religious relationship of love for God embodies the affective response of love (interior love) correlated with different (external) manifestations of love (obeying God’s commands, loving God by loving others). A religious believer who has had the experience of coming into the presence of God may have more than one religious affective response to God; he or she may both have faith in God and feel awe and reverence before God, and his or her relationship to God would

4Richard

Dawkins, The God Delusion (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2006) and H. J. McCloskey, “God and Evil,” reprinted in God and Evil, ed. Nelson Pike (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1964).

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then be correspondingly faceted. Analogously, one who has had the experience of coming into the presence of persons may have more than one affective response in the respect-love range; she or he for instance may feel both respect and sympathy and have a correspondingly faceted relationship to those persons into whose presence she or he has come. In the religious sphere, any of the various religious relationships to God mentioned may be entered by religious believers without the experience of coming into the presence of God. But the experience of coming into the presence of God will strengthen a believer’s existing relationship, vivify it, and make participation in it more pervasive in the believer’s life.

10 An Affective Response to God

Abstract  The third element of coming into the presence of God is the affective element of the discovery of God’s presence. Upon coming into the presence of God a realization is made of a relationship to God, and that relationship is defined by an affective response to God. That response may be faith or trust in God, or some other affective response in the religious affective continuum. As the realization of the worth relationship to persons involves and expresses itself in an affective response in the respect-love range, so the realization of God’s presence and Being involves a positive religious response. Those who come into the presence of God may have any of several religious affective responses to God. These include obedience, faith, fear, love of God or a combinations of these responses. Keywords  A positive affective response to God · The third element Coming into the presence of God, though it may be a quiet epiphany, is an affecting experience. The third element of coming into the presence of God is the affective element of the discovery of God’s presence. © The Author(s) 2019 J. Kellenberger, The Presence of God and the Presence of Persons, Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25045-4_10

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In coming into the presence of God a realization is made of a ­relationship to God, and this relationship is defined by and could not exist without the affective response that defines it. This defining affective response to God may be faith or trust in God, or love or some other positive affective response in the religious affective continuum, just as the realization of the worth relationship to persons expresses itself in an affective attitude in the respect-love range. The full relationship with God that believers in the Jewish and Christian traditions strive to come to is one of love. God’s love for human beings is believed in the Jewish and Christian traditions, and perhaps even experienced. God’s love invites the love of believers in return. An awareness of some kind of positive personal relationship is integral to both coming into the presence of God and coming into the presence of persons, and these relationships are defined by a positive affective response. It is true that in both the religious sphere and the moral sphere, or the sphere of persons, attitudes contrary to trust and love can express an awareness of a kind of personal relationship, Yet, as a response to persons, not just different from, but antithetical to agape is an indication that one has not discovered the intrinsic value of persons, so too such a response to God indicates that one has not made the felt discovery of God’s presence. The realization of the worth of persons and the religious realization of God’s presence and Being involve a positive affective response and the realization of a personal relationship defined by that response. Anyone who thinks of such discoveries as merely discoveries of ­existents is misguided. Contempt or hate expresses a personal relationship to a person, or to God, and one who exhibits either attitude is affectively closer to discovering the presence of persons, or of God, than one who sees these discoveries as merely a matter of proving the existence of something, of a soul, say, or of God. Nevertheless, the personal relationship involved in each discovery is not expressed by contempt or hate. One does not exhibit an awareness of the intrinsic worth of others by showing them contempt, and one does not express an awareness of God’s presence and Being through hate or rejection. Even if these attitudes should not entail the lack of a realization, neither is an ­indication of the relevant realization embedded respectively in coming into the presence of persons and coming into the presence of God.

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Those who come into the presence of God may have any of several religious affective responses to God or several responses in combination. In the previous chapter we indicated a range of relationships to God that coming into the presence of God might bring one to. These include relationships defined by faith, fear, and love of God. These religious relationships to God in their behavioral expression reflect the affective response to God with which they are correlated. In this way faith, fear, and love of God are seen in both affective responses to God and relationships to God. They are found along the religious affective continuum, as respect, sympathy, and love for persons are found along the analogous person continuum. Obedience to God, when it flows from the affective response of faith in God or fear of God, or from the experience of coming into God’s presence itself, is obedience to God’s commandments given from the heart. Faith in God is essentially trust in God. Fear of God is seen in awe and reverence. It is distinct from stark fear or being afraid, which we told in the Letter of James is the response of the “demons,” who “believe – and shudder” (Jas. 2.19). The demons have no doubt that there is a God, and are afraid. Fear of God, as a religious response in the Jewish and Christian traditions, is not such stark fear but the awe and reverence that coming into the presence of God can elicit. A traditional mark of love of God, as we noted in Chapter 8, is obedience to God’s commandments. To a great extent religious obedience is dispositional and expressed in behavior, but it also has an affective dimension, especially when it is from the heart. And traditionally there is a connection between obedience to God and love of God. God is loved by keeping his commandments. However, God is loved not only by keeping his commandments—one of which is love of neighbor—but through loving others, as recognized by a significant religious sensibility (informed by Matthew 25.34–40 in the Christian tradition). Although there is a religious affective continuum that includes a sense of God’s comforting presence and a sense of hope in addition to the affective responses we have mentioned, the apex of the affective religious continuum is love of God (agape ), as the apex of the affective person continuum is love of persons (also agape ). That there is an affective religious continuum and a parallel affective person continuum supports the idea that there

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is a structural analogy between coming into the presence of God and coming into the presence of persons, as does its being the case that the apex of both continua is the same affective state: agape. Furthermore, because one way of loving God is by loving others, our neighbors, and God is loved through loving others, love of God is continuous with love of persons. And so, as we noted in Chapter 8, the experience of coming into the presence of God and the experience of coming into the presence of persons are not only analogous but linked and continuous. This linkage and continuity emerges most clearly in a scrutiny of the affective dimensions of these two experiences.

11 The Recognition of God

Abstract  The fourth element of coming into the presence of God is the recognition that God is worthy of utter devotion and worship. As this chapter brings out, the fourth element of coming into the presence of God caps the three elements to which it is a fourth. Coming into the presence of God is distinguished from coming to the conviction that there is a God through ratiocinative or other means. And the range of religious affective responses to God and the relationships to God that they define are contrasted with the affective responses of Ivan Karamazov in The Brothers Karamazov, the demons in the Letter of James, and Caliban in Browning’s poem, and the relationships those responses mark, as well as Bertrand Russell’s lack of a response, religious or antireligious, and lack of any kind of entered relationship to God, when he briefly thought that the ontological argument was sound, proved its conclusion, and hence that God exists. Keywords  The recognition of God · The fourth element

© The Author(s) 2019 J. Kellenberger, The Presence of God and the Presence of Persons, Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25045-4_11

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The fourth element of coming into the presence of God is the recognition or realization that God is worthy of utter devotion and worship by virtue of his Being. This element is analogous to the fourth element of coming into the presence of persons. It, like realizing the inherent worth of persons, contains and crowns the three elements to which it is a fourth. To discover or find anew the Being of God in a quiet epiphany of God’s presence is (1) to experientially recognize the religious import of God’s Being, (2) to recognize or enter a religious relationship to God of faith in God or fear of God or love of God or a composite relationship to God that is (3) defined by one or more affective responses to God in the affective religious continuum. In Chapter 8 we noted several religious responses to God and to God’s Being, including humility and devotion in several forms. At the apex of the religious affective continuum is love or agape, and the highest way of treating God as an end in accord with his Being is to love God. God is loved by keeping his commandments, we are told in the First Letter of John; and one of the great commandments is to love our neighbors (all other persons). This is one of the great commandments enunciated by Jesus (Mt. 22.39) but also recognized in the Jewish tradition (Lev. 19.18). The idea that God is loved by keeping his commandments is not limited to Christianity. In the Torah in the context of being told to keep God’s commandments the people of Israel are told to love God with all their heart, soul, and mind (Deut. 6). The religious sense that we can love God through loving others, nourished in the Christian tradition by Matthew 25, is found or intimated in other traditions, as in Islam. In the Qur’an the faithful are told to help those in need out of love of God (Qur’an 2.77 and 76.8). If God can be loved by loving others, how God is to be loved becomes the question of how persons are to be loved. How is agape to be given to persons? The expression of agape toward persons is importantly determined by their needs, whether the dire need of those experiencing famine or disease or the need for understanding by those close to us. The expression of agape is not limited to those in need. It is also importantly determined by one’s relationship to the one loved: love for one’s spouse may be expressed in one way and love for a friend in another way. Love for persons beyond our acquaintance, whom we will

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never meet face to face, is similarly determined by our relationship to them, which is the relationship that binds neighbors, and their needs. Coming into the presence of God and thereby discovering or finding anew the Being of God is to enter or renew a religious relationship to God defined by fear of God, faith in God, love of God or another religious affective response. Such a religious relationship is a personal relationship, but it is the affective antithesis of rejection or defiance of God or stark fear of God. These negative affective responses and the relationships they define derive from a conviction of God’s existence held independently of coming into the presence of God. Such a conviction is held by Ivan Karamazov and the demons in the Letter of James. Such an unquestioning conviction is held by Caliban in Robert Browning’s poem.1 In these cases the affective responses and the relationships to God they define range from defiance to envy. It is also possible to come to the conviction that God exists without forming either a negative response or a response found along the religious affective continuum. This may have been the case with Bertrand Russell, who as a student at Trinity College, Cambridge in a flash of supposed logical insight thought he saw that the ontological argument is “valid” and hence proved the existence of God. He was excited by what he briefly supposed was a logical discovery.2 But his religious reaction was apparently nonexistent. He had no religious affective response. The affective responses of Ivan Karamazov, the demons in James’ letter, and Caliban, and the relationships they mark, as well as Russell’s lack of response and his nonrelationship are in contrast to the religious affective response internal to coming into the presence of God, and the relationship it defines. Coming into the presence of God is not coming to the conviction that there is a God through ratiocinative or other means. Of course if someone who did not believe in God were to have the experience of coming into the presence of God, then such a person would acquire along with an awareness of the presence of God the knowledge that

1Robert

Browning, “Caliban Upon Setebos.” Russell, “My Mental Development,” in The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell, ed. Robert E. Egner and Lester E. Denonn (London and New York: Routledge, 1961) [electronic resource].

2Bertrand

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there is a God. And here there may seem a point of apparent disanalogy between coming into the presence of God and coming into the presence of persons. When one comes into the presence of persons one does not acquire the belief that there are persons. The existence of persons is not in question. On the other hand in the minds of many there is a question regarding God’s existence. Nevertheless, we do not have here a point of structural disanalogy. Just as the awareness of the presence of God presupposes by containing within itself but goes beyond the knowledge that there is a God, so the awareness of the presence of persons presupposes and goes beyond the knowledge that there are persons. Only for those who do not believe in God, or for those who believe but doubt, does coming into the presence of God impart knowledge that there is a God. If, contrary to psychological possibility, some of us did not believe in the existence of persons, the same would hold for coming into the presence of persons. The analogy, on this point, is perfect. An affective response to God and to God’s Being is entailed by or is a part of the religious relationship to God that it defines. A religious affective response marks coming into the presence of God, so that a lack of such a response—overt or internal—is an indication that one has not come into the presence of God. The affective response may not be love of God. It may be fear of God or a compound affective response consisting of faith, fear of God, love of God, and other affective religious responses, but in any case it marks a new or renewed relationship to God enlivened by an awareness of God’s encountered Being. Although there may be a religious duty to love God in more than one religious tradition, the love to be given to God is not given from a sense of duty—if love can be given from a sense of duty. In any case the love of God given by those who come into the presence of God is not given from a sense of duty, but given spontaneously in response to or as a part of the realization of God’s presence and Being. That love actively given to God, perhaps through loving others, is the active manifestation of a new or renewed relationship to God realized in coming into God’s presence. It, like other relationships to God defined by other religious responses to God, such as faith or fear of God, is a relationship that is defined by and cannot exist without an affective religious response to God.

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In this way the fourth element of coming into the presence of God— the realization or recognition of God’s Being—contains and orders the other three elements: (1) an awareness of the religious demands of God vivified by a sense of God’s presence and Being and (2) an awareness of a religious relationship to God that is defined by (3) an affective response to God in the religious affective continuum, the zenith of which is love of God. We find, then, that in this overarching symmetry too the structural analogy between coming into the presence of God and coming into the presence of persons is in evidence.

12 The Presence of Persons and the Presence of God

Abstract  In this chapter the experience of coming into the presence of persons is sharply distinguished from an inference, using an argument by analogy, that there are “other minds.” The putative necessity for such an argument stems from an acceptance of a certain philosophical “picture,” and this chapter makes clear that this “picture” need not be assumed and in no way informs the experience of coming into the presence of persons. In the same way in this chapter the experience of coming into the presence of God is distinguished from the teleological argument for God’s existence. Also in this chapter, two further points of analogy between coming into the presence of persons and coming into the presence of God are discussed. One relates to coming into the presence of God and coming into the presence of all persons. The other relates to what prevents the discovery of the inherent worth of persons and what prevents the discovery of the Being of God. Often, it is argued, it may be the same state of mind. Keywords  Theories of the self and the problem of other minds · Two further respects of analogy · Analogy between what prevents coming into the presence of God and persons © The Author(s) 2019 J. Kellenberger, The Presence of God and the Presence of Persons, Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25045-4_12

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In Chapter 2 we indicated that we would use “person” in its unadorned and commonly understood meaning, and so we have done in this study. Persons in this sense are those we commonly meet in everyday life. English speakers have no difficulty in applying this term as speakers of other languages have no difficulty in applying the cognate term or terms in their languages. In general we have no difficulty in recognizing that we are in the physical presence of other persons. As opposed to characterizing foreigners and the enemy in wartime as inhuman, only rarely in human history has there been a problem in perceiving other persons to be human persons, usually arising from confronting others who appeared or acted differently from ourselves. In the sixteenth century the European explorers of the New World were conveniently unsure of the humanity or personhood of the indigenous peoples they encountered, and when the Spaniards entered the empire of the Aztecs some of the Aztecs, at least initially, thought that they might be gods. These misapprehensions, however, evaporated with familiarity. In today’s ­ world virtually all of us recognize persons in their physical presence despite cultural diversity. As we do this without a theory of “self,” or what makes a person a person, so we recognize friends and acquaintances as persons we know without a theory of personal identity that postulates some characteristic that makes an individual that person. In the history of Western philosophy various theories of selfhood and personal identity have been proposed. For René Descartes in the seventeenth century persons were an immaterial soul (âme or anima ) or mind (esprit or mentis ) closely associated with, embodied in, a particular human body. For John Locke in the same century the essence of personhood was consciousness. Counter to both these theories is materialism in various forms, for which consciousness, perception, and other “mental” qualities reduce to or are manifestations of aspects of a person’s physical body. Without comment we have left to one side these various philosophical theories, for the contention among them is not relevant to our concern with coming into the presence of persons. In the same way we have not taken up other theories of the self, or personhood, that are less well anchored in the philosophical tradition. In particular we have not brought into our discussion Rowan Williams’s theory that human beings are made

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persons by the relationships they have to other human beings, so that “[a] person … is the point at which relationships intersect.”1 Though very different from Descartes’ or Locke’s or a materialist’s theory of the self, it is nevertheless a theory of the self and any treatment of it would be an unnecessary accretion to this book’s discussion. The idea that we need to infer that there are other minds derives from the theory of human nature provided by Descartes; it offers a “picture” (in Wittgensteins’s sense) of the nature of human existence. According to the Cartesian picture human beings are dualistic. On the one hand they are minds or souls, a “thinking” thing (where “thinking” is construed very broadly to include sensations, feelings, and more) and on the other hand they are bodily or material, each having a body with which she or he is closely “associated.” For this picture each human being has access to his or her mind through a privileged introspection, but lacks such an access to the minds of others. As a consequence the question of how we come to know or believe that others have minds arises as a troubling and pressing question within the theoretical ambit of this picture. As an inveterate question within the dualistic tradition inherited from Descartes it becomes the problem of other minds. In the nineteenth century John Stuart Mill in his An Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy offered a solution to the problem using an argument from analogy: as one oneself experiences pain when she or he exhibits pain behavior—crying out, wincing, and so on—so we may infer by analogy that others experience pain when they exhibit pain behavior, and so too for other mental states ranging from hunger to jealousy.2 Mill does not explicitly refer to Descartes. Others have formulated the problem as the problem of the (interior) experiences of others without an explicit reference to Descartes. Even so the problem they address persists in the Cartesian assumption or a quasi-Cartesian assumption that the feelings, sense perceptions, and emotions of others are closed to a person and must in some way be inferred. 1Rowan

Williams, Being Human (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2018), p. 32. Stuart Mill, An Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy, 1865, in Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, vol. 9, ed. J. M. Robson (Toronto and Buffalo, NY: University of Toronto Press, 1979), pp. 191–192, 205n, and 369n.

2John

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Alvin Plantinga in God and Other Minds sees a great similarity between the teleological argument for God’s existence (the design argument) and its “teleological evidence” and the argument from analogy for other minds and its “analogical evidence”; and he offers reasoning in support of the proposition that if “belief in other minds” is “rational” on the basis of “analogical evidence,” then a “belief in God” is “rational” on the basis of “teleological evidence.” Plantinga’s primary concern is to defend the rationality of belief in God: the subtitle of God and Other Minds is “A Study of the Rational Justification of Belief in God.” At the end of his book he offers as his “tentative conclusion”: “if my belief in other minds is rational, so is my belief in God. But obviously the former is rational; so, therefore, is the latter.”3 Plantinga’s argument and conclusion are doubly irrelevant to coming into the presence of God and coming into the presence of persons. First, his argument assumes that an argument by analogy is needed to address the “rationality” of belief in other minds. But the picture that justifies such an assumption is not presupposed by the thesis that the presence of persons can be entered. Second, the idea that coming into the presence of persons has the same symmetry as coming into the presence of God is conceptually different from the idea that as an argument by analogy for other minds makes belief in other minds rational so a teleological argument makes belief in God’s existence rational. The possibility of coming into the presence of other persons has nothing to do with the idea that we need to infer that there are other minds or the philosophical picture that generates it. Coming into the presence of persons or another person is a pretheoretical notion. That is, it is understandable as a possibility of something experienced without reference to any philosophical theory of the self. It is compatible with one person knowing—without resorting to an argument by analogy or any argument—that another is in pain, hungry, jealous, or joyful, quite in accord with the ordinary understanding of what one person can know of another’s feelings. Similarly the possibility of coming into the

3Alvin Plantinga, God and Other Minds: A Study of the Rational Justification of Belief in God (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1967), p. 271.

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presence of God has nothing to do with the teleological argument for the existence of God, or any argument for God’s existence. It too, as a phenomenal experience, has been treated in this study as a possibility in human experience. Coming into the presence of persons is analogous to and even continuous with coming into the presence of God. In conception and substance these two movements of discovery and the analogy between them are very different from the putative inference of other minds (the minds of other persons), the teleological inference of God’s existence, and the alleged analogy between them. We have seen how similar the symmetries of these two movements are—the depth of the structural analogy between coming into the presence of persons and coming into the presence of God—in previous chapters, but discovering the Being of God is analogous to realizing the inherent worth of persons in respects we have not yet discussed or not highlighted. In Chapter 2 we observed how being moved by others in need and responding to them is sympathy marks coming into their presence. We might in this way come into the presence of those in famine conditions or those displaced by war even though we have never met them face to face. This experience of being moved by those unseen and responding to them is familiar to many, as is the experience of responding to those close to us with love and affection and in this way coming into their presence. What, though, of coming into the presence of all persons, not just those whose need we see and those close to us, but all the persons of the world? It is harder to identify a familiar emotional event, or a continuing affective relationship, that might make coming into the presence of all persons understandable. What seems to be needed is a radically new perception of the many persons of the earth who are strangers to us and whom we will never meet or see. What is needed is a realization of their inherent worth, a kind of revelation. And it is here that we find a parallel between coming into the presence of person or of persons generally and coming into the presence of God. From a religious perspective coming into the presence of God, finding God, may be seen as a gift of God, something given by God’s grace. When it is experienced for the first time it comes as a revelation and carries with it a metanoia or a redirection. While coming

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into the presence of all persons may or may not be received as a gift of God, it will have a revelatory force and may deeply change, in the manner of a metanoia, how one responds to the strangers of the world. In each case it may be appropriate to speak of an epiphany in the sense of a sudden insight, although the revelations could conceivably be slow-dawning; and for the religious it may be appropriate in both cases to speak of an epiphany in the religious sense of a divinely inspired happening. Regardless of the chosen characterization, the two cases are alike in that each is revelatory. The second respect to be noted in which coming into the presence of persons and coming into the presence of God are analogous relates to what keeps human beings from discovering the worth of persons and what keeps them from discovering God’s presence and Being. If there is the discovery of persons’ intrinsic worth and the religious discovery of God’s Being, it may be that what prevents us from making the one discovery prevents us from making the other. If persons have inherent worth, why do human beings fail to recognize the inherent worth of other human beings? Why do we fail to have what Josiah Royce called “the moral insight,” allowing that the moral insight aligns with the discovery or recognition of the inherent worth of others? Or, as Royce would put the question, why do we fail to retain the moral insight? His answer is that passion clouds the insight. “It is,” he says, “as impossible for us to avoid the illusion of selfishness in our daily lives as to escape seeing through the illusion at the moment of insight.”4 Royce is arguably right when he says that passion clouds the moral insight. A failure to realize the inherent worth of others whom we meet or encounter perhaps daily is not due to a failure of investigation; it is due to an inability to see the significance of what is already before us. It is indeed a cognitive failure to fail to attain or to preserve what Royce calls the moral insight. However the cognitive deficiency here is not a failure to verify a thesis; it is a failure to realize a truth that, as it were, stares us steadily in the face, to which we are blind nevertheless. It is not that our investigative technique lacks rigor, it is that our moral vision 4Josiah

Royce, The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1968), p. 155.

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is “clouded.” Royce does not speak of self-deception in this connection. Rather he speaks of passion. However, he could as well have spoken of self-deception or the kind of blindness that self-deception creates. If self-deception is operative in preventing the realization of the inherent worth of others, then the role of the selfishness Royce mentions is clarified. It is agreed by many philosophers who have written on self-deception that we can with point seek a motive or reason for a person’s self-deception. This recognition has been expressed in several ways. The self-deceiver, it has been said, “persuades himself to believe contrary to the evidence in order to evade [an] unpleasant truth” relating to his “personal identity.”5 Or, he deceives himself “out of concern for truth or moral and personal integrity [or] in order to avoid facing up to some truth that is painful or as a result of fear and/or desire.”6 Or, the selfdeceiver has an “interest … associated with preserving his identity, the sort of person he is, or conceives himself to be.”7 Self-deception then is motivated. This is a conceptual feature. For Jean-Paul Sartre human beings practice self-deception regarding their freedom (“bad faith”) because they want to avoid the anxiety of freedom and responsibility. A similar motive is generated by selfishness. If we come to realize that other persons are inherently valuable, then we will have to admit the moral necessity of treating them as ends in themselves with all that this entails regarding our actions and thoughts. If we understand selfishness as the assertion of one’s will, as Royce does, then we can begin to understand how selfishness can prevent one from realizing even one’s own inherent worth. For allowing our individual wills to determine our basic values may often come into conflict with recognizing the objective responsibilities attendant upon reverence for ourselves. In the Jewish, Christian and Islamic traditions God’s will is to be accepted and to be done, in contradistinction to one’s own will. 5Herbert

Fingarette, Self-Deception, in Studies in Philosophical Psychology, ed. R. F. Holland (New York: Humanities Press, 1969), pp. 28 and 67 (emphasis deleted). 6Alan Drengson, “Critical Notice: Herbert Fingarette, Self-Deception,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 3, 1974, p. 482. 7Amelie O. Rorty, “Belief and Self-Deception,” Inquiry, vol. 15, 1972, p. 395.

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Accordingly, in these traditions what can distance one from God and prevent the religious discovery of God’s presence and Being is selfishness understood as the assertion of one’s self, one’s own will as opposed to God’s. St. Paul in his letter to the Romans spoke of dying to sin and gaining a new life in Christ. John of Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) said that a person, to gain union with God, must “die in God to himself,” and when he feels that God has departed from him, in order to feel again God’s presence within himself, “he must freely abandon his own will to the will of God.”8 In the Dark Night of the Soul St. John of the Cross (1542–1591) spoke of the “way of perfection” as “the negation of [one’s] will and pleasure for God’s sake.”9 While Ruysbroeck and St. John of the Cross were concerned with union with God in one or more mystical conceptions, what they said applies to the discovery of God’s presence and Being. Allowing this extrapolation, what for Royce prevents the moral insight for Ruysbroeck and St. John of the Cross prevents the religious discovery of God’s presence and Being. Thus, if there are these two discoveries, and individuals do not make them as a result of self-deception, then, if Royce is right about the moral discovery and what Ruysbroeck and St. John of the Cross said can be applied to the religious discovery, the reason, or a sufficient reason, for self-deception in each case is the same assertion of will. Exactly what prevents one discovery would then prevent the other. And I think that it is arguable that Royce is right on the one hand and Ruysbroeck and St. John of the Cross are right on the other. Recall the role of agape in the discovery of the presence of persons and in the religious discovery. An aspiration toward agape is required by both discoveries. To be sure many who recognize the ideal fail to attain it. And, too, for many religion is an escape or a means of feeling secure, as Freud saw, or merely a form of social interchange. In the same way

8John

of Ruysbroeck, The Book of Supreme Truth, Chapters 5 and 6, in John of Ruysbroeck, The Adornment of Spiritual Marriage, The Sparkling Stone, The Book of Supreme Truth, trans. C. A. Wynschenk Dom, ed. Evelyn Underhill (London: J. M. Dent & Sons; New York: Dutton, 1916), pp. 233 and 234 [electronic resource]. Other variants of John of Ruysbroeck’s name are John Ruusbroec and Jan van Ruysbroeck. 9St. John of the Cross, Dark Night of the Soul, trans. and ed. E. Allison Peers (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Image Books, 1959), p. 59.

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morality can be used as an escape. (“I have my principles, and they dictate that I cannot help someone like you. I’m sorry.”) Neither this “religion” nor this “morality” need give a place to agape. But if the religious discovery were made, this would not be the religion one would come to, and if the discovery of the presence of persons were made, this would not be the morality one would come to. If these discoveries were made, agape would stand forth as the ultimate and ideal response we would be required to have, should seek to have, to persons and God. Once either of these discoveries were made agape would be required, or be required to be striven toward; and consequently our resistance to the demands of agape provides a common motive for self-deception in the two cases. However, it may not be self-deception that prevents the discovery of God. It may instead be only a blindness to what is evident (as God’s existence is taken to be in strains of religious sensibility). To be sure, in a strong strain of religious sensibility a failure to recognize God’s presence and Being is tied to self-deception, a “darkening” of the mind whose provenance is “wickedness” or “corruption” (Rom. 1.18–21 and Ps. 14.1). But it is too strong to say that from a religious perspective it is always and necessarily self-deception that prevents the discovery of God’s presence and Being. In the first place there is the religious sentiment that those “ignorant of God” are merely “foolish” and are “little to be blamed, for perhaps they go astray while seeking God and desiring to find him” (Wis. 13.1 and 6). Second, from a religious perspective it may be that the noise and constant urgency of the world, or alternatively a comfortable business, that occludes God’s presence for many and makes it impossible for them to discover God’s presence. The hectic nature or business of contemporary life causes the blindness that prevents the discovery of God’s presence. Third, for those with a religious perspective that is imbued with ecumenical and pluralistic sentiments, not finding God may be due to religious adherence to a nontheistic tradition. For such a pluralistically oriented religious perspective Jews, Christians, and Muslims all worship the God of Abraham, though their filled-out concepts of God differ, as Sikhs and devotional Hindus worship God in their respective religious conceptions (in devotional Hinduism God may be worshipped through different ishta-divas or favored forms of God). One with this perspective could say that nontheistic Buddhists

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come into the presence of God in walking the path of the Buddha, although many Buddhists might resist this characterization. The religious reality they know, they might insist, is not theistic. This reply allows that there may be different forms of coming into the presence of the Divine or religious reality, of which coming into the presence of God is the theistic manifestation. The first of these considerations relating to not discovering God’s presence is analogous to being “ignorant” of persons, to not being adequately acquainted with persons beyond our ken in our urban area, in places in our nation far from us, or in places half a world away. The second consideration—the hectic nature of contemporary life or its ­business—can prevent us from coming into the presence of persons as much as it can prevent us from coming into the presence of God. The third consideration, while it explains why many of the religious in nontheistic traditions may not come into the presence of God, as opposed to the religious reality recognized in their tradition, has no analogy or implication for failing to come into the presence of persons. Buddhists and others in nontheistic traditions are not prevented from coming into the presence of persons, especially those in their ken, by their nontheistic conception of religious reality. The qualified point of analogy between coming into the presence of persons and coming into the presence of God is that both failing to come into the presence of persons and failing to come into the presence of God may, for many, be caused by the same self-centered self-deception, especially when they fail to come into the presence of those well within their ken and fail to come into God’s presence though they are acquainted with a theistic tradition and are vestigially theistic. But also, for many, their failure to come into the presence of God may be due to an “ignorance” of God and their failure to come into the presence of persons beyond their ken may be due to a lack of acquaintance, and, for many, their failure to come into the presence of persons even within their ken, or of God, may be due to the hectic nature of contemporary life or its consuming business, while for those in nontheistic traditions their not coming into the presence of God may be because they have come into the presence of the Divine or religious reality in a nontheistic manifestation, though they readily come into the presence of persons.

13 The Death of God and the Death of Persons

Abstract  The shared symmetry of “the death of God” and “the death of persons” is examined in this chapter. As coming into the presence of persons is structurally analogous to coming into the presence of God, so the “death” of persons as the loss of the sense of the inherent worth of persons—of all persons or of certain groups of persons—is structurally analogous to the loss of a consciousness of God, “the death of God” in one of its primary meanings. In this chapter how moral practice in observance of moral duty can survive the death of persons is explored and how, similarly, religious practice based on convention can survive the death of God. But as such a form of morality would not be sustained by an awareness of the inherent worth of persons so such a form of religion would not be grounded in an experience of God’s presence. Keywords  The death of God · The death of persons Their structural analogy

·

The “death of God” has been made familiar to us by Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900). Yet “God is dead,” as Nietzsche was aware, can mean different things. It can mean that the way God has been thought of is no © The Author(s) 2019 J. Kellenberger, The Presence of God and the Presence of Persons, Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25045-4_13

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longer adequate. It can mean that God is dead and we have killed him. It can mean that there is no God and never has been. And it can mean that human consciousness of God has receded. Nietzsche, who turned the death of God theme several ways, meant that God is dead is all of the last three senses. Our concern in this chapter is with the death of God in the last sense, in the specific sense of the death of an awareness of God or of an affective consciousness of God. Or rather, this where half of our concern begins. The other half is with a phenomenon that is the mirror image of the death of God: the death of persons. By “the death of persons” is intended something analogous to the sense specified for “the death of God.” It is the death or at least the decline of a consciousness of the inherent worth of persons, of the worth persons have as persons. The death of persons is the loss of a consciousness of persons as ends in themselves. The death of God and the death of persons share a symmetry, just as coming into the presence of God and coming into the presence of persons do. Just past the midpoint of the twentieth century the theologian William Hamilton (1924–2012) wrote: There really is a sense of not-having, of not-believing, of having lost, not just the idols of the gods of religion, but God himself. And this is an experience that is not peculiar to a neurotic few, nor is it private or inward. Death of God is a public event in our history.1

The death of God is “a public event” in that the experience of the death of God is widespread and socially manifested in various ways. It is not “private or inward” in that the experience of the death of God expresses itself in behavior, attitudes, and feelings, or their lack, perceptible to others. Still, at its root, in a primary sense of “the death of God” it is an individual and “private or inward” experience of a loss of consciousness of God and his presence. And in this sense it has a parallel in the experience of the death of persons. 1William Hamilton, “The Death of God Theologies Today,” in Radical Theology and the Death of God, ed. Thomas J. J. Altizer and William Hamilton (Indianapolis, IN, New York, and Kansas City: Bobbs-Merrill, 1966), pp. 46–47.

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Nietzsche was not the first to proclaim the death of God. Algernon Swinburne did before him and before Swinburne Hegel had referred to the feeling that God was dead and the German poet Heinrich Heine had referred to a dying God. Nietzsche also was not the last to proclaim the death of God. But in his utterance the words assume their full oracular force. He makes the pronouncement more than once, turning the death-of-God theme several ways. In Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche’s prophet of transvaluation says that God is dead, that “he died of his pity for man.”2 The death of God is also announced by Nietzsche in The Gay Science, through a different Tiresias-figure, a seer and “madman.” The madman says that we have killed God. God “has bled to death under our knives.”3 Nietzsche’s metaphor is the same sanguinary metaphor used by Swinburne in his “Hymn of Man.” The madman asks rhetorically: Now that we have killed God “must we not ourselves become gods simply to seem worthy” of the deed?4 If God is dead, then human beings by their will must create their value and their morality. Finally the madman’s message and Zarathustra’s are the same: God is dead and human beings, if they are able, must consciously create their own values. Nietzsche regards the “slave morality” of Christianity as contemptible. He perceives it to be choked with resentment against one’s betters and to be motivated by the secret desire for revenge. At times Nietzsche espouses instead a morality of conscious transvaluation, in which the “noble” man (and for Nietzsche it is men and not women) knows that he himself is the creator of values.5 Nietzsche’s doctrine of transvaluation in its full development is the moral doctrine that the source of all value is the creative will of the individual.

2Friedrich

Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Pt. 2, “On the Pitying,” in The Portable Nietzsche, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Viking Press, 1954), p. 202. 3Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1974), p. 181. 4Nietzsche, The Gay Science, p. 181. 5Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Prologue, Sec. 9 and Pt. 1, “On the Tree on the Mountainside,” in The Portable Nietzsche, pp. 135–136 and 156 and Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Marianne Cowan (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1955), Sec. 260, pp. 202–206.

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Nietzsche often means the death of God in the sense of a recession of a consciousness of God, or this is often a part of what he means. It is in this sense of “the death of God” that the death of God and the death of persons are parallel. Furthermore, they are connected in a way that Nietzsche, albeit inadvertantly, helps us see. To the extent that he affirmed transvaluation and denied moral absolutes he should also have looked for the death of persons, the cessation of a consciousness of persons as ends, as inherently valuable in themselves. A view that makes the individual’s will the sole source of moral value must deny sources of moral value independent of the will. Nietzsche’s doctrine of transvaluation requires not only that God is not the source of religio-moral values, but that persons per se do not embody intrinsic worth with independent moral implications. Accordingly, consistency demands that for Nietzsche, as we have “killed” God so we must “kill” persons as intrinsically valuable in order to clear the way for an untrammelled creation of values. Nietzsche did not proclaim the death of persons and, indeed, he may have continued to see persons as inherently valuable; however, because he thought the doctrine of transvaluation true, he was required to deny the intrinsic value or persons as persons, and to the extent he thought conscious transvaluation a viable morality for the “noble,” he should have been prepared to proclaim, for them, the death of persons in the sense of a death of the consciousness of persons’ intrinsic worth. It is not just transvaluation and other existentialist versions of morality that require the denial of persons as ends in themselves. Societal ethical relativism, according to which the pronouncements of society define moral rightness, does as well. Of course Nietzsche almost certainly would have condemned such relativism as a “herd morality,” a mindless capitulation to popular prejudice. But still transvaluation as much as societal ethical relativism is incompatible with the independent, and in this sense objective, value of persons, as are those forms or moral absolutism that deny the intrinsic worth of persons. To the extent that any of these forms of morality are affirmed the worth of persons must be denied, and to the degree any is affectively embraced there would occur the death of persons. The death of God taken one way is an oxymoron: to say that the eternal God has died and so ceased to exist is to say that the eternal God

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is not eternal. It is to say that there is not now and never has been an eternal God. If God can die, God is not God. Nietzsche, who as we have seen used several meanings of “the death of God,” was aware of the paradoxical implication of saying God could die, could cease to exist, and no doubt savored it. Our concern is not with the death of God in this ontological sense but with the death of God as the loss of consciousness of God. The death of God so understood is structurally analogous to the corresponding loss of a consciousness of persons with inherent value, the death of persons, just as coming into the presence of God—coming to a consciousness of the presence of God—is structurally analogous to coming into the presence of persons. The analogy between the death of God and the death of persons runs as deep as the analogy between coming into the presence of God and coming into the presence of persons. When one comes into the presence of persons one experiences an awareness of them as persons with an inherent worth, to whom the ends principle invincibly applies; one becomes aware of a personal relationship to them defined by an affective response in the respect-love continuum and of one’s worth relationship to them; and one has an affective response to them that is found in the respect-love continuum. When one comes into the presence of God one experiences the presence of God and his Being, to whom the religious requirement invincibly applies; one becomes aware, or becomes aware anew, of a personal relationship to God defined by an affective response in the religious affective continuum (faith, fear of God, love of God): and one has an affective response to God found along this continuum. In each case there are four analogous elements. As each of the four elements is fulfilled when one comes into the presence of God or the presence of persons, so each is lost with the death of God or the death of persons. With the death of persons one loses the experienced sense of their intrinsic worth and a grounded sense of the ends principle; although one may continue to have various relationships to other persons, including relationships of love, those relationships will not be informed by a felt sense of their inherent worth; and though one may respect other persons and even love some persons these responses will not embody an awareness of their inherent worth. With the death of

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God one loses a sense of God’s presence and Being and a grounded sense of the religious requirement; one loses a felt sense of a personal relationship to God of faith, fear of God, or love of God; and one loses a quickened religious affective response to God that would define a ­personal relationship to God. The death of persons and the death of God also mirror each other in the way that they allow “interests.” The death of persons occurs when one loses the consciousness of others as ends, as persons with inherent worth, and one can no longer come into their presence. The loss can occur for an individual, for a collection of individuals, or for a society. And the persons who die to one’s consciousness can be very few, even only one, or persons in general. However, this is not to say that those who have experienced the death of persons will have no interest in persons. A manager of a retail store may have a great interest in persons as customers. One who is in business may have an interest in those who are his or her peers in business and be eager to form relationships with them.6 Medical practitioners have an interest in persons as patients; teachers have an interest in persons as students; lawyers and other professionals have an interest in persons as clients. In these relationships there can be a viable concern for the good of those who are served. In them a professionalism prevails. That professionalism is compatible with a sense of the presence of persons, but a commitment to professional ethics may guide conduct when there no longer is a consciousness of the inherent value of persons. The death of persons, moreover, does not in itself entail turning from moral conduct. One may generally endeavor to act morally out of a sense of duty even though one has experienced the death of those persons one treats morally. One may even adhere to the practical imperative out of a sense of duty without a vivifying consciousness of the inherent worth of persons, as we saw earlier.

6Aristotle recognized relationships or friendships of this sort, which he characterized as based on “utility” or mutual usefulness. Nicomachaen Ethics 1156a, in The Ethics of Aristotle, trans. J. A. K. Thomson and rev. Hugh Tredennick (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1976), p. 261.

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Just as one can be moral and treat others morally, and even follow the ends principle as a matter of principle, without a felt sense of their intrinsic worth, so one can be religious, and even follow the religious requirement as a matter of principle or convention, without a felt sense of the presence of God. As one can be moral in one’s practice even though one has experienced the death of persons in one’s consciousness, so one can be religious in one’s overt practice though one has lost one’s sense of God’s presence and experienced the death of God. One who has experienced the death of God, like one who has never felt the presence of God, may attend and participate in church, temple or mosque services out of habit or in response to family pressure. Such an individual may sing the hymns and recite the prayers with others in a church or temple service or prostrate himself or herself in a mosque service. She or he may even pray in solitude, perhaps with a sense that her or his prayers are ritual observances unheard. After experiencing the death of God one can continue to believe in God’s existence as a residual belief from childhood or even as something “proven” by theological argument but without a felt sense of God’s presence. After the death of God there may still be an “interest” in God. God would not be a client or patient. But he could be the object of an existential belief and perhaps the object of theological or philosophical interest. He might even be the locus of hope. The death of God in the sense pertinent to this study occurs when the consciousness of God’s presence and Being recedes or is lost. The death of persons occurs when the consciousness of the inherent worth of persons withers or is lost. The death of God is overcome when one attains, or again attains, or from a religious standpoint, is given or given again a sense of God’s presence and Being. The death of persons is overcome when there is a renewed awareness of the worth relationship to persons, to some persons or to all persons. In Chapters 8–12 we saw that there is a thoroughgoing structural similarity between coming into the presence of persons and coming into the presence of God. Each has the same or analogous elements, and the elements of each are analogously related. Each is an analogue of the other, but they are distinct. The discovery of the presence of persons and the religious discovery of the presence and Being of God do not entail

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each other. Nevertheless, it is arguable that if there are such discoveries to be made, the self-deception that prevents many from making one discovery prevents them from making the other. Why then, it might be asked, do we not find a well developed Godconsciousness with a well developed person-consciousness? And why is it that historically, over the last several centuries, as human beings have become more aware of the worth of persons there has been a dying of the sense of God’s presence? There may be no general answer to the first question. It is to be noted, however, that though persons may discover that they are deceiving themselves regarding one matter they may still fail to discover that they are deceiving themselves regarding a related matter, even when the cause of the self-deception is the same in the two cases. Thus, assuming self-deception is operative, one may overcome self-deception regarding the presence of God and yet fail to discover and enter into the presence of persons and vice versa; and similarly one may discover the inherent value of some persons in their ken and be blind to the inherent value of others. The second question raises a more serious issue for the thesis that what prevents one discovery prevents the other. For, it would seem, even though one discovery might not lead to the other, still making one should not lead to a strengthened denial of the other. But is the presupposition of the question, shared with the first question, correct? Have we become more aware of the worth of persons in the age of the death of God? Or, to the extent that there is a greater concern for social justice, have we simply become more consistent in the application of social justice as a matter of principle? And it should be kept in mind that self-deception is not the only possible cause of blindness to either God’s presence and Being or the inherent worth of persons. If one were to make these discoveries one would gain, or regain, a consciousness of God’s presence and of the intrinsic worth of persons. In this sense one would overcome the death of God and the death of persons. To be sure, there are issues here about whether there is a religious discovery of the presence and Being of God or a discovery of the presence and inherent worth of persons at all. Our exploration of coming into the presence of persons and coming into the presence of God has been conducted at the level of human experience. That is, it has

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been at the phenomenal level. It may then be asked: Have those who deny God’s presence failed to make a veridical discovery, or have those who speak of God’s presence read into the universe what is not there? And have those who deny the intrinsic worth of persons failed to discover what can be actually discovered, or are those who speak of this discovery misled? The first is a religious question, the second a moral question. Each leads back to the question of self-deception or a kind of blindness to the significance of the familiar, and each does so in the same way.

14 Moral and Religio-Moral Implications

Abstract  Previous chapters have considered the implications of ­coming into the presence of persons for respecting the ends principle as it applies to them and for our affective response and entered relationships to them. In this chapter the further concrete moral and religio-moral (religious implications for the treatment of other persons) are discussed. Some relate to those persons close to us. Some relate to those beyond our immediate ken. The implications of entering the presence of all persons are explored, and pacifism is presented as a possible implication. Also in this chapter the possibility of coming into the presence of nonhuman creatures is examined. Though they are not persons, it would be possible to come into their presence if they have a dignity or inherent value of their own. Several reasons for thinking that this is the case are considered. Keywords  Religio-moral implications · Agape · Coming into the presence of nonhuman animals When one enters into the presence of persons one gains an e­ xperiential awareness of the ends principle. This is the primary moral import of © The Author(s) 2019 J. Kellenberger, The Presence of God and the Presence of Persons, Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25045-4_14

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entering the presence of persons. However, entering the presence of persons can have other more particularized moral and religio-moral implications. In this chapter we will consider the further moral and religio-moral implications of coming into the presence of persons. In previous chapters the implications of our coming into the presence of persons for our affective response and entered relationships to them were recognized. In this chapter we will endeavor to identify and make explicit the more concrete moral and religio-moral implications of coming into the presence of persons. Some relate to persons who are close to us, whom we may love; some relate to humankind in general. Love—agape,—is at the apex of the respect-love continuum of affective responses that mark coming into the presence of persons. Yet, even if one has not come into the presence of those one loves, one may still love them with a species of committed love. One may act morally toward persons without entering their presence. But if a person comes into the presence of those she or he loves, and so recognizes their intrinsic value, the love given will be sustained by more than individual attraction or commitment. It will cease to be transactional (if it was) and develop in the direction of agape, a love given without any condition of return. When a person comes into the presence of those toward whom he or she acts morally, his or her moral actions will no longer flow from a sense of moral or religious duty alone, but be grounded in a respect for them and their intrinsic worth. Morality understood as the moral treatment of others can take different cultural forms in the practice of human beings, although from place to place and over time common threads can be found relating to, for instance, truth-telling, the care of offspring, and the respectful treatment of parents. Also the way that morality taken as a whole is incorporated into a human life, the means by which it is followed, can vary. In one way there may be an emphasis on explicitly respecting moral principles. In another way principles and rules may not be reflected upon but be internalized guides to action. In another way there may be allegiance to God’s commands or in nontheistic traditions the precepts of a religious tradition. Coming into the presence of persons can change the way morality is followed. It provides an experiential basis for morality and being moral. The principles of one’s morality may not be changed, although they may

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be, and new principles may be adopted. Also, more significantly, the scope and reach of moral principles may be changed and enlarged. As an instance, there may be an enlarged understanding of treating others respectfully. Similarly the experience of coming into the presence of persons, perhaps in conjunction with coming into the presence of God or of religious reality or the Divine differently conceived, may change the way God’s commandments or religious precepts are understood and followed. God’s commandments or the precepts of a nontheistic tradition may take on a new depth in their demands and scope. Coming into the presence of persons, in conjunction with entering the presence of the Divine or not, enhances and deepens the attention given to others. Moral or religio-moral treatment of others ceases to be only noninterference and becomes more supportive. Correlated with this transformation is an effort to be more sensitive to those into whose presence one has come. Such an effort may not issue in blanket approval. Its issue may be a gentle encouragement to change. Always, though, it takes the form of increased concern. A person’s understanding of her or his moral or religious commitments (or both) is particularly affected by coming into the presence of all persons. The depth of a person’s moral or religious commitment is deepened as the appropriateness of Agape is recognized, and the scope of her or his moral or religions commitment is seen to apply to strangers as much as to those within the persons’s ken. The demands of morality and of the commandments and precepts of religion may be understood to apply to all before one comes into the presence of persons, but the experience of coming into the presence of all persons transforms and makes more exigent how these demands are understood. For instance, the requirements of charitable action toward others is vivified by coming into the presence of all persons. Broadly given charity, directed toward people in need generally, that is given from a sense of duty is transformed upon coming into the presence of all persons. Such transformed charitable action would address the needs of others but with a response in the respect-love range and ideally with the undemanding love of agape. In Chapter 2 we noted how seeing others in need may move us to sympathy and in this way we may come into the presence of persons in

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need. But this typically is a response to only some persons, those we perceive to be in dire need: the homeless person we directly encounter on the street, victims of famine or a natural disaster we indirectly encounter in news reports. If somehow we were to come into the presence of all persons our felt call to respond to their needs would not arise from a personal or media encounter but from a universal encounter. After such a universal encounter we would have the question of how to proceed. The question of how to proceed with an expression of love arises often when one seeks to act in love. It is not an issue created by the recognition that love is to be given to all. However, when love—or sympathy or concern—is to be given to all, most of whom are beyond our acquaintance and ken, we cannot rely upon personal knowledge. If needs are to be addressed, we cannot rely upon a sensitivity to those needs, or even a knowledge of those needs, informed by personal acquaintance. Instead we may be faced with issues and decisions our personal experience cannot address, such as the question of how exigent relief from malaria is in comparison with relief from AIDS, to name only two of the threatening diseases of the world. This question in one of its branchings becomes the concrete questions: What relief efforts should one contribute to? and how much should one contribute, given other responsibilities? And we may be faced with the issue of the importance of supporting social justice and equal opportunity for the vulnerable of the world in comparison with making contributions to efforts to defeat disease and to improve world health in other ways, such as providing potable water. Though we may not be on a firm footing in deciding which needs to address, our decisions can still be made in love or another response in the respect-love continuum. Often good will be done whichever effort we support. Agape is not expressed only in meeting specific needs. As a response to persons it seeks their good and as a response to all persons it seeks the good of all persons.1 A similar point holds for the other affective 1St.

Thomas Aquinas says that “anyone [who] loves another … wills good to that other.” St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, q. 20, a. 1, in Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas, ed. Anton C. Pegis, vol. 1 (New York: Random House, 1945), p. 217. But the tight connection between love and willing the good of those loved is intuitive and need not wait upon the corroboration of theological reflection.

14  Moral and Religio-Moral Implications     91

responses in the respect-love continuum. A further implication of coming into the presence of all persons, affectively responding to them, and aspiring to respond to them with love, it can be argued, is the renunciation of war, which in its violence toward others is the antithesis of a loving response. The religious traditions of the world give credence to the renunciation of war, or pacifism, although at times they have also sanctioned war or some wars. While in Christianity pacifism historically has been espoused and practiced, in the Christian tradition war has also been approved of and in strains of theological thinking that embraced the just war theory it has been held that some wars are justified. Yet looking to the life of Jesus it can be argued that Christian love of neighbor requires a renunciation of war.2 Independently of the position of Christianity, or the positions of its denominations, if war involves violence—as it does—and love excludes violence—as it does—then to the extent that coming into the presence of all persons brings us to the response of Agape toward others we should renounce war. There is one other moral or religio-moral implication of coming into the presence of persons to be noted: our becoming more alive to the possibility of the inherent worth of nonhuman animals. As far as we know only human beings are persons. Although in the Jewish and Christian traditions God made human beings in his “image” (Gen. 1.26), God is not a person in the sense human beings are persons, but a Divine Person in theistic experience. Allowing that only human beings are persons, still it may be that nonhuman animals have an inherent value of their own though they are not persons. In Chapter 5 in our discussion of the realization of the intrinsic worth of persons and how an affective response is integral to that realization we referred to Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” When the Mariner comes to see the creatures of the sea as “happy living things” he does so with “a spring of love” from his heart. His new way of seeing, we may note, does not relate to a discovery of the worth of persons but to the inherent value of the nonhuman creatures of the sea. The test for 2This

has been argued by Daniel Dombrowski, Christian Pacifism (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991) and by myself in Religion, Pacifism, and Nonviolence (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).

92     J. Kellenberger

the hypothesis that nonhuman animals have inherent value is whether in human experience it is possible to come into the presence of nonhuman animals. One indication that this is a real possibility is the fact that many human beings have been moved by affection for animals with whom they have lived in close association. Another indication that this is a real possibility is the fact that many human beings have been moved by sympathy for farm animals that suffer from various forms of depravation and harsh treatment and by sympathy for abandoned feral animals. Strictly the more humane treatment of animals is not an implication of coming into the presence of persons, and it is not a moral or religio-moral implication for morality understood as limited to the moral treatment of other persons. But as coming into the presence of persons is analogous to coming into the presence of God so it can be seen as analogous to coming into the presence of nonhuman animals (with the analogue of recognizing the ends principle being the recognition of the requirement of treating animals in accord with their dignity or inherent value). And though morality is often understood as the moral treatment of other persons, and other persons only, it has also been understood by many as the moral and humane treatment of all others, including nonhuman animals.3 In this book we have considered two life-affecting experiences that are possible for human beings to have: coming into the presence of persons and coming into the presence of God. We live in the modern age, characterized by secularization and individualism. Are these experiences closed to modernity? Maybe not. It is arguable that in our age individuals have had these experiences. It can be maintained that Albert Schweitzer is one who came into the presence of persons (and also into the presence of nonhuman animals), that T. S. Eliot came into the ­presence of God, and that Mother Teresa of Calcutta (Kolkata), now St. Teresa of Calcutta, came into the presence of persons and into the presence of God.

3Also analogous to entering the presence of persons, it can be argued, is entering the presence of nonliving natural beings, such as mountains, forests, and deserts.

Bibliography

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Index

A

agape 26, 39, 49, 58, 60, 62, 88–90

coming into the presence of persons 8–11, 13, 14, 18, 23, 25, 26, 37, 50, 58, 88, 89

B

Berkeley, George 3 Brightman, E.S. 3 Browning, Robert 63 Buddhism 75, 76 C

Camus, Albert 52 categorical imperative 13 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 26, 91 coming into the presence of God 42, 47–50, 52, 54, 57, 58, 62–65 coming into the presence of nonhuman animals 92

D

Dawkins, Richard 54 death of God 81–83 death of persons 81–83 Descartes, René 68, 69 Deuteronomy 62 Donne, John 21 Dostoyevsky, Fyodor 52 E

Eliot, T.S. 92 ends principle 12–14, 47, 48, 50

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 J. Kellenberger, The Presence of God and the Presence of Persons, Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25045-4

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98     Index F

M

Freud, Sigmund 74

Gueye, Cheikh Mbacke 2

Maclagan, W.G. 26, 32–33, 39 Matthew 50, 59, 62 McCloskey, H.J. 54 Mill, John Stuart 69 Morris, Herbert 38

H

N

Hamilton, William 78 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 79 Heine, Heinrich 79 Hinduism 75 Howison, G.H. 3

Nietzsche, Friedrich 77–80

G

I

ishta-divas 75 J

James 59, 63 James, William 45 1 John 50 John of Ruysbroeck 74 John of the Cross, St. 74 Julian of Norwich 3

P

pacifism 91 personages 9 Personalism 2–4 personal relationships to God 52–53, 58 person, the idea of 8 Plantinga, Alvin 70 primary relationships to persons 17–19, 58 problem of other minds 69 Psalms 2, 43, 75 Q

Qur’an 62

K

Kant, Immanuel 9, 12–13, 31–34, 37 Kierkegaard, Søren 49, 52 L

Levinas, Emmanuel 33–35 Leviticus 62 Locke, John 68, 69

R

religious affective continuum 49, 54–55, 81 religious requirement 47, 48, 50 respect-love continuum 15, 20, 22, 23, 26, 30, 39, 45 Romans 74, 75 Royce, Josiah 24, 31–34, 38, 72–74 Russell, Bertrand 63

Index     99 S

Sartre, Jean-Paul 73 Schweitzer, Albert 92 self-deception 73, 75, 76 Snow, C.P. 36 societal ethical relativism 80 Strawson, P.F. 20–21 Swinburne, Algernon 52, 79 T

teleological argument for God’s existence 70–71

Teresa of Calcutta, St. 93 theory of personal identity 68 theory of “self ” 68 W

Williams, Rowan 68 Wisdom 75 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 69 Wojtyla, Karol (Pope John Paul II) 3 Wordsworth, William 45