CHAPTER 8
Our Ultimate Concern
Nikos Kazantzakis writes:
“We have seen the highest circle of
spiraling powers. We have named this
circle God. We might have given it any
other name we wished: Abyss, Mystery,
Absolute Darkness, Absolute Light, Matter,
Spirit, Ultimate Hope, Ultimate Despair,
Silence.”
Tennessee Williams writes:
“We are all children in a vast kindergarten
trying to spell God’s name with the wrong
alphabet blocks.”
Of Ultimate Concern
• This chapter deals with philosophy of religion. It
ponders the following:
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Anthropomorphic spirits
Spirit possession
The function of myth
Teleocosmic dramas
Apocalyptic interpretations of history
Battlefield cosmology
The final eschaton
Messianic figures
Greek Tragedy
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Religion is universal
Human life is Greek tragedy
To exist is to suffer, Buddha
For a million years evolution has labored to
produce a creature with intelligent awareness.
Now this creature, using that awareness, finds
that he is trapped in a user-unfriendly
predicament – an ontological Prison from which
there seems to be no escape.
Transformation
• Religion is humankind’s response to the bitter
truth of the human condition:
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We are helpless
The universe is uncaring
The universe in unjust
We are mortal
The universe is capricious
The universe is meaningless
There are no grounds for hope
• Doctrine, Dogma, Creed, Theology
The Role of Myth
• Myth – a story involving the supernatural
that is accepted by members of a social
group that explains the origin,
significance, or meaning of an event.
When the story is believed, it become
true; and when it become true through
belief, it is then called religion.
Spirits & Dramas
• The Anthropomorphic Spirits
• Spirit Possession
• Teleocosmic Dramas
• Apocalyptic Dramas
• The Eschaton – End of Drama
All Religion is One
• “The highest common factors”
• “Divine Ground of Being”
• Direct intuitive knowledge
• Man is a duality
• Singular goal as knowing the eternal
essence of being and to identify it with the
Divine Ground of all Being
Joseph Campbell
The Hero with a Thousand Faces
“The fundamental themes of mythological
thought have remained constant and
universal, not only throughout history, but
also over the whole extent of mankind’s
occupation of the earth.”
Reflections…
Understanding the more technical usage
of the word “myth” is important. What
psychological and epistemic function does
myth satisfy?
Ultimate Reality
• This chapter continues the attempt to
understand the phenomenon of religion.
• Nietzsche, “God is Dead.”
• Is “God dead” or on the other side of
Merton’s “seven story mountain”?
Ultimate Questions
• Metaphysical: What is ultimate reality?
How many orders of reality exist? Is there
a supernatural order of reality? Does God
exist?
• Epistemological: Can we humans who
belong to the natural order know that
which belongs to the supernatural order?
If so, how? Does God “reveal”?
The Problem of Divine Knowledge
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Judeo-Christian God
Earth Mothers
Zeus and Zoroaster
Buddhist myth
Mary, Mother of God
Xenophanes
Philo of Alexandria
“Perfect wisdom”/”Perfect being”
Arguments for the
Existence of God
• The Cosmological Argument
• The Ontological Argument
• The Teleological Argument
The Death(s) of God(s)
Worldviews have changed. Spirits and
demons have died: we now account for
human behavior in terms of operant
conditioning and motivation. We have
seen too many gods; our anthropomorphic
habits are too obvious to be brushed
aside. God, too, is dead.
Thomas Merton
The Other Side of Kanchenjunga
What Merton gradually came to see is not an
uncommon realization for seekers: that
experience opens the avenues of
communication, whereas belief closes them off;
that experience encourages dialogue, whereas
belief encourages pronouncement; and that
whereas experience leads to empathy and
appreciation, commitment to doctrinal formulas
produces antipathy and disparagement.
Reflections…
To the best of your knowledge, and after
pondering this chapter, what is the nature
of Ultimate Reality? Can it be described in
mere human words? Is it material? Is it
natural but nonmaterial? Is it personal?
Does it take the form of deity? What kinds
of human experiences might be
interpreted as indicators of the existence
and/or nature of this Ultimate Reality?
Death/Immortality
• Why exactly do we fear the nonbeing of
death?
• Why do humans universally deny it?
• Concepts of immortality
• Argument for/against the immortality of
the soul
• Kubler-Ross’s analysis
• Heinlein on personal immortality
All Graves are Wrong
• Ernest Becker writes: “the idea of death,
the fear of it, haunts the human animal
like nothing else; it is the mainspring of
human activity – activity designed largely
to avoid the fatality of death, to overcome
it by denying in some way that it is the
final destiny of man.”
Death is a Nonexperience
• Thanatologists – philosophers of the death
event
• Cessation of consciousness vs. termination
of physiological processes
• Fear of suffering
• Fear of confusion
• Fear of nonbeing
The Denial of Death
• Biological immortality
• Social immortality
• Moral immortality
• Life-cycle immortality
• Cryonic suspension, total transplants,
regeneration
Arguments for Immortality
• Rational argument for immortality
• Empirical evidence for immortality
Arguments Against Immortality
• Rational argument against immortality
• Empirical evidence against immortality
The Future of Death
• How we perceive “the problem of death”
depends partly upon the attitude options
open to us at any particular time and
place
• Mankind’s general stance toward death
has wavered between a stubborn denial
and a grudging submission
Omar Khayyam
“…this life flies”
• He was denounced as the “arch-
freethinker” of his time and warned to
“bridle his tongue”
• Time is the enemy
• Live for today, but…
• “Turn down and empty Glass!”
Reflections…
• “All graves are wrong when you come
right down to it”. How do you respond to
the point Bradbury is making after
pondering this chapter?
Meaning/Existence
• What do we really want?
• What in the final analysis, drives us and
guides us?
• What end – if anything – are we striving
to accomplish?
• Do we truly want what society tells us we
want?
The Knowledge that Hurts Most
• Gibran’s “unbeliever”
• Nietzsche’s “Don Juan of the Mind”
What Did I Want?
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What am I doing here?
Socrates
Aristippus
Yeshua bar Yoseph
Paul of Tarsus
Confucius
The Buddha
Shankara
Muhammad
John Calvin
Friedrich Hegel
Existence & the Real:
Persistent Confusion
• Viktor Frankl
• Jean-Paul Sartre
• Charles Beard
• Bertrand Russell
Trivialities
• Much modern Western philosophy has
contended that there are no real values
and that, by a sort of hopeless tour de
force, each of us must inject meaning into
his own life.
• “Fish gasping on the strand”
Work, Work…To Kill the Flowers
• Halverson
• Flowering of man’s awareness
• Langdon Jones, The Eye of the Lens
The World-Riddle
• Each human being tries in his personal,
and perhaps desperate, way to make this
short life/time meaningful…behind all this
is the burden of our consciousness of
death…
• Is our loneliness eased knowing what we
know?
Nikos Kazantzakis
“I know not if I shall ever anchor”
• Three kinds of souls: One kind of soul
says “I am a bow in your hands, Lord.
Draw me, lest I rot.” A second kind says
“Do not overdraw me, Lord. I shall break.”
But a third kind says “Overdraw me, Lord,
and who cares if I break!”
Reflections…
• Reflect at length, and with leisure, on the
passage from Langdon Jones’s “Eye of the
Lens.”
• Among several possible meanings, what
do you think the author is saying?