CHAPTER I

CHAPTER I

AN ARCHEOLOGY OF REASON AS

INHERENTLY RELIGIOUS

In the modern secular context the foundational religious meaning of life has been extensively forgotten. Instead, the rare and quite recent phenomenon of a world view precinding from, or neutral to, the divine has come to be taken as the honest baseline from which the religious issue should be considered. For Mohammed Iqbal this is quite out of the question, analogous to defining the mind on the basis of but one (the analytic) of its limited processes. Hence, he does not go far in the first chapter of his Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam before stating as its principle what the Vedanta Sutras exemplified both in its text and in its structure, namely, that: "It is in fact the presence of the total infinite in the movement of knowledge that makes finite thinking possible."1 The genius of his work is its powerful and intricate elaboration of this theme.

To begin, in a typically brief but pregnant aside Iqbal notes that "to the primitive man all experience was supernatural."2 Rather than being simply a referece to dead facts from the past, this points to the total cumulative human experience regarding the essential importance of religion as manifested by human life. It suggests, moreover, the common ground needed by the many cultures as they begin to interact more intensively. It is then the place to begin.

From earliest times human thought has always and everywhere had a sacred center. It is possible to track the evolution of this constant awareness by relating it to the three dimensions of the human mind. The first is the external senses of sight, touch and the like by which one receives information from the external world. The second is the internal sense of imagination and memory by which one assembles the received data. This is done in a manner which enables it to represent the original whole from which the various senses draw their specific data, to represent these and other data in various combinations, and/or to recall this at a later time. Finally, beyond the external and internal senses is the intellect by which one knows the nature of things and judges regarding their existence.3

Not surprisingly, upon examination it appears that the actual evolution of human awareness of the sacred follows this sequence of one’s natural capacities for knowledge. In all cases it is intellectual knowledge that is in play, for religious awareness concerns not the characteristics or shapes of sensible objects, but existence and indeed the one who gave his name as "I am Who Am". This was articulated successively, first in terms of the external senses in the totemic stage of thought, then in terms of the internal sense in the mythic period, and finally in properly intellectual terms as the origin of philosophy or science.4

To follow this evolution it should be noted that for life in any human society as a grouping of persons there is a basic need to understand oneself and one’s relation to others. It should not be thought that these are necessarily two questions, rather than one. They will be diversely formalized in the history of philosophy, but prior to any such formalization, indeed prior even to the capacity to formalize this as a speculative problem, some mode of lived empathy rather than antipathy must be possible. Plato later worked out formally and in detail that the unity of the multiple is possible only on the basis of something that is one, but the history of human life manifests that present in the awareness of the early peoples and according to their mode of awareness there always has been some one reality in terms of which they understood all to be related.

Totemic Thought (see Chapter II of Ways to God)

The primitive or foundational mode of self-understanding was totemic. The earliest understanding by peoples of themselves and their unity with others and with nature was expressed in terms of some objects of the external senses, such as an animal or bird. Peoples spoke of themselves by simple identity with the animal or bird which was the totem of their clan. Levy-Bruhl expressed this in a law of participation: persons were in some way both themselves and their totem. They saw themselves not merely as in some manner like, or descendent from, their totem, but instead asserted directly, e.g., "I am lion." In these terms they founded their identity and dignity, considered themselves bound to all others who had the same totem, and understood by analogy of their totem with that of other tribes the relations between their two peoples for marriage and the like.5

Moreover, the totem, in turn, was not simply one animal among others, but was in a sense limitless: no matter how many persons were born to the tribe the potentiality or resources of the totem was never exhausted — without limit there was always room for one more. Further, the totem was shown special respect, such as not being sold, used for food or other utilitarian purposes which would make it subservient to the individual members of the tribe or clan. Whereas other things might be said to be possessed and used, the totem was the subject of direct predication: one might say that he had a horse or other animal, but only of the totem would one say that he is, e.g., lion.

This concept brings important insight to the question of unity and distinctiveness which has so divided the modern mind as characterized by a rationalist and analytic mode of thinking. The totem is not one in a series, but the unique reality in which each and all have their being — and, by the same token, their unity with all else.

This is the key to social unity. Each is not indifferent to all else or related only externally or accidentally to others in terms of temporal or spatial coincidence or functional service. Rather all are in principle and by their very being united to all, to whom they are naturally and mutually meaningful. Hence, one cannot totally subject anybody or indeed any thing to one’s own purpose; one cannot take things merely as means in a purely functional or utilitarian manner. Instead, all persons are brothers or sisters and hence essentially social. This extends as well to nature in an ecological sensitivity which only now is being recuperated.

What is impressive in this is that all are united but without the loss of individuality that has been the case in modern collectivisms. Instead, each individual, rather than being suppressed, has meaning in the unity of the totem. Hence, nothing one does is trivial, for every act is related to the whole. No one is subservient as a tool or instrument; all are members of the whole. As each act stands in relation to the whole whose meaning it reflects, everything is of great moment. There is justice and there are taboos, for there are standards which are not to be compromised.

What then should be said of the totem as the key to a meaning in which all participate: is it religious, is it divine? Some would answer in the affirmative and for a number of reasons:

- it is the key to the unity of persons, recalling the religious statement of the brotherhood of man in the fatherhood of God;

- it has the absolute meaning of the religious center: the one God of Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Hinduism;

- it is the key to the sacred meaning and dignity of all.

In all these ways the totem is the religious center.

Perhaps, however, it might be called proto-religious, in that while this principle of unity, though privileged and not reducible to humans, is not explicitly appreciated as being distinct from, and transcending the contents of this world.

On the other hand, the effort of the mystic at the high end of the religious spectrum is precisely to overcome the separation of human from God. The direction is immanent, namely, to unite one’s life with the divine, and to do so perhaps less by achieving transcendence than by entering more deeply into the center of one’s own interiority. In this light totemic thought emerges in its true importance as something not to be escaped from, but to be recaptured and lived in new ways in the midst of our much more complex society and more technically organized world.

This has many of the characteristics of the classical a posteriori ways to the existence of God. (a) It began from a reality that did actually exist, namely, the successful and progressive life of peoples through the thousands of centuries which constitute almost the entirety of human experience. (b) It sought the principles of this existence, namely, the content of the understanding which made possible their successful human life. (c) It concluded in that totemic unity and fullness in which people had both their being and their unity. Thus, it established the plenitude of, and participation in, the foundational totem as principle both of the human mind and of social life.

This road differs, however, from the classical five ways of Thomas Aquinas. (a) Being essentially anthropological in character, totemic thought began with people in the primitive stage of their development. (b) Being essentially hermeneutic in method, it attended to the conditions of possibility for the understanding manifested in their life. (c) This combination of anthropological and hermeneutic factors concluded to the plenitude, not as it is in itself, as a cause distinct from its effect — the much later science of metaphysics will be required for that — but only as appreciated by the primitive mind in its totemic mode.

This difference should not be considered to be merely negative. The thought of the primitive is not merely a poorer form of what people in subsequent ages would do better with improved tools. Heidegger indicates the important sense in which especially by returning to the origins important progress can be made.

The totem then was the unique limitless reality in terms of which all particular people and things had their identity and interrelation. It was the sacred center of individual and community life in terms of which all had meaning and cohesion. It made possible the sense of both personal dignity and interpersonal relations, which were the most important aspects of human life. This it did with a sense of direct immediacy that would be echoed, but never surpassed, in subsequent stages of more formally religious thought.

Whether this be seen as religious or proto-religious, what it shows is that religion is not something added to a secular universe, but the basic and essential insight of even the simplest forms of human community. The issue then is not whether there be room for religion alongside public life or how to protect one from the other, but how religion functions as the root of human meaning and community.

Mythic Thought (see Chapter III of Ways to God)

It is in the mythic stage of thinking that the explicitly religious element of the gods appears. Here it is important to see whether this is an external addition to, or imposition upon, prior thinking or whether it is the unfolding or flowering of religious elements already there from the beginning.

The totem was able to provide for unity and meaning while the life of all members of the tribe remained similar. But its manner of expressing unity became insufficient as society became more specialized and differentiated. The bonds between members of the tribe came to depend not merely upon similarity and sameness, but upon the differentiated capabilities of, e.g., hunters, fishers and eventually farmers. With this ability to be both united and differentiated came an appreciation as well of the special distinctiveness of the sacred with regard to the many individuals of which it was the principle and center. What in totemic thought previously had been stated simply by identity (I am lion) could now be appreciated as greater than, and transcending, the members of the tribe. This is reflected in the development of priesthood, rituals and symbols to reflect what was no longer seen simply as one’s deepest identity but as the principle thereof.6

Such a reality could no longer be stated in terms corresponding to the external senses, but needed instead to be figured by the imagination. The terms drawn originally from the senses now were reconfigured in forms that expressed life above humankind and which stood as the principle of human life. Such higher principles, as the more knowing and having a greater power of will, would be personal; and as transcendent persons, they would be gods.

It would be incorrect then to consider this, as did Freud and Marx, to be simply a projection of human characteristics. On the contrary, the development of the ability to think in terms shaped by the imagination released human appreciation of the principle of life from the limitations of animals, birds and other natural entities available to the intellect held to working in terms of the external senses and allowed the transcendence of the principle of unity to be expressed in a more effective manner. This was not to create the sense of transcendence; rather it allowed the unique and essential foundation of human meaning of which Iqbal spoke to find new expression in terms of the evolving capabilities of human consciousness.

Of this the Theogony,7 written by Hesiod (ca. 776 B.C.), is especially indicative. Because the gods stated the reality of the various parts of nature, when Hesiod undertook to state how these were interrelated he in effect articulated the unity and interrelation of all in terms of the divine, which is the basic sense of religion.

His work has a number of important characteristics. First, it intends to state the highest possible type of knowledge. Thus, it begins with an invocation to the Muses to provide him with divine knowledge: "These things declare to me from the beginning, ye Muses who dwell in the house of Olympus."8 Secondly and correspondingly, it is concerned with the deepest issues, namely, the origin and unity of all things: "Tell me which of them came first" he asked, and then proceeded to a poetic delineation of the most important religious issues, from the justification of the divine reign (later named "theodicy" by Leibniz) to the understanding of evil.9 Thirdly, because it was written as the period of purely mythic thought was drawing to a close — within two centuries of the initiation of philosophy in Greece — Hesiod was able to draw upon the full resources of the body of Greek mythology, weaving the entire panoply of the gods into the structure of his poem. He collected and related the gods not externally in a topographical or chronological sequence, but in terms of their inner reality and real order of dependence. Thus, when in the Theogony he responds to the question: "how, at the first, gods and earth came to be," his ordering of the gods wed theogony and cosmogony to constitute a unique mythical religious understanding regarding the unity and diversity of all.

The order of the parts of the universe is the following. The first to appear was Chaos: "Verily at the first Chaos came to be." Then came earth: "but next wide-bosomed Earth the ever sure foundation of all," and starry Heaven: "Earth first bare starry Heaven, equal to herself." From Earth, generally in unison with Heaven, were born Oceanus and the various races of Cyclopes and gods, from whom, in turn, were born still other gods such as Zeus and the races of men.

The understanding of the unity of reality expressed by this poem is the very opposite of a random gathering of totally disparate, limited and equally original units. On the contrary, the relation between the gods, and hence between the parts of nature they bespeak is expressed in terms of procreation. Hence, every reality is appreciated as related positively to all others in its genetic sequence.

This relatedness of things does not depend upon a later and arbitrary decision, but is equally original with their very reality; indeed, it is their reality. Neither is it something which involves only certain aspects of the components of the universe: it extends to their total actuality. This includes actions: Rhea, for example, appeals to her parents for protection from the acts of her husband, Cronus, against his children. Hence, the understanding which the poem conveys is that of a unity or relation which is the original reality of things and on which their distinctive character and actions depend.

This unity is understood to be by nature prior to diversity for it appears through a genetic structure in which each god proceeds from the union of an earlier pair of gods, while all such pairs are descendents of the one original pair, Earth and Heaven. Further, the procreation of the gods proceeds from each of these pairs precisely as united in love, under the unitive power of Eros who is equally original with heaven and earth.

From what has been said we can conclude that unity pervades and precedes gods and men. All is traced back to Earth and Heaven as the original pair from whose union, under the impetus of Eros, all is generated. But what is the relation between Heaven and Earth? This question is at the root of the issue of unity as expressed in mythic terms. It promises to be able to take us to a still deeper and more properly religious understanding if we return to the text and use the proper etymological tools.

The text states the following sequence: Chaos, Earth, Heaven. Unfortunately, since the Stoics, Chaos has come to mean disorder and mindless conflict or collision. Aristotle, however, in his Physics referred to chaos as empty space (topos).10 Etymologically, the term can be traced through the root of the Greek term ‘casko’ to the common Indo-European stem, ‘gap’. This stem was employed in a manner similar to a sonar signal in order to sound out mythic thought across the broad range of the Indo-European peoples. The term was found to express a gaping abyss at the beginning of time as for example the derivative ‘ginungagap’ in Nordic mythology.11 Kirk and Raven confirm this analysis and conclude that ‘chaos’ meant, not a state of confusion or conflict, but an open and perhaps windy space which essentially is between boundaries.12

Returning to the text of the Theogony in this light, it will be noted that it does not say "In the beginning" or speak directly of a state prior to Chaos, but begins with Chaos: "At first Chaos came to be". But there is no suggestion that Chaos was the original reality; on the contrary, the text is explicit that chaos came to be: "He toi men prótista Cháos genet."13 Further, Chaos is a space to which boundaries are essential. These, it would seem, are the gods which the text states just after Chaos, namely, Earth and its equal, Heaven. These are not said to have existed prior to chaos and to have been brought into position in order to constitute the boundaries of the `gap’; rather, they are said somehow to follow upon or be arranged on the basis of chaos.

Thus, Kirk and Raven understand the opening verses of the body of the text, namely, "Verily at the first Chaos came to be, but next wide-boomed Earth . . . and Earth first bare starry Heaven equal to herself" in an active sense to express the opening of a gap or space, which thereby gives rise to Heaven and Earth as its two boundaries.14

For its intelligibility, this implies: (a) that an undifferentiated unity precedes the gap, and (b) that by opening or division the first contrasting realities, namely, Heaven and Earth, were constituted. That is, on the basis of the gap one boundary, Heaven, is differentiated from the other boundary, Earth: by the gap the boundaries identically are both constituted and differentiated as contraries. As all else are derivatives of Chaos, Earth and Heaven in the manner noted above, it can be concluded that the entire differentiated universe is derivative of an original undifferentiated unity which preceded Chaos.

It would be premature, however, to ask of the mythic mind whether this derivation took place by material or efficient causality; that question must await the development of philosophy. But the original reality itself is not differentiated; it is an undivided unity. As such it is without name, for the names we give reflect our sense perceptions which concern not what is constant and homogenous, but the differentiated bases of the various sense stimuli. What is undifferentiated is not only unspoken in fact, but unspeakable in principle by the language of myth which depends essentially upon the imagination.

Nonetheless, though it is unspeakable by the mythic mind itself, reflection can uncover or reveal something of that undifferentiated reality which the Theogony implies. We have, for instance, noted its reality and unity. This lack of differentiation is not a deficiency, but a fullness of reality and meaning from which all particulars and contraries are derived. It is unspeakable because not bounded, limited and related after the fashion of one imaged contrary to another. This is the transcendent fullness that is at the heart of the Hindu advaita or nondual philosophy; it is also the total infinite to which Iqbal referred as that which makes finite thinking possible.

It is the source of that which is seen and spoken in our language which is based in the imagination and which Hindu thought refers to as the world of names and forms. Further, it is the source, not only whence the differentiated realities are derived, but of the coming forth itself of these realities. This is reflected in three significant manners. First positively, Eros, which itself is said to come from chaos, is the power which joins together in procreative union the pairs of gods, thereby reflecting the dynamic, manifestive and sharing character of the undifferentiated reality.

Negatively, this is indicated also by the acts which the Theogony describes as evil. For example, it says that "Heaven rejoiced in his evil doing", namely, hiding away his children in a secret place of Earth as soon as each was born, and not allowing them to come into the light. Cronus is termed "a wretch" for swallowing his children. In each case evil is described as impeding the process by which new realities are brought into existence. This implies that its opposite, the good, involves essentially bringing forth the real. The undifferentiated unity is the origin of the multiple and differentiated; in terms we shall encounter below, it is participative.

Finally, it can now be seen that all the progeny, that is, all parts of the universe and all humans, are born into the unity of a family. This traces its origin, not to a pair of ultimately alien realities and certainly not to human chaos as conflict, but to the undifferentiated Unity. Just as there is no autogenesis, there is no unrelated reality or aspect of reality. It would seem, then, that verses 118-128 of the hymn imply a reality which is one, undifferentiated and therefore unspeakable, but productive of the multiple and therefore generous and sharing. For the Greek mythic mind then, beings are more one than many, more related than divided, more complementary than contrasting.

As a transformation of the earlier totemic structure, mythic understanding continues the basic totemic insight regarding the related character of all things predicated upon a unity and fullness of meaning. By thinking in terms of the gods, however, myth is able to add a number of important factors. First, quantitatively the myth can integrate, not only a certain tribe or number of tribes, but the entire universe. Second, qualitatively it can take account of such intentional realities as purpose and fidelity. Third, while implying the unitive principle which had been expressed with shocking directness in totemic thought ("I am lion"), it adds the connotation of its unspeakable and undifferentiated, but generous, character.

The expression of all this in terms of the forms available to the mythic internal sense of imagination had its temptations. These were pointed out by Xenophanes who noted that by the time of Homer and Hesiod a perfervid imagination had gone from expressing the transcendence of the gods to attributing to them as well the many forms of evil found among men:15 the very principles of meaning and value had begun to point as well to their opposites. Thinking in terms of the imagination was no longer sufficient. Instead, the intellect needed to proceed in its own terms, beyond sense and imagination, to enable the deeper sense of the divine and of nature to be expressed and defended against confusion and corruption. As the mind proceeded to operate in properly intellectual terms, rather than though the images of mythic thinking, science and philosophy replaced myth as the basic mode of human understanding.

Parmenides’s Metaphysics of the Changeless, Eternal One

(see Chapter V of Ways to God)

Once begun, philosophy made spectacularly rapid progress. Within but a few generations, the human intellect had worked out a structure of the physical world using the basic categories of hot and cold, wet and dry available to the external senses, along with mechanisms of vortex motion.16 Mathematical reason worked with the internal senses to lay down the basic theorems of geometry.17 In brief, by developing properly intellectual terms the Greeks elaborated with new and hitherto unknown precision insights regarding physical reality.

But that had never been the root human issue. Totemic and mythic thought were not merely ways of understanding and working with nature, although they did that as well. Fundamentally they concerned the metaphysical and religious issues of what it meant to be, the transcendent divine basis of life, and the religious terms in which it needed to be lived in time. After the work of others in conceptualizing the physical and mathematical orders, Parmenides was able to take up the most basic questions of life and being in properly intellectual metaphysical terms.

First, he bound the work of the intellect directly to being: "It is the same thing to think and to be" (fragment 3).18 Hence, the requirements of thinking would manifest those of being. Second, he contrasted being with its opposite, nonbeing, as something in contrast to nothing at all (fragment 2). This principle of non-contradiction was a construct of the mind; like 2 pi in geometry it was something good to think with, for it enabled the mind to reflect upon the requirements of both being and mind so as to avoid anything that would undermine their reality.

Speaking still in a mythic language, the Proemium of Parmenides’ famous poem described a scene in which he was awakened by goddesses and sent in a chariot drawn by a faithful mare along the arching highway that spans all things. In this process he moved from obscurity to light, from opinion to truth. There the gates were opened by the goddess, Justice, as guardian of true judgements, and he was directed to examine all things in order to discern the truth.

Parmenides then images himself proceeding further along the highway19 till he comes to a fork with one signpost pointing toward being as essentially beginning. Here, Parmenides must reason regarding the implications of such a route. As "to begin" means to move from nonbeing or nothingness to being, were "to be" to include "to begin" that would mean that being included within its very essence nonbeing or nothingness. There would then be no difference between being and nothing; being would be without meaning; the real would be nothing at all. If conversely, from this notion of beginning such nonbeing is removed then it emerges as essentially not beginning, but eternal. This is the first requirement of being: the possibility of taking the fork which would have being as essentially beginning is excluded; being is by nature eternal and all that does begin can do so only in derivation therefrom. In economics not only would all debts be eliminated, but all assets as well; in speech to affirm something would be the same as to deny it. Among persons everyone would be treated as non-existent. The same would be true in the realm of meaning: absolute nihilism would darken the earth. Being then must not be of the nature of change, but unchanging; that is, being as such is and in no way is not.

The chariot then moves along the highway of being and the procedure is analogous at the two subsequent forks in the road where the signposts tempt one to consider being as changing and multiple, respectively. Each of these, Parmenides reasons, would again place nonbeing within being itself, thereby destroying its very character as being. Nonbeing is contained in the notion of change, inasmuch as a changing being is no longer what it had been and not yet what it will become. But for such nonbeing to pertain to the essence of being would destroy being. When, however, nonbeing is removed then being emerges as unchanging. Similarly, nonbeing is essential to the notion of multiplicity, inasmuch as this requires that one being not be the other. When, however, nonbeing is removed what emerges is one. These then are the characteristics of being: it is infinite and eternal, unchanging and one.

Being itself then transcends the multiple and changing world in which we live: it is in a manner more perfect than could possibly be appreciated in the graphic terms of the internal senses of imagination which defined the nature of human capabilities in the stage of myth.

In this way Parmenides discerned the necessity of Absolute, eternal and unchanging being — whatever be said of anything else. Neither being nor thought makes sense if being is the same as nonbeing, for then to do, say or be anything would be the same as not doing, not saying or not being, reapectively. As the real is irreducible to nothing and being is irreducible to nonbeing — as it must be if there is any thing or any meaning whatsoever — then being must have about it the self-sufficiency expressed by Parmenides’s notion of the absolute One.

A person can refuse to look at this issue and focus upon particular aspects of limited realities. But if one confronts the issue of being it leads to the Self-sufficient as the creative source of all else. Without this all limited beings would be radically compromised — not least, man himself. It is not surprising, therefore, that Aristotle would conclude his Metaphysics as a search for the nature of being with a description of divine life and call the whole a "theology".20

The issue then is not how the notion of the divine entered human thought; it has always been there, for without that which is One and Absolute in the sense of infinite and self-sufficient man and nature would be at odds; humankind would lack social cohesion; indeed, thinking would be the same as not thinking, just as being would be the same as nonbeing.

From the above archeology of human thought in its totemic, mythic and first philosophical stages it can be concluded with Iqbal that it has been religious insight regarding the Absolute which has made finite thinking possible. Leaving home and going deeply into the past thus brings us home to reconstruct the deep truth of faith regarding knowledge, namely, not only that it can also be about religion, but that in essence thought itself is the religious reconstitution of all in God: this is what knowledge most fundamentally is.

There are two implications of this archeology which I would like to note here. The first concerns the relation of a people to the message of a prophet. As the basis of the human self-understanding of the different cultures is essentially religious, a divine revelation through a great prophet comes not as alien and conflictual, but as a special divine help to appreciate, purify and strengthen a culture. The message of the prophet evokes the divine life which lies within; it enables each people to plunge more deeply into the infinite ground of their cultural traditions and to bring out more of its meaning for their life. Indeed, confidence (etymologically rooted in "faith" — con-fidence) and commitment to one’s tradition as grounded in the infinite means precisely expecting it to have even more to say then a people has yet articulated. In this light, the Prophet’s voice is a call to delve anew into one’s tradition, to bring out more of its meaning for one’s times and to live this more fully. This is a voice to which one can respond fully and freely.

In this sense I would take issue with Iqbal’s seemingly overly Darwinian description of the first period of religious life as:

"a form of discipline which the individual or a whole people must accept as an unconditional command without any rational understanding of the ultimate meaning and purpose of the command. This attitude may be of great consequence in the social and political history of a people, but is not of much consequence in so far and the individual’s inner growth and expansion are concerned."21

The archeology of human thought suggests that the response of a people to the message of the prophet is more precisely a renewal and reaffirmation of their deep self-understanding. This is truly a homecoming in whose very essence lies the deep freedom of the peace one experiences in returning home after a long and confusing day. But I suspect that Iqbal would not disagree with this for in reality it is an application to culture of what he concluded regarding thought, namely, that it is made possible by the presence therein of the total infinite.22 This parallels his observation regarding the natural order, namely, that "there is no such thing as a profane world . . . all is holy ground," citing the Prophet: "The whole of this earth is a mosque."23

A second implication can be of special importance in these times of intensifying communication and interaction between peoples. If the future is to hold not Huntington’s conflict of civilizations, but their cooperation in a shrinking world, then it is important to see how the civilizations deriving from prophets and religious traditions can relate one to another. Hermeneutics can be helpful here with its suggestion that in order to delve more deeply it is good to hear not only reformulations of what we ourselves say in our own horizon, but new formulations from other traditions regarding the basically shared truths of our divine origin and goal. As Iqbal is supported by an archeology of knowledge indicating that all knowledge is grounded in the divine, we can expect that religious texts from the traditions of other great prophets will evoke new echoes from the depths of our own tradition. In this light interchange with other traditions comes not as a threat. Rather, cultural interchange can enable us to make our pilgrimages, each more unerringly along our own path, to the one holy mountain24 to which Iqbal refers as the total absolute. Other forms of cooperation can, and indeed must, be built upon this.

NOTES

1. See also the edition edited by M. Saeed Sheikh (Lahore: Iqbal Academy Pakistan and Institute of Islamic Culture, 1989), pp. 4-5.

2. Ibid., p. 13.

3. This threefold structure followed both in Aquinas’ Commentary on Boethius’ work On the Trinity, qq. 3 and 5, and Descartes’ systematic procedure for placing under doubt all that arises from the three sources of knowledge until what is derived from that source could be certified as true. Aristotle’s dictum regarding humans as physical and spiritual held that there is nothing in the intellect which is not first in the senses.

4. Indeed, one might define philosophy and science precisely as knowledge of the various aspects of reality in terms proper to human reason and hence expressive of the nature or existence of the things themselves.

5. L. Levy-Bruhl, How Natives Think (New York: Washington Square Press, 1966), ch. II.

6. How Natives Think, ch. XII.

7. Hesiod, Theogony (New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1953).

8. Xenophanes, fragments 11, 14-16 in George F. McLean and Patrick J. Aspell, Readings in Ancient Western Philosophy (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1970), p. 31.

9. Ibid., p. 4. See also by the same authors, Ancient Western Philosophy: The Hellenic Emergence (New York: Appleton, Century, Crofts, 1971).

10. Werner Jaeger, The Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), pp. 12-13.

11. Physics IV, 1,208b31.

12. Jaeger, p. 13.

13. G.S. Kirk and J.E. Raven, pp. 26-32.

14. Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns and Homerica, trans. by H.G. Evelyn-White (London: Heinemann, 1920), p. 86.

15. Kirk and Raven, loc.cit.

16. Anaximander, fragments, see McLean and Aspell, pp. 22-28.

17. See McLean and Aspell, Ancient Western Philosophy (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1971), ch. III.

18. Parmenides, fragments, see McLean and Aspell, Readings in Ancient Western Philosophy, pp. 39-44.

19. Fragment 8; see Alexander P.D. Mourelatos, The Route of Parmenides: A Study of Word, Images, and Argument in the Fragments (New Haven: Yale, 1970).

20. Metaphysics, XII, 7, 1072 b 26-29.

21. Iqbal, p. 143.

22. Iqbal, pp. 4-5.

23. Iqbal, p. 123.

24. Old Testament.