SELF-CONCERN AND SELF-TRANSCENDENCE:

THE CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMATIC

 

Further, the ever more close interaction of increasingly diverse peoples, which has characterized modernization, urbanization and nation-building, could only exacerbate, rather than resolve, problems of living with others. As the level of work rises above a mute carrying out of orders, as parents begin to play an active role in planning goals for schools and health, civil society emerges. And as people take a more active role in a democratic system, and as all of these economic, educational and political decisions increasingly affect and are affected by national and international life, the level of interaction between persons increases geometrically. Decisions come to be made less individually and autocratically, and more through discussion in the home or work-place, community or nation, indeed the world. Tomonobu Imamichi speaks of a basic inversion of the practical syllogism reflecting the fact that energy, transportation and communications are provided by a developing technology and now are largely in common possession. It is not I, but we, who have these means; hence, it is we who must choose. Further, it is no longer a matter of choosing in terms of a goal to which they will be applied. Now the means are so large that we are burdened with the responsibilities of husbanding these massive means with which we now are charged and determining goals which render them profitable and regenerative.

A brief catalogue of present tensions suggests the depth and difficulty of the problem of taking the step from passive tolerance to active inter-change and unity. First, within the person there exist multiple tensions between, on the one hand, the traditional content of one’s culture built upon community and, on the other hand, the cumulative and often depersonalizing demands of a life whose every phase is ordered according to the abstract rationalizations of industry and commerce, educational systems and political theory.

Secondly, between social, national, and other groups – and on the basis of the most subtle shadings of color or style of hair, birth or personal mannerism – one group comes to be considered not merely slightly different, but markedly inferior, or somewhat threatening. Even where no differences exist, some negative evaluation is imposed in order not fully to accept or recognize a group’s freedom and dignity. Often the group resides in a distinct sector of a country or even of each town, surrounded by a climate of apathy or, more probably, of incipient antipathy. In some cases, they are cast out to swell the growing tide of the world’s 14,000,000 refugees, where they languish in camps, wander in hunger, and are indiscriminately exploited or even attacked. This is a primary problem of our time.

Thirdly, this phenomenon of alienation reappears between countries and continents; it shadows man’s every advance. As the ability is developed to communicate and interact with peoples and cultures ever more distant and diverse, the modalities of alienation keep step, adopting ever more sophisticated and powerful economic and even military forms.

At the present juncture, we face a particularly exacerbated form of these tragic tensions. After a half to three quarters of a century of attempts to supplant the natural bonds of human community by a notion of class scientifically constructed upon the triumphant industrialization of the machine age, peoples were freed to seek their destiny once again. Suddenly, it has become urgent to face ancient frictions as well as more recent and unresolved grievances – often the results of forced transport of peoples in cruel and despotic attempts at social engineering and territorial expansion. What is more, this must be done in the context of new and unaccustomed independence and before the civilizing factors of the various cultures have been able to be identified, much less rebuilt.

This is the excruciating, lived dimension of the basic metaphysical problem of self-identity and, hence, of otherness. To ignore the depth of the contemporary problematic would restrict one’s response to the level of compromises and accommodations possible in terms of the particular sciences. These alleviate the symptoms while delineating the terms and planting the seeds for subsequent confrontation and conflict.

The real problems of interrelation between persons and cultural groups can be faced only by looking more deeply into the nature and origin of self-awareness and of self-identity to see whether this sets one against others or, on the contrary, unites persons; and, whether and how this can ground positive interaction or cooperation in the face of the intercultural tensions – even the clash – of civilizations of our day.

The previous chapters have suggested ways of understanding: the person in terms of living and creative traditions; harmony as a philosophy of freedom, of transcendence as a foundation for the dignity and meaning of human life, and of suffering as a path to resurrection and life. This chapter will look ahead, not in the sense of a man-made utopia – because that would restrict human freedom since it could never reflect the full richness of life – but in seeing the person as gift and the implications of this for harmony and peace.

It is possible to develop such a vision in terms of beauty and the aesthetic order, but in so doing it is necessary to conceive this in such a way that it does not detract from, but transforms humankind and its interactions in space and time. Above we saw that in terms of existence and unity the many could be reconciled in the vision of the Transcendent One: as all persons are participations in this One they are brothers and sisters one to another. The danger remains that this would be overcome by either/or self-centeredness, on the one hand, and an overriding emphasis upon community, on the other.

It would be possible to build the vision in terms of truth, or consciousness, also as treated above. This is more commonly found in philosophies of justice, whether in the liberal mode of Rawls or in that of critical theory. But, if the problem of egoism is not resolved, there is danger that focusing upon justice might lead to being dragged back into conflict over possessions and profits.

To protect against this and to open the road to creative progress, it is important to go further in terms of the good and of love. There are two approaches to this, one directly in terms of being, the other in terms of our self-consciousness as persons.

As noted above, in the appreciation of being as standing against nonbeing or nothingness lies the basis for the notion of "perfection," in the sense of the complete realization of a being according to its nature. When realized, this balance of the nature and actuality of being constitutes a stable state; but when not yet realized it is the basis for seeking "perfection" – a plant grows, an animal seeks food, and human seeks to know. In this way the good, as the perfection of being, is the basis of the dynamism of the human search, not only as realizing the achievement of perfection, but of awakening the search thereof.

This participational relation of all limited beings to the All-perfect divine as source and goal creates a dynamic field for all beings in which the human will is able to choose any instance of perfection in its search for its perfection. Yet at the same time, it is not necessitated by anything less than Perfection Itself. The all-perfect is then the creative context of human life. Unfortunately, if one’s search for perfection closes upon self, this very dynamism becomes corrupted into a basis for conflict with others.

Once placed within the context of the transcendent as infinite and All-perfect, however, something more appears which transforms the total meaning of life. For then one observes that the All-perfect source has created not out of a need or self-seeking; the work of creation is not a search for self-realization, but rather a sharing of perfection. In this, being comes to be seen in a dramatically new light, namely, not simply as self-seeking, but as self-sharing and self-communicating. The dynamism of being, then, is much more than a mean struggle for survival; it is rather a search for creative realization and sharing.

This insight, derived from the creative love of the divine and concerning the basic generosity of being, is ever in conflict with the creature’s self-centeredness which shrinks the self to ego as each person desires to establish him or herself by him or herself. Milton’s account of Paradise Lost becomes too truly a parable of our lives, describing in classic terms what Sartre states more technically as modern man wanting to be both ‘in-himself’ and ‘for-himself’.

There are reasons in the very nature of modern thought why this has become a special problem in our times. In order to achieve scientific control of life in terms of mathematical clarity and empirical evidence, the dimension of teleology by which persons are drawn beyond themselves was put to one side. Also excluded from consideration was affectivity, one of the idols in Bacon’s terminology. The result has been a highly rationalized and analytic view of life in which all that is not subject to being reduced by the mind to simple empirical components or as a distinct part of Descartes’ "man-machine" was rejected. In these terms the affective dimension of life came to seem irrelevant to understanding the person for it had no place in rational calculation. Humankind itself was to be understood by reduction to single, simple and indifferent individuals as its basic reality. The result was a sense of isolation in a lonely crowd, and accompanying asocial or antisocial behavior.

Indeed, these proclivities have come to be so ingrained in some cultures and are so characteristically modern that it would seem less likely that the implications of universal principles such as those of human rights would be appreciated, much less be able to overcome self-centered concerns. Hence, it is necessary to look foundationally into human experience itself and follow the way in which, at the various levels this bespeaks affectivity, and thereby engagement with others. These are not compromises of our rights (Hobbes), but modes of self-realization in the context of time and space.

An important philosophical development of our times has been phenomenology as a method of looking into human consciousness (Husserl), especially in its embodied spatial and temporal condition. Here the usual horizon of perception is reversed. The approach is not that of a detached observer who perceives only external realities as objects. Nor is it that of the human mind in a process of active self-reflection and self-determination. Instead the point of reflection is that of affectivity as the originary mode of finite being, that is precisely its capacity for reception. Just as a painful impression is not something distinct from its perception but is the presentation of the pain itself, so affectivity is itself a presentation in subjectivity of the reception of being.

To appreciate this it should be noted that time has a reversible character. There is retention from the past as this goes through the process of self-constitution and hence must retain from the past what it accomplished (otherwise there would be but a series of discrete moments and no constitution of self). There is also protention, a reaching toward the future, toward realizing all that is hoped for. The two mutually imply each other, similar to the way in which one hand cannot touch the other without being touched. I do not constitute myself in time without retention of the past, but such retention implies that each moment is future oriented.

This retention from the past is not merely speculative; it is an active process of positive constitution. Further, as it is the constitution of my self, it has an affective and even passionate character. Looking toward the past there is fascination with the sense of original paradise or perfection, which is combined with anguish at its loss. At the same time, the protention toward the future is essentially a desire of the perfection it promises yet anguish at the direction of life toward death. Thus, in affectivity the extension or distension of life from birth to death intersects experientially or perpendicularly with the intentionality of feeling or affectivity, both positive and negative, – of hope and fear, as Plato says in his Laches – to constitute our lived experience.

Lived precisely as mine, this constitutes my life as a deeply experienced emotive and emotional reality, reversibly both moving and moved. Indeed, the degree of its affective intensity, whether positive in enjoyment or negative in horror, constitutes the qualitative level of our life. Hence, if one wishes to transcend, in the sense not of dismissing but of sublimating the quantitative reductionism that is the effect of the scientific fascination of the modern mind, then it is to this qualitative dimension, realized in affectivity, that one should turn.

When we do so we see that the affectivity of the child is derivative not of a mere biological event, but of the mutual recognition or openness of the parents to each other. Emerging from this the infant enters into finite existence as a realm of meaning already marked by the established loving relation between one’s parents. This points one beyond the Oedipal stage. By identification with the parent of the same sex one enters into one’s proper existence. This is not a role added on indifferently, but the beginning of one’s proper mode of existence.

As specified sexually in the body one’s identity is properly relational; it is toward the other sex. As received from the meaning-giving act of procreative love of the parents this is not a mere physical fact, but an inscription of the child into the circle of meaningful relations with its polarity of anguish and desire. This interdependent existential relationality is constitutive of the relational growth of the person.

Thus, for the human person what begins in the sexual differénce where all differences are by the same token relational in the affective order of meaning, expands along with the development of consciousness into the broad panoply of the physical universe as a meaningful whole and through all the modes of personal and social encounter. This generates the truth of cultures and of civilizations with their scientific and aesthetic, ethical and political articulation.

As noted above this affective pattern of extended and sophisticated hopes and fears is not an object of observation that can be properly thematized. Rather, as a system of correlations of the experience of anguish and desire, it is our life-world which, writ large, is not simply our experience of being as if of an object, but is the life of being as received, lived passionately, and transmitted to others.

In the light of this reflection on the affective dimension of being a number of considerations emerge. First, a philosophy constructed on a physical and quantitative paradigm is in principle inadequate to take account of the human and social quality of a persons’ life. Such a scientifically calculable approach to reality expunges from life all meaning and value. It threatens the culture not only of one people, but of humanity as such. This is the terrible pathology of the Enlightenment which comes increasingly to consciousness and calls for a post-modern world. This must consist not in a solitary, skeptical sense of rejecting foundations and principles as many would want, but in sublimating these within the free and creative life of the spirit lived passionately and essentially with others.

Thus, the affective experience of meaning through desire and anguish manifests much that is of the greatest importance for human life in our times. A metaphysics and ontology, or study of being, carried out as if being or existence were indifferent to consciousness and bliss, would be an abstraction in which the term ‘being’ would have extension (that is, can refer to each thing), but not the intention or depth of meaning required as the context of a life of meaning and value. This implies, in turn, the need for a metaphysics of Being which is "love," for it is this which gives meaning to humanity. This is not an arbitrary construct reflective only of the human, but a sharing by all in that bliss which is eternal and gives temporal life great meaning and beauty. One key manner in which to look at human life then is that of gift, reflection thereupon should provide the foundation projecting one into cooperation with others as neighbors in a life whose purpose is sharing in eternal bliss (ananda).

This can be approached in another phenomenological manner by reflecting carefully on the mode of operation of our own conscious life. One place to begin is with the person as a polyvalent unity operating on both the physical and non-physical levels. Though the various sciences analyse distinct dimensions, the person is not a construct of independent components, but an identity: the physical and the psychic are dimensions of myself and of no other. Further, this identity is not the result of my personal development, but was had by me from my beginning; it is a given for each person. Hence, while I can grow indefinitely, act endlessly, and do and make innumerable things, the growth and acts will be always my own: it is the same given or person who perdures through all the stages of his or her growth.

Unfortunately, this givenness is often taken in the sense of closure associated with the terms ‘datum’ or ‘data’, as hypothetical or evidential. On the one hand, in the hypothetical sense a given is a stipulation agreed upon by the relevant parties as the basis for a process of argumentation: granted X, then Y. The premises of an argument or the postulates in a mathematical demonstration are such. On the other hand, in the evidential sense, data are the direct and warranted observations of what actually is the case. In both meanings, the terms ‘given’ or ‘data’ direct the mind exclusively toward the future or consequent as one’s only concern. The use of the past participle of the verb stem (data) closes off any search toward the past, so that, when one given is broken down by an analysis, new givens appear. One never gets behind some hypothetical or evidential given.

Second, there is the too broadly experienced danger that in concrete affairs the concern to build the future in terms only of what has been conceived clearly and by all will be transformed, wittingly and unwittingly, into oppression of self-identity and destruction of the integrative work of cultures, both as civilizations and as centers of personal cultivation. Indeed, the charges of cultural oppression and the calls for liberation from so many parts of the world raise founded doubt that the humanist notion of the self-given and its accompanying ideals can transcend the dynamics of power and leave room for persons, especially for those of other cultures.

It is time, then, to look again to the second meaning of ‘given’ and to follow the opening toward the source implied in the notion of gift. Above, we had noted some indications that self-identity and interpersonal relatedness are gifts (dona). Let us now look further into this in order to see what it suggests regarding the dynamic openness required for cooperation between persons and cultures.

First, one notes that as gift the given has an essentially gratuitous character. It is true that at times the object or service given could be paid for in cash or in kind. As indicated by the root of the term ‘commercial,’ however, such a transaction would be based on some merit (mereo) on the part of the receiver. This would destroy its nature as gift precisely because the given would no longer be based primarily in the freedom of the giver.

The same appears from an analysis of an exchange of presents. Presents cease to be gifts to the degree that they are given only because of the requirements of the social situation or only because of a claim implicit in what the other might have given me. Indeed, the sole way in which such presents can be redeemed as gifts is to make clear that their presentation is not something to which I feel merely obliged, but something I personally and freely want to do. As such, then, a gift is based precisely upon the freedom of the giver; it is gratuitous.

There is here a striking symmetry with the ‘given’ in the above sense of hypothesis or evidence. There, in the line of hypothetical and evidential reasoning, there was a first, namely, that which is not explained, but upon which explanation is founded. Here, there is also a first upon which the reality of the gift is founded and which is not to be traced to another reality. This symmetry makes what is distinctive of the gift stand out, namely, here the originating action is not traced back further precisely because it is free or gratuitous. Once again, our reflections lead us in the direction of that which is self-sufficient, absolute and transcendent as the sole adequate giver of the gift of being.

The great traditions have insisted rightly both upon the absolute reality of the One and upon the lesser reality of the multiple: the multiple is not the Real, though neither is it totally non-reality. Anselm’s elaboration of the notion of privation contains a complementary clarification of the gratuitous character of beings as given or gifted. The notion of privation was developed classically by Aristotle in his analysis of change, where privation appeared at the beginning of the process as the lack of the form to be realized. He saw this as more than non-being, precisely in as much as it was a lack of a good which is due to that subject. Hence, in substantial change, because the basic potential principle is prime matter to which no specific form is due, privation plays no role.

Anselm extended this notion of privation to the situation of creation in which the whole being is gifted. In this case, there is no prior subject to which something is due; hence, there is no ground or even any acceptance. Anselm expressed this radically non-reciprocal nature of the gift – its lack of prior conditions – through the notion of absolute privation.

In the beginning, my dear, this world was just being (Sat), one only, without a second. . . . Being thought to itself: ‘May I be many; may I procreate.’ It produced fire. That fire thought to itself: ‘May I be many; may I procreate.’ It produced water. . . . That water thought to itself: ‘May I be many; may I procreate.’ It produced food. . . . That divinity (Being) thought to itself: ‘Well, having entered into three divinities [fire, water, and food] by means of this living Self, let me develop names and forms. Let me make each one of them tripartite. (Chandogya Up., 6.1-3, 12-14.)

 

To what does this correspond on the part of the source? In a certain parallel to the antinomies of Kant which show when reason has strayed beyond its bounds, many from Plotinus to Leibniz and beyond have sought knowledge, not only of the gift and its origin, but of why it had to be given. The more they succeeded, the less room was left for freedom on the part of man as a given or gift. Others attempted to understand freedom as a fall, only to find that what was thus understood was bereft of value and meaning and, hence, was of no significance to human life and its cultures. Rather, the radical non-reciprocity of human freedom must be rooted in an equally radical generosity on the part of its origin. No reason, either on the part of the given or on the part of its origin, makes this gift necessary. The freedom of the human person is the reflection of one is derivation from a giving that is pure generosity: a person is the image of God.

The African spirit, especially in its great reverence of family, community and culture – whence one derives one’s life, one’s ability to interpret one’s world, and one’s capacity to respond – seems uniquely positioned to grasp this more fully. In contrast to Aristotle’s classical ‘wonder,’ these philosophers do not situate the person over against the object of his or her concern, reducing both to objects for detached study and manipulation. They look rather to the source whence reality is derived and are especially sensitive to its implications for the mode and manner of one’s life as essentially open, communicative, generous and sharing.

In the light of this sense of gift, it may be possible to extend the notions of duty and harmony beyond concern for the well-being of those with whom I share and whose well-being is, in a sense, my own. The good is not only what contributes to my perfection: I am not the center of meaning. Rather, being is received and, hence, is essentially out-going.

Seen in terms of gift, person and community manifest two principles for social dynamism in the development of a cultural tradition of harmony: complementarity which makes the formation of culture and interchange possible, and generosity which passes it along in an active process of tradition. First, as participants in the one, self-sufficient and purely spontaneous source, the many are not in principle antithetic or antipathetic one to another. Rather, as limited images they stand in a complementary relation to one another as participants or images. This is reflected in the enjoyment experienced in simple companionship in which, by sharing the other’s experience of being, each lives more fully: the result is more than the sum of its parts. What is true here of individual persons is true as well both of groups of peoples and indeed of peoples and of the cultures they create through self-knowledge. It is this complementarity, derived from their common origin, which makes cooperation in work and decision making, whether in commerce or in culture, fundamentally possible and ultimately desirable.

This has two important implications for the person and for relations between peoples. Where the Greek focus upon their heritage had led to depreciating others as barbarians, the sense of oneself and of one’s culture as radically gifted provides a basic corrective. Knowing and valuing oneself and one’s culture as gifts implies more than merely reciprocating what the other does for me. It means, first, that others and their culture are to be respected simply because they, too, have been given or gifted by the one Transcendent source. This is an essential step which Gandhi, in calling outcasts by the name "harijans" or "children of God," urged us to take beyond the sense of pride or isolation from which we would see others in pejorative terms.

But mere respect may not be enough. In fact I and another, my people and another, originate from, share in and proclaim the same Self, especially as Good or Bliss. This implies that, to the degree that our cultural traditions share in the good, the relation between the integrating modes of human life is in principle one of complementarity. Hence, interchange as the effort to live this complementarity is far from being hopeless. In the pressing needs of our times, only an intensification of cooperation between peoples can make available the indispensable immense stores of human experience and creativity. The positive virtue of love is our real basis for hope.

A second principle for interchange is to be found in the participated – the radically given or gifted – character of one’s being. As one does not first exist and then receive, but one’s very existence is a received existence or gift, to attempt to give back this gift, as in an exchange of presents, would be at once hopelessly too much and too little. On the one hand, to attempt to return in strict equivalence would be too much, for it is our very self that we have received as gift. On the other hand, to think merely in terms of reciprocity would be to fall essentially short of my nature as one that is given, for to make a merely equivalent return would be to remain centered upon myself where I would cleverly trap, and then entomb, the creative power of being.

Rather, looking back I can see the futility of giving back, and in this find the fundamental importance of passing on the gift in the spirit in which it has been given. One’s nature as given calls for a creative generosity which reflects that of one’s source. Truly appropriate generosity lies in continuing the giving through participating in one’s tradition, shaping it creatively in response to the needs of the day and the discoveries of the era, and handing on this good to others. This requires a vast expansion or breaking out of oneself as the only center of one’s concern. It means becoming effectively concerned with the good of others and of other groups, and for the promotion and vital growth of the next generation and of those to follow.

The implications of such generosity are broad and at times surprisingly personal. First, true openness to others cannot be based upon a depreciation of oneself or of one’s own culture. Without appreciating one’s worth, there would be nothing to share and no way to help, nor even the possibility of taking joy in the good of the other. Further, cultural interchange enables one to see that elements of one’s life, which in isolation may have seemed to be merely local customs and purely repetitive in character, are more fundamentally modes in which one lives basic and essential human values. In meeting others and other cultures, one discovers the deeper meaning in one’s own everyday life.

One does more than discover, however. One recognizes that in these transcendental values of life – of truth and freedom, of love and beauty – one participates in the dynamism of one’s origin and, hence, must share these values in turn. More exactly, one comes to realize that real reception of these transcendental gifts lies in sharing them in loving concern in order that others may realize them as well. This means passing on one’s own heritage and protecting and promoting what the next generation would freely become.