CHAPTER IV

THE TRANSCENDENT BASIS FOR PERSONAL DIGNITY AND SOCIAL DYNAMISM

TRANSCENDENCE AND HUMAN FREEDOM

            As seen in chapter III, a sense of the aesthetic transforms the understanding of being, allows it to soar beyond the material, and opens it to the creativity of the human spirit. In Confucius, this implies an "inner" transcendence in the sense of self-improvement and a continuing effort to hone a perfect harmony of human capabilities. There is substantive evidence both in the practices of the people, in writings of earlier thinkers and in the words of Co nfucius himself that this was related to a context of reality which transcended human persons and their individual and social creations. Subsequent to Confucius, however, the horizon was closed tightly around man and his social achievements. In terms of both its goal and its means, life came to be defined entirely in terms of man himself.

            However, just as one cannot truly be oneself if isolated from others, man may not be able alone to achieve his full potential:

(a) Without a further context, even the exalted aesthetic sense of harmony tends to lose its original Confucian sense of creative adaptation of new insights and to discount novelty in favor of repetition and conservation.

(b) Hegel was concerned that philosophy integrate, but not conclude with the aesthetic. He sees a danger in remaining solely on that level, for aesthetic awareness grasps being through the imagination and expresses its meaning and value in physical media. While this renders the Absolute visible and makes manifest the spiritual meaning of the world, left to itself the aesthetic might conclude in a pantheism--and if nature were to become God, man would be enslaved by his own creations. In the end, being would come to be defined by man, who, thereby, would be forever entombed within the walls of his own ability to create, for in the end this must be as limited as is man himself. The aesthetic sense, if left to itself, would subject man to his own creations and trap him in a deadening idolatrous loop.

(c) Finally, given the vicissitudes of human character, harmony without a normative ideal can be used by leaders, as seems to have been the case in the Meiji period in Japan, to suppress dissent and merge all into phases of the march of progress, as described in a recent study on Ernst Cassirer by George Pierson.

             In order to be truly free, therefore, we must acknowledge, as it were, not only that we are athletes but that we are playing in a vast--even limitless--arena. We must think not only in terms of ourselves, but must transcend ourselves in recognizing an adequate ground for the limitlessness of the radical creative potentialities we possess. For this purpose, Hegel pointed to the need, beyond art and the aesthetic, for religion--indeed, for revealed religion--in order to state the full content of transcendence; and beyond even religion he saw the need for philosophy to purify the content of religion from the limitations of its symbolic forms.

            Taken abstractly, there is lasting truth in this pattern, but He gel's thought is also historical. As such, the sequence he states between religion and philosophy reflects as well, or perhaps even more, the chronological sequence of the two in his native Germany. The order is also characteristic of the particular phase of the evolution of the Christian vision in which he stood. To grasp this, one should note that historically, the Christian vision has evolved and contributed thereby to some of the deepest dynamisms of culture. The history of these dynamics might be analyzed in a number of ways, but once one gets beyond the initial unfolding of the Christian reason in ancient times, a three-fold dialectical division seems particularly relevant.

            The first phase (or thesis) is the medieval period, whose thought is typified by the philosophical-theological synthesis of Thomas Aquinas. In the midst of a fractured Europe, he synthesized Pla tonism and Ari stotlianism on the basis of an existential sense of being into an integrated, systematic philosophy which emphasized the unity of all men under God.

            The second (or antithetic) phase is the Protestant Reformation in Renaissance times. On the one hand, it emphasized freedom of the will and individuality. On the other hand, it considered human nature to be corrupted by sin, implying thereby a skeptical attitude regarding the ability of man by the power of his natural reason to develop a philosophical knowledge of human nature as a unifying principle for human life. Finally, abandoning philosophy, it based all human learning upon revelation as coming from without, which in turn had the tendency to set the presentation of Christianity against the particular cultures.

            c. The third phase is the Catholic counter-reformation and its more recent Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s. This sought new understanding of the work of God within the dynamisms of human life and attempted to synthesize the ancient traditions of community with the new senses of personal freedom. This was the special effort of the Jesuits, of which Matteo Ricci was a prime representative in China. Typically, he began with the Confucian culture and sought how this might be, not substituted for, but deepened and enriched by Christian philosophy, implying thereby a deep respect both for Chinese culture and for its dynamic openness to progress.

            The previous three chapters--the first on the importance of cultural heritage for the dynamism of change in our times, the second on the notion of persona and the third on a new and deeper understanding of the Confucian notion of harmony for a rethinking of all in terms of human freedom--reflect this latter approach. Rather than seeing philosophy as did He gel, as following upon and correcting our understanding of revelation, it suggests rather the role for philosophy in allowing us to question our traditions (in Gadamer's sense) in order to retrieve and unfold the implications of elements deep within ourselves and our culture.

            In this sense, philosophy encounters religion, not as a contrasting doctrine coming from without and alien to the particular cultures, but as their deepest and most dynamic ground, as a leaven for the many cultures as they transform themselves from within. It looks to religion for its capacity to liberate and inspire the work of philosophy based upon the dignity of the human person and the meaning of nature and of human life. Such a philosophy is inevitably facilitated and inspired contextually by religion, whether revealed or natural, as a major factor in the process by which a people has shaped its culture; but as philosophy, it remains a work of natural reasons which does not require or depend upon a particular faith commitment.

            This raises, in turn, the question of the role of the philosopher. In the Biblical tradition, there is a sense of God's supreme love guiding his people and drawing them to himself. Reconciling this with human responsibility required much patient philosophical reflection. It was in proclaiming and clarifying this relation of God to his people that the figures of the prophets, Christ, the saints and the church as a community emerged in their full stature. In the Confucian perspective, the relation of heaven to the people would seem first to have been personal (Shan-di or "Lord on High"), and later to have become more diffused as tien. In this context, the sage appears as mediating between mankind and heaven to the degree that he comes from the people and, by his life, is assimilated to heaven. This relation of sagehood to sanctity is an important issue for investigation; it is the essence of the role of the philosopher in both the Confucian and the Christian traditions.

            This sets a pattern for the more delicate and sensitive relation of participation between the transcendent One and the multiple limited beings. The term "transcendence" can be diversely employed. It can be taken to mean going beyond one's present level of perfection and, hence, self-improvement; at times this is referred to as inner transcendence. Taken as an ethic, it can raise a high ideal of human perfection, inspire sacrifice and promote harmony and peace with nature and all mankind.

            However, there can be difficulties, indeed megatragedies, when an ethic is made into metaphysics and must assume the burden of answering the foundational questions of being and meaning. This was the case when Dew ey's ethics of progress was transformed into a metaphysics. `Pragma' became pragmatism without restraints or orientation: all became acceptable in the name of progress which, being undeterminable, could be used to justify everything that people had the power to do. A similar critique is made in a recent study of Ernst Cassirer whose effort to avoid metaphysics in his philosophy of symbolic forms left him without the possibility of rationally condemning the Naziism he abhorred as anything more than a negative phase of the ongoing process of human development.

            This points toward the need for the deeper sense of inner transcendence as is found in Indian thought, in which one's phenomenal and changing self bespeaks one's permanent identity or self (at man) which, as openness to being, leads one to the Absolute Self (Bra hman). The ways of understanding this relation between ourselves (atman) and the Self (Brahman), in this inner direction, is the central point of differentiation between the Hindu systems of metaphysics. In the Advaitan philosophy of Shankara, one comes finally to the awareness that what is really real is the absolute Self or Brahman and that all else is an illusion. Other schools, such as that of Ramanuja, would see sufficient distinctiveness on the part of the self (atman) to be an attribute of the Self (Brahman); still other schools, such as that of Mahdva, would see a substantial difference between the human and divine selves.

            This philosophical pattern could be of special interest to Chinese philosophers for, through Bud dhism, which arose as a Hindu Reformation, these explorations into the ground of the human self can be related genetically to the shaping of the Chinese tradition. More interestingly, they may suggest a possible evolution for the Confucian sense of inner transcendence beyond self-perfection of the finite self to the Absolute Self. The Hindu thinkers look within man, not for what is reductively human, but for what is infinitely greater than the individual human self. This is discovered by an interior route and in most schools is not substantially distinct from the human self. (Of course, the Advaitan tendency--in contrast to all other philosophical schools--finally, to dismiss the human self as illusion is quite contrary to Confucianism which, in its turn, could help the Advaitin to a stronger sense of human reality.)

            Nonetheless, there may remain here a certain inconvenience. In Japan, in the period of the Shogunate and the Me iji, the Confucian focus upon human relations seems to have left it susceptible to being employed for political manipulation. Thus, inner transcendence, even when taken in the Hindu sense of the Absolute inner reality of the Self or Brahman, may not provide sufficient grounding for the sense of human individuality, independence, and autonomy, to protect persons from political manipulation and control for purposes less than noble. This is especially true when the position of the ruler is developed in terms of abstract modern rationality with technical structures which ignore what is properly personal.

            This suggests that, in order for the sense of harmony to unleash its potential, creative freedom requires as source and goal, foundation and norm, inspiration and fulfillment, an unlimited context of being that is an outer transcendence quite beyond what man is or can become. This raises, in turn, a number of issues, namely:

(1) what kind of thinking does such an investigation require?

(2) what can be known in this regard?

(3) will an outer Transcendent disrupt human harmony or produce a mega-harmony?

(4) what role can religious revelation play with regard to philosophy? and

(5) how does this transform our understanding of the meaning of being and the harmony of life?

TRANSCENDENCE IN PRE-PHILOSOPHICAL THINKING

            It would be a mistake, however, to look to religion and its sense of outer transcendence as implying that the divine is outside, over and above or alien to the world and its cultures. From earliest times human thought always had a sacred center.

            It is possible to track the evolution of this awareness by relating it to the three dimensions of the human mind. The first dimension is the external senses of sight, touch and the like, by which one receives information from the external world. The second is the internal senses of imagination and memory by which one assembles the received data in a manner which enables it to represent the original whole from which the various senses drew their specific details, to rearrange these and other data in various combinations, or to recall it at a later time. Finally, beyond both of these dimensions of the senses is the intellect by which one knows the nature of things and judges regarding their existence. It was according to this threefold structure that Descartes proceeded step by step to place under doubt all that arises from a source of knowledge once a reason for doubt could be identified and until knowledge 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. Not surprisingly, upon examination it appears that the actual evolution of man's awareness of the sacred follows this sequence of his natural capacities for knowledge. In all cases, it is intellectual knowledge that is in play, but this is facilitated and articulated successively, first in terms of the external senses in the totemic stage, then in terms of the internal sense in the mythic period and, finally, in properly intellectual terms as the origin of philosophy or science. Indeed, one might define philosophy and science precisely as knowledge of the various aspects of reality in terms proper to human reason and, hence, proper to themselves.

            To follow this evolution, it should be noted that, for life in any human society as a grouping of persons, a first and basic necessity is an understanding of oneself and of 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. If, as Plato would later work out in detail, the unity of the multiple is possible only on the basis of something that is one, then the unity of social life will require that there be present in the awareness of the early peoples and according to their mode of awareness something that is one in terms of which all are related.

            To temic Thought. In the earliest form of thought and society this understanding by people of themselves and their unity with others was carried out in terms of a natural reality, such as an animal or bird, able to be perceived by them through their external senses. These peoples spoke of themselves by simple identity with the animal or bird which was the totem of their clan.

            Le vy-Bruhl expresses this in a law of participation. It expressed a discovery which his own positivist philosophy was unable to assimilate, namely, that in the primitive or foundational mode of thinking of the earliest peoples their root identity was that of the totem. It was not that such persons saw themselves as in some manner like, or as descendent from, their totem, e.g., lion; instead, they said directly: "I am lion." It was in these terms that they founded their identity and dignity, considered themself 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.

            The totem was, of course, not simply one animal among others. It was in a sense limitless in that no matter how many persons were born to the tribe its potentialities were never exhausted. Further, it 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. And, whereas other things might be said to be possessed, the totem was the subject of predication by direct identity: one might say that he had a horse or other animal, but only of the totem would one say that he is e.g., horse or lion. This was the sacred center of individual and community life in terms of which all had meaning and cohesion. It made possible the sense of personal dignity and the interpersonal relations which were the most important aspects of human life and did so with a sense of direct immediacy that would be echoed, but could never be repeated, in subsequent stages of thought.

            My thic Thought. Though the totem was able to provide for unity and meaning while the life of all members of the tribe remained similar, its manner of expressing unity became insufficient as society became more specialized and differentiated. Then 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. At that point, with the ability to look upon others as both united and differentiated and distinct, came an appreciation of the special distinctiveness of the sacred center as above the many individuals of which it was the principle and center. What in totemic thought had previously been stated simply by identity could now be appreciated as greater than and transcending the members of the tribe. This is reflected in the development of priesthoods, rituals and symbols to reflect what was no longer seen simply as one's deepest identity.

            Such a reality could no longer be stated in terms immediately present to the external senses, but rather was figured by the imagination in terms drawn originally from the senses, but now redrawn in forms that expressed life that was above men and stood as the principle of their life. Such higher principles, as the more knowing and having a greater power of will, would be personal; as transcendent persons they would be gods. It would seem incorrect 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 the appreciation of the principle of human life from the limitations of animals, birds and other natural entities available to the external senses and allowed the real transcendence of the principle of unity to be expressed in a more effective manner. This did not create transcendence, but allowed it to be expressed in a more effective manner.

            But expression in terms of the forms available to the internal sense of imagination had its temptations; these limitations were pointed out by Xenophanes. He 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. These principles of meaning and value thus pointed as well to their opposites. Thinking in terms of the imagination was no longer sufficient; the intellect needed to proceed in its own terms in order to enable the true sense of the gods as well as of nature to be expressed and defended against confusion and corruption. As the intellect proceeded to operate in properly intellectual terms rather than in terms of the images of mythic thinking, science and philosophy emerged to replace myth as the basic mode of human understanding.

            Paul Tillich points out that the mythic mode of thinking never completely disappeared and that its contribution of imagery and its evocation of responses from all dimensions of the human personality remain essential components of human awareness. No ethical treatise will ever equal the power and penetration of the I liad or the plays of Soph ocles in penetrating the human condition. But once the intellect was able to conceptualize things in their own terms, rather than in terms of anthropomorphic gods, mythic thinking would no longer be taken as the literal truth. It became what Tillich would call "broken myth", in the sense that it helps and enriches human awareness and response without being the sole or basic mode in which all is appreciated.

OPENING THE METAPHYSICAL DIMENSION OF PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT

            At this point, the way is opened for philosophy, and, in its terms, spectacularly rapid progress was made. Within but a few generations, the human intellect had worked out a structure of the physical world using basic categories of hot and cold, wet and dry available to the external senses, along with mechanisms of vortex motion.pp. 22-28. Mathematical reason worked with the internal senses to lay down the basic theorems of geometry. In brief, by developing properly intellectual terms, the Greeks had revised and perfected the thought processes of the totemic and mythic ages, elaborating 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. The fundamental issue was rather what it meant to be, what life was based upon, and in what terms it should be lived. 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 the properly intellectual terms of metaphysics.

            When the procedure for this `opening the mind' came later to be reflected upon and made explicit, it would become clear that the procedure for achieving this all inclusive vision must itself be unique. In particular, it could not be accomplished by abstraction which omits the differences in order to broaden the range of applicability of a notion, for omitting reality in order to open to all that is real would be self defeating. Hence, Thomas Aquinas concluded that the approach to metaphysics must not be by abstraction as in the other sciences, but by a judgment concerned directly, not with form or essence, but with existence, that is with the simple affirmation or assertion of reality. As a result the notion of being is not univocal and delimited as would be the case were it form-standing in contrast to all other forms, but analogous or open to affirming in positive terms the full range of being, namely, whatever is and in whatever way it is.

            Further, the form of the judgment is negative, setting aside whatever might restrict or limit that affirmation. It states that being with which metaphysics is concerned is not limited to those things which are of a changing or material nature and perceived by the intellect working in conjunction with the senses. Because not all reality is material, to be real does not as such imply to be material: being as being, or that according to which it is or is being, is then not material or changing.

            This judgment is negative; it does not question the reality of the material order, but negates only the limitation of being to that one type of being, namely, to material being. By this type of judgment, being, as the subject of the science of metaphysics, is liberated in principle from restriction to a particular kind or kinds of differentiated existence. It is opened to any being and every aspect of being, to whatever might prove either to characterize or to be required by being precisely as being. With this as its subject, the science of metaphysics will be a systematic process without shackles, accountable before Par menides' principle of contradiction never to reduce being to nonbeing or nothing, and in positive terms open to every evidence of being, whether conditioned or Absolute.

            Working out an adequate method for metaph ysics took a millenium and a half; but from the beginning, beyond the notions of hot and cold, even and uneven, Parmenides recognized this issue of reality itself, or what it meant to be, and undertook to begin its investigation. How could this be understood? First, he bound the work of the intellect directly to being: "It is the same thing to think and to be" (fragment 3). Hence, the requirements of thinking would manifest those of being. Second, he contrasted being with its opposite nonbeing as something to nothing at all (fragment 2). This principle of non-contradiction was a construct of the mind; like pi in geometry, it was something that is good to think with, for it enabled the mind, in reflecting upon being, to identify its requirements and avoid anything that would undermine its reality.

            The proemium of Parmenides' famous poem had described a scene in which he was awakened by the 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. When at last he arrived there, the gates were opened by the goddess justice as guardian of true judgments, and he was directed to examine all things in order to discern the truth.

            Parmenides then images himself proceeding along the highway until he comes to a fork in the road with one signpost pointing the way toward being as reality whose nature is precisely that of beginning, i.e., no such reality would be eternal, all would be of the type what at some point begins. Here, Parmenides must reason regarding the implications of such a route. "To begin" means to move from nonbeing or from nothingness to being. Hence, if "to be" meant essentially "to begin", being would include within its very essence nonbeing or nothingness. In that case, there would then be no difference between being and nothing; being would be without meaning; and the real would be nothing at all. (Conversely, when nonbeing is removed from this notion, no sense of beginning remains and it becomes clear that at the fork in the road, the path of being is not that whose sign reads "beginning" but rather the other path which is that of the eternal.) This, then, is a first requirement of being: having excluded at the fork the possibility of taking the path fork which led to being as essentially beginning is excluded; being is seen to be eternal and the chariot moves on along the highway of being.

            The procedure is analogous at the two subsequent forks in the road where the signposts point to being as changing or multiple. Each of these, Parmenides' reasons, would include nonbeing within being, thereby destroying the character of 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. When, however, one removes that nonbeing 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, that nonbeing is removed what emerges is one. These then are the characteristics of being: infinite and eternal, unchanging and one.

            Such being transcends the multiple and changing world in which we live and is realized in a manner more perfect than could be appreciated in the graphic terms of the internal senses of imagination which defined the nature of man's 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. But 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' notion of the absolute One.

            One 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 Being which as the creative source of all else, without which all limited beings would be radically compromised--not least, man himself. It is not surprising, therefore, that Aristotle would soon conclude his search for the nature of being in his Metaphysics with a description of divine life.

            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 self-sufficient, man and nature would be at odds, and mankind would lack social cohesion. Indeed, thinking would be the same as not thinking, just as being would be the same as nonbeing. The real issue, then is how effectively to assure the openness of the methods of philosophical thought to the full range of reality, including its divine source and goal, and to implement the search for meaning in a way that enables a vigorous itinerary of the human heart and, hence, enlivens temporal life.

            Simplicius and others concluded from the first half of Parm enides' poem that there could be but one absolute being, but this does not fit well with the second, longer half of the Parmenides' poem, which treats at great length the many changing beings of our universe. Hence, it would appear to be a more correct reading of his mind to say that being requires the one infinite unchanging and eternal Being, i.e., an Absolute transcending the world of multiple and changing beings, and on which the universe of changing reality depends. How this universe is related to the One is not worked out by Parmenides, but it could be expected that whoever did work out this relation of the many to the One would be the father of the Greek, and, hence, of the Western, philosophical tradition. In fact, this proved to be Plato.

            For this relation, P lato developed the notion of participation. This operates on all levels because it is the mode of being itself. In logic, multiplicity requires that the many not be unrelated to each other, for then they could not be gathered in any set as multiple units. In nature, the multiple instances of any one type required the supereminent reality of the perfection according to which the many instances were similar or one. On the metaphysical level, this same dynamic required that, at the summit of all reality, there be the self-sufficient and infinite One or Good in which all things share or participate for their being, identity and goodness.

            This notion of participation according to which the many derived their being from the One which they manifest and toward which they are oriented and directed would subsequently provide the basic model for "outer" transcendence and the relation of creatures to God. In Plato's thought, however, the order of forms was relatively passive, rather than active. Hence, the supreme One or Good was the passive object of contemplation for the highest soul which was conscious and active. Most scholars, therefore, consider the highest Soul in Plato's thought rather than the highest One, to correspond to the notion of God.

            This was reversed in the thought of Ari stotle. His philosophy began with the changing beings available to the senses and discovered that such being must be composed of the principles of form as act and matter as potency. As a result, his sense of being was axised upon form as a principle of act in the process of change as active transformation. Consequently, when in his Metaphysics he undertook the search for the nature of being, which he rightly sought in the notion of substance, he tracked this from second substances as natures in the mind to first substances as the higher modes of being because they exist in themselves, and arrived inevitably at the highest act, the knowing on knowing itself (noesis noeseos), which he referred to as life divine. This is the culmination of his philosophy because it brings him to the very heart of the whole order of being and, hence, of reality itself. Joseph Ow ens would conclude from his investigation of being as the subject of Aristotle's metaphysics that this was primarily the one Absolute Being and was extended to all things by a pros hen analogy; that is, all things are beings precisely the extent that they stand in relation to the Absolute One which transcends all else.

TRANSCENDENCE AND PARTICIPATION IN  THE CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF EXISTENCE

            What would be the effect of a revealed religion based upon the manifestation of the divine mind to that of man? To examine this, we will look for the effect of Chris tianity upon the development of the Greek sense of being and to the consequent enrichment with which the resulting notion of the "outer" transcendent endowed the meaning of life.

            Here, it is important to note that, although Greek philosophy grew out of an intensive mythic sense of life in which all was a reflection of the will of the gods, nonetheless, it presupposed matter always to have existed. As a result, the focus of its attention and concerns was upon the forms by which matter was determined to be of one type rather than another. For Aristotle, physical or material things in the process of change from one form to another were the most manifest realities and his philosophizing began from that. This approach to philosophy through sense encounter with physical beings corresponds especially to our human nature as mind and body and could extend to the recognition of divine life. But the sense of reality needed considerable enrichment in order adequately to bring out the foundational significance for mankind of its grounding in a fully transcendent and infinite Being.

            It was here that the development of the Chr istian context had an especially liberating effect upon philosophy. By applying to the Greek notion of matter, the Judeo-Christian heritage regarding the complete dominion of God over all things, the Christian Church Fathers opened human consciousness to the fact that matter, too, depended for its reality upon God. Thus, before Plotinus, who was the first philosopher to do so, the Fat hers already had noted that matter, even when considered eternal, stood also in need of an explanation of its origin.

            This enabled philosophical questioning to push beyond the reality of form, nature or kind to that of existence and, hence, radically to deepen its sense of reality. If what must be explained is no longer merely the particular form or type of beings, but the reality of matter as well, then the question becomes not only how things are of this or that kind, but how they exist rather than not exist. Man's awareness of being thus evolved beyond change or form; to be real could be seen to mean to exist and whatever is related thereto. Quite literally, "To be or not to be" had become the question. By the same stroke, our self-awareness and will were deepened dramatically. They no longer were restricted to focusing upon the choice of various external objects and modalities of life in the first sense of circumstantial freedom of self-realization (see chapter III), or even to choosing as one ought after the manner of the acquired freedom of self-perfection set within the context of being as nature or essence. The sense of freedom now opened by the conscious assumption and affirmation of one's own existence was the natural freedom of self-determination and responsibly for one's very being.

            One might follow the progression of this deepening awareness of being by reflection on the experience of being totally absorbed in the particularities of one's job, business, farm or studies--the prices, the colors, the chemicals--and then encountering an imminent danger of death, the loss of a loved one or the birth of a child. At the moment of death as at the moment of birth, the entire atmosphere and range of preoccupations in a hospital room shifts dramatically, being suddenly transformed from tactical adjustments for limited objectives to confronting existence in sorrow or in joy and in terms that plunge to the center of the whole range of meaning. Such was the effect upon philosophy when the awareness of being developed from being merely an affirmation of t__s or that kind of reality, to the act of existence rather than non-existence, of human life in all its dimensions and, indeed, of life divine.

            Cornelio Fa bro goes further. He suggests that this deepened metaphysical sense of being in the early Christian ages not only opened the possibility for a deeper sense of freedom, but itself was catalyzed by the new sense of freedom proclaimed in the Christian message. That message focused not upon Plato's imagery of the sun at the mouth of the cave from which external enlightenment might be derived, but upon the Son of God, the eternal Word or Logos, through and according to whom all things had received as gift their created existence.

            In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.

            The same was in the beginning with God.

            All things were made by him: and without him was made nothing that was made.

            In him was life, and the life was the light of men.

            And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.

. . .

            That was the true light, which enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world.

            As the first to rise to new life in victory over sin, his victory had to be accepted by each person in a radical act of freedom opening oneself to, and affirming the transcending power of, the Creator and Redeemer in one's life. The sacramental symbol of this is not one of mere transformation or improvement, or even of dissolution and reformation, but of resurrection from the waters of death to radically new life. This is the power of being bursting into time.

            It directs the mind beyond the ideological poles of species and individual interests, and beyond issues of place, time or any of the scientific categories. It centers, instead, upon the unique reality of the person as a participation in the creative power of God, a being bursting into existence, which is and which cannot be denied; it rejects being considered in any sense as nonbeing, or being treated as anything less than its full reality. It is a self, affirming its own unique actuality and irreducible to any specific group identity. It is an image of God for whom life is sacred and sanctifying, a child of God for whom to be is freely to dispose of the power of new life in brotherhood with Christ and with all mankind.

            It took a long time for the implications of this new appreciation of existence and its meaning to germinate and find its proper philosophic articulation. Over a period of many centuries the term `form' was used to express the kind or nature and the new sense of being as existence. As the distinction between the two was gradually clarified, however, proper terminology arose in which that by which a being is of this or that kind came to be expressed by the term `es sence,' while the act of existence, by which a being simply is, was expressed by `exi stence' (esse).

            The notion of an "outer" transcendence, while traceable from Plato, Ari stotle and Au gustine (and, indeed, to the basic sense of the move from totemic to mythic thought), was developed classically in a systematic manner by Thomas Aquinas, using Plato's notion of participation, in terms of participated and unparticipated being.

            In any limited being, its essence or nature constitutes by definition a limited and limiting capacity for existence: by it, the being is capable of this much existence but not more. Such an essence must then be distinct from the existence which, of itself, bespeaks affirmation, not negation and limitation. Such a being, whose nature or essence is not existence but only a capacity for existence, could not of itself or by its own nature justify its possession and exercise of existence. The Parmenidean principle of noncontradiction will not countenance existence coming from non-existence, for then being would be reducible to non-being or nothing. Such beings, then, are dependent precisely for their existence, that is, precisely as beings or existents. This dependence cannot be upon another limited being similarly composed of a distinct essence and existence, for such a being would be equally dependent; the multiplication of such dependencies would multiply, rather than answer, the question how a composite being with a limiting essence has existence. Hence, limited composite beings must depend for their existence upon, or participate in, uncomposite being whose essence or nature, rather than being distinct from and limiting its existence, is identically existence or being itself.

            That uncomposite B eing is simple, the One par excellence, and is participated in by all multiple and differentiated beings for their existence. The One, however, does not itself participate; it is the unlimited, self-sufficient, eternal and unchanging Being which Parmenides had shown to be the sole requisite for being. In sum, "limited and composite brings are by nature relative to, participating in, and caused by the unique simple and incomposite being which is Absolute, unparticipated and uncaused."

            On this insight, Thomas constructed his "five ways," which have remained the classic expression of a posteriori reasoning to the Ab solute. Beings manifest to our intellect working through the senses undergo change, stand in a differentiated relation of contrariety to other beings, realize their perfection of being or goodness only to a certain greater or lesser degree and stand in graded and ordered relation to others. This manifests that their being is a composite of their essence, related as potency to their existence as act. This internal composition required that they depend for their existence upon that O ne which is incomposite and, hence, unchanging, unique, and unlimited; their being is predicated upon the simple Being Itself (Ipsum Esse). This alone is absolute, an outer transcendent. It is distinct from all else which must, however, be related to it or participate in it. Plato had been able to analyze this only externally in terms of the relation of the many to the one and on the basis of formal causality. Thomas, using Aristotle's insight regarding internal structures and the Christian understanding of being as existence, was able to carry out an internal analysis. In its light, the internal structure of existence and essence for multiple beings manifests them to be participations, that is, effects of the active or efficient causality of the unparticipated One.

            By means of the above structural and dynamic understanding of participation, Thomas Aquinas was able to philosophize in a systematic manner upon the theme of transcendence and participation. Indeed, in the view of Cornelio Fa bro, L.B. G eiger, Arthur L ittle and others, this theme constituted the central discovery, the coordinating and fructifying principle, of his entire work. Here, we can identify but a few factors in order to illustrate the contribution of a systematic philosophy of participation to man's awareness of an outer transcendent and to the sense of life in this world and with others.

            It will be noted that, thenceforward, our considerations will proceed in an a priori, rather than in the above a posteriori manner from effect to cause. Unfortunately, `a priori' has come to suggest arbitrariness. Etymologically, it means proceeding on the basis of that which comes first and is most basic, namely, proceeding from a cause to its effects. The importance of this a priori phase for metaphysics cannot be over-emphasized, for only by understanding being on the basis of that which is Self-sufficient or Absolute and transcends all else can we gain basic understanding of being as such and of participating beings. This was seen by De scartes, Spi noza, and Leibniz, all of whom developed works in metaphysics which proceeded from the absolute to the relative and considered this synthetic procedure to be the proper method for metaphysics.

            The realist character of Thomas' thought and his insistence upon the use of a scientific method for metaphysics led him to insist upon building this science around finite being as its subject. Once, however, the cause of that subject--the incomposite or unparticipated being--was discovered all could be seen more deeply and more richly through an awareness of that Absolute on which all depends. In particular, we shall consider the radical totality of the creative act.

            First, note must be taken of the extent of the dependence of participated on unparticipated being. A preliminary, but not provisional, instance of great importance for our theme is the dependence of matter which the Greeks had presupposed to be a given--unquestioned and, hence, unexplained. Action consisted in the transformation of matter, that is, in its successive formation according to different forms. This process ultimately came full cycle, simply to begin once again. In this perspective, the individual had no further purpose or meaning than to continue the cycle; nothing was radically new, unique, or personal.

            Above, we saw that early Christian thought directed attention to matter and to its origin from God. A priori reflection upon this transcendent source and cause of all can provide further understanding. As simple and not composed of a distinct limiting essence and existence, the Absolute Being Itself is existence or being unlimited. For this reason, no other reality can be equally original with it, for that would mean that being would be had only partially by each. In that case, what should be the absolute would in fact be limited, what should be simple would be composite; there would be no absolute. But then, the question concerning the origin of the existence of limited or composite beings would have no answer: not in themselves and not in a simple, absolute and transcendent cause; there would remain only Parmenides' all impossible way of Non-Being or nothingness.

            Since, then, nothing can be equally original with the Absolute, all else for their total reality must be a participation in it. Each thing, to the full extent of its being, images in a partial manner the One. Further, as each limited being is in contrast to every other limited being, together they constitute an ever unfolding manifestation of being. Though there are more beings, however, there could never be more or less of being than the unlimited plenitude of the Absolute. (The checks one writes do not add to the money one possesses; still more marvelously, one does not lose the knowledge one shares, but multiplies its instances.) No matter how many participate in the One, it remains ever the Ple nitude of Being and is in no sense augmented or diminished. The simple, incomposite being does not depend upon composite beings; composite beings depend upon the incomposite entirely.

            This participated and caused character applies to all limited realities and components thereof; hence, it applies also to matter. As a potential principle, its proper reality is that of a relation of potency to form as its act, without which it could have neither meaning nor reality. As a constituent principle of the essences of physical beings, matter, too, must share in their reality and to that degree in their creation. Just as there can be no matter existing independently of form, neither can there be matter which, with that form, does not constitute an essence and participate to the full extent of its reality in the Abs olute.

            Thus, the causal activity in participation is a creation from nothing. By this is not meant, of course, that there is no cause: actively considered participation is causing. What is meant is that there is involved here only (a) the act which is the Absolute or transcendent and (b) the effect as depending upon it and by which the transcendent is designated as cause or creator. What is excluded is any independence or equally original existence of the effect in its totality or in any of its principles, e.g. matter. The full classical phrase is creation from nothing as regards the effect and any subject thereof (creatio ex nihilo sui et subiecto). For this reason it can be termed outer transcendence.

            In this total sense, then, the creative source transcends the created in every facet of its being. Conversely and correlatively, limited beings as participating or sharing with corresponding completeness all their being in the divine are constituted fully with all the capacities for being and acting according to the full perfection of their nature. God's power is manifested not in making up for deficiencies in his creatures, but by the ability of all his creatures to seek indissociably their perfection and his glory to the full extent of their nature.

            Recent phenomenological thought suggests new, less technical and perhaps more available ways of thinking about how human life must be founded in the Transcendent. Maurice Nedoncelle notes that our identity and our relatedness to others are not something which we construct, but are possessed by us from the beginning of our life. All our actions are ours; they pertain to my identity which I was given and did not make or create.

            By reflection, it is possible to trace back the characteristics of my life to gain some sense of the nature of the giver of that life. First, my life must be not from another individual who is contrary to me as, e.g., a horse is to a cow, for this could not give me my identity, but only something distinct and alien to me. Hence, this source of human beings must be not another being of a limited nature and, hence, contrary to each, but a unique and limitless source able to be the origin of all individuals. Similarly, as I examine my relationships to others, I find that the deepest and most humane among them--friendship and marriage, for example--are not limited and measured, but precisely open beyond place or time, health or economic condition. In contrast to legal agreements, I make promises to friends which are not conditioned by time, and the commitment in marriage is specific in its rejections of all limiting conditions: "for richer or poorer, in sickness or health, till death do us part." This bespeaks a context for our life which transcends all our measurements of place and time.

            Further, as we survey our life we see that it is ever open to new and innovative responses to others in the most concrete and seemingly repetitive circumstances of our daily life. What we eat for breakfast and those with whom we eat it may be identical, but breakfast is never the same. Our life is not lived according to a scientific formula with everlasting sameness, but is endlessly new and unfolding as we explore together the many ways of being concerned and sorrowful, amazed and delighted.

            This manifests that human life, rather than being lived in terms of the limitations of individual concrete things or of abstract formulae and laws, is lived in terms of an infinity of being which transcends us in life and enables us truly to be free and creative. Man is not God but, these phenomenologists point out, life in its properly human characteristics manifests that it is lived in an order which derives from, and is directed toward, the living God.

THE MEGA-HARMONY OF THE TRANSCENDENT WITH ALL CREATION

            How should this outer transcendent and absolutely perfect reality be conceived? Were it to stand in opposition to man, were its action to be an intrusion upon human life, were its prerogatives to be at the expense of human perfection, then it would disrupt the Confucian vision of harmony and subvert its philosophy. But is this the case?

            What would be the conditions for such a disruptive relationship? It would need to be not that of absolutely perfecting or realizing the human, but of good as totally opposed to a humanity whose very nature had been corrupted and become evil. This view obtained, however, only in the reformation or antithetic phase of Chri stian theology which saw man not only as fallen but corrupted in his very nature. The Judeo-Chr istian view, however, is clearly that of man created in the image of God, sharing and manifesting--if in a limited way--the divine perfection: "And God saw all the things that he had made, and they were very good." To speak of man's nature as being corrupt can only be a theological metaphor reflecting the philosophical nominalism of the time which did not admit universals or natures in any case. But in any proper philosophical sense a nature either contains all of its components or simply ceases to be that nature. A 3 which loses one of its units is not a corrupt 3, but no 3 at all--it has become a 2. However weakened by the abuse of sinfulness, like all natures, human nature remains good as a limited way of participating in and manifesting the absolute perfection of God.

            The disruptive relationship between outer and inner transcendence, divine grace and self perfection, might also arise not in the nature of man, but in the process of his development if this were to be conceived as other than one process of self-realization. But again, that would appear to be a philosophical impossibility, for how could some alien intrusion be called self-development. In the long Cat holic tradition--the Christian thesis and synthesis--just as man's nature is not corrupted but has its perfection as a manner of participation in divine perfection, so is his development and self-perfection. God acts throughout this process: just as in creation his action does not substitute for man's substance, but makes it to be, so in acting in the process of man's perfection he does not substitute for man's activity but capacitates man's work of self-perfection and self-realization.

            In brief, God does not subvert human reality as free and self-responsible; indeed, it would be a contradiction if human perfection were not one's own self-perfection. Rather, as the unique and unchanging Absolute Being, he stands definitively against non-being and imperfection, creates man, makes him to be, and enables him to undertake the magnificent process of self-perfection. Life in Him lets man be man indeed.

            Our difficulties in seeing this come from our tendency to view God as man and, hence, to introduce two similar operative agents in the one self-realization. It is important that we distinguish the two, that we let God be God. The causality of his infinite nature is the creative action of making me and my activities simply to be, while I, in my limitation, can shape them according to this or that character and relationship. All is from God as first cause or creator; all is also from man as second cause or cause of change. The two are not conflictual, much less are they incompatible; neither substitutes for the other. The late President John F. Ke nnedy said it well in his inaugural address: "In this world God's work is man's own."

            In this way, the Christian vision sees only God as absolutely perfect and, hence, self-sufficient. Man is complete but is not abandoned in his created nature; his nature is to seek his self-realization in a process that echoes the power of the divine. He is made to stand then in his own right by an absolute and self-sufficient power and, thus, must not be manipulated to lesser purposes by any man or group of men. It is the Transcendent Cr eator who has made man autonomous and equal to all others. His dignity and rights are firmly founded in this divine origin which they, in turn, reflect. Thereby, they are precious beyond question, and it is the duty of men acting in consort as society to protect that dignity and promote those rights individually and socially.

            Christianity goes further still. It does not set man as the ultimate goal in relation to which God is merely source and support; rather God is as well man's ultimate end or goal. Aristotle articulated part of this vision in his treatment of human happiness or fulfillment at the beginning and end of his ethics. Happiness, he said, consists in contemplation as the highest realization of man's highest power (intellect) with regard to the highest reality of life divine. This is not an abandonment, but fulfillment of human life; it is the point at which man lives most fully.

            To this, Christianity adds, beyond death, the goal of life with God seen not, as now, indirectly by reasoning from creation, but face to face. This does not negate the natural fulfillment of which Ari stotle spoke, but carries it further by grace to an even more perfect knowledge of the Trinitarian essence of divine life. Though this is made possible by a special divine grace, like life itself it cannot be given exteriorly but must be lived by the person, him or herself.

            In this context, we see the true character of evil--we let evil be evil. It is not merely an unfortunate flaw in human perfection which man comes to know and bear, but which is nobody else's business. If our life is lived in response to God's love and as a way toward reunion with the Transcendent and personal source and goal of life, to abandon goodness is to reject the divine gift and to refuse the divine rendezvous. It is a personal rejection whose significance goes beyond oneself to our Absolute source and goal. This is the universe of the gentlemen, seen now in terms of what is fitting or ugly in relation not only to man, but to God as well. This does not mean that this is an affair between man and God alone, for as all men are made in God's image, to do evil or refuse good to the least of our brothers is to do so to God himself and vice versa; to disrupt the harmony of community is to disrupt harmony with heaven.

            Here, we find the source of the ultimate seriousness of human life: the depth of evil when committed; the urgency of response to need where we can help; and the sublime, indeed divine, beauty of the simplest life lived in harmony with man, nature and God. As above, this Cat holic-Christian vision goes beyond, but is not against, the realm of which Con fucius spoke. On the contrary it unpacks, gives contextual principles for, and opens the ultimate import of, the sublime sense of the harmony he so richly articulated.

            The Catholic-Christian vision can provide as well a rich context for understanding teachings on love and the sublime teaching of Confucius thereupon. It joins the key Confucian principle of respect for one's father with its commandment to love honor and obey father and mother. It holds a graded love with the strongest and most detailed obligations in relation to those to whom we are closest by consanguinity and community. It places upon this a divine seal by adding that one who claims to love God and yet does not love his neighbor is a liar, that one who would bring offerings to the altar but is not reconciled with his brother must first become reconciled with his brother in order to be able to approach the altar of the Lord of Heaven.

            In some ways the Catholic-Christian message may even extend and intensify the Confucian vision. For it would speak not only of control, of obedience of wife and children to husband and father, but would enjoin husbands to love their wives. It envisages these relations not merely as obligatory because they are imposed, but as imposed because they are freely and lovingly entered into. They are then not only obligations of justice, but implications of love. Finally, it does not leave all solely as the effect of the fallible will of a father, but puts this in the context of God as Father whose love and justice the human father is to imitate and to whom one has ultimate allegiance. This could imply even leaving father and mother in order to carry the love they first showed us into a broader service of mankind. Such broadening of horizons relocates the issue of filial and unfilial behaviour in a richer and liberating context in which such aberrations as arbitrariness and self-centeredness on the part of parents can be transcended and the essence of a child's love for them more amply fulfilled in family and in society at large.

            As was noted in the Introduction, this work explores the possibility of modernizing the Confucian sense of harmony by not restricting it to merely adhesion of all individuals in a family or society to the will of their one father or governor, but by grounding this relation within a liberating and expanding relation to the Infinite One. Over time, the former more restrictively human perspective would seem to lend itself to being evolved in an autocratic style. Historically this seems indeed to have taken place and could have many particular causes. It seems well established that at times, for reasons of political stability, an autocratic sense of harmony was officially promoted, and, of course, at first blush this seems to be an easier way to run a family or nation. Yet, as most societies do not have so autocratic style, there is reason to ask why this should have happened in the Confucian tradition and how that tradition might be elaborated along less autocratic paths.

            Indeed, some would argue that the original sense of Confucius was rather that of a dynamic cohesion of multiple elements into an harmonious whole. If so, this certainly could be revived, but to do so it is important to search for the principles which would found, maintain and protect such an integrative sense of harmony from reductivist tendencies. Here the sense of participation could be particularly helpful. For, to the degree that all were to be conceived simply in terms of human beings without anything transcending the father or governor and without democratic practice, it would fall simply to the will power of father or governor to establish order and all would veer toward autocracy. To avoid this and enable all to tend freely toward what is perfective of them, both individually and as a social whole, it is important that they be able to conceive their life in relation to an open and unlimited Transcendent being which is source and goal of all by which all are united, enlivened and cohesive in the exercise of that freedom. This would provide the key to a transition to democratic modes of life and would enable the Confucian sense of harmony already present to become the dynamic basis for civic responsibility and social cohesion.

            Before moving to the impact of this for the very notion of being and, hence, of life and meaning, let us reflect for a moment on the dynamics at play in this impact of the Christian-Catholic vision upon philosophy. We must first ask whether, when situated within a cultural context grounded in a revealed vision, philosophy, as knowledge gained by the natural light of reason, ceases to exist, being transformed into a theology based upon revelation? Certainly, that which involves formally the mysteries of the Trinity and the plan of Red emption in Ch rist can be known only by revelation and is therefore, a matter of theology. Today, however, as seen in chapter I, we are more conscious of the significance of the cultural and social context within which thought takes place. One who is raised in a loving and generous family will be more able and more liable to reflect love and generosity in his interpretation and response to life, just as one who lives in a more calculating, manipulative and exploitive environment is less likely to factor into his thinking these elements of love and generosity. Today, we recognize that, like economics and even mathematics, philosophy is created by persons and peoples living in place and time, is stimulated by their physical and social circumstances, and reflects the deepest personal experiences and free commitments of their people.

            The sense of meaning experienced through the ages and articulated in the myths had provided Plato with content for his ideas; by his dialogical method, he sorted out this meaning rather than creating it. Similarly, in philosophizing, the Christian thinkers returned to Pla tonic and Aristotelian themes with a new heart and mind, sensitized by their new redemptive and Trinitarian experience. The result was an inversion of the Aristotelian perspective, even by those who would be most Aristotelian in the technical implementation of their philosophy. For Ari stotle, the point of initiation of knowledge was the senses, and his philosophy arose through his physics. It was built upon the requirements and implications of matter and change in the physical order. Man was seen to transcend the material, but was defined in relation to the physical order especially as care-taker of nature.

            In contrast, the Trin itarian Catholic-Christian sense of what it meant to be corresponded rather to the noesis noeseos or Life Divine to which Aristotle concluded at the very end of his Metaphysics. Indeed, he did not hesitate to call his metaphysics a theology, both because it alone treated God among its objects and because it was the type of knowledge of all things which befitted God above all others. In this light, it might be said that the distinctive Christian metaphysical sense, as also the Hindu metaphysics of the Vedanta Sutras, reflects the point at which Aristotle concluded, namely, the outer Transcendent or Ab solute, Bra hman, from which, in which and into which all is or exists.

TRANSCENDENCE, BEING AND THE MEANING OF LIFE

            In this light, being is primarily and in principle not multiple, limited and changing, but One, unlimited and eternal; not material and potential, but spirit and fullness of Life; not obscure and obdurate, but Light and Truth; not inert and subject to external movers, but creative Go odness, F reedom and L ove. This was the foundational Christian sense of being; the work of reason carried out by philosophy in its light would be sensitized to look--always by natural reason--for the reflections of this in human experience; its sense of person and community would be correspondingly enlivened.

            Nor were these notions entirely strange to philosophy. As was seen above, Parmenides created metaphysics as a science in terms of Being as One. Aristotle's metaphysics not only culminated in divine life, but understood being entirely as a pros hen analogy or relation thereto. He gel would see theology as a symbolic form of philosophical truths.

            But religion is a human virtue, a mode of human action which, in its imaginative forms, conceives, unfolds, lives and celebrates the sense of life and meaning. Ka nt's thought, as described in the third chapter, provides a place for this at the very center of human freedom and, hence, of human life. Christ, like Confucius, laid down concrete patterns in which this has been lived and experienced by peoples through the centuries. They are the classical instances of the traditions in which we are born and from which we receive our trove of self-understanding and sensibility to others, our ability to conceive our world and to communicate with others in love and concern.

            If then, philosophy in the Christian context looks not to the material order, but to the divine as its paradigm of reality, to unpack the effect of the Christian sense of transcendence upon philosophy we would do well to examine more closely the distinctive characteristics of its divine paradigm. This suggests the need to examine serially the enrichment that the Christian notion of the Trinity brings to the philosophical sense of being articulated according to its properties of one, true and good, to which the Christian mysteries provide a corresponding absolute and living person as source and goal.

            For the Graeco-Christian philosophical tradition the inner properties of being as such are unity, truth and goodness; for Hindu philosophy, the characteristics of the Absolute are expressed in the correspondingly and explicitly living terms of existence (sat), consciousness (cit) and bliss (ananda). For the Christian, these are not simply characteristics of the divine, but persons related as Father, Son (Word) and Holy Spirit. To gain insight, then, into the impact of the Christian sense of the Transcendent upon the root sense of Being and the metaphysics of freedom, we shall look first to the richness of the unity of being as this appears to human reason in the Christian cultural context of the outer Transcendent as Father, or its Hindu correlative, Existence (sat). Next, we shall look for the meaning of truth when considered by natural reason in cultures marked by a sense of the Divine Word or Lo gos and the Transcendent as consciousness (cit). Finally, and especially in the last chapter, we will look to the sense of goodness when seen in the context of the Spirit of love proceeding from the Father and Son and as articulated in Hindu thought simply as bliss (ananda).

            Our goal here will not be to define these as properties of being, or a fortiori to develop a theology of the Trinity. It will be rather to sample some of the ways in which the Christian cultural context has made possible an enrichment and deepening of the properly philosophical insight into the properties of being and, hence, into the meaning of being both as lived by oneself and in itself. Further, because this religious vision of the Transcendent has been at the center of a people's self-understanding as they have faced the problems of living together in society, it relates as well to the meaning of the person in society and of the modes in which persons live together in freedom.

Unity

            From the very beginnings of Greek philosophy, unity was recognized by the first metaphysician, Parmenides, as a first characteristic of being. In his poem, he reasoned that in order to stand against the nonbeing or negation implied in the notions of beginning, limitation or multiplicity, that is, in order simply to be rather than not be, being as such--and, hence, Being Itself--had to be one, eternal and unchanging. Practically all religions recognize these characteristics as belonging to the divine. With Parmenides, they recognize that what is problematic is not how God can be. For being does exist and in the final analysis must be self-sufficient, because by definition there is no other reality or being upon which it could depend. What is problematic is rather how it is possible for finite or multiple beings to exist?

            Since finite or limited beings do, in fact, exist, their reality must be a participation in the infinite, eternal and unchanging One, the "external" transcendent, which they reflect in every facet of their being. It is as sharing in this absolute nature that limited beings are not mere functions of other realities, but subsist in their own right: the creator, in making them to be as participations in Himself, makes them to stand in--if not by--themselves, to have a proper identity which is unique and irreducible. This is the foundation of Boethius' classical definition of the person as a subject of a rational nature. Inasmuch as they reflect the divine, such beings are unique and unable to be assumed by some larger entity--even by the divine. Because they reflect the Absolute and Transcendent, they exist in their own right.

            At the same time, because all limited beings are made to be by the same unique Transcendent Being, their foundational existence-in-themselves, rather than alienating them one from another, makes them to be related one to another by the very fact of their participated individual uniqueness. If to be is to exist in myself as a creature of God, it is thereby to be foundationally related both to Him and to all manifestations of His being. Seen in the light of the Transcendent, being, or "to be", is to be radically myself, irreducible to nonbeing whether in the form of any reduction in my own being, subjection to another or merger into a mere member of a group. But, by the very same participation in the One divine source and goal of all, to be myself is equally and indissociably to be related to others. One is not compromised, but enhanced by the other in such wise that I achieve my highest identity in loving service of others in need.

            This, in turn, founds the harmony of nature. It is the reason also, why living in harmony with nature and other persons is living fully. Within this harmony it implies, as Jefferson wrote in the "Declaration of Independence," that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The task of the social order is not to diminish this or even to grant it, but to recognize, protect and promote it.

Truth

            Truth unfolds the unity of being to a still greater degree. Unfortunately, too often unity has been seen in terms that are static, reductionist and even commercial. Property, for example, has been looked upon as the right to withhold possessions. Rights have been seen as license to turn inward along the lines of the all-consuming orientation of freedom-as-choice described above. In that light, my being comes to be looked upon as a possession to be acquired and conserved or, worse still, to be bartered for something of equal quantity or quality.

            Were the sense of reality essentially material, the paradigm would be that of blind and senseless atoms colliding randomly and chaotically one with another. Then, the laws of conservation of energy and commercial exchange would dictate that we guard what we have, share it only when we can get equal return and exploit others to the degree possible. In this case, Hobbes' description of man as wolf to man and as short, brutish and mean would not be far from the mark.

            In contrast, in the context of a culture marked by a sense of outer Transcendence, it is quite the opposite. The original and originating instance is being as pure knowledge or, better yet, truth. As imminently one and simple, there is not in us so much division as there is unity between our capabilities and their actuation, between our minds and the ideals they generate. Instead, all is one: the infinite capacity is fully actual, the infinite power to know is one with its ideas or insights, the infinite knower is identically the known, i.e., infinite being: in a word, subject and object, mental capacity and mental output are identically the one act of being. Such "outer" Transcendent is not only all-knowing but wisdom or knowledge itself, and, to the degree that knowledge implies a process of achievement or a grasp of something other, it would be more appropriate to speak not of infinite knowledge but of truth that is all-perfect or Truth Itself. Being is Truth in its prime instance, and, hence, also in each of its participations to the very degree that they participate in the One, which is to say, to the full extent of their being.

            Being and life are not, then, dark and hidden, mysterious and foreboding; on the contrary, what light is to our eye, being is to spirit. Being makes sense to the mind, and, where it is sufficiently in act, it inevitably "sees" or knows; it is primarily subsistent knowledge and truth, and by extension the limited participations thereof. Also, as the word is to our tongue, being declares, expresses and proclaims itself; it is Word or Logos and participations thereof. A Christian culture is especially sensitive to this, for in Christian teaching the Word of God is a person and personal, the Son of the God the Father. Through this Word, all things were created. Having become incarnate in Christ, Jesus would say "He that seeth me seeth the Father also." How can you have known me and yet say that you do not know the Father who sent me: who spoke me. John, the author of the fourth gospel, said it classically: "That was the true light, which enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world."

            One cannot overstress the degree which philosophy done in this context is particularly sensitized to the intelligibility or truth of being. Parmenides could say immediately upon initiating metaphysics: "Being is; nonbeing is not" and "It is the same thing to think and to be. All being is open, indeed is openness, to intellect; what is radically closed to mind simply is not and cannot be. In the context of the transcendent Truth itself, this resonates vibrantly in the mind. Philosophy moves confidently--if not always correctly--to overcome obscurity and fear; science races forward, confident that each step of insight constitutes solid progress in mankind's exploration of this universe; problems are not destructive dilemmas and permanent contradictions, but challenges to be solved. The mind thrives in such a contest; the creativity of the human genius is invigorated and moves forward.

            There is something else about being in the light of transcendent Truth itself. Truth speaks itself as word; indeed it proclaims itself. To attempt to hide the truth would image Chronos in the ancient Greek myths who attempted to swallow his children rather than allow them to enter into the light. This is contrary to the nature of being and as violent as attempting to force a river to flow upstream; in the long run, it must eventually be unsuccessful. Being is fundamentally truth and, hence, openness, manifestation and communication. This is reality itself and, hence, the key to the self-realization of both individuals and peoples.

             In the image of the Son who as Word expresses all that the Father is, and, like Logos as the first principle through whom all is created, being is open, expressive and creative. Just as a musician or poet unfolds the many potential meanings of a single theme, so being as truth unfolds its meaning and communicates itself to others. Here, the human intellect plays an essential role by conceiving new possibilities, planning new structures, and working out new paths for mankind in the pilgrimage of life with others. Justice, too, is implied as true judgments in the public forum about being. Such judgments must honor and express the sacredness of beings in their self-identities and promote their mutuality. This is the role of leadership in family, business and society.

            It was the dark plot of Go ebbels to harness the new 20th century technology of communication to a restrictive and, hence, false ideology in order to create the modern means for mind control. The philosopher's dream is rather that those means can be engaged by the free and enquiring mind in its fascination with the truth, communication and cooperation. This is the key to the implementation of a modern democratic society.

Goodness

            Goodness is the third property of being. In the Christian Trinity this corresponds to the Holy Spirit as the love of Father and Son. In being, it expresses the conjunction and fulfillment of unity and truth in celebration of the perfection of being or, where imperfect, in the search for that perfection or fulfillment. Holiness is precisely this devotedly holding by being to its perfection or goodness.

            Further, as Being Itself is absolute and eternally self-sufficient, and, hence, has no need for other beings, it creates not out of need, but out of love freely given. This transforms the understanding of human life, which can now be seen not merely as freedom to choose, to gather and accumulate, or statically to maintain, repeat or conserve, nor even as Kant's freedom as the ability to do as we ought. Rather, it is freedom of self-determination, whereby we can "change our own character creatively by deciding for ourselves what we shall do or should become." As seen in Chapter II, this may be closer to Confucius's original sense of harmony as a dynamic interrelation of multiple and changing units; if so, it would be also the role of peacemaker in the image of the "Prince of Peace."

            Yves Simon summarizes some implications of this for human freedom. He points out that it is based, not in the indeterminism of freedom as mere choice, for that would face the will with the impossible task of deriving something from nothing. Rather, human freedom is the result of a supradeterminism. Because the human intellect and will are open to the infinite One, the original Truth and Good, man in thought and will can respond to any limited participated good whatsoever, but without being necessitated thereby. In this lies the essence of freedom: as liberated from determining powers, whether internal or external, the will is autonomous; at the same time it is positively oriented toward the good and its realization in all circumstances and in limitless ways. This is the positive attraction of beauty and harmony as a vital source for the human creativity of which Confucius spoke and about which Kant wrote in his "Critique of the Aesthetic Judgement."

            Still more dynamically, the originating Transcendent Spirit implies for being a sense of transforming, innovating and creating. As radically, His gift, our life must in turn be passed on by sharing it with others in love (see chapter VI). Even death--whether analogously through suffering in the image of the cross or physically at the end of one's days--does not overcome this Spirit of Life, but becomes a way to new life. In his Second Letter to the Corinthians, the Apostle P aul expressed well the combination of irreducible confidence and indomitable hope implied by the sense of life lived in the context of the Absolute and Transcendent.

We have this treasure in earthen vessels, to show that the transcendent power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies (II Cor. 4:7-10).

            A philosophy of the person as image of this transcendent divine principle, carried out in the cultural context sensitized by the dynamic Trinitarian interrelations of persons, transforms the sense of the person in this world. Man remains part of nature, but rather than being subject thereto as a mere producer or consumer, is a creative and transforming center, responsible for the protection and promotion of nature. Similarly, man is by nature social and a part of society; but rather than being subject thereto as an object, he is its creative center and must be an integral part of all decision making.

            As the movements of freedom in this half century reflect the emergence of new understanding of the person and its fuller role in social life, human dignity, equality, and participation in the socio-political process have become central concerns. The search for adequate foundations for democracy and its heightened sense of the dignity of the person generates naturally new interest in religion.

            In the image of the Trinity, the three characteristics of being stand out in human life. First, self-affirmation is no longer simply a choice of one or another type of object or action as a means to an end, but a radical self-affirmation of existence within Existence Itself. Second, self-consciousness is no longer simply self-directed after the manner of Aristotle's absolute "knowing on knowing"; rather, the Absolute Truth knows all that it creates as a reflection of its own being, truth and goodness, while the participating instances of self-awareness transcend themselves in relation to others. Finally, this new human freedom is an affirmation of existence as sharing in Love Itself, the creative and ultimately attractive divine life--or in Indian terms, "Bliss" ( ananda).

            This new sense of being and freedom reflects the meaning of the Transcendent for man and of man in the Transcendent, in the contest of its radical proclamation in the Christian mysteries. Expressing far more than a transition from one life style to another, the new meaning is based in Christ's death and Resurrection to new life. Hence, Chris tian baptism is a death to the slavery of selfishness and a rebirth to a new life of service and celebration with others. It is a gift or divine grace, but no less a radically free option for life on our part.

            This new life of freedom means, of course, combating evil in whatever form: hatred, injustice and prejudice--all are privations of the good that should be. This will be the topic of the next chapter. The focus of being seen in the light of the Transcendent, however, is not upon negations, but upon giving birth to the goodness of being and bringing this to a level of human life marked by an enriched Confucian harmony of beauty and love.