CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XIV

HARMONY AND TRANSCENDENCE

GEORGE F. McLEAN

The last half century might be said to have been marked especially by the march of mankind toward freedom. From the famous "Long March" of Chinese lore in the thirties, to the "march on Washington" by Martin Luther King in the sixties, to the world-wide social reforms in the eighties, the aspiration of freedom has electrified hearts, evoked great sacrifices and defined human progress in our age. This suggests that we might helpfully reflect upon society and the relation of the person thereto by focusing upon the different notions of freedom and attempting to see the implication of each for life in society. In this context, new appreciation may prove possible of the special contribution that Confucianism can make to our times.

The paper will proceed by first considering three basic and successive notions of freedom which have emerged in the tradition of Western philosophy: (1) choice as a minimal sense of freedom found in classical British philosophies of the liberal tradition and common in our day; (2) Kant’s formal sense of freedom; (3) Kant’s development of an integrating aesthetic view. It will then consider how the third of these can be enhanced by the Confucian philosophical traditions, and hence the essential contribution which Confucianism can make to the effort of China to integrate science and democracy in this century.

LEVELS OF FREEDOM

Level I. Empirical Freedom: To Choose What One Wants

At the beginning of the modern stirrings for democracy John Locke perceived a crucial need. If decisions were to be made not by the king, but by the people, the basis for these decisions had to be equally available to all. To achieve this Locke proposed that we suppose the mind to be a white paper void of characters and ideas, and then follow the way in which it comes to be furnished. To keep this public he insisted that it be done exclusively via sense experience, that is, either by sensation or by reflection upon the mind’s work on the materials derived from the senses.1 From this, David Hume concluded that all objects of knowledge which are not formal tautologies, must be matters of fact. Such "matters of fact" are neither the existence or actuality of a thing nor its essence, but simply the determination of one from a pair of sensible contraries, e.g. white rather than black, sweet rather than sour.2

The restrictions implicit in this appear starkly in Rudolf Carnap’s "Vienna Manifesto" which shrinks the scope of meaningful knowledge and significant discourse to describing "some state of affairs" in terms of empirical "sets of facts." This excludes speech about wholes, God, the unconscious or entelechies; the grounds of meaning as well as all that transcends the immediate content of sense experience are excluded.

In such terms it is not possible to speak of appropriate or inap-propriate goals or even to evaluate choices in relation to self-fulfill-ment. The only concern is which objects among the sets of contraries I will choose by brute, changeable and even arbitrary will power, and whether circumstances will allow me to carry out that choice. Such choices, of course, may not only differ from, but even contradict the immediate and long range objectives of other persons. This will require compromises and social contracts in the sense of Hobbes; John Rawles will even work out a formal set of such compromises.3 Throughout it all, however, the basic concern remains the ability to do as one pleases.

This includes two factors. The first is execution by which my will is translated into action. Thus, John Locke sees freedom as "being able to act or not act, according as we shall choose or will"4; Bertrand Russell sees it as "the absence of external obstacles to the realization of our desires."5 The second factor is individual self-realization understood simply as the accomplishment of one’s good as one sees it. This reflects one’s personal idiosyncracies and temperament, which in turn reflect each person’s individual character.

In these terms, Mortimer Adler points out in his study of freedom at the Institute for Philosophical Research one’s goal can be only what appeals to one, with no necessary relation to real goods or to duties which one ought to perform.6 "Liberty consists in doing what one desires,"7 and the freedom of a society is measured by the latitude it provides for the cultivation of individual patterns of life.8 If there is any ethical theory in this it can be only utilitarian, hopefully with enough breadth to recognize other people and their good as well as one’s own. In practice, over time this comes to constitute a black-hole of self-centered consumption of physical goods in which both nature and person are consumed; this is the essence of consumerism.

This first level of freedom is reflected in the contemporary sense of "choice" in North America. As a theory, this is underwritten by a pervasive series of legal precedents following Justice Holmes’ notion of privacy, which now has come to be recognized as a constitutional right. In the American legal system the meaning of freedom has been reduced to this. It should be noted that this derived from Locke’s political decision (itself an exercise of freedom) to focus upon empirical meaning, and to eliminate from public discourse any other type of knowledge or concern. Its progressively rigorous implementation, which we have but sampled in the references to Hume and Carnap, constitute an ideology in the sense of a selected and restrictive vision which controls minds and reduces freedom to willfulness. In this perspective liberalism is grossly misnamed, and itself calls for a process of liberation and enrichment.

Level II. Formal Freedom: To Choose as One Ought

Kant provides the basis for another, much richer, notion of freedom which Mortimer Adler has called "acquired freedom of self-perfection." It acknowledges the ability of the human being to trans-cend the empirical order and to envisage moral laws and ideals. This direction has been taken by such philosophers as Plotinus, Spinoza and Bradley who understood all in terms of ideal patterns of reason and of nature. For Kant freedom consists not in acting merely as one pleases, but in willing as one ought, whether or not this can be enacted.9 Moral standards are absolute and objective, not relative to individual or group preferences.10 How they can remain nevertheless autonomous emerges in the evolution of Kant’s three critiques.

In his first Critique of Pure Reason Kant developed a theory of knowledge for the universal and necessary laws of the physical sciences. Reductionist philosophies such as positivism are happy to leave the matter there, for the necessity of the sciences gives control over one’s life, while their universality extends this control to others. If Kant’s categories could lend rational order to the random empirical world of facts, then positivism could achieve Descartes’ goal of walking with confidence in the world.

For Kant, however, this simply will not do. Clarity which comes at the price of necessity may be acceptable and even desirable for works of nature, but it is an appalling way to envisage human life. Hence, in his Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant proceeds to identify that which is distinctive of the moral order. His analysis pushes forcefully beyond utilitarian goals, inner instincts and rational (scien-tific) relationships -- precisely beyond the necessitated order which can be constructed in terms of his first Critique. None of these recog-nizes that which is distinctive of the human person, namely, freedom. For Kant, in order for an act to be moral it must be based upon the will of the person as autonomous, not heteronomous or subject to others or to necessary external laws.

This becomes the basic touchstone of his philosophy; every-thing he writes thence forward will be adapted thereto, and what had been written before will be recontextualized in this new light. The re-mainder of his Foundations and his second Critique of Practical Reason will be composed in terms of freedom. Later his third Critique of the Faculty of Judgment will be written in order to provide a context that enables the previous two critiques to be read in a way that protects human freedom.

In the Foundations he recasts the whole notion of law or moral rule in terms of freedom. If all must be ruled or under law, and yet in order to be free the moral act must be autonomous, then my maxim must be something which as a moral agent I -- and no other -- give to myself.

This, in turn, has surprising implications, for if the moral order must be universal, then my maxim which I dictate to myself must be fit to be also a universal law for all persons.11 On this basis freedom emerges in a clearer light. It is not the self-centered whimsy of the circumstantial freedom of self-realization described above; but neither is it a despotic exercise of the power of the will; finally, it is not the clever self-serving eye of Plato’s rogue.12 Rather, as the highest reality in all creation, freedom is power that is wise and caring, open to all and bent upon the realization of "the glorious ideal of a universal realm of ends-in-themselves." It is, in sum, free men living together in righteous harmony.13

Level III. Existential Freedom: Aesthetic Harmony

Despite its central importance, I will not remain longer on prac-tical reason because it is rather in the third Critique of the Faculty of Judgment that Kant provides the needed context for such harmony.14 In so doing he approaches the aesthetic sensibility of Con-fucius in articulating the cosmic significance of freedom. Kant is intent not merely upon uncovering the fact of freedom, but upon protecting and promoting it. He faces squarely the modern person’s most urgent questions.

How can this newly uncovered freedom survive when con-fronted with the necessity and universality of the realm of science --and its implications for technology -- as understood in the Critique of Pure Reason? Will the scientific interpretation of external nature force free-dom back into the inner realm of each person’s heart where it would be reduced at best to good intentions or good feelings towards others?

- When we attempt to act in this world or to reach out to others must all our categories be universal and hence insensitive to that which marks others as unique and personal; must they be necessary, and hence leave no room for creative freedom? If so then public life can be only impersonal, necessitated, repetitive and stagnant.

- Must the human spirit be reduced to the sterile content of em-pirical facts or to the necessitated modes of scientific laws? If so then philosophers cannot escape what for wisdom is a suicidal choice between either being traffic directors in the jungle of unfettered com-petition or sharing tragic complicity in setting a predetermined order for the human spirit.

- Freedom would indeed have been killed and would pulse no more as the heart of humankind.

Before this threat Kant’s answer was a resounding: No! Taking as his basis the reality of freedom -- so passionately and often tragi-cally affirmed in our lifetime by Ghandi and Martin Luther King -- Kant pro-ceeded to develop his third Critique of the Faculty of Judgment as a context within which freedom and scientific necessity could coexist, indeed in which necessity would be the support and instrument of freedom.

For this Kant found it necessary to distinguish two issues as reflected in the two parts of his third Critique. In the "Critique of Teleo-logical Judgment"15 he acknowledges that nature and all reality must be teleological, for if there is to be room for human freedom in a cos-mos in which one can make use of necessary laws, if science is to contribute to the exercise of human freedom, then nature too must be directed toward a goal and manifest throughout a teleology with which free human purpose can be integrated.

In these terms nature, even in its necessary and universal laws, is no longer alien to freedom, but expresses divine freedom and is conciliable with human freedom. The structure of his first Critique will not allow Kant to affirm this teleological character as a metaphysical reality, but he recognizes that we must proceed "as if" all reality is teleological precisely because of the undeniable reality of human freedom in an ordered universe.

If, however, teleology in principle provides the needed space, there remains a second issue of how freedom is exercised, namely, what mediates it to the necessary and universal laws of science? This is the task of his "Critique of the Aesthetic Judgment"16 where the imagination plays the key integrating role in enabling a free person to relate to a necessary order of nature and to given structures in society in ways that are neither necessitated nor necessitating.

There is something similar here to the Critique of Pure Reason. In both, the work of the imagination in assembling phenomena is not simply to register, but to produce the objective order. As in the first critique the approach is not from a set of a priori principles which are clear all by themselves and are used in order to bind the multiple phe-nomena into a unity. On the contrary, under the rule of unity the imagi-nation orders and reorders the multiple phenomena until they are ready to be informed by a unifying principle whose appropriateness emerges from the reordering carried out by the productive imagi-nation.

In the first Critique, however, the productive work was done in relation to the abstract and universal categories of the intellect and carried out under a law which dictated that phenomena must form a unity. Hence, although it was a human product, the objective order was universal and necessary and the related sciences were valid both for all things and for all people.17

In the "Critique of the Aesthetic Judgment," in contrast, the ima-gination in working toward an integrating unity is not confined by the necessitating structures of categories and concepts, but ranges freely over the full sweep of reality in all its dimensions to see whether re-latedness and purposiveness can emerge. Hence, in standing before a work of nature or of art it might focus upon light or form, sound or word, economic or interpersonal relations -- or, indeed, upon any com-bination of these in a natural environment or a society, whether en-countered concretely or expressed in symbols.

Throughout all of this the ordering and reordering by the imagi-nation can bring about numberless unities. Unrestricted by any a priori categories, it can integrate necessary dialectical patterns within its own free and therefore creative production, and scientific universals within its unique concrete harmonies.

This properly creative work of the human person in this world extends the realm of human freedom to the whole of reality. For this harmony is appreciated not merely intellectually in terms of its relation to a concept or schema (the first Critique), nor morally in relation to the force of a just will (the second Critique), but aesthetically by the plea-sure or displeasure of the free response it generates. What manifests whether a proper and authentic ordering has or has not been achieved is not a concept,18 but the pleasure or displeasure, the elation at the beautiful and sublime or the disgust at the ugly and revolting, which flows from our contemplation or reflection.

One could miss the integrating character of this pleasure or displeasure and its related judgment of taste.19 This would be so if one looked at it ideologically as simply a repetition of past tastes in order to promote stability, or reductively as merely an interior and purely pri-vate matter at a level of consciousness available only to an elite class or related only to an esoteric band of reality. That would ignore the structure which Kant laid out at length in his first "Introduction" to his third critique.20 He noted there that he conceived this third critique not as merely juxtaposed to the first two critiques of pure and practical rea-son, but as integrating both in a richer whole.

This opens a rich prospect for freedom in society. It need no longer be simply the capacity of the individual to gather goods about oneself, nor at the second level of freedom to set universal laws. Be-yond this it is the capacity creatively to integrate both of these in a process of shaping one’s personal and social life in a unique and beau-tiful manner. In society this, indeed, becomes the reality of culture. Let us look more closely at this with special attention to the contribution that Confucius can make to the challenge noted above by Professor Imamichi of the exercise of social life through technology.

CONFUCIAN CULTURE AND FREEDOM

IN A TECHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY

Culture and Freedom

Developing the level of aesthetic sensitivity enables one to take into account ever greater dimensions of reality and creativity and to imagine responses which are more rich in purpose, more adapted to present circumstances and more creative for the future. This is mani-fest in a good leader such as a Churchill or Roosevelt -- and super-eminently in a Confucius, Buddha or Christ. Their power to mobilize a people lies especially in their rare ability to assess the overall situation, to express it in a manner which rings true to the great variety of per-sons, and thereby to evoke appropriate and varied responses from each according to his or her capabilities. The danger is that the example of such genius will be reduced to a formula, become an ideo-logy and exclude innovation. In reality, as personable, free and crea-tive -- and when understood as the work of the aesthetic judgment --their example is inclusive in content and application as well as in the new responses it continually evokes from others. When aesthetic ex-periences are passed on as part of a tradition, gradually they con-stitute a culture.

Some thinkers such as William James and Jürgen Habermas,21 fearing that attending to these free creations of a cultural tradition might distract from the concrete needs of the people, have urged a turn rather to the social sciences for social analysis and critique and as a means for identifying pragmatic responses. But these point back to the necessary laws of the first Critique. In many countries engaging in reforms, these have come to be seen as stifling creativity and para-lyzing the populace.

Kant’s third critique points in another direction. It integrates scientifically universal and necessary social relations, but it is not limited to them. It does not focus upon them, nor does it focus directly upon beauty or ugliness of concrete relations, or even directly upon the beauty or ugliness as things in themselves. Its focus is rather upon our contemplation of the integrating images of these which we ima-ginatively create as manifesting the many facets of beauty and ugli-ness -- actual and potential. We evaluate these in terms of the free and integrating response of pleasure or displeasure, enjoyment or revul-sion which they generate most deeply within our whole person.

Confucius and Freedom in a Technological Society

Confucius probably would feel very comfortable with this if struc-tured in terms of an appreciation or feeling of harmony. In this way, he could see freedom itself at the height of its sensibility, not merely as an instrument of a moral life, but as serving through the imagination as a lens or means for presenting the richness of reality in varied and intensified ways. Freedom, thus understood, is both spectroscope and kaleidoscope of being. As spectroscope it unfolds the full range of the possiblities of human freedom, so that all can be examined, evaluated and admired. As kaleidoscope, it continually works out the endless combinations and patterns of reality so that the beauty of each can be examined, reflected upon and chosen when desired. Freely, purpo-sively and creatively, imagination weaves through reality focusing now upon certain dimensions, now reversing its flow, now making new con-nections and interrelations. In the process reality manifests not only scientific forms and their potential interrelations, but its power to evoke our free response of love and admiration or of hate and disgust.

In this manner freedom becomes at once the creative source, the manifestation, the evaluation and the arbiter of all that imagina-tively we can propose. It is goal, namely to realize life as rational and free in this world; it is creative source, for with the imagination it unfolds the endless possibilities for human expression; it is manifestation, be-cause it presents these to our consciousness in ways appropriate to our capabilities for knowledge of limited realities and relates these to the circumstances of our life; it is criterion, because its response manifests a possible mode of action to be variously desirable or not in terms of a total personal response of pleasure or displeasure, enjoy-ment or revulsion; and it is arbiter, because it provides the basis upon which our freedom chooses to affirm or reject, realize or avoid this way of self-realization. In this way, freedom emerges as the dynamic cen-ter of our human existence.

There is much in the above which evokes the Confucian sense of the role of the gentleman in unfolding the implications of daily life. But it evokes also new significance of the thought of Confucius for the exercise of freedom in society in our day.

What has been said only prepares the terrain by formulating the question; it suggests looking to the aesthetic sense of harmony and a way of applying this to the work of freedom in society. The actual ex-perience of harmony, however, is the work of an entire people which develops its own specific sensibility thereto. Through the ages this forms a tradition and a culture which can form sensibilities that enable us to evaluate properly the challenges encountered in social life in our day and find appropriate and creative responses thereto.

TRANSCENDENCE OF VALUES AND THE LORD OF HEAVEN

Here I would recall a suggestion from Hegel that philosophy in-tegrate, but not conclude with the aesthetic. As seen above, the aes-thetic transforms the meaning of being, lifts it beyond the material, and opens it to the creativity of the human spirit; yet Hegel sees a danger in remaining solely on that level. For artistic creation grasps being through the imagination and expresses its meaning and value in phy-sical media. While this renders the Absolute visible and makes mani-fest the spiritual meaning of the world, left to itself the aesthetic might conclude in a pantheism; but if nature were to become God then hu-mans would become slaves of their own creations. In the end being would come to be defined by humans, who would thereby be forever entombed within the confines of their own limited powers to create.

In order to be truly free we must acknowledge an adequate ground for the limitlessness of the radical creativity experienced in our human capabilities. For this, Hegel pointed to the need, beyond art and the aesthetic, for religion--indeed for revealed religion -- to state the content of authentic transcendence; and beyond this he saw the need for philosophy to purify the content of religion from the limitations of its symbolic forms.22

Metaphysics

It would be a mistake, however, to look to religion as a sense of the divine over and above or in contrast to culture. From earliest to-temic times human thought always had a sacred center. Myths in Greece, as elsewhere, had a superabundance of gods in a loose ge-netic unity. Parmenides’ cosmic way led from this to the godless justice who led the way to the Absolute, and Aristotle’s Metaphysics was a process of reasoning to divine life. The issue then is not how the notion of the divine entered human thought, but how to articulate its role in and impact upon philosophy as a work of reason broadly taken. In pur-suit of our general theme then we will examine the effect of Christianity upon the sense of being in the Greek philosophical tradition and its im-plications for the development of modern social forms.23

Greek philosophy had presupposed matter always to have existed and as a result focused upon the forms by which matter was determined to be of one type rather than another. Aristotle considered things in the process of change from one form to another, analyzed in his Physics, to be the most manifest of realities. This approach to philosophy through physical beings corresponds especially to our hu-man nature as mind and body. However, it is in need of considerable broadening to be able to take account not only of transcendent beings, particularly the divine, but also of the foundational significance of man-kind as grounded in the transcendent.

It was here that the Christian 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 con-sciousness to the fact that matter too depended for its reality upon God. Thus, before Plotinus, who was the first philosopher to do so, the Fathers already had noted that matter, rather than simply being con-sidered eternal, also stood in need of an explanation of its origin.24

But to push the question of reality beyond that of form, nature or kind to existence was to deepen radically its sense. What must be ex-plained is no longer merely the particular form or type of beings, but the reality of matter as well; the question then becomes not only how things are of this or that kind, but how they exist rather than not exist. This constituted an evolution in human awareness beyond issues of change or of forms.25 Instead, to be real came to mean to be or to exist and whatever is related thereto: quite literally, "To be or not to be" had become the question. By this same stroke our self-awareness and will were deepened dramatically to the conscious acceptance and affirm-ation of our own existence, and by implication in the practical order to acting in freedom or responsibly.

Cornelio Fabro suggests that this deepened metaphysical sen-se of being not only opened the possibility for a more profound sense of freedom, but was itself catalyzed by the new sense of freedom pro-claimed in the Christian message. That focused not upon Plato’s 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. As the first to rise to new life in victory over sin, his victory could be accepted by each person only 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 re-formation, but of resurrection from the waters of death to radically new life. This 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 that I am as a participation in the creative and redemptive power of God, a self for whom living is freely to dispose of the very power of the resur-rection in union with all of God’s creation.26

It took a long time for the implications of this new appreciation of what it meant to be to germinate and find its proper philosophic arti-culation. Over a period of many centuries the term ‘form’ was used both as kind or type of being and to express the new sense of being as existence. As the distinction between the two gradually clarified, however, proper terminology arose in which the act of existence by which a being simply is was expressed by existence (esse), while that by which a being is of this or that kind came to be expressed by ‘es-sence’.27

Philosophy and Revelation

Let us reflect on the dynamics at play in this impact of Chris-tianity upon philosophy. Was this a theology based upon revelation, rather than a philosophy available by the light of natural reason? Cer-tainly, that which depends formally upon the mysteries of the Trinity and the plan of Redemption in Christ can be known only by revelation and is therefore a matter of theology. But today we are more conscious of the significance of the cultural and social context within which thought takes place. Like economics and even mathematics, philo-sophy is created by persons and peoples living in place and time and reflects their physical and social circumstances; above all it reflects their deepest personal experiences and free commitments.

The sense of meaning experienced through the ages and arti-culated 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 Plato-nic and Aristotelian themes with a new heart and mind, sensitized by their new redemptive and Trinitarian experience. The result was an in-version of the Aristotelian perspective, even by those who would be most Aristotelian in the technical implementation of their philosophy. Because for Aristotle the point of initiation of knowledge was the sen-ses, his philosophy arose through his physics, and was built upon its requirements and implications, in which light human beings were seen especially as the care-taker of nature.

In contrast, the Trinitarian 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, Aris-totle did not hesitate to call his metaphysics a theology both because it alone treated God among its object and because it was the type of knowledge of all things which befitted God above all others.28 As can be seen from Aristotle, both the changing or physical and the unchang-ing or transcendent are within the horizon of philosophy as a work of reason. But where Greek culture, focused upon nature, took the for-mer as its prime analogate for being in terms of which it interpreted all else, Christian culture, focused upon the divine, took the latter as its analogate for its philosophy as a work of reason concerned with under-standing all things through their ultimate causes. This remains philoso-phy for it is carried out by the light of human reason; it is not theology which proceeds by the light of the faith.

Carried out in this light philosophy would see being as 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 freedom and Love. If this was the found-ational Christian sense of reality, then the work of reason carried out by philosophy in such a cultural context would focus less upon physical changing nature as did the Greeks, but upon the divine. Such a philo-sophy would be vastly enriched, and its sense of person and com-munity would be correspondingly enlivened. Nor were these notions entirely strange to earlier philosophy: Parmenides created metaphy-sics as a science in terms of Being as one;29 Aristotle’s metaphysics not only culminated in divine life, but understood being entirely as a pros hen analogy or relation thereto.30 Later Hegel would see theology as a symbolic form for philosophical truths.

But religion is moreover a human virtue, a mode of human action which in its imaginative forms conceives, unfolds, lives and celebrates the sense of life and meaning. Kant’s thought as described above pro-vides a place for this at the very center of human freedom and hence of human life. Confucius and Christ laid down concrete patterns in which this has been lived and experienced by peoples through the centuries.

This suggests further that to gauge the impact of Christianity upon philosophy we should reflect upon the stimulation which the Christian life of the Trinity brought to philosophical reflection upon being as one, true and good. In the Graeco-Christian philosophical tra-dition the inner properties of being as such are unity, truth and good-ness. For Hindu philosophy the characteristics of the Absolute are existence (sat), consciousness (cit) and bliss (ananda). For the Chris-tian these are not simply characteristics of the divine, but the personal interrelations of Father, Son (Word) and Holy Spirit. To gain insight then into the impact of the Christian sense of the Transcendent upon the metaphysics of freedom we can look at this succession of Father-Existence(sat)-Unity, Son/Word-consciousness(cit)-truth, and Holy Spirit-bliss (ananda)-good. In each case the last term (e.g., truth) is the more abstract Greek term while the first two terms (e.g. Word and Consciousness) are the life of the Absolute as experienced and articu-lated in the Christian and Hindu religions respectively.31

Our goal here will not be to define these as properties of being, but to sample some of the ways in which religious vision has deepened the sense of these properties and hence of being itself. Because this vision 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 sense they have of the person in society and of the modes of living together in freedom. Let us look then at the properties of being in the Graeco-Christian tradition, the ways in which they have been en-riched by philosophizing in a Trinitarian cultural context, and the impli-cations of this for the meaning of freedom.

The Transcendental Properties of Unity, Truth and the Good

Unity, was recognized by Parmenides as a first characteristic of being from the very beginnings of metaphysics. In his poem he rea-soned that in order to stand against the nonbeing or negation implied in the very notions of beginning, limitation or multiplicity, being as such had to be one, eternal and unchanging. Practically all religions reco-gnize these characteristics as belonging to the divine. With Parme-nides, they recognize that what is problematic is not how God can be, for as being does exist in the final analysis must be self sufficient, for by definition there is nothing else upon which it could depend.

The real question is how is it possible for finite or multiple beings to exist?32

Since, however, finite beings do in fact exist their reality must be a participation in the self-sufficient infinite, eternal and unchanging One which they reflect in every facet of their being. As participating in an absolute nature they are not mere functions of other realities, but subsist in their own right: the creator makes them to be, 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 or supposit of a rational nature. Reflecting the divine such beings are unique and unable to be assumed by some larger entity -- even by the divine. Like God whom they reflect, they exist in their own right.

Yves Simon summarizes some implications of this for human freedom. He points out that it is based not in the indeterminism of free-dom as mere choice, which would face the will with the impossibility of deriving something from nothing. Rather, human freedom is the result of a supradeterminism,33 that is, because the human intellect and will are open to the infinite and original Unity, Truth and Good they can respond to any participated, limited good whatsoever without being necessitated thereby. In this lies the essence of freedom: libe-rated from any determining powers, whether internal or external the will is autonomous; at the same time it is positively oriented toward the good and realization of the good in 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 Kant wrote in his Critique of the Aesthetic Judgement.

Further, because all limited beings are made to be by the same unique Transcendent Being their foundational existence-in-them-selves does not alienate them one from another, but relates them at the very center of their being: to be is to exist in myself as a creature of God and hence to be foundationally related to Him and to all mani-festations of His being. This, in turn, founds the harmony of nature. It is the reason also why living in harmony with nature and other persons is the sign of 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, li-berty and the pursuit of happiness; it is the task of governments to protect and promote them.

Truth unfolds the unity of being. Unfortunately, too often unity has been seen in terms that are static, reductionist and even com-mercial. Property, for example, has been looked upon as the right to withhold possessions and to turn inward along the lines of the all-consuming orientation of freedom as choice described above, where being was looked upon as a possession to be acquired and conserved or at best bartered for something of equal quantity or quality.

In contrast, in the image of the Son who as Word expresses all that the Father is and through whom all is created, being is seen as open, expressive and creative. Just as a musician or poet unfolds the many meanings in 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 humankind in its pilgrimage. Justice too is implied as true judgments about being in the public forum. 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.

Goodness and Beauty. Goodness is the third property of being and corresponds in the Trinity 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 a being or, where imperfect, the search for that perfection or fulfillment. Holiness consists in holding devotedly 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 now can be seen not as freedom to choose, to gather and accumulate, nor statically to maintain, repeat or conserve. Rather it is closer to Confucius’s original sense of harmony as a dynamic inter-relation of multiple and changing units; this the role of peacemaker, or ‘Prince of Peace.’

Still more dynamically the Spirit suggests for being a sense of transforming, innovating and creating. As radically His gift, our life cannot be repaid; we can "pay back" the gift only by passing it on or sharing it with others in love. Even dying -- whether in life through suf-fering in the image of the cross or physically at the end of one’s days -- we rise to new life. In his Second Letter to the Corinthians, the Apostle Paul expressed well the combination of irreducible confidence and indomitable hope implied by the sense of life lived in the context of a Transcendent Absolute:

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; per-plexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed (II Cor. 4:7-10).

As image of this transcendent divine principle (and hence of the dynamic Trinitarian interrelations of persons), the sense of the person in this world is transformed. One is part of nature, but rather than being subject thereto as a mere producer or consumer, the person is a creative and transforming center, responsible for the protection and promotion of nature. Similarly, he 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 his fuller role in social life, human dignity, equality, and participation in the socio-politi-cal process have become central concerns. The search for adequate foundations for democracy and its heightened sense of the dignity of the person naturally generates new interest in religion.

In the image of the divine in both Western and Hindu metaphy-sics the three characteristics of freedom stand out. First, self-affirm-ation 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 Consciousness knows all that it creates as a reflection of its own being, truth and goodness, while the more limited instances of self-awareness transcend themselves in relation to others. Finally, this new human freedom is an affirmation of exist-ence as sharing in Love Itself, the creative and ultimately attractive divine life -- or in Indian terms, "Bliss" (ananda).

Here the aesthetic dimensions come to the fore in relation to beauty (or harmony in Confucius) as that which is appreciated when seen. This unites the previous three characteristics of reality: unity, truth and goodness in an intuition from the deepest center of our being in response to the creative power of Being working in and through us in cooperation with others to realize together a society whose dignity reflects the awe of every person before the divine life found in every person and coursing through nature.

From within a Christian cultural context this new sense of being and freedom expresses far more than a transition from one life style to another, and is rather 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. The focus of freedom, 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 beauty and love.

CONCLUSION

This paper has looked at three notions or levels of freedom which in their difference can compliment and unfold one another in hu-mankind’s modern effort to achieve maturity and play an in-creasingly responsible role in directing social life in our times.

We saw how, in the context of the Enlightenment and in order to make possible universal participation in social life, Locke limited the range of meaning to what was empirically available. This assured free-dom, but limited it to choices between contrary qualities. The effort was well intentioned, but he seems to have tried too hard and compro-mised too much in a single minded pursuit of parliamentary govern-ment. As a result, the very notion of freedom has not been able to sus-tain itself, but over time has turned gradually into a consumerist black hole.

The aesthetic sense of Kant and, I believe, Confucius can dra-matically enrich the pursuit of freedom. The aesthetic integrates body and spirit, opens all to high ideals and locates in one’s free response to the beauty and harmony of the whole the norm of creative human engagement in society and indeed in reality as a whole. Kant’s work may suggest ways of rearticulating Confucius’ potential for con-tributing to the modern aspirations for freedom, while the Confucian culture can flesh out with centuries of lived experience the abstract model which Kant could only sketch during the decade in which he wrote his three Critiques. Together they promise greatly to enrich the Enlightenment effort at constructing freedom by raising its goals and locating the exercise of human freedom within the aesthetic response itself to beauty and harmony.

This is progress indeed, but in his own philosophy Hegel both pointed out in theory, and illustrated in practice the potential this opens for a serious undermining of the sense of freedom. For if the required context for freedom is based upon proceeding hypothetically ‘as if’ all is teleological then its very reality is compromised. If its exercise is restricted to the confines of human imagination then freedom be-comes not only self-determining but self-constituting. Again we have tried too hard and become trapped within what we can make or do.

This then is the real issue, indeed it is the issue of the foundation and extent of human social reality and of reality itself. If, as the deepest striving of the human spirit, freedom is real, then the transcendent principle it requires must not be a merely hypothetical ‘as if’, but really existent; if freedom presents us with a limitless range of possibilities, then its principle must be the Infinite and Eternal, the one actual composite Source and Goal of all possibility. Thus, the transcendent is the key to real liberation: it frees the human spirit from limitation to the restricted field of society’s halting and even partial creative activity; it grounds social reality in the Absolute; it certifies one’s right to be respected, and evokes the creative powers of the human heart alone and with others in society.

From the Protestant Christian tradition that sin has corrupted human nature, Hegel would say that truth content regarding the transcendent first must be revealed and then can be perfected by philosophy. The Catholic tradition, which sees the effect of sin not as corrupting but as weakening human nature, would consider this insight regarding the transcendent source to be within the proper capabilities of philosophical reason. In either case, however, it is not a matter of abstract theory but of discovering that the foundations of freedom are lived and experienced fully in a living God who created us out of love. a Christian culture bears further ‘good news’, namely that our freedom cannot be defeated by evil, but is resurgent and in the end will triumph; this is the full truth about humankind seen in relation to the tran-scendent Lord of Heaven.34

To the Enlightenment sense of freedom as choice, awareness of the transcendent Creator adds that life is not only a matter of having, that is, of selecting between which physical realities one will consume, but of being, with its characteristics of self-identity, communication, justice and sharing. Beyond this there is an awareness that even suf-fering can be redemptive and lead to resurrection and a new birth in freedom.

To the aesthetic awareness of Kant (and Confucius) as de-scribed above, awareness of the transcendent as the context of human life adds a sense of human meaning, dignity and rights beyond anything that humans themselves can construct. This, in turn, evokes a dynamic and creative response from humankind to the gifts of which its very reality is constituted. Historically as well as philosophically this not only reflects the search of humankind for freedom, but is its source and inspiration.

Conversely, it can be said that the Enlightenment and the Kantian and Confucian aesthetic sense are important for an unfolding of a religious philosophy of social life. The Enlightenment has given egalitarian form to the modern sense of freedom and hence to the search for universal participation in social decision making. The aes-thetic sense can do much to temper the aggressive excesses of a self-centered sense of personal identity by a broad sense of harmony both with human beings and with nature. This is needed in our ever more complex and crowded world. Both are essential to the progress of religion in our times, while themselves being protected from ideolo-gical reduction in turn by its sense of the Transcendent.

Together, Eastern Confucianism and Western Christian philo-sophy have important roles in bringing to life a social harmony in which freedom is protected in justice and exercised as creative love.

The Catholic University of America

Washington, D.C.

NOTES

1. John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (New York: Dover, 1959), Book, Chap. I, Vol. I, 121-124.

2. David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (Chicago: Regnery, 1960).

3. The Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1971).

4. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, A.C. Fraser, ed. (New York: Dover, 1959), II, ch. 21, sec 27; vol. I, p. 329.

5. Skeptical Essays (London: Allen & Unwin, 1952), p. 169.

6. Mortimer J. Adler, The Idea of Freedom: A Dialectical Examination of the Conceptions of Freedom (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1958), p. 187.

7. J.S. Mill, On Liberty, ch. 5, p. 15.

8. Adler, p. 193.

9. Ibid., p. 253.

10. Ibid., p. 257.

11. Immanuel Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. R.W. Beck (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1959), Part II, pp. 38-58 [421-441].

12. Plato, Republic, 519.

13. Foundations, III, p. 82 [463].

14. Cf. Hans Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (New York: Crossroads, 1982), Part I, pp. 1-2, pp.39-73; and W. Crawford, espec. Ch. 4.

15. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. J.H. Bernard (New York: Hafner, 1968), pp. 205-339.

16. Ibid., pp. 37-200.

17. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. N.K. Smith (London: Macmillan, 1929), A112, 121, 192-193. Donald W. Crawford, Kant’s Aesthetic Theory (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1974), pp. 83-84, 87-90.

18. See Kant’s development and solution to the autonomy of taste, Critique of Judgment, nn. 57-58, pp. 182-192, where Kant treats the need for a concept; Crawford, pp. 63-66.

19. See the paper of Wilhelm S. Wurzer "On the Art of Moral Imagination" in G. McLean, ed., Moral Imagination and Character Development (Washington: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 1991) for an elaboration of the essential notions of the beautiful, the sublime and taste in Kant’s aesthetic theory.

20. Immanuel Kant, First Introduction to the Critique of Judgment, trans. J. Haden (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965).

21. William James, Pragmatism (New York: Washington Square, 1963), Ch. I, pp. 3-40. For notes on the critical hermeneutics of J. Habermas see G. McLean, "Cultural Heritage, Social Critique and Future Construction" in Culture, Human Rights and Peace in Central America, R. Molina, T. Readdy and G. McLean, eds. (Washington: Council for Research in Values and Philosophy and The University Press of America, 1988), Ch. I. Critical distance is an essential element and requires analysis by the social sciences of the historical social structures as a basis for liberation from internal determination by, and from dependence upon, unjust interests. The concrete psy-cho- and socio-pathology deriving from such dependencies and the corresponding steps toward liberation therefrom are the subject of the chapters by J. Loiacono and H. Ferrand de Piazza in The Social Context and Values: Perspectives of the Americas, G. McLean and O. Pegoraro, eds. (Washington: Council for Research in Values and Philosophy and The University Press of America, 1988), Chs. III and IV.

22. G.W.F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind, tr. J.B. Baille (New York: Harper, 1967), VII and VIII; see also James Collins, God in Modern Philosophy (Chicago: Regnery, 1959), VII, espec. pp. 232-37.

23. For a description of the evolution of the notion of being itself see Etienne Gilson, Being and Some Philosophers (Toronto: PIMS, 1961); and The Unity of Philosophical Experience (New York: Scribner’s, 1937).

24. G. McLean, Plenitude and Participation: The Unity of Man in God (Madras: The University of Madras, 1978), pp. 53-57. This was elaborated as well in the course of the classical Trinitarian debates. To understand Christ to be God Incarnate it was necessary to understand Him to be Son sharing fully in the divine nature. This required, in turn, that in the life of the Trinity his procession from the Father be understood to be in a unity of nature: The Son, like the Father, must be fully of the one and same divine nature. Through contrast to this procession of a divine person it became possible to see more clearly the formal effect of God’s act in creating limited and differentiated beings. This would not be in the same divine nature for it resulted, not in a coequal divine person, but in a creature radically dependent for its being.

25. Aristotle had taken the compossibility of forms as a sufficient response to the scientific question of ‘whether it exist’. See Joseph Owens, The Doctrine of Being in the Aristotelian Metaphysics; A Study in the Greek Background of Medieval Thought (Toronto: P.I.M.S., 1978).

26. C. Fabro called the graded and related manner in which this is realized concretely an intensive notion of being. Cornelio Fabro, Participation et causalité selon S. Thomas d’Aquin (Louvain: Pub. Univ. de Louvain, 1961).

27. Cornelio Fabro, La nozione metafisica de partecipazione secondo S. Tommaso d’Aquino (Torino: Societá Ed. Internazionale, 1950), pp. 75-122.

28. Aristotle, Metaphysics, I, 2.

29. Parmenides of Elea, Fragments, trans. D. Galop (Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1984).

30. See Owens.

31. Raimundo Panikkar, The Unknown Christ of Hinduism: Toward an Ecumenical Christophany (New York: Orbis, 1981).

32. See Parmenides; see also Shankara, Commentary on the Vedanta Sutras, Introduction.

33. Yves R. Simon, Freedom of Choice, P. Wolff, ed. (New York: Fordham Univ. Press, 1969), p. 106.

34. Matteo Ricci, The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven (T’ien-chu Shih-i), trans. J. Lancashire and Peter Hu Kuo-chen (St. Louis: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1985).