Absolutism

I mentioned that Mr. Lewis' spiritual journey included a sojourn with Absolutism. I will now attempt to define it, to the best of my clumsy abilities. I've told you philosophy is hard for me. I read the same page of the Absolutism entry in my encyclopedia over and over again last night for about half an hour, trying to understand. I'm still not sure that I do.

Please be patient with me in your comments.

The Absolute: Ultimate reality is a single, all-inclusive system of being. This is the ground, source and repository of all other being.

Monism: Ultimate reality is One. The Many -- the multiplicity of finite events and creatures -- are dependent existents that contain real being only by participating in the life of the One. But carried to its extreme, this is untenable, because it would exclude human knowers from ultimate reality.

Pluralism: Ultimate reality is Many. But carried to its extreme, this is also untenable, because with no unity, there can be no connection and no comprehension.

The suggested conclusion: Both a One and a Many must be considered equally ultimate in the scheme of things in which human beings exist.

This debate began circa 500 BC and continues today, it was noted. Which would make it one of the world's oldest arguments.

Also noted: The great philosopher Bertrand Russell allegedly demolished the premises of absolutism.

The path towards a rekindled faith, continued

Is philosophy just math in words?

I get words. I love words. But philosophy trips me up almost as badly as math once did, back in the days when I was forced to take it in school.

I try to understand it, in blogs and in books, but my eyes glaze over and it goes right over my head.

That being said, I wish it were different. Philosophy is the study of wisdom, and the study and comprehension of wisdom compliments science as the crowning achievement and glory of the human species.

Having survived his boyhood, CS Lewis (see earlier posts) now takes me into the deep waters of philosophy. I must swim with him if I am to understand how he reclaimed his faith after years of intense atheism.

The first step, and he didn't consider it even a step at the time, appears to have been his realization of the following:

"The whole universe is mental. Our logic is participation in a cosmic logos or Absolute."

Any thoughts from smart people? Interpretations for the layman? Suggestions of refutation?

A little Longfellow for my Wednesday

"All are architects of fate
working in these walls of time
some with massive deeds and great
some with ornaments of rhyme ..."

-- Longfellow, The Builders

In keeping with CS Lewis' advice to often read verse aloud in a solitary place, I read this stanza out loud at a stoplight today, and I hope that it will stay in my head for a while. It is indeed profound.

I didn't like the sound of my voice much. It doesn't have the manly gravitas that I would wish for it. And my sense of poetic cadence is not great. We must, I was told back in college, not read poetry in sing-song form, like a child's nursery rhyme. But I sing-songed Longfellow.

I need more practice. In more solitary moments.

The faith of a smart man

A friend recently bought me a DVD of the late C.S. Lewis' "Chronicles of Narnia.'

It's not the type of movie I would have sought out on my own. But I watched it, mostly to humor them.

It's very much a Christian allegory -- which allegory, except for the final sacrifice of the Lion, probably passed right over the heads of most of the general public.

The movie did inspire me to pull "Surprised by Joy," off my bookshelf and blow the dust off it for a read. That's Lewis' autobiography.

You see, his life story intrigues me. Here is a very smart, very well-educated man, who passes from naive childhood belief, to complete atheism, then reasons his way back to faith.

More than ever now, with great doubts gnawing at me, I want to know HOW that happened. How did a man, a smart man, a logical, reasonable man, whose faith was shattered on the shoals of scholarship, as happens to so many, rebuild his vessel and sail on, which happens to very few.