CHAPTER III
Global Feeling-Awarenesses
and Global Importances
The aim of Part One this treatise
is to examine the nature of feelings and the world as felt, with special
attention to global feelings and the felt features that belong to the world
in its whole ness. I have maintained that the I’s feelings are
feeling-sensations and feeling and that the features of the world as felt
are feeling- tonalities and their important sources. In Chapter 1, I
examined the purely sensuous aspect of these phenomena’ the
feeling-sensations of the I and the feeling-tonalities of the world. In
Chapter 2, 1 described the other aspect, the l’s feeling and the importances
of the world apprehended in these feeling But the descriptions in the latter
chapter were incomplete; I described primarily the mundane feeling
awarenesses and importances, without thematically investigating their global
modalities. This deficiency is remedied in the present chapter, the subject
of which is the global feeling-awaresses and the global
importances which are appreciated in these feeling
My interest
in particular is in the intuitive global feeling and the global importances
as they appear in these feeling for it is these phenomena that form the
basis and reference point of the nonintuitive and reappreciative feeling of
the world-whole’s importances. These intuitive feeling are the global
moody in tuitions and the global affective intuitions. The moody
phenomena are described in Division A of this chapter, the affective
phenomena in Division B.
Division A:
GLOBAL MOODS AND GLOBAL IMPORTANCES AS THEY
ARE MOODILY APPRECIA TED
III. 15. Preliminary Characterization of
Moods and Their Difference from Affects
Moods, like
affects, have a multiform nature. I am interested in describing their
globally intuitive nature, but this requires that we first gain some idea of
the nature of moods in general. This can be achieved by briefly contrasting
the general nature of moods with that of affects, and by reviewing in a
summary way the historical development of the distinction between moods and
affects.
A principle
difference between moods and affects concerns their origination.
Affects are consciously directed responses to the importance that elicits
them, whether this eliciting importance be a part of the world or the whole
of the world. But moods are not conscious responses to the phenomena that
originate them; moods are diffuse feelings about every thing in general,
even though this felt “everything in general” is not necessarily, and does
not appear as, what brought on the mood in the first place.
Compare the
mood of melancholy with the affect of grief. Melancholy “comes over me” as a
generalized feeling about the world, without my apprehending anything that
gave rise to the melancholy. But the affect of grief arises as a response to
the important event that elicited it, such as the death of a beloved.
This
difference between the relation of moods and affects to their origination
has been explicitly noted by some of the phenomenological philosophers in
this century, but it has been implicitly recognized as far back as the
fourth century B.C. We know that Aristotle was aware of affects and their
responsive relation to their originating phenomena, for his classifications
of feelings in Book 2 of Rhetoric concern the feelings that involve a
conscious relation to their causes. “Pity,” Aristotle writes, “is definable
as a feeling of pain caused by the sight of a destructive or painful evil
that happens to a person who does not deserve it.”
Here the “sight of some evil” may be understood as Aristotle’s conception of
the affective awareness of an importance that belongs to the concrete
feeling of pity. In Book 1 of On the Soul Aristotle makes a remark
that seems to indicate he also recognized the phenomena of moods; he writes
that “men some times are overcome by a feeling of fear without anything
threatening having occurred.”
This remark evinces a recognition of the mood of fear or anxiety, which
comes over one without being felt as a response to any threat that
instigates it.
The same
implicit and brief recognition of moods also appears in Descartes’s
Passions of the Soul, which, like Book 2 of Aristotle’s Rhetoric,
is a classification of affects. Descartes remarks in passing that sometimes
“we feel sad or joyous without being able to give a reason,”
although at other times the sadness or joy is experienced (in an affective
awareness) as an effect of an evil or good object of the senses.
The
recognition of the difference between moods and affects is expressed in some
of the works of twentieth-century analytic philosophers, e.g., in Russell’s
An Outline of Philosophy,
but it is the phenomenological philosophers who explain this distinction in
an explicit and systematic way. This distinction is merely incipient in
Husserl’s writings,
but in Scheler’s writings it is expressly made. Scheler points out that
affects are responses to a valuable phenomenon which is grasped as their
motivating object, whereas moods possess no such directedness to a
motivating object. An affect of joy, for example, is a response to the
presence of some good, such as the return of one’s beloved after a long
absence, whereas a mood of cheerfulness is not directed towards anything
that is comprehended as the motive for the cheerfulness. Thus it is possible
to wonder in moods: “Why am Tin this or that mood [Stimmung] today?
What is it that makes me melancholy or cheerful?”
I can form hypotheses about the motive for my mood, but the mood itself does
not refer to its motive.
Von
Hildebrand developed Scheler’s distinction between moods and affects in
chapter 17 of Ethics by maintaining that moods are unintentional
experiences, whereas affects are intentional. Moods or states, “such as
being tired, being in a bad humor, being irritated, and so forth, have no
conscious relation with an object.”
They do not intentionally refer to an object, like affects (the intentional
object of affects being their motive), but are subjective states of mind
that do not refer beyond themselves.
A new way
of looking at moods developed out of Heidegger’s analyses of findedness (Befindlichkeit)
in Being and Time. By “findedness,” whose ontic manifestations are
“moods” (Stimmungen), Heidegger did not mean “moods” in the sense of
a class of feelings distinguishable from other classes of feelings (such as
affects), but feelings in general. Nevertheless his analyses prove
applicable to “moods” in the narrower sense as a specific class of feelings.
This holds true in particular for his distinction of anxiety from fear.
Although Heidegger himself does not say this, anxiety can be understood as a
mood (in the narrower sense) and fear as an affect. Fear is a fear of a
definite being within the world (e.g., another Dasein), whereas
anxiety is not about this or that being within the world, but about Being-
in-the-world as a whole.
Strasser,
strongly influenced by Otto Bolinow, who was himself in fluenced by
Heidegger,
developed these ideas of Heidegger and at tempted to synthesize them with
some of Scheler’s and Von Hildebrand’s insights. While maintaining the
thesis of Scheler and Von Hildebrand that affects refer to their motives
whereas moods do not, he rejects the thesis that moods are purely
“subjective states of mind” that do not refer to the world, and replaces it
with the Heideggerian idea that moods disclose Being-in-the-world as a
whole.
Strasser acknowledges that moods do not have an intentional consciousness of
an object, but asserts that they nevertheless have a preintentional and
nonobjectifying awareness of the world as a whole:
A mood is
not “p subjective”; it is transubjective and transobjective as well. It
precedes the subject-object dichotomy which our knowing, evaluating,
striving, intending, and opining consciousness usually always produces. A
mood is a feeling of the All.
To show this phenomenologically is not diffiIcult. If I am in an elevated
mood, all appears to me “in a rosy light”; if I am depressed, then I see
all “gray on gray.”
With this
theory of Strasser, which is repeated in its general outlines by Paul
Ricoeur,
we have a recognition of the global character of moods. This global
character was expressed in a succinct way by Robert Solomon, who said that
moods “attend to the world as a whole, typically without focusing on any
particular object or situation.”
Now it is not encumbent upon us to accept the details of these conceptions
of the global character of moods, or of these conceptions of the nature of
the world-whole re vealed in moods, but we can accept the general tendency
of these concep tions and use it as a point of departure of our own
investigations into the moody intuitions of the important world-whole.
Following the ensuing three sections on moods, affects will be examined in
order to show that they are also capable of being global in nature, although
in a different way than moods.
III. 16. The Constant Global Characters of
Moods
In every
mood there is an awareness of the world-whole, and to this awareness there
belongs several distinguishable characteristics, which I shall call the
constant global characters of moods. In each mood there also lies a
potential to achieve a special kind of awareness of the world-whole, a
contemplative awareness, but this potential is seldom realized. To this
occasionally experienced contemplative awareness there belongs the
exceptional global characters of moods. In this section, the constant
global characters are discussed; the exceptional characters are the subject
of the next section. In the third section I elucidate a metaphysical problem
that is posed by these constant and exceptional global characters of moods
but which is insoluble on the basis of these moody characters alone. The
recognition of this problem will serve as an impetus to proceed to an ex
plication of global affects, wherein this problem finds its resolution.
The
constant global characters can be described from a fourfold point of view,
relative to: (i) the moody awareness of the deep and broad world- emanation
of the moody tonalities, (ii) the intuitive character of the moody awareness
of the important world-whole, (iii) the unfocused character of this
awareness, and (iv) the extralogical character of this awareness. A
description of these characters will show that we are not trapped in
mundanity, aware only of a small part of the world, but are in our moods
constantly opened up to the world as a whole, and to a meaning of the world
as a whole. It is by virtue of our moody feelings, and not by virtue of a
priori “rational thinking,” that all of us are in daily contact with
meta physical meanings, and thereby are metaphysical beings in our innermost
nature. In rational metaphysics, it is usually assumed that we can intuit
only this or that part of the world and that to apprehend the world-whole we
must engage in intuition-transcending thinking. But a metaphysical
perspective that is epistemically sound and integrated with intuitive
feeling is based on a recognition that we do have intuitive access to
the world- whole, a regular and daily access in our moods, and hence that it
is neither necessary nor permissible to transcend intuition in order to
obtain a meta physical knowledge. A metaphysical theory can be developed
through de scribing what appears in these daily moody intuitions.
III. 16. i. The Moody
Awareness of the Deep and Broad World-Emanation of the Moody Tonalities
The global
awareness that belongs to every mood is an awareness of concrete moody
features of the world-whole, i.e., of moody tonal-flows that have a deep and
broad world-emanation, and of the global importances that are the sources of
these tonal-flows.
We know
from Chapter 1 that feeling-tonalities have a deep world- emanation if they
flow from the interior of the world, from behind its sensible
surface. They have a deep and broad world-emanation if they flow from the
whole interior of the world, the world as a whole that lies behind the
entire sensible surface of my surroundings. The sources from which the moody
tonalities flow lie within this global interior; these sources are the
important features of the world-whole.
The
different ways in which the world-whole is important are experienced as
correlating with the different types of moody tonalities, so that each type
of global importance is the source of a corresponding type of moody
tonality. As a moody tonality of anxiously suspended quavering begins to
permeate everything in my surroundings, I begin to apprehend the world-whole
as ominously important, and I feel this global ominousness to be the
source from which the anxious tonality is flowing. Likewise, an upwardly
radiated euphoric tonality has its source in the global importance of
fulfillment, and the hopelessly sunken tonality of depression flows from
the emptiness of the world-whole.
The moody
tonalities are different from the global importances in that, among other
things, they are sensuous feelings, whereas the importances are
neither sensuous nor feelings. The moody tonalities have a pleasurable or
painful quality, and flow in a certain direction and manner, but the
importances have none of these characteristics. The importances are rather
features of the world-whole that are the sources of the sensuous and
qualitatively flowing moody tonalities. The importances are that which is
appreciated in moods, whereas the tonalities are constituents of the
moody appreciation.
The nature
of the moody tonalities has largely been described in the discussion of the
broad and deep world-emanations in Chapter 1, but their important sources
have not yet been investigated. Accordingly, the following three subsections
shall be concerned with the moody awareness of these importances.
III. 16.ii. The
Intuitive Character of the Moody Awareness of the Important World-Whole
The moody
awareness of the important world-whole is intuitive in that it is immediate
or direct; it is not mediated by words, concepts, or images. The words
“world as a whole,” “empty,” or “harmonious” are not present to my
awareness. I apprehend the world-whole wordlessly, in an inner silence. And
I do not have a concept of the world-whole; I am not holding before my
intellect a concept that signifies or refers to the world- whole. Nor do I
have before my mind an image that symbolizes the whole. Rather, the whole is
directly apprehended; what is before me is the world- whole itself, not some
mental representation of it.
But if the
moody awareness is to be called “intuitive,” this cannot be meant in the
traditional sense of a unidirectional apprehension that singles out
one phenomenon among others. With Henri Bergson, for ex ample, one beholds
the duration of the self; with Husserl, one is intentionally directed upon
an eidos. The moody awareness by contrast is omnidirectional;
I feel the presence of a phenomenon everywhere, without having to turn my
awareness in this or that direction in order to apprehend it. The
omnipresence of a world-importance pervades the field of my aware ness,
extending ominously or mysteriously or monotonously everywhere I turn.
In most
moods, the omnidirectional intuition is a marginal intuitive
sensing of the world-importance. The important whole does not appear in
the foreground of my awareness but in the background; its presence is
vaguely sensed on the horizon of the phenomena of which I have an
attentional awareness. For example, I can read a book while in a depressed
mood. Here I am attending to what I am reading, but at the same time I have
a marginal awareness of a depressing world. On the horizon of my
concentration upon the subject matter of the book, I have a dim sense of the
futile and empty importance of everything.
The
horizonal character of the moody awareness means that the mood opens up a
space in the foreground of my awareness for a concern with specific
activities or existents within the world. I can engage in vocational
activities, interpersonal relations, etc., or I can let my attention wander,
and daydream. It is by virtue of the horizonal character of the appearance
of the whole of the world that the foreground of my awareness is relegated
to an occupation with this or that part of the world,
The moody
awareness contrasts quite sharply in this respect with the awareness usually
characteristic of affects. This affective awareness does not open up any
attentional space for me, but occupies all my attentional space. In the
affects of rage, terror, and joy, my attention is completely absorbed in
being aware of the phenomenon I am raging at or am terrified of. It is
obvious that I cannot read a book while undergoing a terrified affective
response to an armed robber.
While in
most moods the omnidirectional intuition is a horizonal sensing, in some
moods it is a foreground contemplating. The potential to achieve such
a contemplative awareness is possessed by all moods, but only occasionally
is it realized. Due to the complex and exceptional nature of this
contemplative awareness, I shall devote a separate section to it
(III.17).
III. 16. iii. The
Unfocused Character of the Moody Awareness of the Important World-Whole
The moody
awareness is not focused but is relatively indefinite and indeterminate.
This character of the moody awareness can only be under stood if it is
clearly distinguished from the usual horizonal character of the awareness.
That to have an unfocused awareness is not the same thing as to have a
horizonal awareness is shown by the fact that it is possible to have an
unfocused foreground awareness. This is not only possible in moods, but also
in such holistic bodily feelings as delirium, drunkenness, and exhaustion;
in such feelings I am not experiencing a focused act of attention but a
diffuse awareness that does not apprehend definite phenomena which have
finely articulated structures or sharply defined boundaries.
It is such
indeterminacy that belongs to the moody awareness of the important
world-whole. In the following, I will consider first what it means to have
an unfocused awareness of the world-whole, and then what it means to
have such an awareness of an importance of the world-whole.
It may be
asked, “Of the many different kinds of wholes-of-parts, what kind of
whole-of-parts is the world apprehended as in the moody awareness?” But such
a question cannot be answered without falsifying the moody awareness, for it
would be to make definite and determinate what is indeterminately given in
the mood itself, Inasmuch as this awareness is unfocused, all that can be
affirmed of it is this: it is not an enumerating or collecting awareness of
the world; it does not single out each and every individual in the world and
combine or add them together into a totality. Rather, it is an awareness of
something unitary. The “whole” of the world appears as a unit, a one, but
not as a simple one; it manifests itself as a one-of-many, as a single whole
composed of multiple parts. Some of these parts individually appear, such as
this table or that tree, but most appear in the almost wholly indiscriminate
form of “that which composes the world.” Moreover, this awareness is too
unfocused to even articulate this whole into basic sections (e.g., “nature,”
“society”) or types of constituents (e.g., “animate things,” “inanimate
things”).
Analogous
remarks can be made about the unfocused awareness of the importance of the
world-whole. The world-whole appears to be important in some way, but there
is no determinate aspect of the whole that appears to have this importance.
Not only do I mean that no part of the world-whole, e.g., this person
or that region of nature, is given as what has this importance, but also
that no determinate character that the world possesses in its nature as a
whole is given as having the importance. In serenity, for example, I am
aware of a good and harmonious world-whole. But I am not aware of any
specific way in which the world-whole is good and harmonious. If somebody
asked a serene person, “In respect of what is the world good and
harmonious?” or “What is it about the world that leads you to believe it is
good and harmonious?” the serene person would not be able to answer. The
good and harmonious nature of the world- whole does not appear to be
structurally articulated. It is not the case, for example, that the
world-whole appears harmonious in that it is a teleologically ordered
network of means and ends, or in that everything is an expression of
an élan vital, or in that everything is a manifestation of
Brahman. Rather, the world-whole appears harmonious in no determinate way.
The unfocused awareness of the serene mood can be explicated no more exactly
than by saying that it is an awareness of “a good and harmonious whole.”
III. 16. iv. The
Extralogical Character of the Moody Awareness of the Important World-Whole
The
unfocused omnidirectional intuition of the important world- whole unfolds on
an extralogical level. What the mood is aware of cannot be derived from a
priori logical principles or justified by logical arguments. This means
not only that the moody awareness does not engage in deductive or inductive
methods of thinking, but also that the results of these logical methods have
no necessary bearing or effect upon the moody awareness.
To begin
with, consider the irrelevance of syllogistic demonstrations to the moody
intuition that the world-whole is important in some way. The endeavor to
logically justify the mood of serenity, for example, by arguing that the
world can be demonstrated to be good and harmonious, is essentially
irrelevant to the serene intuition of this goodness and harmony. One could
argue with Aquinas that the proposition that “the being of everything is
good” can be deduced from the premises that “what is desirable is good” and
“everything desires its own being.”
But such
a deduction has no essential
bearing upon the serene intuition of goodness. The serene intuition is not
aware of this demonstration of the world’s goodness, is not based upon this
demonstration, and senses no need for such a logical justification. A person
could be completely ignorant of this demonstration and all similar
demonstrations, and still feel assured in his serenity that everything is
good. Moreover, a person could even be aware that this demonstration and all
similar demonstrations have been shown to be invalid, and remain unaffected
in his serenity.
But the
failure of all attempts to demonstrate syllogistically that the world-whole
is good is not all that is irrelevant to serenity. It could even be
successfully argued on inductive grounds that the world-whole is not good
and harmonious, but malevolent and strife-ridden, and this would still leave
the serene intuition unaffected. An inductive argument might conclude that
the empirical evidence indicates that the world exhibits a vicious struggle
of part against part, that it is a chaos of conflicting elements, or a
“swarming confusion” of particles/waves of energy. But such inductive
arguments would not exclude a mood of serenity, for this mood is not an
intuition of these inductive generalizations, and it is not based upon these
generalizations. It is possible, for instance, that a Darwin or Heisen berg
would be no less capable of a serene mood than thinkers who come to
fundamentally different conclusions about the world, e.g., an Aristotle or
Ptolemy. A Darwin or Heisenberg could very well conduct his studies in an
“unaccountable serenity”; he could have an intuitive sense that “every thing
is good and harmonious at bottom,” without attempting to articulate or
explain this intuition to himself and without attempting to relate this
intuition to the results of his scientific investigations. The “eyes”
through which he looks upon the world in his moods are different from the
“eyes” through which he looks in his scientific cognitions.
The
above-mentioned differences between the moody awareness and the logical
modes of awareness can be summed up by saying that the moody awareness is
noninferential; it is not involved in, and is not based upon, inferring
conclusions from deductive or inductive premises. The moody awareness
apprehends that the world-whole is important, and that it is important in
this or that way, without grasping any ground for this apprehension and
without sensing any need or requirement for such a ground.
These
remarks on the extralogical character of the moody awareness conclude the
discussion of the constant global characters of moods. The exceptional
characters are discussed in the next section.
III. 17. The Exceptional Global Characters of
Moods
What is it
to achieve a foreground awareness of the world-whole? Do I become completely
oblivious of this or that part and grasp instead a distinctionless unity?
(How could such a pure undifferentiated unity be the world-whole,
i.e., a whole-of-parts?) Or do I remain marginally aware of the
individual nature of some parts and achieve a foreground awareness of the
whole they help to compose?
It appears
that the latter is the case. The first possibility may be an experienceable
awareness, but it is not the global awareness experienced in moods.
The foreground moody awareness of the whole I call a metaphysical or
global contemplation. In it a feeling-tonality of the world-whole
comes to a foreground appearance (cf. III.17.i.), as well as a global
importance (cf. (III.17. ii); contemplation is different, however, from a
fore ground moody mulling (cf. III.17 .iii).
III. 17. i. Realizing
the Potential for Contemplating a Feeling-Tonality of the World- Whole
An
essential factor that is involved in realizing the potential for global
contemplation is “getting in touch” with the moody feeling. Usually the
moody feeling is consigned to the periphery of my experience, pushed aside,
as it were, by the urgency of my mundane strivings or the intensity of my
affective responses to this or that world-part. In order to “get in touch”
with the moody feeling, I must relax my concern with the mundane importance
that is the source of the striving or affect, and let myself flow primarily
with the moody feeling that has its source in the whole.
Consider
that in a bored mood I am frequently attentionally engaged in some
vocational activity or in some attempt to divert myself from the boredom.
But the possibility is always before me of terminating my resistance to my
boredom, of abandoning or relaxing my strivings to do this or that, and of
“giving in” to my bored orientation to the whole. This process of “giving
in” is not, however, a turning of my awareness back towards my ego and of
directing my apprehension upon the feeling- sensation of boredom that
adheres to my ego. In such a case, I would achieve a foreground awareness
only of one part of the world, namely my ego and its feeling-sensation. To
bring the boring world-whole into the foreground of my awareness, I must
unfocus my awareness and let my awareness become pervaded by the
feeling-tonality of the world. I let myself sink into the gray haze of the
boring world-whole. A vast fog of boredom seems to emanate from a source
deep within the global interior; it drifts listlessly from everywhere,
muffling and enshrouding everything. My awareness comes to an unfocused rest
in this great stagnancy of the whole.
In this
process of opening up contemplatively to the moody tonality of the
world-whole, I do not close my eyes or otherwise become oblivious to my
perceptual surroundings. Rather, my surroundings appear as the part of the
world in which the feeling-tonality of the whole is able to be sensuously
apprehended. The boring and stagnant tonality of the whole seems to imbue
the perceptual phenomena in my surroundings: the landscape, the sky, and
everything else within my view seems to be dull and lifeless. The boring
stagnancy of the whole seems to penetrate through this landscape and sky and
acquire here a sensuous embodiment for me. But my awareness is not confined
to what I perceive; I apprehend my surroundings as only one part in the
vastness of the boring whole.
If I cease
my strivings in order to “give in” to the boredom, I will no longer
experience (even marginally) a feeling of striving, but I will marginally
experience some type of mundane feeling. This is necessary, for I am still
aware of individual world-parts, this sky, those trees. I am
marginally experiencing a perceptual appreciation of the panoramically hued
environment, e.g., a somber landscape. This somber panorama marginally
emanates a tonal-flow that adds a dark tinge to the dulled flow of the
boredom.
In order to
engage in global contemplation, it is not always necessary to cease my
strivings and to experience on the mundane level nothing more than a
marginal perceptual appreciation of my panoramically hued surroundings. I
can “let myself go” and drift into the vast monotonous whole as I absently
engage in some routine chore, like washing the dinner dishes. In such a
case, the global dullness is coexperienced with a marginally felt
physical effort.
III. 17. ii. Realizing
the Potential for Contemplating an Importance of the World-Whole
The
contemplative opening up to the moody feeling-tonality of the world-whole is
at the same time a realization of a foreground contemplation of the
importance of the world-whole. This contemplation is realized through
allowing the important whole to emerge from the horizon and swell into the
foreground, so as to overwhelm apparentially the mundanely important things
that once occupied the foreground. An omnidirectional intuiting displaces
the unidirectional intuiting as the center of my experiencing. I open myself
primarily to that which is omnipresent. This means neither that I am lost in
a distinctionless simplicity nor that I am singling out each thing that
exists, but rather that I am directed to the one omniapparent whole of which
each thing partakes. I am singling out a few world- parts, but they are
being appreciated primarily in regard to their feature of partaking
of the omnipresent whole. The mundane importance that these parts
have relative to their individual nature (as this or that con figured
importance, magnetizing importance, intrinsically flowing importance,
enhancing or detracting importance), appears only marginally and is
overshadowed by the metaphysical importance these parts have in their common
aspect as participants in the important world-whole.
In euphoric
contemplation, there is a diffuse intuitive feeling that the world is a
fulfilled whole. As this fulfilled whole emerges into the foreground,
I begin to appreciate the parts around me primarily as fulfilled
parts of this whole. Each part has this importance, not through being this
person or that tree, but simply through being a part of the fulfilled
whole.
Although
both the fulfilled whole and its fulfilled parts that are around me appear
in the contemplated foreground, my contemplative awareness is more oriented
to the whole. This whole shines into me from before me and all around
me as the boundlessly appreciable. It is comprised of every innerworldly
importance that exists; there is no importance that falls outside of it. I
am experientially deepened and broadened into a feeling of maximal
importance, a feeling of an importance that is more important
than any other importance. Every other importance is but a part of the
maximal importance, and is only partly as important as the maximal
importance.
This
contemplative feeling of maximal importance is made fully explicit in the
moodily reappreciative thinking-feelings in the following way. Each and
every thing that appears in a feeling-awareness is an importance. In
globally contemplative feeling-awarenesses, all the things in the world in
some sense appear, although most of them appear in an indeterminate way and
are not individually singled out. Most of them appear vaguely as belonging
to the indiscriminate mass of “all the other things beyond the ones I am
currently singling out in my perceiving or striving.” Nevertheless, they do
appear in some way, and in so appearing they appear (as do all appearing
things) as importances. It is realized in the reappreciative thinking that a
whole composed of anything less than all the parts of the world does not
include some importances. Accordingly, a whole that includes both the
importances of this lesser whole and the importances this lesser whole does
not include, is a whole of more importances than the lesser whole. And this
means the greatest whole there is, the world-whole, is the whole that
includes the most importances within itself. In this sense there is
more importance belonging to this whole than to any whole that is a
part of the world. And this is what it means to say that the world-whole is
the most important whole that exists.
It is
possible to perform an imaginative exercise in the reappreciative awareness
that illustrates and further substantiates this sense that the world- whole
is the most important importance. I can begin by imagining some mundane
whole, such as myself, and comparing it with a whole that includes myself
and some other things, e.g., members of my family. It is imaginatively and
noninferentially felt that the whole composed of myself and other members of
my family is a more important whole than the whole represented by myself
alone. If this were not the case, I would have to feel that the other family
members are absolutely unimportant and that they cannot add any further
importance whatsoever. But in apprehending them, I feel that they are
important, and hence that they add to my importance. I can further
imaginatively compare the whole composed of my family members and myself
with the whole of humanity. It is felt that my family, myself, and all other
human beings comprise a more important whole than that comprised by myself
and my family alone. I can then add all other living and nonliving things to
the whole of humanity and imaginatively feel that this larger whole is even
more important than the whole of humanity.
But most
significant of all is the last stage in this imaginative experiment. I can
imagine the whole of all that exists except for one thing that is relatively
unimportant, e.g., a pebble on a beach. Does the addition of this pebble
make an even more important whole? The pebble is relatively unimportant, but
it is not absolutely unimportant; it is noteworthy (it is worthy at least of
being examined to see how important it is), substantial, smooth, shiny, and
it is something that exists. I can appreciate it in a perceiving-feeling as
a hue-displaying configured importance. It is a source of feeling-flows,
perhaps of enchantment with its smooth and shiny surface or perhaps only of
inertial indifference.
It is both evocatively describable (shiny, etc.) and exactly describable
(reflects light, etc.). I see that it is important, and thus that the whole
that includes the pebble, and which is the whole of everything, is
more important than the whole of everything but the pebble. In this way it
is imaginatively realized that the world-whole is more important than any
mundane whole, no matter how large the mundane whole may be.
Despite
this fact, most people devote most or all of their time to appreciating in a
foreground way some mundane whole, such as themselves, their families, their
fellow workers and workplaces, and their friends and recreational
entertainments. Humans for the most part spend their lives appreciating,
without realizing this explicitly, importances other than the most important
importance. They do not realize this explicitly because they fail to realize
their potential for global contemplation that belongs to their moods. This
failure is due to the declination into mundanity that holds sway
throughout virtually all human existence, the perpetual narrowing or
making shallow of one’s appreciative openness, so that one be comes
receptive to the importance of this thing or that thing but
not of everything. The deep and broad reception of the absolute
totality of importance is usually or always confined to the horizon of one’s
experience, displaced by the magnetizing importances, configured importances,
and intrinsically flowing importances that emanate mundane striving or
affective flows. The metaphysical nature that belongs to all humans remains
for the most part horizonal and undeveloped.
III. 17. iii. Global
Contemplation Distinguished from Moody Mulling
Global
contemplation is somewhat similar to, but is not to be confused with,
another attitude that can also be adopted in moods, a mulling over mundane
concerns. Moody mulling is similar to global contemplation in that it
involves letting myself go from my mundane strivings and affects and “giving
in” to the sensuous moody feeling and awareness of importance. But the moody
feeling and awareness of importance are not allowed to hold sway in their
pure state, as a feeling and awareness of importance that are oriented to
the world-whole. Rather, they are diverted towards specific individual
phenomena that are singled out on the basis of mundane concerns. Moreover,
whereas the global contemplation is intuitive, the mulling is nonintuitive,
involving thinking about or imagining this or that world-part. I begin
mulling over these phenomena in the light of my moody feeling and sense of
importance: I become involved in moody thoughts, in reliving certain scenes
in my memory, and in day dreaming. In a depressed mood, for instance, I
cease my strivings and “give in” to my downcast feeling and to my sense of
futility and emptiness; but instead of contemplating the world-whole in this
light, I begin mulling over mundane matters. I have depressed thoughts that
“I will never be successful in my career as a doctor,” that “my friends
don’t really like me,” that “I will never be able to pay off all my debts,”
and so forth. What I appreciate as futile are the specific activities and
phenomena that belong to the sphere of my mundane concerns. I am not letting
myself “give in” to the pure moody sense that, everything is futile
and empty instead of just my career and financial state. By mulling over the
futility of this or that mundane concern, I keep the futility of everything
at bay, relegated to the horizon of my awareness.
This
differentiation of mundane mulling from global contemplation concludes the
description of the exceptional global character of moods. In the next
section we shall encounter the metaphysical problem that is posed by the
constant and exceptional global characters of moods.
III. 18. The Metaphysical Problem Posed by
the Moody Awarenesses
There lies
dormant in moody intuitions a metaphysical problem whose implications seem
to cast into doubt the veridical character of the moody awarenesses, and
which appears to be insoluble on the basis of the metaphysical data provided
by moods alone. This is the problem of the seemingly clashing ways in
which the world-whole is felt to be important. This problem arises in
moods themselves, and on the basis of the phenomena manifested in the moods
themselves, and is not a problem imported into moods from the outside. It is
originally experienced in the reappreciative moody thinking that
arises in the afterglow of certain mood changes. It is recognized that the
way in which the world-whole appears to be important in one mood clashes
with the way it appears to be important in another mood, and that there is
no basis or criterion in the moody intuitions themselves for deciding which
of these clashing appearances is the veridical one.
Consider
the following mood changes. I may begin by feeling de pressed, and in this
depression the world-whole intuitively appears to me to be empty and futile.
But then my depression lifts and I begin to feel serene or even euphoric,
and the world-whole appears to be harmonious or fulfilled. As this latter
mood comes over me, I form the tacit judgement that the world-whole is not
really futile and empty after all, but had merely seemed to be empty due to
my depression. In the new mood, let us say it is a euphoric one, I feel that
the world-whole is really fulfilled and that it really deserves a euphoric
appreciation rather than a depressed one.
Now the
problematical character of this “see-saw” among mutually cancelling
world-views is not recognized in these moody intuitions them selves, for in
each mood it is unthematically and intuitively felt to be the case that the
world-whole is the way it appears to be in that mood, and the previous
clashing appearances exhibited by the world-whole are tacitly discounted as
deceptive appearances. It is not until a moody thinking has ensued wherein I
no longer live in, but reflect upon, my moody intuitions that
I can recognize the problematic nature of these changing world-views. In the
afterglow of one of these mood changes, I can turn back upon and compare the
incompatible feelings of intuitive givenness; in this reflective comparison
I can recognize that the givenness which is felt in the mood whose afterglow
I am experiencing is no different in character than the givenness
felt in the incompatible mood I had earlier experienced. In both cases,
there is a feeling of the intuitive presence of a certain global
importance, and since there is no other internal mark that could serve
to distinguish on an epistemic level one of the moody intuitions from the
other, the reflection upon these intuitions is led to the conclusion that
the purported metaphysical data provided by these intuitions are
unreliable and incoherent when considered in terms of themselves alone.
Stated in a
more explicit way, this conclusion has the following form: if the
world-whole is thought to really have the features it appears to have in the
moody intuitions, then it is thought to really have features it can not
possibly have; for the world-whole cannot possess features that cancel each
other out. Moods must be deluded experiences of the world-whole.
This is the
conclusion to which moody thinking is led insofar as the moody intuitions
are considered by themselves alone. However, if new and additional data
can be obtained about the importances revealed in moods, data that show
these importances to be mutually compatible, then this conclusion can
be avoided. If such data could be obtained, then one of two possible ways of
avoiding this conclusion would present itself. First,
it might appear that the
newly understood structural aspects of the impor tances indicate that some
of them are real importances of the world-whole, whereas other ones, the
ones clashing with these, are not real importances of the worid-whole but
merely deceptively seem to be so in certain moods. For example, if we
learned more about the nature of the world-whole’s fulfillment and
emptiness, we might find ourselves in a position to know that the
world-whole really is fulfilled, and really is not empty, although it
deceptively seems to be empty in the deluded mood of depression.
The other
possibility is that the world-whole really has all the ways of being
important it appears to have in moods, but it has them in different and
nonclashing respects. Thus we would no longer describe the fulfillment
and emptiness of the world-whole in the brief sentences “The world-whole (as
such and without qualification) is fulfilled” and “The world-whole (as such
and without qualification) is empty,” but would add further qualifications:
“The world-whole in this respect is fulfilled,” but “The world-whole
in this other respect is empty.”
Now it is
known to the moody thinking that we experience global affective
intuitions as well as global moody intuitions, and it can be recognized
in this moody thinking that these affective intuitions are able to provide
the further data about the world-whole’s importances which are required in
order to solve the problem posed by the moody appearances of these
importances. The solution to this problem, as we shall see in Division B of
this chapter, is the second of the two above-mentioned ones, viz., the
world-whole really has all the importances it appears to have in moods, but
it has them in different and nonclashing respects.
DIVISION B:
GLOBAL AFFECTS AND GLOBAL IMPORTANCES
AS THEY ARE AFFECTIVELY APPRECIA TED
III. 19. Preliminary Descriptions:
Similarities and Differences between Global Affects and Moods
The aim of
this division is to show how the metaphysical problem posed by moods can be
solved by an explication of global affective intuitions. This will be done
by comparing moods and affects and indicating how the unique metaphysical
characteristics possessed by affects enable them to reveal the respects in
which the different global importances are mutually compatible.
Global
affects and moods are similar in that they are awarenesses of the important
world-whole and of sensuous feelings that have their source in this whole.
The quality and flow of their sensuous feelings are parallel in type: just
as there is a mood of depression that has a downward and sunken
feeling-flow, so there is an affect of despair that has a parallel
feeling-flow; the affect of joy corresponds to the mood of euphoria,
the affect of dread to the mood of anxiety, and so on.
One of the
differences between global affects and moods was stated at the beginning of
III.15: global affects are consciously directed responses to the global
importance that elicited them, whereas moods, although aware of a global
importance, do not apprehend this importance as that which brought on the
mood in the first place. Rather, in moods the originator of the moody
feeling is not given. I feel anxious or serene, but do not know from what.
In the following, this difference will be specified in terms of different
nontypological fiow-characters and awareness-characters of moods
and affects.
The
affective flow is experienced to have the character of being “made to flow”
by the important world-whole: it is experienced as emanated from and by
the important world-whole. But the moody flow is not experienced to be
emanated by the whole. This does not mean that the moody feeling- flow
lacks a directional source; it means only that the moody “flowing from” the
whole is not a flowing that is engendered by the whole. The moody
feeling-flow is emanated from the whole, but not emanated by
it. The “from” in the phrase “emanated from” has only a directional sense;
the world-whole as the global interior is the “place from which” or the
“directional source” from which the moody flow flows, but is not also the en
gendering power that makes the moody flow emanate from this
directional source.
The
engendering relation experienced in affects is a type of enhancing or
detracting relation. Affective flows in respect of their feeling-sensations
are important features of the I that feels, and their being engendered by
a global importance is a way in which the importance of the I that feels is
enhanced or detracted from.
The concept
of “causing” is a way of exactly conceiving what implicitly appears in an
intuitively felt enhancing or detracting. Accordingly, the engendering of an
affective flow by a global importance can be said to be a “causing” of this
flow.
Although
engendering features are exactly determinable as causal features,
source-features are not. To be a source from which a feeling flows is not by
that fact to be a “cause” of the flow.
The world
as it is felt, then, cannot (if only for this one consideration) be
essentially characterized as a world of “experienced causes of feeling.” For
“felt causes” only manifest themselves in the world as it is affectively
felt and not in the world as it is moodily felt.
The world as felt is essentially characterized in a way that pertains to
both moods and affects, as a world of “experienced sources of
feeling.”
The
above-described differences in the flow-character of moods and affects are
mirrored by differences in their awareness-characters.
Moody
intuitions are not captivated by the important whole. Consider, to begin
with, the moods in which the potentiality for global contemplation is not
being realized and which are engaged only in a horizonal intuitive
sensing of the whole. In these cases, the important whole appears so
uncaptivating that it leaves my attention free to concern itself with some
other matter, with some world-part that is mundanely important.
Moody
contemplations likewise are uncaptivated: they originate in my free
choice to turn towards the already horizonally felt whole and to allow this
whole to emerge into a foreground appearance. The whole does not capture my
attention and hold it upon itself; I turn towards it and hold my attention
upon it.
Contrast
this voluntary origin of the contemplation with the involuntary origin of
the affective captivation. In affects, an important feature of the
world-whole spontaneously irrupts into appearance, without my first having
decided to turn my attention towards that feature. It captivates me: a
single spellbinding presence occupies and rivets my attention. This
irruption may be occasioned by some event in my surroundings or by some
train of thought or imagery, but this occasioning is not something planned
or chosen. I look out my window and see a gloriously red sky; suddenly there
emerges into presence the joyous fulfillment of the whole. Or I
resolve some turmoil about my career or family, and the resolution occasions
an expansion of awareness of such a sort that the harmoniousness of
the world suddenly rises into appearance and bathes me in a global
peacefulness.
In some
cases, an irruption into affective omnipresence may not ap pear to be
occasioned by anything; without warning, and without apparent connection to
anything, the emptiness and futility of everything washes over
me and casts me into the hopelessly sunken abyss of despair. Or I wake up in
the middle of the night, startled at the miracle of the world.
Obviously
these captivating importances cannot break forth into the consciousness of
one who is closed off from the whole and who is completely and constantly
absorbed in mundane importances. The whole can not show itself to somebody
who lacks the capacity or desire to appreciate anything but his family and
friends, his career, his television set, and his next meal. A person must be
globally receptive and open. These last remarks point to another way in
which the origination of global affects differs from that of moods. Moods
are originated regularly in everybody (although usually in a horizonal way),
whereas global affects are only occasionally originated in some people.
The rarity
of the experience of global affects is due to three things. One of them,
already indicated above, is the mundanity of most people’s concerns
and capacities. This mundanity can be further described, following which the
other two factors will be discussed.
Spirituality, the desire and capacity to know and appreciate mean ings of
the world as a whole, is not possessed by all people, and those who do
possess it have it in different degrees. Relative to spiritual or global
desires, four cases can be distinguished.
A person’s
predominant desire may be to know and appreciate global meanings; this
person is maximally receptive to being captivated by global importances and
he experiences global affects more often than mundane affects. This is the
rarest type of person.
More common is the person whose global desires are secondary to his mundane
desires for family intimacy, career success, friends, etc. This person may
infrequently experience global affects, perhaps on occasions of great
mundane crises or successes, but is usually closed off from them; they do
not form the focus of the feelings of importance that govern his life.
A third
case is a person who is bereft of global desires. His affective life is
wholly absorbed by the mundane, and he feels no need for any thing greater
or more important than the objects of his mundane desires.
A fourth
case concerns those people to whom global matters are neither something
desired nor something to which they are indifferent, but are something to
which they feel an aversion. In some cases, this aversion is based on a fear
of global reality as something unfamiliar, as something that threatens the
“reality” of their familiar mundane sphere. Such persons suppress any
foreground global awareness, so that even their fear of global reality
remains suppressed. In other instances of aversion to metaphysical
importances, the aversion takes the form of scorn and con tempt of the
persons who affectively experience these importances. Persons who are wholly
absorbed in mundanities, and yet who pride themselves on being “wise” and
“intellectually superior,” cannot allow that other people have a more
fundamental experience of reality than they themselves do. In order to
preserve their sense of superiority, they go out of their way to heap
ridicule upon globally sensitive persons and to assert that such persons are
“sick” or “deluded.” All that can be “known” to be real, they passionately
avow, are mundanities of the type in which they themselves are absorbed.
It is not
only lack of desire but also lack of capacity that prevents many people from
being receptive to global affects. It is clear that different people have
different capacities to intuit or comprehend different things; e.g., some
people have better eyesight than others, are more aesthetically sensitive,
or are more able to comprehend mathematical theories, etc. Analogously, some
people have a greater capacity to focus intuitively upon the world-whole.
Just as an unintelligent person cannot intellectually grasp a complicated
argument or a tone-deaf person cannot auditorily grasp a difference between
two tones, so a globally insensitive person cannot intuitively grasp the
whole. Globally insensitive persons who pride themselves on being
“intellectually superior” frequently adopt the above- described attitude of
scornful aversion to sensitive persons and to claims about global
intuitions; their implicit belief is, “if I, a wise person, do not or
cannot experience these intuitions, then they cannot be veridical
intuitions!”
The second
major cluster of factors besides the lack of global desire or capacity
concerns the kind of spirituality people possess. Most people who are
spiritually desirous and capable have a rational spirituality, and this
means their spiritual affective life is directed towards the presence or
absence of God (or absolute goodness) rather than the importance features of
the world-whole. They experience mystical affects, or contrary affects like
Godless desolation, nausea, or angst, but not global affects
in the sense pertinent to the metaphysics of feeling. (Global affects are
distinguished from mystical and other seemingly spiritual affects in III.
21.)
A third
factor concerns people who are both desirous and capable of experiencing
global affects but do not believe these affects are veridical. This
sceptical attitude closes them off from the omnipresent global importances
that they would otherwise be captivated by. One of the tasks of the
metaphysics of feeling is to show that global affective intuitions are
veridical and that such scepticism is unwarranted. The veridicality of
global affects is not a “premise” of the metaphysics of feeling, or
something to be “taken on faith,” but is something to be established
by the metaphysics of feeling. This establishment begins in the next
section.
III. 20. The Difference between Global
Affects and Moods That Enables the Global Affects to Resolve the
Metaphysical Problem Posed by Moods
III. 20. i. Affective
Intuitions Are More Focused than Moody Intuitions
The
differences in the way moods and global affects are originated point ‘to the
third and crucial difference between these feelings, crucial in the sense
that this difference is what enables global affects to resolve the
metaphysical problem posed by moods. This third difference is what accounts
for the first two differences, namely, why global importances engender
the affective flows but not the moody flows and why these importances
captivate the affective awarenesses but not the moody aware nesses. The
explanation is that some aspects of these importances, the aspects which are
flow-engendering and captivating, appear in affects but not in moods. More
of the global importances, that is, more of their structural constitution,
comes to appearance in the affects, and these constitutive aspects of the
importances are such that when they come to an intuitive appearance they
engender a feeling-flow and captivate one’s attention. The global affect of
tedium, for example, is more focused than its parallel mood of boredom.
Both are feeling-awarenesses of the global importance of monotonousness, but
in the boredom, this monotonousness appears in a vague and unarticulated
way, such that the monotonousness as it is manifest in the boredom cannot be
analyzed into further elements or aspects that make it up. In the affect of
tedium, on the other hand, the world-whole appears to be monotonous in
that there are no interesting sequences unfolding in the world qua
whole. Every moment, every hour, every day, the world in its wholeness is
“just there,” always the same, en during inertly. All
processes—interpersonal, physical, ideational, and the like—are or are
features of this or that part of the world and are not features of the whole
of the world. In this sense, the monotonousness comes to appearance in the
tedium as articulated into structural aspects; it appears as the enduring
unchanged of the processless “being a whole” of the whole. It is this
determinate constitution of the monotonousness that captivates me, binds in
a wearying way my affective awareness, and “makes me flow” backwards in a
dulled manner.
This
difference gives rise to a different understanding of the language
used in describing the importance as it appears in the boredom and global
tedium. Relative to boredom, the sentence, “The world-whole is monotonous,”
is an exact explication of what appears in the bored intuition. But
this same sentence understood as applying to what appears in global tedium
is inexact and suggestive, the exact explication being “The
world’s physi cally, interpersonally and ideationally processless character
of ‘being a whole’ endures unchanged.”
In order to
find an explication of the world-whole as it appears in the bored mood that,
relative to this appearance, is inexact and suggestive, one must turn to
such phrases as “all is gray upon gray” or “everything is muffled by a
cosmic fog.” (And these phrases would be even more inexact and suggestive
than “the world-whole is monotonous” relative to the tedious
appearance of the world-whole.)
The terms
for the different global importances, monotonousness, fulfillment,
emptiness, supremacy, immensity, closeness, miraculousness, ominousness,
etc., may be understood as exact terms insofar as they are used to describe
the appearance of these importances in moods, but as inexact and suggestive
terms when employed to explicate their appearance in global affects.
At this
point we may raise the question, How does this difference in the
determinateness of the appearance of global importances in moods and affects
provide a means of solving the metaphysical problem posed by moods? It will
be recalled that at the end of Division A of this chapter I indicated that
the affective intuitions enable us to understand how the importances belong
to the world-whole in different and compatible respects. The determinacy of
the affective appearance of the importances is such that the unique respect
in which each importance belongs to the world-whole comes to appearance in
the affective intuition of the importance itself. Because of this, it can be
understood how the different ways in which the world-whole is important are
compatible with one another, for each importance affectively appears as
belonging to the world-whole in a different respect.
This can be
illustrated by the global affects of tedium and awe and their corresponding
moods. In ordinary language there is no word commonly used to designate the
mood that parallels the affect of awe, so I shall decide somewhat
arbitrarily to use the word “amazement” for this purpose.
The moods of boredom and amazement seem to disclose in compatible features
of the world-whole, for it seems that the world-whole cannot without
qualification be both boring and amazing. It seems that the
world-whole must have either the importance of monotonousness and dullness
or the importance of stupendousness and immensity.
But this
seeming incompatibility is resolved once the determinate nature of these
importances becomes disclosed. In tedium, it becomes manifest that the
world-whole is dull and monotonous in respect of the enduring unchanged
of its processless nature; in awe, it becomes apparent that the
world-whole is stupendous and immense in respect of its character as the
greatest whole there is, as a whole that is so great it indefinitely
surpasses my capacity to single out in thought or imagination each and every
one of its parts. It is recognized, in a reappreciative thinking that
reflects upon and compares these two determinately appearing importances,
that they belong to the world-whole in different and compatible respects.
The world-whole is not immense in that it endures processlessly, but in
that it is the greatest whole there is; it is not monotonous in that
it is the greatest whole there is, but in that it endures
processlessly. It is manifest, moreover, that the world’s feature of being
the greatest whole there is, is compatible with its feature of being a
processless whole that endures unchanged.
It appears,
then, that in global tedium I am aware of a different importance of the
world-whole than I am aware of in awe. It is not as if in passing from
tedium to awe I tacitly “change my mind” about how the world-whole is
important (as I may seem to do in passing from boredom to amazement);
rather, I change the direction of my attention, so that I turn
towards a different feature of the whole.
The
complete resolution of the problem of the seeming incompatibility of the
global importances is accomplished through describing the affectively
disclosed determinate nature of each global importance, and showing how
these determinately disclosed importances are mutually compatible. This task
is largely accomplished in Part 2, where the determinate nature of the
various global importances is the major theme of
my descriptions.
It can be
pointed out here that the disclosure of this compatibility dissolves the
basis for doubting the veridicality of global intuitive feelings. If global
intuitive feelings clash with one another, then it is questionable if they
are veridical. But if they are mutually agreeing, and no other veridical
intuition clashes with them, then there is no justifiable basis to doubt
their veridicality. If they seem in all respects to be veridical, then they
are veridical.
This last
remark introduces in a summary way the following detailed criticism of
scepticism about global affects. I will show that any basis for doubting the
veridicality of global affective intuitions is also a basis for doubting all
intuitions, and that all intuitions cannot be coherently doubted.
III 20. ii. The
Veridicality of Global Affective Intuitions
That global
affective intuitions are veridical can be shown if the nature and criteria
of intuitional truth are made fully explicit. The nature and criteria of
intuitional truth differ from the nature and criterion of significational
truth; a signification is true if it signifies an importance, and the
criterion for determining its truth is the intuitive discovery of the
importance that the signification purportedly signifies.
Intuitive feelings, since they are not significations, possess a truth that
has a radically different nature and set of criteria.
The nature
of intuitional truth is manifested in intuitive feelings wherein the
putatively intuited importance is and is as it is intuitively felt
to be. In all intuitions, there intuitively seems to be an important
state of affairs, and if there really is an important state of affairs, and
if it really is just as it intuitively seems to be, then the intuition is
veridical. The intuition is nonveridical if there intuitively seems to be an
important state of affairs that is not or is not as it intuitively
seems to be.
The
criteria for determining the veridicality or nonveridicality of intuitive
feelings become apparent once it is noted that in the strict sense of
“intuition” only veridical awarenesses can be intuitions. For an
intuition by its very nature is an immediate apprehension of something
as it really is. A nonveridical awareness cannot, strictly speaking,
be an intuition, but can (in some cases at least) deceptively seem
to be an intuition. Such feeling-awarenesses are delusory intuitions.
Real intuitions and delusory intuitions are analogous in that they both seem
to be (real) intuitions, such that in this respect there is no experienced
difference between the two. There cannot be an experienced difference in
this respect, for if there were, a delusory intuition would not be a
delusory intuition, i.e., it would not deceptively seem to be a real
intuition.
This
observation enables us to understand that there are two criteria for
determining whether or not a seeming intuition is a real or delusory
intuition. First, there is the intrinsic criterion, how the
feeling-awareness seems to the person who is experiencing it. If the
feeling-awareness seems to be a real intuition, then (according to
this criterion alone) it is a real intuition. The second criterion is
extrinsic: if there are extrinsic grounds for believing that the
supposedly intuited importance does not exist, or does not have the features
it was supposedly intuited as having, then the intrinsic ground, how the
feeling-awareness seemed to the person who ex perienced it, is overridden,
and the seeming intuition is determined to be delusory. But if there are no
such extrinsic grounds, then the intrinsic ground is sufficient to detetmine
the seeming intuition to be a real intuition.
Since real
and delusory intuitions both meet the intrinsic criterion, since they both
seem to be intuitions, it is only by reference to extrinsic grounds
that they can be distinguished. Delusory intuitions are seeming intuitions
the intrinsic grounds of which are overridden by extrinsic grounds, and real
intuitions are seeming intuitions the intrinsic grounds of which are not
overridden.
Since I
shall maintain that we are justified in believing many global affects to be
real intuitions, in that they are seeming intuitions whose intrinsic grounds
are not overridden by any known extrinsic grounds, it is crucial to
establish firmly that intrinsic grounds are sufficient (in the
absence of overriding extrinsic grounds) to determine seeming intuitions to
be real intuitions.
The
intrinsic criterion for intuitional truth is an instance of the more general
principle of intrinsically grounded belief, which states that “if something
seems to be the case, then (in the absence of extrinsic grounds for
believing otherwise) the very fact that it seems to be the case is a
ground for believing that it is the case.” This principle is
equivalent but not identical to the principle of veridical seeming, which
states that “all seemings are intrinsically veridical seemings; that is, in
the absence of overriding extrinsic grounds, seemings are veridical.” If the
principle of veridical seeming is true, the principle of internally grounded
belief is true, and if this latter principle is true, so is the principle
asserting the intrinsic criterion of intuitional truth. It will suffice,
then, to show in the following that the principle of veridical seeming is
true.
That the
principle of veridical seeming is true can be made manifest by describing
what appears in a certain type of affect, an absolutely epistemically
confused affect. This affect is an affective believing in the truth of a
sceptical principle, a principle that is tantamount to a denial of the
principle of veridical seeming. This sceptical principle is that “all
seemings to be are intrinsically deceptive; they do not have an intrinsic
ground of veridicality but of nonveridicality.” This principle seems true
to the absolutely confused person. It can seem true to him because he is too
con fused to recognize that if this principle does seem to him to be true,
then it is false. There are two possibilities in regard to this seeming to
be true. Either the principle’s seeming to be true is a deceptive seeming
and the principle is false, or the principle’s seeming to be true is a
veridical seeming, in which case the principle also false. Consider
this second possibility. If the seeming to be true is a veridical seeming,
then the principle is true, and all seemings, including this
one, are deceptive. Thus if this seeming to be true is a veridical seeming,
it also is a deceptive seeming. And this means it cannot be a veridical
seeming, for a veridical seeming whose very veridicality implies its
nonveridicality is nonveridical. The sceptical principle, then,
cannot veridically seem to be true, and this implies that its denial, the
principal of veridical seeming, is true.
It might be
believed that the denial of the principle of veridical seeming can be
attempted in another way, a way that is coherent. Instead of
asserting that all seemings are intrinsically deceptive, it could
be asserted that all seemings could be intrinsically deceptive.
More exactly, it is believed that “all seemings may be intrinsically
deceptive or may be intrinsically veridical, and there is no presumption in
favor of either possibility.”
But this
second sceptical principle also cannot veridically seem to be true, and can
only seem to be true in an absolutely epistemically con fused affective
believing. For if all seemings could be intrinsically deceptive, then it is
a possibly true belief that all seemings are intrinsically deceptive. That
is to say, it is possible that there is a veridical seeming that all
seemings are intrinsically deceptive. But it is not possible that there
could be such a veridical seeming, for if all seemings are intrinsically
deceptive, this seeming also is deceptive.
Since it is
not possible or actual that all seemings are intrinsically deceptive, all
seemings are intrinsically veridical.
This
applies to seeming intuitions. All feeling-awarenesses that seem to be
intuitions are (in the absence of overriding extrinsic grounds)
veridical seemings; that is, they are what they seem to be, intuitions.
In regard
to seeming affective intuitions of the important world whole, this means
that if they are not overridden by extrinsic grounds, then their intrinsic
claim to veridicality is unimpeached. The only possible source of extrinsic
grounds capable of overriding seeming global affective intuitions would be
veridical mundane intuitions that clash with the seeming global intuitions
(for apart from intuitions of the whole of the world, the only other
intuitions are of some part of the world). For exampie, if there were a
seeming global intuition of the world-whole as being temporally finite, and
if there were veridical mundane intuitions of world- parts that were
temporally infinite, these latter intuitions would clash with and override
the seeming global intuition. One of the aims of my descriptions in Part 2
is to make it manifest that there are many seeming global intuitions which
are not overridden by mundane intuitions, and hence that there is no
justifiable basis for doubting the veridicality of all global affects.
III. 21. Global Affects Distinguished from
Mystical Affects, Existential Affects, Essential Affects, and Nature Affects
If the
subject of my descriptions in Part 2 is to be the particular types of global
affects, then it is necessary to first achieve a more precise idea of the
general nature of these affects. In the preceding sections, I offered a
positive account of their general nature. But equally significant is a
negative account, that is, a determination of what these affects are not.
This is of especial significance in a metaphysics of feeling, as there are
several different types of affects that have frequently been thought to be
“metaphysical”or “spiritual” in some sense, but which are fundamentally
different from what I have described as metaphysical affects, the affective
intuitions of the felt meanings of the world-whole. Four such seemingly
metaphysical affects are the mystical, existential, essential, and nature
affects. In the following four subsections, I shall elucidate these four
affects and indicate how they differ from global affects.
III. 21.i. Mystical
Affects Distinguished from Global Affects
It is clear
from the contemporary literature on mysticism that there is no universally
accepted definition of a “mystical experience” or a “mystical affect.” It
remains true nevertheless that mystical affects are usually (but not
always) considered to be seeming intuitions of God, the unconditioned
cause of the world, and in accordance with this predominant viewpoint I
shall use the phrase “mystical affects” to refer to these seeming
intuitions.
An
elucidation of the nature of the mystical affect can be achieved by way of
substantiating the above claim that the mystical affect is “usually
considered” to be a seeming intuition of the uncaused cause of the world. I
will show that in most mystical traditions, the Hindu, Neoplatonic,
Christian, and Islamic, the mystics within that tradition predominantly
conceive of their mystical experiences as intuitions of the unconditioned
cause of the world. This will prepare the way for a sharp distinction
between the mystical and global affects.
The
earliest expressions of mysticism appear in the Hindu scriptures,
particularly in the Upanishads. In these writings the mystical affect
is pre dominantly considered to be a “union with the Lord [Isa] of
the world,”
this Lord being Brahman, who is also identical with the Self,
Atman. The nature of this union is characterized in the Brhadaranyaka
Upanishad as follows: “He who has discovered and become aware of his
Self [atma] and entered into this impenetrable dwelling, he is the
cause of everything, the cause of the whole world, in fact, he is the whole
world.”
The apparent paradox that is created by this statement that in mystical
union one has achieved identity with the cause of the world and with the
world itself is dispelled once the pantheistic basis of the Hindu doctrine
is under stood. Brahman, the cause of the world, is also the real
nature of each and every thing in the world. “This whole world is Brahman.”
The world qua caused by Brahman is maya, illusion, whereas the
world as it really is, is Brahman himself. It is written in the
Svetãsvatara Upanishad that “Brahman is the illusion-maker [mayin]
who created this whole world as an illusion [maya] in which the human
soul is bound.”
The human soul is released through recognizing that the world as caused is
an illusion and through being united in mystical contemplation with the
cause of this illusion.
This
understanding of the mystical experience is shared by Sankara, the most
well-known and influential Hindu philosophical mystic. Sankara held that
Brahman is the cause of the world and that in this sense “Brahman is
other than the world. [But] there exists nothing that is not [in reality]
Brahman. If something other than Brahman appears to exist, it is unreal,
like a mirage.”
In mystical intuition one “sees the world as the non-dual Brahman,”
i.e., one sees the world as it really is.
The
pantheistic element in Hindu mysticism is less present in Neo platonic
mysticism and in the Christian mysticism that stemmed from the Neoplatonic
mysticism. The principal Neoplatonic mystics include Plotinus, Porphyry,
lamblichus and Proclus. They conceived of the mystical affect as an
intuition of the One (to hen), which is the first reason of the
world, although they conceived this intuition and the One in somewhat
different ways. According to Plotinus,”… the One causes all things,”
and when the soul engages in its potentiality to not know (to me noein)
it can ascend to and become united with this cause: “He becomes absorbed in
the Supreme, at one with it, like a center coincident with another center.”
The
Neoplatonic doctrine influenced the early Christian mystic Dionysius the
Areopagite, who proclaimed “the necessity of being united with and praising
Him Who is the Cause of all and above all.”
The conception of the mystical affect as being of the first reason can also
be found in the writings of the later Christian mystics, John Tauler, Henry
Suso, John Ruysbroeck, St. Teresa, St. John of the Cross, Jakob Boehme, and
numerous others, but a brief consideration of the writings of Meister
Eckhart, frequently considered to be the most significant of the Christian
mystics, should suffice.
In one of
his earlier sermons, Eckhart asserts that “our whole perfection and blessing
depends on our stepping across or beyond the estate of creaturehood, time,
and Being and on getting at last to the Cause that has no cause.”
In a later sermon he writes of the mystical union in which “I was my own
first cause as well as the first cause of everything else.”
But with Eckhart it cannot be said without qualification that the mystical
affect is an experienced unification with the uncaused Cause. Eckhart
distinguishes God (Gott) from the Godhead (Gottheit) and
attributes the characteristic of being the cause of the world to the former.
The deepest mystical union, however, is not with God but with the Godhead.
Of the distinction between God and the Godhead, Eckhart writes, “… creatures
speak of God — but why do they not mention the Godhead? Because there is
only unity in the Godhead and there is nothing to talk about. God acts. The
Godhead does not.”
The union with the Godhead involves going beyond God: “When I return to the
core, the soil, the river, the source which is the Godhead, no one will ask
me whence I came or where I have been. No one will have missed me—for even
God passes away!”
Accordingly, to be united with the Godhead is to be united with that
which is the cause of the world (for the Godhead is the Godhead of
God), but it is not to be united with it qua cause of the world,
i.e., qua having the distinction of being the cause of the world, but
qua distinctionless unity.
Islamic
mysticism is based on seeming intuitions of Allah, the un caused cause of
the world. The Islamic mystics, the Sufis, flourished from A.D. 800 to 1400
and included such figures as Ziyad B. al-Arabi, Al Bistami, Al-Ghazali,
Attar, Ibn al-Arabi, and Rumi. Ziyad B. al-Arabi characterized the mystic’s
intuition as a “vision given to him by his Creator”;
Ibn al-Arabi wrote that in the mystical experience “the mystic is one with
the Divine,”
i.e., with “He [who] called into being the things that are”;
and Al-Ghazali maintained that in mystical union (faniya) one had
“passed away from everything” but “the Creator.”
Many of the
Sufis exhibited a tendency different from that of the Christian mystics but
similar to that of the Hindu mystics, namely, to conceive of the mystical
union as an identity with the first reason of the world.
Ibn al-Arabi maintained that when the mystical union came upon you, “you
will understand that you are no other than God.”
He continued:
Thus,
instead of his [the mystic’s] own essence, there is the essence of God and
in place of his own qualities, there are the attributes of God. He who knows
himself sees his whole existence to be the Divine existence, but does not
realize that any change has taken place in his own nature or qualities. For
when you know yourself, your “I-ness” vanishes and you know that you and God
are one and the same.
Contrast
this with St. John of the Cross’s conception of the union, which according
to him was not a union of identity but a “union of likeness.”
In The Ascent of Mount Carmel (1579-85) he wrote:
A man must
strip himself of all creatures and of his actions and abilities (of his
understanding, taste, and feeling) so that when everything unlike and
unconformed to God is cast out, his soul may receive the likeness of God,
since nothing contrary to the will of God will be left in him, and thus he
will be transformed in God. . . . Yet truly, its [the soul’s] being (even
though transformed) is naturally as distinct from God’s as it was before…
Besides the
Hindu, Neoplatonic, Christian, and Islamic mystical traditions, the Jewish
and Taoist mystical traditions also were based on a conception of the
mystical affect as relating to the first reason of the world.
But it should not go without mention that the major exception to these six
mystical traditions is Theravada Buddhism. The experience of enlightenment (anuttara-samyak-sambodhi)
was conceived as an experience of Nirvana, and Nirvana,
although eternal and uncaused,
was not held to be the first reason of the world of change (samsara).
Nevertheless, Mahayana Buddhism, which developed from Theravada Buddhism,
did display a predominant tendency to describe the mystical experience as an
intuition of the world’s first reason, often called tathatã (Suchness),
which is an uncaused and eternal Mind. Asvaghosha endeavored to summarize
the essentials of Mahayana Buddhism in his Awakening of Faith in the
Mahayana. He wrote that “samsara [the world of change] has its
ground or reason in Tathagata-garbha [the womb of Suchness],“
which is the uncaused and eternal Mind as it exists immanently in man.
Samsara arises out of tathatã through ignorance, and the mystical
experience consists in returning to identity with tathatã, the Un- caused
and eternal Mind.
Zen
Buddhism, one of the branches of Mahayana Buddhism, also manifested a
central tendency to conceive of satori, enlightenment, as an
intuition of the first reason of the world, which is frequently called
sunyatã (Emptiness) and tathata (Suchness).
The above
represents a brief attempt to substantiate my claim that the predominant way
in which the so-called “mystics” have understood the mystical affect is as
an intuition of the first reason of the world. A further substantiation
appears in the fact that virtually every philosopher of mysticism, including
W.R. Inge,
Evelyn Underhill,
Rufus Jones,
Rudolph Otto,
Walter T. Stace,
and R. C. Zaehner,
has espoused the idea that all or at least the highest kind of mystical
experiences are of the world’s first reason.
The
mystical writings and the philosophies of mysticism to which I referred
reveal that the mystical affect is to be understood primarily as a mode
of affective experiencing that belongs with and is complementary to the
metaphysics of rational meaning. The mystical affect is the supreme
metaphysical affect, where “metaphysics” has the sense of rational meta
physics, i.e., the theory that the world has a reason that explains its
existence and nature. This affect is the nonlogical way of apprehending the
first reason of the world, whereas the inferential reasoning practiced by
the metaphysicians (and by the mystics who are also metaphysicians, such as
Sankara, Plotinus, Dionysius, and Al-Ghazali) is the logical way of
comprehending the first reason.
In many of
the writings of the mystics and the philosophers of mysticism, these two
ways of apprehending the first reason are conceived to be based upon two
different aspects or ways of appearing of the first reason, the logical and
the nonlogical. The most incisive development of this conception can be
found in Otto’s The Holy, Eastern and Western Mysticism, and
Religious Essays. In The Holy, Otto states that a distinction
should be made between the logical attributes of God and the nonlogical
subject of these attributes, which is the object of mystical intuition.
The attribute of being the creator or cause of the world is one of God’s
logical attributes, and this attribute is not intuited as such in mystical
experience.
However, there is a mystical intuition of a parallel nonlogical aspect of
God, His “overpoweringness” or majestas, and a consequent feeling of
one’s own stature as a creature (which is to be distinguished from the
intellectual recognition of the fact that one is created by God).
At this
point we are in a position to raise the crucial questions of this
subsection, viz., is the nonlogical and mystical affective experience of the
world’s first reason a global affect? and is the mystical affect an
affect that can be known to be veridical?
With regard
to the first issue, it will be recalled that a global affect has been
characterized as a captivated intuition of a feature of the
world-whole. But God, the focus of the mystical affect, is not a feature of
the world-whole; rather, He is a relational term that is related to the
world- whole through the relation of causation (taken in the wide
sense, to include emanation, manifestation, grounding, illusion-making,
etc.). The world-whole, through being the other term of this relation,
acquires the relational feature of being the effect of God. To be a
global affect, the mystical affect would have to be a captivated intuition
of this relational feature of the world-whole. However, it is clear from the
above accounts of the mystical affect that in this affect one is absorbed
in God, not in the world-whole qua effect of God.
Ruysbroeck writes that in the mystical affect one “feels nothing but the
unity [of God] ,“
such that all “creaturely distinctions” belonging to the world have ceased
to appear. The mystical affect, then, cannot be understood as an intuition
of a feature of the world- whole and thus cannot be called a global affect.
If the
mystical affect is not a global affect, is it then a mundane
affect? A mundane affect is a feeling-awareness of a part of the
world-whole. But is God, if He exists, a part of the world-whole?
In the
traditional use of the term “the world” or “the world-whole,” both by the
mystics and by the metaphysicians of rational meaning, “the world” refers to
the whole of created being, and as such is distinguished from the
Uncreated Creator, Who existed “beyond” (and/or “behind” or “within”) the
whole of created being. But no such rational-metaphysical definition of “the
world-whole” can form the starting point of a meta physics of feeling. In
this metaphysics, the sense of the expression, “the world-whole,” must be
derived from feelings themselves, specifically from the types of
feeling that are reappreciatively articulated as “intuitive feelings of the
world-whole.“
These types of feeling, as I have tried to show in this chapter, are
moods and what I have called “global affects.” The world-whole as
it is revealed in moods is relatively indeterminate in its nature and
possesses no such determination as the whole of created being. This
is obvious, for if the world-whole as revealed in moods were revealed as
the whole of created being, then it would be impossible to feel a mood
unless one believed that God existed. But clearly moods are in dependent of
any such belief. The world-whole as revealed in moods, and in the global
affects that are parallel in type to moods, is intuitively felt to be “the
whole composed of myself these-things-around-me-and-everything-else, “
where the “things” that compose this whole have no such limited sense as “created
things.” Rather, these “things” are “things” in an unrestricted
sense, inclusive of all possibilities, such as created things, un created
things, creative created things, and creative uncreated things. God, if He
exists, is a creative uncreated thing that creates all other things, and as
such He would be one of the “things” that compose the world-whole, albeit by
virtue of His creativity He would be the preeminent thing. In
accordance, then, with this understanding of the expression, “the
world-whole,” God must be understood as a part of the world-whole,
and the mystical affect must be understood as a mundane affect,
although this affect is the preeminent mundane affect, inasmuch as it
is an awareness of the preeminent part of the world-whole.
It follows
from the above considerations that “the world-whole” believed by the mystics
to have the relational feature of being an effect of God is the whole of
created things, not “the world-whole” in the unrestricted sense. The
whole of created things is, like God, a part of “the world-whole” in
the unrestricted sense. If God exists, then the two basic parts of “the
world-whole” in the unrestricted sense are God and His creatures.
This means that even a captivated intuition of “the world-whole” (in
the sense of the whole of created things) qua having the
relational feature of being an effect of God is, like the awareness of God,
a “mundane affect” in the unrestricted sense I have given to this
phrase.
The above
remarks constitute the first point I wished to make, that the mystical
affect is not a global awareness. My discussion indicated that the mystical
affect is not a “global awareness” either in the restricted or
unrestricted sense: it is not a captivated intuition of a feature of the
whole of created things, and it is not an intuition of a feature of the
whole of myself, these-things-around-me, and everything-else.