Chapter III: The Differences between the Ontological Argument and the Seddiqin Argument
The ontological argument has a strange history. On the one hand, it attempts to show that the proof for the existence of God is an evident fact which does not need to use a real fact in the external world to help us reach to the existence of God. On the other hand, some philosophers like Arthur Schopenhauer assert1 that the ontological argument is a "charming joke," a kind of ontological sleight of hand, because it assumes the existence of God and then pretends to arrive at it in the conclusion: the rabbit was in the hat all the while. Or, to use Schopenhauer's own illustration, the chicken was already in the egg the theist was brooding over.
Whatsoever the ontological argument will be, it is an argument that attempts to prove the existence of God through a scrutiny of the meanings of existence and necessary existence without any reliance on a special fact in the world, like motion, contingency, etc. The conclusion is that the very meaning of necessary existence or most complete being necessitates its real existence. Has this argument been successful or not? The answer needs another survey that is not related to this research, but the attempt to prove the existence of God not through a special incomplete fact but through the meaning of God makes this argument an attractive one. This means that the argument is so evident that everybody, even a fool, must accept it2. Therefore, the argument makes the bridge between faith and reason to be very short, not a bridge which is incomplete and weak in which poor facts make us to reach to a most complete being, nor in the least from believing in Him. St. Anselm, himself, did not want to introduce an argument for believing in God, but an argument for manifesting his belief. He sees his endeavor in ontological argument as the following3:
"I do not endeavor, O Lord, to penetrate thy sublimity, for in no wise do I compare my understanding with that; but I long to understand in some degree thy truth, which my heart believes and loves. For I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand. For this also I believe, -that unless I believed, I should not understand."
These beautiful words can be said only through an ontological attitude, not through cosmological argumentation.
The Seddiqin Argument seems, firstly, to be an argument like the ontological one and perhaps as another kind of this argument; but, in spite of some similarities, it differs from the ontological argument. The Seddiqin Argument is similar in that it tries not relying on incomplete, weak, poor facts in the world to prove the existence of the most complete being and to make the argument for proving His existence more evident than other beings that are His effects. Yet it differs from the ontological argument in the following ways:
1-The ontological argument begins with the meaning of existence, then the meaning of necessary existence all of which are conceptions in the mind; then it endeavors to make this meaning real outside the mind by some reasons. But in the Seddiqin Argument begins with the reality of existence, not its notion; and it continues by searching in this reality. In other words, the pyramid of existence in the ontological argument is built in the mind then the head of this pyramid - the necessary existence- comes out of the mind and is projected into the reality; in contrast in the Seddiqin Argument this pyramid is a building in reality; stands on its head, which is also real working in the very reality of existence rather than its notion, and its accuracy in the distinction between the notion and the reality of existence have vaccinated this argument against most of the criticisms that have created troubles for the ontological arguments.
2- The problem in the ontological argument is a problem of judgment, while in the Seddiqin Argument the problem is to some extent a problem of presentation and perception. In all kinds of ontological argument that have been proposed in the view of Anselm, Spinoza, Leibniz, Hartshorn, Malkolm and Plantinga the conception and meaning of God or the Necessary Being is assumed by a definition, and then the argument begins to prove His existence and gives a judgment for its listener about the reality of this meaning. But, the Seddiqin Argument tries to provide a good presentation of God by some philosophical surveys into the reality of existence that is important for having a good perception from what is intended from God. If someone can have this presentation (that may need some intuitional knowledge), then the judgment about its reality will be clear and evident without any difficulty in proving it. Therefore, the problem is to give a correct and suitable conception of God through the fundamental reality of existence and its analogical gradation and copulative and independent existences and possible poverty in caused beings and so on. After these presentational surveys there is no problem in having a judgment about its existence that had been made clear through previous presentations.
That is why some Muslim philosophers believe that4 "The problem of proving the existence of God lies at the level of presentation, not of judgment. In other words, what is difficult is for the mind to have a correct presentation of that conception; when it reaches this purpose its judgment will be easy. This contrasts to in other types of knowledge where the presentation of the meanings and conceptions is easy, but the difficulty is in the judgment and affirmation.
In the ontological arguments the proposition that must be proved is: "God or necessary existence exists", but in the Seddiqin Argument the proposition to be affirmed or proved is: "The pure existence or reality is God and others are His representations." It means a conversion in the proposition, where the subject and the predicate have changed their places.
3- The purpose of those scholars who developed Seddiqin Arguments was not only to present an argument for proving the existence of God, but also to give a suitable view of the relation between Him and His creatures. This relation is not a "categorical one" that stands on two sides like the relation between subject and predicate which are two different things, but an "illuminative relation" that stands on one side, the other side being only this relation. According to ontological and cosmological arguments, God is a necessary existence that must exist necessarily; other existent beings are contingent existences whose existence depends on that necessary existence. In this view there are two kinds of being: one of which depends on the other; this is a categorical relation. But, In the Seddiqin Argument this relation is an illuminative one. We explained previously in the section "the types of existence” the difference between "independent existence" and "copulative existence". It is said that the relation between cause (not preparatory cause) and its caused is a copulative one, and that the caused is not a being that needs a cause but is just need. Let me repeat that paragraph:
It will be discussed in the section "cause and caused" that the need of the caused to the cause is in the essence of the caused, and this requires that the caused is nothing but need, its essence stands only by the existence of the cause, and it has no independence in existence. This necessitates that the existence of the caused must be copulative in relation to its cause by attention to this relation. But, with relation to itself and by attention to itself alone, it will be an independent existence. So, the type of existence of the caused is due to our attention. From one aspect it is copulative, and from another it is independent.
In this view the relation between God and other beings is like a thing and its shadow, or like a man and his picture, one is real and the other is relation to that real5. In other words, other beings are representations of God. He is the real existence and the others show Him before showing themselves. Tabatabaii has a beautiful analogy to show the relation of other beings to God6:
"Suppose: you are sitting in a quiet place with a tranquil mind, and you are focusing your attention on this moving world and regarding it and looking at every up and down, inner and outer, small and big thing in it and gloating this world. It is a boundless space...
Let's come nearer: The earth and its blue horizons, thick jungles and roaring seas, extensive deserts, living animals and their inner organizations, the vital relations of human beings and their comprehensive thoughts, the elements and compositions, condensed atoms and countless molecules, individual and social activities... To sum up, you are looking at this strange discipline with all of its dependencies...
At a single instance, you are shocked by an inner attention, and realize that all of these that you are regarding are in the mirror not in your last supposition that you are looking directly.
Now, in consequence of this circumstance how will your situation be? It is obvious that all of that you were observing and remembering will change; but not in a manner that all of your previous knowledge and observations -not even one of them- change to be false or non-existence; no, never it will be so. However, the
secondary transfer [the realization that all of those are in the mirror], in spite of preserving all of those essences and their activities that is observed, takes only the existential independency from your first observations.
Each of your observations has independency before that transfer so that it acts in its area of action; and after that transfer all of those scattered independencies gather and focus in one place (the mirror) without that one of those independencies disappear or a small part of those observed activities is decreased."
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Author: Hamidreza Ayatollahy
