Alhassanain(p) Network for Heritage and Islamic Thought

Part IV: Phenomenological and Existential Philosophy in Pakistan

Chapter XV: The Notion of Existence

Manzoor Ahmad

"If I am not asked, I know; if I am asked, I know not." This is perhaps true of most notions which seem to be self-evident. No sooner is the question put to us then we are at a loss to define it, or sometimes even to describe it.

"What is `existence,?" is such a question. I know that I exist, that this pen with which I am writing exists, that God exists, but what is existence? Does existence exist in the same way as selves, pens, or God are said to exist? The answer is not so clear as it might have seemed. Philosophers have expressed a variety of views that it is the `ergo, of the `cogito’; that to exist is to be perceived; or that it is the outcome of `dread, or `horror’. Others would smilingly put away the idea of existence, quoting Plato’s Eros, "Existence is the child that is born of the infinite and the finite and is therefore constantly striving"; they would say that it is fictitious, nonsensical or meaningless poetry.

Why is it difficult to answer such a simple questions?

If someone asks us: "What is hydrogen?" We can reply: "It is a gas" or "It is a gaseous element, which is colorless, whose atomic weight is 1 and whose atomic number is 1." There can be other answers, and all or any of them will satisfy the questioner. Suppose someone asks us, what is good, what is beauty or what is existence? The form of the question is the same, but it is puzzling and cannot be answered as straightforwardly as the previous question. We cannot find the meaning of existence from a dictionary or an encyclopedia, though the person who asked the question may want the same kind of answer as given in the case of hydrogen. Here lies the difficulty.

When we ask such questions as those concerning existence, what we actually seek is information concerning the nature or essence of existence. We could say, perhaps, with equal justification that when we ask questions about hydrogen we request in the same manner information about the nature or essence of hydrogen. But Noone would say that: though the questions are analogous. Traditional philosophy has long sought for the essence or nature of existence, and has tried to define, following Plato and Aristotle notion that the "definition is the formula of essences." But this magic formula which could resolve the various and contradictory state-ments of the philosophers about existence was never found, and if someone did claim to find it, very strangely it was so simple that it could be expressed only in words except recognized as synonyms of existence. Further all thought that we are perfectly familiar with its meaning and that everyone can at once perceive what is meant by it.

Had it been as simple as Moore thought, there would have been no difficulty, but where does the difficulty lie? It would seem to be in the basic assumption underlying the question as well as the answers, namely, that every existence in its various expressions possesses a common nature or essence which can be discovered; that there is something the same or common in the existence of this table, myself, God, ideas and imagination, unicorns, chimeras, whiteness or blackness, in the universal and in the particular. This ‘esse’ is elusive; it peeps through everything but escapes away when we want to seize it. It is the property of every content but we cannot find it. Surely there must be something common to them all, they say, or we should not call them all by the same name, "Unum Nomen, Unum Nominatum." And they ask, "What is that property of ‘existence’ which may belong to every content which I observe or may again belong to none? What is this property which may belong to the perception of a movement and yet belong neither to the movement perceived nor to my perception of it, or which again may belong to both or to neither?

The assumption that existence, despite its vast differences in manifestation, must possess some common characteristics or mark, something in its essence which must distinguish it and by which we can define it, constitutes the first mistake of traditional philosophy. The moment we start searching for the common elements, the nature or essence of existence which all things are supposed to possess, we become bewildered. We handle tables and chairs, we know our-selves, we believe in other minds, we have faith in God, and therefore we ought to encounter "existence" somewhere. We look, but we do not find. Like "substance" for Locke, we assume that it is something hidden or behind and that that should be its essence. That is why, unlike hydrogen, existence is hard to describe and why we have a philosophy of existence but of hydrogen.

It my be suggested that if we have patience, search diligently and continue to scrutinize, some day we might lay hand on existence as such. But there is still another possibility, namely, that we may be looking for something which is not there. There may be some resemblances and common elements between different things, but is we begin to push through these resemblances we meet insur-mountable difficulties. Is it the form which is common between "this" and "that" or is it matter? But what is matter and what is that matter which is common between matter and energy? If it is one and the same, then what is common between this and God? Is God energy; is my idea of the square root of minus one also energy? Must we draw a line between existence and subsistence?

It all seems to be the greatest the man has ever invented.

Then, should we say that the "notion" of existence is simply nonsensical, and the search for a common denominator and simila-rities among different existences is a fool’s errand? To say this requires great courage and some of the diehardiness of a logical positivist as well. The answer to this question depends upon what we expect to find after such a search. If we are after the myste-rious, evasive essence or nature, we are doomed. Perhaps we will never find such a common element.

But this search can be fruitful. On the one hand, it may be the search for a kind of family resemblances; on the other, it may enlighten us on different aspects of existences which at first glance may escape our view. This search may further be useful in dealing with things manipulating them, and differentiating them one from another. Taken in this light, the various conceptions and theories of existence, which different philosophers have put forward from time to time, are not nonsense, but have a significance and meaning in their own universe.

The history of modern philosophy provides ample proof of this. Take, for example, the problem of existence in modern philo-sophy. It is a cosmological problem, which arises with the question of what nature we must attribute to that existence of which we partake. This is a cosmological problem because it leads to the discussion of the possibilities of constructing a general conception of the world based upon the data of experience. Its actual value lies in the significance and comprehensiveness of experience upon which it is based or upon coherence and consistency of the construction as such. With the advent of the new age when Kepler, Copernicus and Bruno brought about a kind of revolution and a new outlook on different problems, a question strongly presented itself. The picture of the world given by immediate perception is totally different from what the world actually is, leading to an opposition between existence and knowledge. Galileo’s solution is that this difference between knowledge and existence disappears to a certain extent in the clearest knowledge we possess, i.e., mathematical knowledge. "Here human knowledge participates in the necessity with which God thinks the truths which underlie the content of existence."

The impact of scientific development, which created the problem of the subjectivity of sense qualities and a separation between knowledge and existence, crystallized over 50 years. A need was felt to systematize the wealth of facts, thought and new discoveries, on the one hand, and on the other, to reduce them to simple notions. This brought the problem of existence more forcefully to the fore. Bruno had already treated it from the point of view of the new world scheme, yet with the modern mechanical explanation of nature, thought was confronted with the problem of mind, and the relation between the physical and the mental. At the same time there were demands that religion should be reinterpreted in the light of new knowledge. Descartes had to face this difficult and important problem. His training at the Jesuit College may have oriented him toward saving the existence of God, and the impact of Renaissance compelled him to account for the causal and me-chanical world. To strike a balance between the two so that they might not clash, on the one hand, he had to save philosophy and thereby religion as well by finding some fundamental principle, some maxim, some starting point free from doubt, which could serve as the basis for further deductions, on the other hand, he had to account for scientific and mechanical reason he was forced to derive each and everything from a subjective and psychological maxim. This is true of nearly all great systems produced before the advent of the English empirical school: all proceeded from the conviction that clarity of thought was sufficient to account for existence.

The English empirical school reversed this order, and discussed the problem of knowledge before metaphysics. The nature of existence was not taken for granted but, proceeding according to clarity of thought as the norm, existence was now subservient to epistemology. Thus, the conception of substance melted in the hands of George Berkeley, and later totally disappears in the hands of David Hume. With substance the "notion of existence" is also gone, because it does not correspond to any impression. To think of a thing and to think of it as existing are one and the same. In this a thoroughgoing empiricism reached its climax.

Recently there have been some attempts to solve this problem that are opposed in intent to rationalistic constructive systems, on the one hand, and to the empirical approaches, on the other. When Heinmann bases existence on the formula ofRespondo ergo sum, it has significance only in the context and for the purpose for which he is speaking. For him the central problem of our time (as against that of Hume and Descartes) is that human activities, whether in philosophy or in arts, have become too technical and have lost their grounding in human existence. They cannot regain this ground through instrumentalism an technology where ideas are definitions of operations or plans of activities, rather than a flow of subjective consciousness; where the quest for certainty with which the age began enters a new stage in holding that secure values can be realized only by perfecting methods of inquiry and action; where the knowledge of the greatest value is that of technique by which values can be reached or restored. This "irrational" system of thought and life developed by Western industrial society and its philosophical representatives has given birth to a logical and naturalistic me-chanism which challenges individual freedom; as an analytic ra-tionalism it transforms everything including man himself into objects of calculation and control.

This basically is not a problem of the description or definition of existence, but fundamentally the problem of human freedom; it is the challenge of modern technology to man, his self and his religion. How to save them; how to meet the challenge? Heinemann suggests returning to concrete experience and reality. It is this aspect of the problem which has disappeared in the dazzling light of the modern scientific methodology. The interpretation of existence as "an unconscious participation in reality" is not as ridiculous as a logical positivist would make us believe, provide we do not make the mistake of taking this as the definition of the "notion of existence".

Consider, for example, the following proposition. "The nothing exists," because "Anxiety reveals the nothing," and "we know the nothing." Apart from the article "the" before nothing, very in-geniously used, which contributes an air of mystery around "nothing", and to which existence is attributed in some extra-rational way, the whole of the assertion is a great confusion. The assertion that "nothing exists" quite plainly cannot be constructed as an utterance which is intended to state a fact about the existence of something. It cannot be construed as affirming the existence of a kind of a thing, or as denying the existence of everything. Even the way out that insists upon the "existence" of nothing as an "idea in the mind" is conducive to this confusion for it implies a double existence, that of being here, and in the mind. Such a confusion can be easily remedied by abandoning the notion that talking sense always necessitates there being things talked about.

The point here is that we can interpret different notions existence only as functional descriptions relative to the purpose for which they are used, and in the particular context in which they occur. Apart from that, and talk on the "notion of existence" as such is simply to talk of nothing.

Therefore a logical analysis of existential propositions must always attempt to seize upon the context in which it occurs. Devoid of context not a single word, let alone a general concept, is meaningful. The most general methodological mistake is the dis-junction of a concept or idea from the field of its being, treating it as an independent and self-contained. Hence, "existence" is meaning-ful only in a special context of being -- "non-existence" being its other aspect.

Moreover, every existent may be located in the extension of the context of its own specific existence. Our inquiry would then be a search after different and distinct contexts of existence. All these distinct contexts would appear to fall in the most general field of "the Existence" which must appear as a co-member with the "non-existence", in the universal context of Being.

In this manner we may work out a general theory of Being which would be formal in character and which could be fitted to any context of experience.

Chapter XVI: From Anguish to the Search for Truth

Waheed Ali Farooqi

Biography

When I was asked to put into words my personal philosophy I was reluctant to accede to this request. For a person whose fragmented thoughts found expression only in the form of stray articles over the course of three decades, it was no easy task to condense them all in the shape of one article. But the request was so insistent and so kind that ultimately I was left with no choice but to agree.

Pretentious though it may sound I feel no hesitation to state at the outset that my philosophical views have largely followed the footprints of the great al-Ghazali who thought and wrote with the weight of his personal experience, and whose philosophy and life were almost synonymous. In a sense therefore the present article may be treated as my concentrated spiritual autobiography.

I was born in 1929 and brought up in the northern Indian province of U. P. (now known as Uttar Pardesh), where I lived until I migrated to Pakistan in 1948 after the partition of the sub-continent. Coming from a family of religious scholars I had the opportunity of meeting, quite early in life, many people of sincere and deep religious convictions. It was through them that I acquired my first hand knowledge of religion.

After leaving high school I was stricken, at the age of 15, with a paralysing illness whose agony I suffered continuously for a period of two years. This ailment gave a big jolt to the otherwise calm and serene routine of my life. The most valuable lessons of my life grew out of this crippling attack. My suffering helped me to know things in their true perspective; I was aroused from the slumbers of my existence. The commonplace notions of life suffered a setback at this stage as I was brought to grips with the problems of human freedom and destiny. The phenomenon of death and widespread suffering deeply afflicted my mind and I came to realise that suffering is universals. Life is a series of crises which challenge everyone and must be faced. These problems became all the more pronounced with the advent of my college studies when I came across the mystic Persian poets Hafiz and Omar Khayyam. Not only the charm of their poetry, but their oft-repeated themes of the transitoriness of life and the vanity of all existence firmly caught hold of me. Their thoughts were therefore my introduction and first incentive to the study of philosophy.

The second World War had just ended and society was in a state of ferment. The cherished value-system of my parents was tottering and the finely tailored routine of my home also lost meaning for me. I now eagerly looked to philosophy for the resolution of all the problems that baffled me.

In 1952 I joined the University of Karachi for my graduate studies, with philosophy as my major subject. Here I was deeply enamoured with Socrates whose life and teachings helped to mould and shape my innermost life. After obtaining my Master’s degree I joined the University of Sind as a lecturer in 1955. Here I came under the influence of the Irish philosopher Berkeley and post-Kantian German idealism. For several years I continued to profess the doctrines of idealism and pan-psychism and firmly believed in the spiritual nature of the physical world. In 1966 I wrote my doctoral thesis at Michigan State University on "A Spiritual Interpretation of Reality in the Light of Berkeley’s Immaterialism." This dissertation aimed, on the one hand, to synthesise Berkeley’s immaterialism with 19th century German idealism and, on the other, with the mystic doctrine of the unity of all existence.

However, soon after my return from the United States I began to realise that even after a protracted intellectual exercise of ten years I was no nearer to solving the fundamental issues that agitated my mind. I had simply ‘come out of the same door I went in’. "What difference does it really make," I pondered, "if the nature of the physical world is mental or material, or if the monads are windowless or full of windows." I was also an eager reader of Schopenhauer and of Kierkegaard, the existentialist. The gloom and tragic mood of my early college days again caught hold of me.

In sympathy with the existentialists I clearly saw that the great thorn in man’s consciousness throughout his life is that he is condemned to die. "Like shipwrecked mariners who struggle and struggle to save their wearied bodies from the terrible waves, only to be engulfed at last," human beings are tormented throughout life by anxiety, melancholy and frustration only ultimately to face the grim reality of illness, old age, pain and death. All those things which they prized and valued so much in life prove empty, rotten and trifling, for death cuts off all relations to the world. All looks like a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury but signifying nothing. For a number of years, with pain and effort, man gathers knowledge and skill and his mind becomes a repository of all sorts of learning and wisdom. But just as he is learning how to live it is already too late as his mental and physical powers begin to decline. Every breath that he draws is a protest against the death which is constantly threatening him, and against which he is battling. There is weakness of sight, weakness of limbs, incapacity to work and earn. The world considers his existence futile. Where is the stage, he begins to ask, of using and applying all the learning and talent for which he toiled and suffered all his life. Is not he, with Thomas Hardy, justified in calling this world:

A senseless school where we must give

Our lives that we may learn to live.

He now comes to realise that he had really been standing on the brink of an abyss all his life, though he dared not confess it. Unfortunately he was invisibly caught up in a ghostlike routine, and the stormy activity of his life kept him tied to the wheel of existence. He was enticed by the solid assurances of common sense upheld by the impersonal dictator of "everyday life." This I thought was the most tragic aspect of the whole story. My nature shrank and I began to experience remorse. I began to lament the finitude and the transitoriness of life. This poignant state of man’s existence brought me to the verge of despair, what Kierkegaard termed "sickness unto death." I began to ask questions as to why there is a world at all, why man exists, and whether life is at bottom meaningful or meaningless. I began to wonder whether anything like an Infinite or Eternal Being exists, and whether I can ever come to know or find succour in Him. I found myself in the grip of what James called "ontological wondersickness."

Phenomenology

Life forces us to make decisions which, I thought, could be evaded only at my own peril with the words of Socrates that "an unexamined life is not worth living," still resounding in my ears, I sat down to work out for myself a system of philosophy which, I thought, should not only provide me with mental solace but strictly should correspond with the facts of existence. To do this I needed a definite method of work which should escape all the uncertainties of the old. The methodology of any philosophy, we know, is its most decisive aspect in the sense that it presents philosophy with terra firma, its solid ground, on which to build its entire superstructure. Soon I discovered that the method of phenomenological reduction professed by the German philosopher Husserl, with certain modifications, furnishes the surest guide to any philosophical inquiry of this sort. His method of concentrating attention on the data of consciousness as they are presented to man’s mind and subjecting themto a rigorous and exhaustive examination, the proposal to set aside all questions of interpretation, evaluation and validation, perhaps still provides the best approach to solving the crucial issues faced by mankind. In order to restrict ourselves to what appears, it uses the method of complete intellectual suspense (epoche) and abstention from all judgement about the nature of phenomena and their manifold relationships. Usually we corrode the objectivity of phenomena as given in our pre-reflective situation by not allowing reality to reveal itself in its pristine form and by not letting facts speak for themselves. Epoche, on the other hand, reduces the phenomena to their original givenness, unspoiled by all pre-conceived notions, uncorrupted by all prejudices, and uncritically accepted "self-evidences."

But phenomena should be studied in their totality -- phenomena as manifested in man’s consciousness, nature and history. In order to achieve a unified and veritable outlook on life one who searches for truth has to study not only the inner processes of his mind, but also be a historian of facts and an impartial observer of Nature.

Now out of the multiplicity of man’s inner experiences, the idea of a Supreme Being is one of the most primitive notions. The history of humankind cannot produce a more impressive phenomenon than the existence of this universally prevalent idea. This indubitable notion is so firmly implanted in man’s subliminal consciousness and has such universal dimension that it needs no profound intellectual gift to know the power of this genuinely religious experience. It is perhaps for this reason that man has sometimes been defined as a religious animal. Every human being encounters this transcendent and eternal reality irrespective of what he calls it, and irrespective of whether or not he chooses to acknowledge its reality. Provided one is not inhibited by false and pre-conceived notions, there is hardly any person whose mind is not open to this sense of the infinite and the mystery which surrounds his existence. An agnostic may deny its existence with his lips, but he cannot deny it with his heart or in his practical life. In the feelings of dependence, creatureliness and finitude which, according to Otto, go with the idea of the holy (numinous) one has a sense of a being who is ultimate, unconditioned and infinite. Concern for this numinus demands a total and unconditional commitment on the part of man, and once committed this exercises a profound effect on his entire life. This unique content of man’s experience is neither a pure emotion, nor simply cognition, nor will. Had this experience been a pure feeling he should remain for ever shut up within the circle of his own subjectivity. On the contrary, it involves his whole self and represents a total human attitude.

Now this numinus strand in man also makes him cognisant of another important phase of phenomena viz., the marvellous, sublime and awe-inspiring features of the universe around him. By an observation of this aspect of phenomena a divine presence is borne in upon him, this time not by the majestic beauty of the moral law within, but by the starry heavens above. The physical world here serves as language of the Book of God. We all know how Ibn Tufail in his philosophical romanceHayy bin Yaqzan, and some early 18th century Deists sought to establish the existence of God through observation of design and teleology in Nature. God, they attempted to prove, speaks Himself through nature and all existence is a medium of revelation.

But though man’s own conscience and nature do provide an intuitive evidence of a supreme being as creator of the universe, sheer examination of these phenomena cannot lead us to a knowledge of the personal God of religion, His nature and attributes, what He wills us to do, what is the ultimate destiny of man, and wherein lies man’s eternal felicity. God may be self-revealing in nature and in man’s conscience, but in none of these phenomena are his intentions and purposes overwhelmingly manifest and unmistakable. This gap is, however, filled up by the data supplied by the third category of phenomena, human history. History, it may be noticed, plays an important role in explaining what is really true and valuable in life and provides a guide to the ultimate questions of human concern. The cumulative record of the religions and philosophies of humankind lies within this mundane world and is fully open to historical observation. As being on earth means being historically conditioned, historical circumstances assume an overriding importance in the search for philosophic truth. This, however, is possible if history is not simply devoted to the life of kings and their dynasties but accords primacy to the analysis and comprehension of human ideals and institutions, and of the undercurrents of the long enduring spiritual life of man. Once studied with this frame of mind we find in history a succession of wonderful men (generally known as prophets) who delivered to humankind a self-consistent message, involving lofty principles about God, His nature, and about the nature and destiny of man. In view of the limited guidance provided by the data of man’s conscience and nature, a revelation from a Supreme Being is not only conceivable but indispensable which, instead of violating, augments the light of reason and supplies satisfaction and response to its urgent questions.

The above threefold data of our phenomenological existence serve as the raw material for laying an unshakable foundation for the edifice of human knowledge. But how to sift this data so as to reach apodictic certainty in our objective search for truth is now the Archemedian point of the whole philosophical endeavour. In spite of the immense significance of these three-dimensional data, we still find a vast variety not only in the pronouncements of men’s conscience but also in the way they perceive nature and in the way they interpret the facts of history. The so-called conscience of an individual may, in Ruskin’s phrase, be the conscience of an ass. Again, nature whose one impulse could teach a Wordsworth the deep mysteries of human life and divine existence, to a Tennyson is red in ‘fang and claw’, and for a Schopenhauer it is ‘dreadful in her features and savage in her gestures’. In like manner recorded history too provides a formidable record of how it has been distorted in the course of time. Further, not all claims to prophethood or revelation can be accepted as true because there have been true and false prophets as there have been true and false revelations.

Therefore true to our principle of phenomenological reduction I uphold the universally accepted criterion of rationality as the only unquestionable measuring rod and the only valid instrument in my search for religious truth. A true religion must seek expression in rational categories and comprehensive logical examination and testing. In order to prevent hasty and premature commitment our method demands a complete suspension of judgement until all opinions are properly investigated and their credentials thoroughly examined.

Religion

It should, therefore, be clear that reason is of two kinds: (i) scientific reason and (ii) transcendental reason. Since the tools and methodology of scientific reason are analysis, observation, logical consistency, inference and prediction science is most suited to the phenomenal world. Transcendental reason, on the other hand, is that faculty of the apprehension of truth in which the whole personality of man, not only his perceptual, intellectual, emotional and volitional faculties, but also his spiritual faculties (which Pascal called the reason of the heart) are inextricably involved. It is a tool for our understanding of transcendental and noumenal realities. But it is the methodological requirement of the human mind that scientific reason, and transcendental reason instead of being mutually exclusive, should jointly work in the search for truth.

Now it will be seen that only a perfect religion can stand the rigours of such a test of philosophia perennis on the basis of our criteria of scientific and transcendental reason. A completed philosophy which goes beyond the traditional fields of knowledge -- metaphysics, physics, ethics, political theory -- to embrace all possible knowledge by a unitary and certain method of combining empirical content with logical order can only be presented by a perfect religion coming as it does from an infinite source through a process of divine revelation. In such a religion eternity and time come into a close contact and there is no time/eternity antithesis. All compartmentalisation between the temporal and the eternal, the secular and the religious is ended. Here the material world serves as a channel for communication with the spiritual.

God and the world are not rivals; the world rather becomes a "vale for soul-making," In a perfect relation God should not be the God only of soul but also of body, of science as well as of faith. Its ideal for the individual should not be a retreat from the world, but a forceful moral role therein: religious and moral behaviour form a vital unity.

Kierkegaard wrongly assumed that the religious and the ethical move in different directions. He broke off his engagement with Regina Olson because he felt it necessary to surrender the life of the world in order to dedicate himself to the life divine. In the perfect religion, on the other hand, God wants the individual to come to Him by means of the Reginas He Himself has created, not by means of renunciation. Its religious ideal is no retreat from the world. The world, according to it, is not maya or an illusion and life is not a dream. Its laws are the universal laws of God and the whole world is filled with His glory.

If religion makes such impractical demands on our life and environment which the majority of mankind cannot stand, and feel to be a burden, there is something wrong with that religion itself. The laws of a true religion should be akin to the laws of nature which the human mind is prone to accept ‘a priori’.

A perfect religion should present a coherent and comprehensive system pervading both the mundane and the transcendental with elaborate doctrines about God, man, nature, creation and redemption in such a way that it solves all the enigmas of phenomenal and noumenal existence without involving itself in the so-called antinomies of reason. A true faith must be clear and satisfying and its metaphysical doctrines should teach that Truth and Reality are one and the same.

One great criterion of a perfect religion is that it should be a powerful motivating force for action. Religion should not be only an individual affair but a serious call for social duty. A community is, therefore, a must for the religious development of man. Whitehead’s view that the essence of religion is what the individual does with his solitariness, entirely ignores this social and corporate dimension of religion. A perfect religion should engender in man what is the noblest and the best in him, leading to the strengthening and cohesion of society at all levels. It should have an elaborate system of casuistry in which the right way of acting or serving is defined for every conceivable situation. It should be a complete code and way of life where religious, political and social factors are bound together in an organic unity, capable of meeting all challenges of the advancing civilizations.

In the ethical realm a vital religion, such as I am talking about, is one which is a great standard bearer of human freedom. For it is absurd to make anybody responsible for any act for which honestly he cannot assume any responsibility. Further, it should tell us that not our overt actions but our motives and intentions are the axis of all moral life. Mankind is here considered as one community because all owe allegiance to one Supreme Being. It demolishes all distinctions of caste, color, creed or nationality. Humanity being one spiritual brotherhood, the notion of patriotism is totally transformed in such a religion.

In the spiritual sphere God is not treated an elan vital or a blind force without knowledge and purpose. Unlike the Absolute of the philosophers who is simply a disinterested spectator of the drama of existence, and who on occasions is simply introduced as deus ex machina to save the existence of the physical world, a perfect religion envisages a direct relationship between man and God who at every moment is concerned with the supreme happiness of mankind. This divine human encounter provides man serenity, peace, courage and consolation in the face of the grim realities of life.

Life and existence being understood in this sense, the trials and tragedies of human life also lose much of their poignancy. The great question of the meaning and purpose of human life that always agitated my mind is largely resolved in this system of perfect religion. Once the life of man is accepted as being for another, providing him with an opportunity to act, sufferings and afflictions make sense. By compensating for the injustices of earthly existence balance is restored and justice ultimately done to the individual. Man is not then simply considered as thrown into an alien world without any meaning or purpose, but in the course of his brief transit he now discovers that existence is a pilgrimage and a vocation. The greatest question of all philosophy "Why is there something rather than nothing" is thus finally answered.

Perfect religion is, to me, the only philosophia perennis. Being the sole public criterion of knowledge and the only perennial body of eternal truths and wisdom, it visualises a complete unity of science, philosophy and revelation. There reason and faith are co-extensive, and the theoretical and the practical concerns of life are so resolved as to unite all people of all time in a universal vision.

Can there be a method for discovering this perfect religion or philosophia perennis? It is the moral duty of every seeker after truth that before making any final religious commitment he should study all religions of the world without bias and prejudice and try to find out, on the basis of these dual criteria of scientific and transcendental reason, which one is true. Such an unbiased search for a perfect religion should be the prime objective of every philosopher.

The search for the perfect religion should not, however, be considered as a barren intellectual pursuit. In matters of such momentous import on which depends the eternal felicity or damnation of mankind we fiddle with academic pastimes at our own peril. Consequently, once convinced of the truth of this perfect religion after a thorough, unbiased and objective examination, it is the most urgent demand of reason that we should be committed to it with all our heart and soul. The prime objective of all Ecumenical movements and inter-religious dialogues also should be not simply a barren academic discussion, but an existential search for truth for the sake of whole-hearted commitment thereto. Otherwise all the effort, time and energy devoted to it would be an exercise in futility.

But can the brevity of human life permit any long drawn out inquiry of this nature? Can we afford, Hamlet-like, to wait all our life for fuller information? The exactly right moment may mean letting the crucial moment pass by default. To suspend judgement on ultimate issues to the point of paralysing all capacity to commitment is not the attitude of a true philosopher. But the method of phenomenological reduction and critical evaluation does not require a permanent suspension of judgement to evade commitment to definite conclusions. Rather , it emphasises that in dealing with issues fraught with consequences of such momentous import one should possess an absolutely open mind and should avoid all dogmatic presuppositions.

It is a tragedy of human life that man has not always been governed by his reason. He has behaved more as a creature of passions and emotions than as a responsible human being. His early childhood orientation and indoctrination has served as a stumbling block to his judicious weighing of facts. Instead of adopting his religion by an act of deliberate and conscious moral choice usually he is born into his religion and by the time he reaches an age capable of discriminating between truth and falsehood he is thoroughly brainwashed by the forces of his environment. The unconscious attachment to his own ancestral faith then gradually becomes so strong that even when its defects become painfully manifest to him he has not the courage to abandon it. This propensity of mind has the capacity to force a religious ‘shell’ or ‘casing’ (Gehause) which becomes inimical to the discovery of new truths. He exists within a ‘horizon’ and a ‘standpoint’, his ego being trapped within the circle of his own social context. This bondage of his particular orientation is like a self-incurred tutelage which cramps his spiritual powers and stifles his mental capabilities. It is the chief destroyer of his integrity and the main cause of his spiritual impoverishment. Religious devotion, in such circumstances, becomes a form of pernicious idolatry leading to dogmatic fanaticism and blind cruelty. It was in pursuance of this closed-minded attitude that the ancient Hebrews stoned their prophets and the fanatics of Athens demanded the death of Socrates.

Philosophy

To maintain one’s faith and at the same time examine it critically is no doubt a Herculean task, but in view of the very grave stakes involved, the achievement of the goal is still worthy of our sincere efforts. For this purpose a universal focus can be provided by the philosopher who, supposedly standing on independent grounds, endeavours impartially to examine and weigh the testimony of every claimant to truth. In the quest of this viable philosophy of life his personal inclinations and affections should not blunt his honesty. The unbiased search is the prime objective of the philosophia perennis.

In such a state of affairs what should be the attitude of the person convinced of the truth of his position? Does his absolute and unconditional commitment to truth leave him any room for compromise? Truth, we know, enjoys a status of its own and it would be not only unthinkable, but criminal to extend this right to falsehood. Therefore while remaining unflinchingly faithful to the principles and ideals of truth the philosopher should be a man of great liberality of mind and broad human sympathies. His attitude should be one of dignified toleration to all those with whom he does not see eye to eye in matters of religious belief. Conscious of the frailty of the human spirit he should avoid all sorts of compulsion even if he happens to possess the capacity to apply it, for freedom of choice is one of the greatest prerogatives and glories of man. Physical constraint in such matters is all the more undesirable because though it may sometimes lead to lip service, it never inculcate true conviction. Indeed to penalise an error is not to refute it, and persecution has always led to a rebellious mental attitude. It is indeed unfortunate that the religious history of humankind is replete with instances of intolerant persecution.

But the tolerant attitude which the philosopher extends to other persons should not be construed as his compromise with falsehood. Truth and falsehood mutually exclude each other, and contradictories cannot both be true. Tolerance towards that which I firmly believe as radically wrong or evil would be sheer hypocrisy. This would be pseudo-tolerance which leads to moral and intellectual cowardice and an inhuman attitude towards life. Of late there have been attempts in certain parts of the world towards some sort of religious syncretism and eclecticism. In India Rabindranath Tagore and Mahatama Gandhi have been the great exponents of this ideal. But without casting any aspersion on the sincerity and integrity of such persons one can clearly see that in the face of conflicting and contradictory truth-claims of various religions a confused mind or a hypocrite alone can adopt this attitude and take the risk of playing with the spiritual life of mankind.

Thus I think it is the imperative duty of the philosopher and, for that matter, of every conscientious person to adopt all pacific methods to convey to others the truth of which he feels sincerely convinced after an unbiased and impartial inquiry. By precepts, preaching and example he should try to win others to his faith and make them see the truth of his convictions. He should emphasise that such an objective quest for truth is not his sole responsibility, but the joint responsibility of humankind.