Dear Eduardo
Thank you. I have been fascinated by it since I discovered this connection.
Which made me study some necessary works of the traditions.
Isayeva N. (1993). Shankara and Indian philosophy. Delhi: Sri Satguru
Publications.
John of the Cross. (2003). Dark night of the soul, New York: Dover
publications.
Nargajuna. (1995). The fundamental wisdom of the middle way (J. L. Garfield,
Trans.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
floyd merrell is, by the way, doing wonderful work in this area. We published
an article from him some years ago. merrel, f. (2009). Musement, play,
creativity: Nature's way.
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Cybernetics & Human Knowing, 16 (3-4), 89-106.
Best
Søren
Fra: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]
Sendt: 21. maj 2014 23:00
Til: Søren Brier
Cc: [email protected]; [email protected]
Emne: Re: SV: [PEIRCE-L] De Waal seminar chapter 9, section on God, science and
religion: text 1
Soren:
Forgive my intrusion and brevity. This is a beatiful message. In Spanish we
would say: muy hermoso.
Eduardo Forastieri-Braschi
<-----Original Message----->
From: Søren Brier [[email protected]]
Sent: 5/21/2014 2:11:56 PM
To:
[email protected];[email protected]<mailto:[email protected];[email protected]>
Subject: SV: [PEIRCE-L] De Waal seminar chapter 9, section on God, science and
religion: text 1
Dear Gary and list
Peirce seems keen to work with the foundation of all religions, which is one
way to characterize the pure types of mysticism and the theory of collecting
them into a perennial philosophy. His theory of the immanent divine as
Firstness and his idea of an emptiness before the three categories or
universes, as he also calls them -a Tohu Bohu (the great emptiness) as he
quotes from the old testament - is pretty mystical. It is also important to
note that Peirce is both inspired by transcendental Christianity as well as
Buddhism in a sort of panentheism. The divine is both immanent and transcendent
in Peirce's philosophy. It is both an emptiness "behind and before" the
manifested world in time and space giving birth to a Firstness of
possibilities, "random sporting", qualia and possible mathematical forms.
Peirce writes:
"If we are to proceed in a logical and scientific manner, we must, in order to
account for the whole universe, suppose an initial condition in which the whole
universe was non-existent, and therefore a state of absolute nothing. . . . But
this is not the nothing of negation. . . . The nothing of negation is the
nothing of death, which comes second to, or after, everything. But this pure
zero is the nothing of not having been born. There is no individual thing, no
compulsion, outward nor inward, no law. It is the germinal nothing, in which
the whole universe is involved or foreshadowed. As such, it is absolutely
undefined and unlimited possibility -- boundless possibility. There is no
compulsion and no law. It is boundless freedom.
Now the question arises, what necessarily resulted from that state of things?
But the only sane answer is that where freedom was boundless nothing in
particular necessarily resulted. . . .
I say that nothing necessarily resulted from the Nothing of boundless freedom.
That is, nothing according to deductive logic. But such is not the logic of
freedom or possibility. The logic of freedom, or potentiality, is that it shall
annul itself. For if it does not annul itself, it remains a completely idle and
do-nothing potentiality; and a completely idle potentiality is annulled by its
complete idleness."
(CP 6.215-219)
This philosophy places "emptiness" and "the void" at a central a place in
Peirce's metaphysics, as it is in the pure mysticism of Buddhism, for instance
the version represented in the writings of Nargajuna (1995) in his famous verse:
"Whatever is dependently co-arising
That is explained to be emptiness.
That, being a dependent designation
Is itself the middle way."
(Garfield 1995, p. 93)
This verse defines "the middle way" of Buddhism. It is the view arising from
the contention that everything is supported and connected by a positive
emptiness (which is not an absence but a primary being), the foundation for
nearly all major Buddhist schools in East Asia (Garfield 1995)[1]. The
metaphysics of emptiness is to be found not only in Buddhism but also in the
Vedic thinking of Shankara's Advaita Vedanta and Christian mysticism (John of
the Cross and Eckehart). Peirce saw Buddhism and Christianity melting together
within a transcendental religious view of empathy and love as the foundation of
reality. The emphasis on feeling and emotion as central to all "rational"
thought is one of Peirce's outstanding contributions to understanding the
processes of mind. Such a way of thinking is close to the mystical thinking we
find in many cultures and many historical periods inside and outside religions,
and is sometimes referred to as "the perennial philosophy."
The idea of "mystic" does not mean a personal meeting with a personal God, but
the merging of the inner and the outside of our being in a unity consciousness,
which as such is a no-experience as it lacks the duality need for a subject to
experience something else. It is well described in Zen. Eckhart also say "I
pray to God to get writ of God". The idea of a personal God only arise on the
"other side" of the mystical state. But Peirce did not seem to know very much
about these kinds of descriptions.
Best
Søren
Fra: Gary Fuhrman [mailto:[email protected]]
Sendt: 21. maj 2014 17:21
Til: 'Peirce List'
Emne: RE: [PEIRCE-L] De Waal seminar chapter 9, section on God, science and
religion: text 1
Søren, list,
Peirce did not use the term "panentheism" because it wasn't available in his
time. But he did use both "mysticism" and "revelation" - even defined the
latter for the Century Dictionary - and his usage of both is fairly consistent
with his own philosophical work as a whole, and with current usage of those
terms as well. So I don't think it's helpful to apply them to Peirce's work in
a sense quite different from Peirce's usage.
I agree with what you say below about "musement", even to calling it a form of
"meditation". But what animates musement, and the whole Neglected Argument
which begins with it, is neither mysticism nor revelation; rather it's the
"natural light" of reason, as Kees explains in 9.5. This "natural light" is the
root, as it were, of Peircean common-sensism and of Peirce's view of religion;
it's what makes science religious. It's also the root of the instinctive
beliefs which, according to Peirce, are more reliable in most practical
situations than deliberate reasoning is.
Here's a few Peirce passages to illustrate this point (I can give many more J)
while also exemplifying Peircean usage of the terms "mystical" and "revelation".
CP 1.142-3, c.1897:
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