Dear Jon
I admit that some of those quotes spread doubts about the immanence, but I
think one has to reflect on the Concordia transcendentalist’s influence on
Peirce. Emmerson for one was a panentheist. There are other quotes that seem to
support immanence and not a personal creator: Yet we must not assume that the
qualities arose separate and came into relation afterward. It was just the
reverse. The general indefinite potentiality became limited and heterogeneous.
Those who express the idea to themselves by saying that the Divine Creator
determined so and so may be incautiously clothing the idea in a garb that is
open to criticism, but it is, after all, substantially the only philosophical
answer to the problem. Namely, they represent the ideas as springing into a
preliminary stage of being by their own inherent firstness. But so springing
up, they do not spring up isolated; for if they did, nothing could unite them.
They spring up in reaction upon one another, and thus into a kind of existence.
This reaction and this existence these persons call the mind of God. I really
think there is no objection to this except that it is wrapped up in figures of
speech, instead of having the explicitness that we desire in science. For all
you know of "minds" is from the actions of animals with brains or ganglia like
yourselves, or at furthest like a cockroach. To apply such a word to God is
precisely like the old pictures which show him like an aged man leaning over to
look out from above a cloud. Considering the vague intention of it, as
conceived by the non-theological artist, it cannot be called false, but rather
ludicrously figurative. (CP 6. 199.)
Best
Søren
From: Jon Alan Schmidt [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: 12. oktober 2016 04:09
To: Søren Brier
Cc: [email protected]
Subject: Re: RE: [PEIRCE-L] Peirce's Cosmology
Søren, List:
SB: I think your problem is solved by Panentheism, which accept the divine to
be both transcendent and immanent.
Again, I am now leaning against trying to apply any such label to Peirce.
Granted, one of the three drafts that I quoted from R 843 indicates that God is
not merely immanent in nature; and this might plausibly be interpreted as
compatible with panentheism, at least as you have described it here. However,
the other two drafts both clearly state that God is not immanent in nature and
is not immanent in the three Universes. That being the case, if immanence is
required for panentheism, then it appears that Peirce was not a panentheist.
Regards,
Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA
Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman
www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt<http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt> -
twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt<http://twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt>
On Tue, Oct 11, 2016 at 6:43 PM, Søren Brier
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Dear Helmut
I think your problem is solved by Panentheism, which accept the divine to be
both transcendent and immanent. Thus the Tohu va Bohu or pure Zero is the
transcendent, which as the first step in creation produces Firstness as real
possibilities of forms of existence, combined with the tendency to take habits,
which could be interpreted as The holy Ghost, which when stabilized produces
real Secondness and goes on to order it through the self-organizing drive of
thirdness. Now God = the Father in this scenario , is not a person because it
is pure potential. A person or a subject need both Secondness and thirdness to
manifest with a consciousness and a will. (Peirce writes: Since God, in His
essential character of Ens necessarium, is a disembodied spirit, and since
there is strong reason to hold that what we call consciousness is either merely
the general sensation of the brain or some part of it, or at all events some
visceral or bodily sensation, God probably has no consciousness. CP 6.489) The
manifestation could be The son, which can both manifest as a person like
Christ and/or Krishna and as our inner awareness. As Meister Eckhart says the
Sons is born again and again in every person and it is only through the birth
of the son in our consciousness that the way to Gods is possible. This
interpretation is pretty Gnostic and pure mystical and as such fits with much
Cristian mysticism, Taoism, Advaita Vedanta, Rumi’s Sufism and so on collected
in what is usually called the Perennial philosophy. This view on the divine has
been ad odds with most theistic religion that works with a personified creator.
Best
Søren
-----------------------------
PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L
to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to [email protected] . To
UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to [email protected] with the
line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at
http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
