03/24/2021 – Robert Neville Part 2: Existence

What is existence? The second of a three-part series on Robert Neville’s trilogy. This is TenOnReligion.

Hey peeps, it’s Dr. B. with TenOnReligion. This video is closed-captioned here on YouTube and the transcript is available at TenOnReligion.com. Welcome to a continuation of the previous vlog. Bob Neville published a three-volume series on philosophical theology, which isn’t really as much about theology as it is about explaining religion. You really have to be interested in analyzing religion at very high level, I mean a big-picture view. It’s very complicated stuff for most regular folks, I’m taking shoulder-deep in the weeds, but like the last episode, we’re gonna try and hit some highlights here, but there’s a lot of stuff. Last time we talked about the first volume titled Ultimates. This episode will be on the second volume titled Existence and the next episode will be on the last volume titled Religion. As I mentioned in the previous episode, all three books in Neville’s series have the exact same structure. Following an introduction to the book, they all have four parts and each part has four chapters, so each book has exactly sixteen chapters. The four parts of Existence are “Ultimate Boundary Conditions,” “Predicaments and Deliverances,” “Ecstatic Fulfillments,” and “Engagement and Participation.” I found the third section, “Ecstatic Fulfillments,” to be the most interesting part of the book.

In this second volume, he is making a double claim. First, the human condition has something wrong with it – some form of perfection has been lost; and second, part of religion’s job is to fix it. We’ll unpack that a little more as we move on. He maps a main focus of the human predicament onto the three geographical categories explained in the first volume. For West Asian traditions the main concern is disobedience. For South Asian, defects of consciousness which is primarily illusion (or delusion). And for East Asian it is disharmony that frustrates emergence.

His initial definition of religion is based on the concept of ultimacy. Religion is human engagement of ultimacy expressed in cognitive articulations, existential responses to ultimacy that give ultimate definition to the individual and community, and patterns of life and ritual in the face of ultimacy. So what’s up with all of this ultimacy? There are five ultimate realities that all humans share, one ontological – meaning it has to do with our very being, and four cosmological ultimates – meaning after we have existence, then what? These were all mentioned in the last episode. The categories of the religions as well as the categories of ultimate realities is how the story is told across all three books. In this second volume, he also maps five dimensions of the human predicament onto his five ultimates: (1) affirmation and negation to map to the ontological, and four others to map onto the cosmological; (2) obligation and guilt, (3) grounded wholeness and disintegration, (4) engagement and estrangement, (5) achievement and destruction. Behind all the cosmological predicaments is the ontological predicament of death. Behind all the cosmological paths to ecstatic fulfillment is the ontological significance of life. These are all articulated through the symbol systems of what Neville refers to as sacred canopies, basically religions, which help us cope with death and give us life in this present world.

The first part,“Ultimate Boundary Conditions.” We have obligations that we feel in four areas: moral, social, personal, and natural. These sometimes can and do come into conflict with each other. For instance, one can feel a social obligation to fight in a war but at the same time feel like the war is morally wrong. The is the story of the Hindu epic, the Bhagavad Gita. The components for these obligations come from a mythos – a set of stories or narratives which can be religious or in some way provide an understanding of what wholeness is, often in symbolic form. Our own location defines the conditions for engaging in any particular version of wholeness in reference to a harmony. A harmony here means with other people, a community, oneself, or the environment around us. The trouble is, we are subjective, but only have access to everything and everyone else as an object. Thus, we objectivize others and often dehumanize them by grouping them into stereotypes. The challenge is to understand all of the others are subjects, just like us. This is why Neville talks a lot about value-identity in relationship to belonging. One feels valued in a religious community as well as in relation to an ultimate reality like Allah, God, Heaven, the Dao, or Brahman.

Then in the second part of the book, “Predicaments and Deliverances,” he talks about guilt and justification. The failure of fulfilling what we perceive to be obligations creates a feeling of brokenness. Deliverance of moral and social guilt arising from broken obligations comes through redemption and restoration. Sacrifice and purification are frequently used symbols for this. It is no surprise that the plots of many novels, films and other productions have redemptive or restorative themes as these have been common experiences in religions for millennia. But sometimes the things that lead us towards restoration are forgotten and people become alienated from them. One must become centered to recapture what was lost. This might include physical or emotional healing, a dose of humility to cure arrogance, or finding comfort in a time of suffering. Some traditions use the language of enlightenment to find one’s true self. Neville then relays four types of estrangement which map to four dimensions of engagement: denial to awareness, distortion to appreciation, despair to courage, and hate to love.

The third part, “Ecstatic Fulfillments,” was my favorite part of this second volume in the series. The four chapters are about time (specifically narrative), eternity, love, and freedom. The first chapter in this third part was about fulfillment through narrative in that one experiences and envisions their religious life as part of an ultimate story. Many of these religious frameworks are apocalyptic in nature. This means there is some sort of cosmic conclusion only for those who live by and accept the narrative. One issue with this type of understanding religion is that things which don’t fit into the narrative become obscured and devoid of meaning. Ultimacy isn’t always easily defined in narrative terms. The sets of narratives from one religion makes its understanding of truth limited to only those narratives. Then he gets into eternity, never an easy philosophical topic to discuss. He explains what I thought was probably the most important point of the entire three-volume series: differentiating between the iconic and indexical reference of a symbol. This is a game-changer and it comes from a philosopher named C. S. Peirce. An iconic reference of a symbol is one in which a likeness exists between a sign and its object. An indexical reference is one in which a causal relation is established between a sign and is object such that the interpreter, seeing the sign, picks up on something important in the object. Why is this such an important distinction? Because Neville says that ultimate religious symbols cannot be literally true, meaning iconically true. They are only indexically true as metaphysical symbols, not metaphysical realities beyond the concepts they represent. Many religious adherents don’t get that. They live with religious symbols as if they referred iconically without realizing their actual functional reference to the ultimate can only be indexically true, but they often question whether or not that is the case. Are they being deceived? Does God exist? Is there an afterlife, and so on. The third chapter in this section is on love and describes four modes: gratuity, arbritariness, undeservedness, and surprising-ness. The fourth chapter talks about freedom which also gets into some deep philosophical issues which could be its own video episode. Basically, all of us are free to a certain extent, and we should use that freedom to the degree that we can. But, here’s the key, freedom is limited for people, families, or groups that find themselves living in a society that does not tolerate their culture and give it opportunities for active participation in the society, access to education and jobs, and a place in the society’s history. These are huge issues which religion has often had more of a negative than a positive effect.

The last section, “Engagement and Participation,” has chapters on “Ritual,” “Commitment,” “Faith,” and “Sacred Worldviews”. So what are religious rituals and what do they do? Religious rituals symbolically represent the remedies for the broken obligations of human predicaments. They are the path to fulfillment which engages and connects daily life with ultimacy. Even though there is great similarity in some of the rituals across religions, such as water as a symbol of purity, they are often quite particular to that religion. Neville suggests we should learn how to engage others on their own terms. This means respecting such religious particularity. Concern for other people includes concern that they find salvations appropriate for their versions of the human predicaments. This means that one cannot rest, in matters of ultimate salvation, with the achievement of religious depth in one’s own particular ritualized community. In order properly to be aware of, appreciate, and love other people, one has to respect their religion as well, for that is where they address ultimate matters. This ignorance is a limitation for a lot of people.

The next chapter on “Commitment” as shared with multiple levels of intensity is pretty straightforward. The chapter on “Faith” refers to living out that commitment. The last chapter on “Sacred Worldviews” also has some very rich points about religion. Again, Neville refers to religious worldviews as sacred canopies. The problem is when one’s sacred canopy is called into question, because this also questions the entire orienting meaning for one’s life. He writes:

“Death for a good cause gives extra meaning to life. Yet the death of one’s worldview means that even the meaninglessness of personal death is gone. The result of this profound terror sometimes is that the limits on acceptable behavior are eroded and terrorist methods are tempting to reinforce the authority of the old worldview. But the violence in defense of the old worldview comes from deep suspicion that those who claim it is implausible might be right. If one were thoroughly confident in one’s worldview, there would be no anxiety about its being under attack. Ours, however, is a time of deep anxiety about certain conservative religious worldviews that pushes communities that find meaning in them to extremes of verbal, social, and physical violence, especially in Christian and Muslim communities, although not only there.” [p. 316-317]

Dude! If one were thoroughly confident in one’s worldview, there would be no anxiety about its being under attack. Wow, what a statement! People feel the authority of their sacred worldviews are put into jeopardy when they start to recognize that they are contingent, specifically, a partially adequate and partially inadequate symbolization of the human predicament.

Neville’s book series is super deep and not really for everyone, but when you’re able to see what’s really in them, it’s a great philosophical description of religion. The next episode we’re going to plunge into the third and final book, Religion. That’s it for today. I hope this vlog has helped you better understand this topic. Until next time, stay curious. If you enjoyed this, please like this video and subscribe to the channel. This is TenOnReligion.