[MD] Essentialism and the MOQ

[Ham Priday]

Hi Laramie --

Thanks for the reference.  This comparison of Aurobindo's (Indian)
conception of God with Hartshorne's (Western) concept is indeed interesting.

Since it took me awhile to locate the specific pdf file containing this
analysis from the link you provided, I've quoted relevant portions below for
the benefit of others.  I've also added some comments of my own at the end.

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8 HARTSHORNE, PROCESS PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY

God as ''self-knowing''

It is impossible to expound fully in a short paper either Aurobindo's or
Hartshorne's world view. I shall focus on the two theists' concepts of God
and of God's mutability.

Both philosophers discern a fundamental distinction of ''nature,'' or
''aspect,'' in God, ''primordial'' and ''consequent'' with Hartshorne,
''essential'' and ''manifest'' with Aurobindo.  Both also see God as
mutable: Hartshorne holds that God has accidents in God's consequent state;
Aurobindo holds that what he calls ''evolutionary manifestation'' is a
manifestation of God. Both believe that God ''includes'' or 'contains''
our world of ''becoming,'' and that God changes as it changes. (For both, it
is a necessary truth that everything is ''within'' God's awareness,
''prehended'' by God.)

But concerning the sense in which God is immutable, there is sharp
disagreement: the concepts of a ''primordial God'' and of an ''essential
Divine'' are hardly a neat match.  Once this is clear, it will be seen that,
despite the similarity at first blush, each conceives ''divine mutability''
quite differently, too.

The key differences may be brought out with respect to ideas on ''God's
creativity'' and an argument Hartshorne makes.  For Hartshorne, God not only
necessarily is but also necessarily creates.  Aurobindo, in contrast,
believes that God need not have created anything at all.

Hartshorne believes that the notion of a Creator without a creation makes no
sense. But he should not be construed as holding simply that the terms
'Creator,' etc. connote a relational complex.  The issue, he doubtless would
admit, could be framed in a neutral way-for example: Is God necessarily a
Creator? or: Could God have existed without creating?

Indeed, Hartshorne supports his view that God is necessarily creative with
several interlocking lines of argument, framed in the interlocking terms of
his system.  As with Whitehead, the concept of ''creativity'' is with
Hartshorne as central as that of ''God.'' (Whitehead: ''In the philosophy of
organism this ultimate is termed 'creativity'; and God is its primordial,
non-temporal accident.'')

The argument on which I shall focus-as particularly well-suited for contrast
with Aurobindo-hinges on Hartshorne's view that a characteristic of
''perfect knowing'' is intrinsic to God.  (That is, we must conceive God as
necessarily a perfect knower.)  Hartshorne then asks: What would there be
for God to know if there were only God's
''own existence?''  For Hartshorne, God's ''own existence'' would lack a
sufficiently rich content to qualify an exclusively ''self-cognizing'' God
as a knower.  The idea makes no sense.  ''Existence'' is an abstraction from
the actual.  Without characteristics, what would there be to exist, much
less to know?  Note that Hartshorne's own concept of
a ''primordial state'' of God is, in his view, an abstraction from God's
actuality, that ''aspect,'' namely, that prefigures ''infinite
potentialities of being.'' God does not ''know'' even (Whiteheadian)
''eternal objects'' (such as numbers) apart from knowing the world.
(Though ''thicker'' than a concept of bare ''existence,'' ''Primordial God''
is
in no way prior-conceptually or in any other way-to God as God is actually.
The ''primordial,'' ''consequent,'' and ''superjective'' aspects each
presuppose the others, as does ''knowing perfectly'' as well.)

Indeed, ''knowing perfectly'' is an abstraction from God as God fully is.
But we may take Hartshorne to say that it is by focusing on this aspect that
we can see what nonsense is the idea of a merely ''self-cognizing God.''
Let me add that while God is considered necessarily a perfect knower, not
everything about God is so construed.  Much of God's knowledge is contingent
on contingent events.  Further, what is contingent is, in Hartshorne's view,
what might not have been.

But contingency is not itself contingent, since the idea of a perfect knower
demands that ''Contingency must be somehow actualized, but just how or in
just what it is actualized: that is the contingency.''  Aurobindo's
''self-existent'' (svayambhu-) God, or ''Brahman,'' has a triad of
necessary, or ''essential'' characteristics  The mystic uses the Upanishadic
term 'saccida-nanda,' ''Existence-Consciousness=Power-Bliss,'' to
characterize this ''essential nature'' (or ''svaru-pa''): Brahman is
self-existent and self-creative (sat), self-conscious and conscious of a
power to ''loose forth'' contingencies (cit or, in an alternative
formulation-indicating Tantric influence-cit-s´akti ), and blissful in
itself (sa-nanda).

To understand Aurobindo's position, we need to review a concept of
''knowledge by identity'' that is expressed early in Indian thought, and
that has known marked importance in several Indian schools: in Sanskrit,
''svayampraka-s´ama-na,'' literally, a ''self-illumining.'' Aurobindo holds
that a capacity for such a ''non-dual'' knowing is an intrinsic
characteristic of a ''self,'' whether God or a contingent being.  He claims
this ''self-knowing'' is continuous but ''subconscious'' for most humans at
most times, and clearly evident during a type of self-absorbed meditation,
i.e. in a mystic trance facilitated, he says, by yoga.

Perhaps it does violence to English usage to call such a state a "knowing".
But Aurobindo could respond that is it a peculiar ''awareness'' or native
''potentiality of awareness.'' It is presumed an awareness devoid of
sense-mediated, affective, and mental content-''mental'' not in a sense of
''cognitive'' but in the psychological sense of ''thinking act.''....

Thus for Aurobindo, God's ''immutability'' amounts to a timeless status
where God cognizes only God's own essence, including a continual (or
timeless) option to become or not-and to become aware of or not-inessential
determinations.  God is necessarily ''mutable'' in that God cannot forsake
being faced with the option of unfurling the divine
body in, and as, our time and world.  But God need not undergo such change.
It is true that were God to recoil into a Divine trance of
''self-absorption,'' destroying the world, that also would be, in a sense, a
''mutation'' in what God is: God's choosing not to change would itself be a
change (timelessly figured).  And so God is, strictly speaking,
necessarily mutable, in Aurobindo's conception.  But loosely speaking, God
is, on his view, only contingently mutable.
______________________________________________

Here are my comments.  To keep to the theistic framework of this essay, I'll
(reluctantly) use the term 'God' instead of 'Essence' .

I see three fundamental premises in question here:
1) that God can be '"immutable" as a Creator,
2) that God could "exist" without creation, and
3) that God is "perfect knowing"

The suggestion that God is mutable arises from the human perspective of
Creation as evolutionary, thus presupposing "change".  I can resolve that
issue in one sentence: If God is absolute, it encompasses all of Creation in
time as a 'fait accompli'.

The question as to whether Creation is a "necessary" contingency for God is
also meaningless, because Creation (i.e., existence) is an empirical fact,
hence is included in the timeless absolute.  The fact that existence itself
is an "actualized" contingency does not make God contingent (dependent) upon
it.

Finally, "perfect knowing" is absolute sensibility which is undivided and
not subject to the conditions of finitude.  Knowing is the incremental,
finite differentiation of Absolute Oneness performed by man's intellect.
Sensibility is indistinguishable from "knowledge" in the identity of God.

To rephrase these conclusions in Essentialist terms, Essence is absolute,
immutable, timeless Sensibility.  Existence is the finite, dynamic,
space/time appearance of a differentiated object (beingness) to a negated
subject (awareness).  Creation is the dichotomous, valuistic affinity of
nothingness for its uncreated, absolute Source.

That's a highly condensed synopsis, but I think it ties together the loose
ends of the fundamental questions raised in Stephan Phillip's monograph.

You must be doing a bit of research on the Internet, Laramie.  Let's see who
else is interested.

Best regards,
Ham