By Schubert Ogden
The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden
Analyses of the "axial religions" commonly point up what has been called "the prophetic-mystic divide" (Race: 88). Thus "the prophetic and the experience of personal encounter with the divine are dominant in the semitic faiths, and mystic and non-personal union with the divine are dominant in the Asian faiths" (Race: 84 f.).
Tillich makes essentially the same point while stressing that each type exhibits "a polar relation" in the sense of "a relation of interdependent elements, each of which is necessary for the other one and for the whole, although it is in tension with the opposite element" (Tillich, 1961: 55). All religions "grow out of a sacramental basis, out of the experience of the holy as present here and now, in this thing, this person, this event. But no higher religion remained on this sacramental basis; they transcended it, while still preserving it, for as long as there is religion the sacramental basis cannot disappear. It can, however, be broken and transcended. This has happened in two directions, the mystical and the ethical, according to the two elements of the experience of the holy—the experience of the holy as being and the experience of the holy as what ought to be. There is no holiness and therefore no living religion without both elements, but the predominance of the mystical element in all India-born religions is obvious, as well as the predominance of the social-ethical element in those born of Israel" (58 f.).
My question now is how all this relates to (1) the basic analogies or symbols in terms of which the relation between "the one among the many" and "the one which is all" has been understood-namely, the social analogy and the psychosomatic analogy; and (2) a genuinely neo-classical (transcendental) metaphysics, for which "the one which is all" is conceived as the universal individual, or individual universal, and thus as dipolar.
6/16/1
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