By Schubert Ogden
The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden
More on the "particula exclusiva"
Question: What is the logic of the "exclusive particle" in all of its different uses? Could it perhaps be illumined by the logic of the unique relation between whole and part, universal individual and particular individual?
I have maintained for some time that the point of the exclusive particle in all of its uses "is not simply to rule out all other factors as also being relevant or playing a role in the matter or process in question," but rather "to rule out such other factors as being primarily relevant or playing any primary role." But what is this if not to say, in so many words, that, although a pluralism of factors is to be affirmed, it is a qualified pluralism only, in that the symmetry that pluralism implies rests on an even more fundamental asymmetry -- namely, that between being a primary, and not being a primary, factor.
God and the world, yes. But, as Hartshorne always insisted, it is better to say, God as including the world, or the world as included in God -- thereby bringing out the asymmetry as well as the symmetry of the relation between them.
Note 1: Perhaps another way of saying this would be simply to make use of Hartshorne's distinction between "dualism" and "duality," understanding the second to be, as it were, a mean between the extremes of monism and pluralism (dualism being, after all, only a special case of pluralism, even as duality is, as it were, a qualified dualism).
Note 2: Interestingly enough, this whole line of reflection appears to have been anticipated by what I was thinking when I wrote the following: "The genius of the Christian understanding of existence is that it is the true and original 'center' from which the extreme contraries of monism and dualism in all their several forms are equally departures and distortions" (RG: 228). Also 67 f., where, speaking of "the scriptural witness historically represented by Protestant Christianity," I argue that "Protestantism's most distinctive claims all share a certain paradoxical or dialectical character. Beginning with its central doctrine of justification by grace and faith alone, all its main teachings seem either to affirm or to imply what Kierkegaard spoke of as 'the infinite qualitative difference' between God and the world. On the one hand, God is said to be 'wholly other' than the world, and the world by itself utterly secular or profane; on the other hand, the very otherness of God is understood as his being for the world, not against it, so that the world in itself is affirmed to be of ultimate significance .... [I]t is clear, I think, that, if anything is to be called 'the spirit of Protestantism,' it is just this dialectical vision of God and the world and the total style of Christian life to which it gives rise. And equally clear is the reason why Protestants tend to share this vision almost as if by instinct: from the beginning, their chief inspiration has not been the spirit which informs the rich culture of classical antiquity, but the quite different Spirit who moves over the pages of Holy Scripture, witnessing simply that 'God is love.' It is precisely and only eminent love, in the distinctively scriptural sense of pure personal relationship, that could relate God to his world by such a profound dialectic of difference and identity." And 69, where I speak of "the peculiar paradox of Protestant Christianity -- that God is radically other than the world and never to be confused with it, but that, just for this reason, the world itself has an unconditional worth and significance. ").
30 September 2008
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