The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden

scanned pdf

Some have said that the metaphysical question is, "Why is there something rather than nothing?" In point of fact, however, this question is absurd, implying, as it does, that "There might be (or have been) nothing" is a meaningful assertion, which it is not. But granted that the assertion, "Something exists," can only be true, the proper question of metaphysics is, "What does the 'something' in 'Something exists' necessarily imply?" And the full answer to this question is the whole of metaphysics. Arguably, the "something" in "Something exists" implies that "God exists" is also a necessary truth, provided, at any rate, that "God" is conceived neoclassically as "dual transcendence."

In all of this, I am in entire agreement with Hartshorne, even as I also agree that the "actuality" of God, as distinct from God's "essence" and "existence," is not necessary but contingent, so that no truth about it, beyond the necessary truth that God's essence exists necessarily, and so is somehow actualized, can be other than contingently true. But where I strongly disagree with Hartshorne is when he goes on to claim that "Something exists," having yielded "God exists," is "further defined or explicated by two analogies, one being the interpersonal analogy, [God being conceived as] the ideal form of love or concern by one individual for other individuals, . . . the other being Plato's analogy [according to which God is conceived as] . . . the 'World Soul' and the Universe as the body of this Soul" (PCH: 570 f.).

As entirely proper as it is to speak of God symbolically or metaphorically as well as literally, such speaking is not properly metaphysical, is not, as Hartshorne claims, a matter of further defining or explicating "Something exists" along the same lines that have yielded "God exists" as likewise a metaphysical truth. By his own admission, neither the interpersonal analogy nor the mind-body analogy can be an "analogy" in the sense that being a metaphysical analogy requires. Therefore, even if there could be such a thing as a proper metaphysical analogy, which there cannot be, talk of God either in interpersonal terms or in mind-body terms is not a further instance of metaphysical talk at all.

10 August 2002

  • No labels