The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden

scanned pdf

According to Hartshorne, the "ideas which we must have . . . are all summed up, focused, united, made sense out of by the idea of God. What is 'added' is only the more complete intelligibility. God is not . . . a fact among facts, but any fact as differing from nothing only through a love which sways and registers all occurrences" (AD: 108).

It seems clear from this that what Hartshorne means by "the idea of God" is precisely the idea of "a love which sways and registers all existence." But, then, it is arguable that what "the idea of God" provides is not more, but rather less, intelligibility, the idea of such a love being an unintelligible (because self-contradictory, incoherent) idea. This it is, at any rate, unless it is understood simply as a symbolic way of talking about "the inclusive reality," or "the universal individual."

Elsewhere Hartshorne reasons similarly: ""[T]he analysis of this sense [sc. of being coordinate to, or coexistent with others] reveals God as its intelligible content; for only within a common impartial unity can such coordination obtain; and this impartial inclusiveness is precisely the omniscience and all-appreciativeness of God" ("The Formal Validity and Real Significance of the Ontological Argument": 235 f.).

To this one can only reply, "No," 'this impartial inclusiveness' is not precisely 'the omniscience and all-appreciativeness of God,' which is only a symbolic way of thinking and speaking about it!"

18 April 1997

  • No labels