Princeton University Class of 1957

You have set me a task for which I am not equipped (I tell my students facetiously that I do not believe in philosophy). Yet I think that I can summarize the argument. I do not know how familiar you are with Kant: you may be way ahead of me, but I will outline my understanding.

Kant's three Critiques are three modes of knowing:

1. Pure Reason: Physics

2. Practical Reason: Morality

3. Judgment: Beauty and the Sublime

Kant rejects Aristotle's (and Aquinas') proofs of the existence of a first cause (God) on the grounds that physics (pure reason) cannot properly argue to the existence of God. It seems that this is true, even if we recognize that the a-priori categories are an unsucessful attempt to account for necessity. I think that this is the reason that Dodelson wanted to reject the term "big bang;" it has become a symbolic term in the "religious argument." It is also significant that Dodelson wanted to define T-zero as the time that the laws of physics began to operate, allowing that there might be a "time before" T-zero which cosmology does not describe. Most of the 20th century theologians doing rational theology (i.e. neo-Thomists et al) also reject the proofs of God from physical causality as they seem to be based on a weak and less than instructive analogy. Thus Kant believed, and I believe that physics will never prove nor disprove the existence of God.

Moving to the moral law (which concerns the interior life and the intentions of the individual human), I will only remark that our seminar participants John and Arthur, who could not bring themselves to say that there was a "Creator," had absolutely no doubt whatsoever in the way in which we ought to conduct ourselves. Now I did not challenge them, because they appeared bigger and stronger than I; but I might have said, "Why don't you just go out to do and get whatever you can for your own benefit; to hell with the weak and underpriviledged?" Why don't we promote skillful sociopathic morality? Well, it's because of the natural moral law written on the hearts of men, which at least demands justice and fairness and does not endorse the law of the strongest. It is not so difficult to see awe and reverence here, as Kant found God here (explicitly in the Critique of Practical Reason).

Now the third category is the one in which the interior world of freedom and the physical world of necessity approach one another. The Critique of Judgment is generally classed under the heading of aesthetics, and it is mostly discussed by those with literary interests. But note Coleridge's famous oracular eruption, which he drew from the Critique of Judgment:

The imagination then, I consider either as primary, or secondary. The primary imagination I hold to be the living power and prime agent of all human perception and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I am.

The secondary imagination I consider as an echo of the former, coexisting with the conscious will, yet still as identical with the primary in the kind of its agency, and differing only in degree, and in the mode of its operation.

Those interested in literature go on to discuss the secondary imagination and literature; but notice that the definition of the primary imagination is a theological statement: human perception and the constituant principles of being are in harmony. Now Kant was not much interested in art and literature (many find it ironic that Kant stands behind so much of our present day understanding of poetry, when he didn't know much at all about poetry), so he is primarily interested in "beauty" in nature. The sublime by definition (the most famous early discussion of the sublime is by Edmund Burke) is the occasion in which the vision of natural existence overwhelms the observer by its power or magnitude, e.g. the sea, a sunset, a waterfall, or most especially the stars in the heavens. Kant argued that this perception of pleasure in the case of beauty or awe in the case of the sublime was an actual and true human response - and in the end knowledge, i.e. a judgment. From here arises the perception of awe and reverence. Nature appears purposive to us, i.e. if a beaver is running back and forth on his dam, it appears to us that he is doing so for some reason, maybe building the dam, but we really don't know what the "reason" is; still appears to us to be purposive action. Thus nature on the grandest scale seems to us to be in harmony with human action which always results from some reason or purpose.

Jerry's example of Dennett is a case in point. The feeling of awe and reverence is natural to human experience and not contingent upon faith or cultural conditioning. No surprise: awe and reverence are the natural response of the human to the sublime, that which overwhelms us. The interesting fact is that those natural scientists who step back a bit from their formulas and equations remain in awe of the "big picture", - the reality they are attempting to master.

Dennett is also interesting to me because he quotes Anselm's ontological proof of God: i.e. Dennett might have been hesitant to speak about his experience, in that he is a natural scientist for whom "feeling," "awe," or "the sacred" have no relevance. Still he was willing to assert that Life is that actual greater than which nothing can be conceived - God is Life Qua Life. Surely he is arguing from magnitude and not perfection. I go back to Kant here to note that he mentioned that the ontological argument of Anselm was the only argument that held the possibility of producing a valid metaphysic. This paragraph doesn't have much to do with our seminar; its just that I have come to believe recently that the ontological proof of Anselm is from magnitude rather than perfection. From the time that it was uttered, it was criticized in terms of perfection. I think, however, that it was always referring to the sublime.

Boiled down: I do not find it to be a surprise that awe exists apart from a specific faith, and I believe that any human can trust in this real experience. It does not depend on the particular scientific cosmological knowledge of the time, the totality will remain sublime. I also think that those who maintain "intelligent design" are really arguing from the sublime.

I would have written this earlier, but Bart kept saying that I should write my 50th yearbook thing first.

Harry

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