Our culture generally assumes that we can truly and definitively know things. If we don’t know something now, we believe we will certainly know it soon. Students cram their heads with facts and come to believe they have knowledge.
But the best philosophy, at least since Socrates in the West and Laozi in the East, suggests that we don’t know what we think we know. What we think we know might not be true, and true knowledge is realizing that you really don’t know. Both Socrates and Laozi told us that there is something Ultimately Real, but that we cannot truly know it. We may catch glimpses of it or experience it occasionally, but we often find words inadequate to express what we have glimpsed or experienced. “The Dao that can be named is not the enduring Dao,” said Laozi. Socrates always ended his dialogues without a conclusion, with no definitive answer.
Immanuel Kant, in the 18th century, further developed this idea with his distinction between the “phenomenon” and the “noumenon.” For Kant, the phenomenon is the world as it appears to us—the reality we can experience and know through our senses and intellect. This is the realm of “das Ding für mich” (the thing for me). However, beyond this is the noumenon, or “das Ding an sich” (the thing in itself), which represents the true essence of things as they are independently of our perception. Kant argued that while we can know the phenomena, we can never truly know the noumena—the ultimate reality—because our knowledge is limited by our sensory experience and cognitive faculties.
In essence, Kant echoes the insights of Socrates and Laozi: there is an ultimate reality that we cannot fully grasp. We live in a world of appearances, understanding only what is presented to us, but the true nature of things, the noumenal world, remains forever beyond our reach. This reinforces the idea that true wisdom lies in recognizing the limits of our knowledge.
In all my classes, regardless of the subject, my aim is to demonstrate the complexity of the issues at hand. The best minds in human history have wrestled with these issues and have not reached unanimous conclusions. Our conclusions can only ever be a tentative “maybe.“
Theo-logia—thinking about G*d—is the first philosophy. Like the best philosophy, theology is always tentative, always full of loose ends, and always in awe of the Ultimately Real. Theology wrestles with ideas, explores possibilities, identifies problems, pushes the limits of human thought, and yet, in the end, says, “No, that's not it.” Ultimately, theology must be silent. There is nothing. For G*d, the Ultimately Real, is no-thing. Anything that can be a “thing” cannot be G*d, for G*d is beyond all things, and therefore must be no-thing ... nothing at all. And about nothing, we must be silent. That’s why, in Rabbinic Judaism, the name of G*d is neither written nor spoken (and why I have taken to writing “G*d” rather than “God.”) G*d is not a being —a bigger being than the little beings we know—but is Being and Non-being.
Theology, as the first philosophy, breaks the silence with questions, seeking, searching, and looking for meaning—we are, after all, meaning-seeking animals. Theologians find answers in words, concepts, thoughts, and schemes, but then they come to realize the utter inadequacy of words and systems. All that can be said is merely analogous—something like, a comparison, but inadequately so. In the end, theology, like philosophy, returns to silence, to nothing, to losing the self in the cloud of unknowing. The pathway is from not knowing, through knowing, to Unknowing; from no form, through form, to Formlessness. (Coincidentally, it is the same for those who play tai chi.) Knowing is important, and form is essential, but they are only way markers to the great Emptiness.
Then there’s fundamentalism. Fundamentalism is the kind of religion that promises certainties. It matters little what the religion is, nor that the certainties differ between fundamentalisms. It is the offer of certainty that grips people, whatever its religious garb. Certainties are dangerous. By their nature, certainties are intolerant. People are willing to die for them, perhaps nobly so. More problematically, people are often willing to kill for certainties. The roots of persecution, war, and genocide are all found in the certainties of supposed knowledge, often religious knowledge.
Some images of G*d can be helpful for a while (G*d as heavenly parent, carer, creator, lover, benefactor); while others are unhealthy (G*d as cosmic tyrant, G*d as harsh judge, G*d as child abuser). But even the helpful images eventually become inadequate, for G*d is not this or that. To remain with the image is ultimately misleading.
Doubtless, I can live with my students’ questions., On Tuesday morning, I'll be asked for some philosophical answers. I'll try to make sense of the question, but I will likely hear again the response, “But Professor, when are you going to give us the right answer?”
Keep looking for truth,
+Ab. Andy