Jan Olof Bengtsson

Keith Ward on Materialism, 5     1  2  3  4

“Materialism has rarely seriously been on the agenda of classical philosophy”, Ward says. Materialists are perhaps not quite as rare in European philosophy as in Indian thought (where it is necessarily represented only by those who – and I think there are, before the importation of Western scientisms and Marxism of course, only two schools – position themselves outside of the major spiritual traditions), but it is remarkable that they are not so much less rare as one might think. Before materialism became part of a political ideology, Marxism, they were in fact very few in the West.

The first philosophical formulation of materialism is still relevant to its definition or for accounts of what materialists mean: “Democritus’ theory that nothing finally exists except material particles with mass, position and velocity, interacting with one another in more and more complicated ways, did not have much appeal as a description of the value-laden, complex world of human experience, with all its depths of feeling and varieties of intellectual description.” This points to some of the experience that is part of the philosophical point of departure and basis of personalism, and to the reasons why this experience speaks against materialism. Personalism is, or should be, a form of idealism.

Ward remembers “the occasion when materialism first hit the world of Oxford philosophy”. This is remarkable. Ward was born in 1938. But he is of course not saying materialism had been unknown in Oxford philosophy. Many of the basic materialist positions became prominent in the nineteenth century and had been widely discussed since then, although materialism has certainly been further developed and radicalized in recent decades, a fact which Ward also discusses. What he means here is that materialism was not embraced and defended by Oxford philosophers – that it didn’t quite “hit” it.

Also, he is speaking only of materialism, not of atheism. It is quite possible to be an atheist without being a materialist, like Hume, and Ward notes elsewhere that there are more atheists than materialists in the history of Western philosophy. It is also possible to be a non-materialist but not an idealist. It is all a matter of various levels of experience, insight, and coherence and comprehensiveness of reasoning. But we define materialism here primarily in such a way as to make it impossible to be both a materialist and a theist, or one who affirms the spiritual view of the world – as the position that matter is all there is, the position of reductionist materialism. But the question of this kind of materialism turns out to be inseparable from a secondary definition, the one according to which materialism is merely the affirmation of the existence of such a thing as matter as understood by materialists in itself, with the exception of its quality of being that to which all reality can be reduced.

As late as the early 1960s, reductionist materialism was unknown in Oxford, Ward recounts. There were then “three main Professors of Philosophy in Oxford – Gilbert Ryle, A. J. Ayer, and R. M. Hare. Hare was an Anglican, Ryle an agnostic, and Ayer an atheist. But they all agreed that materialism was an over-dogmatic, impoverished and over-simplified form of belief that completely failed to account for the sheer diversity of the human world, the importance of human experience, and the exigencies of morality.” This is clearly important to note for those who object to other aspects of the work of those non-idealists.

Ward’s account of the “hitting” is fascinating: “I was sitting in one of Gilbert Ryle’s seminars in 1963 when a visiting Australian doctor, David Armstrong, presented a paper defending a materialist theory of mind. I still remember the sense of shock as this heretical Australian laid into Ryle’s concept of mind and insisted on the need for a purely materialist account of consciousness. It seemed so far beyond the bounds of plausibility that some of us were not sure if it was tongue-in-cheek or not.

Well, it was not. And in about forty years materialism, sometimes called ”physicalism”, has risen to a position of such prominence in philosophy that the materialist Daniel Dennett can say, quite falsely in fact, that virtually every serious philosopher is a materialist.”

Early on, I came to think that materialism was in fact philosophically refutable, in the sense in which things are at all refutable by philosophy. I.e., I came to think it was refutable not only in terms of spiritual experience and realization, but on the theoretical level, through the particular intellectual discipline of philosophy. Materialism – all possible variations of Democritus’ basic theory – always seemed unbelievable and often simply absurd to me. Therefore I could never take the materialist or physicalist development in the last forty years, which Ward mentions, quite seriously. I could hardly even really accept it as philosophical.

Not only did the materialists for the most part have an often clearly identifiable agenda and motivation, which are not in themselves of a philosophical nature. And these do require analysis in terms of political and cultural history, psychology, and other perspectives. They also made false claims of the kind Ward cites from Dennett. It is obvious, despite the recent development, not only how many serious philosophers are not materialists, but how many serious philosophers are idealists and personalists.

The exceptionality of materialism implied by the majority consensus is of course also in itself a part of the case, for the obvious reasons that follow from the ones that make the consensus such a part, although it is certainly not in itself a sufficient one.

Keith Ward on Materialism, 4     1  2  3

“That is”, Ward continues, “they have held that ultimate reality has the nature of mind or consciousness, and that the material universe is the appearance or creation of the ultimate mind.” Ward here says that this is what is meant by ”a basically spiritual view of the world”, the view on which there is a broad consensus among classical philosophers.

This is important in itself, being that for which the positive case is made. But it is also necessary for the definition of materialism, in which the decisive thing is the negation of these positions in the name of a different principle, matter. It should be noted that it is possible to define materialism and matter in a different way. All affirmation of the existence of matter does not negate these positions, i.e., is not reductionist. And, with the help of a different concept of matter, materialism too could in fact be defined in an altogether different way, a way that does not contradict idealism, not even the kind of idealism that denies the existence of matter in the ordinary sense(s).

It should also be said that the case against materialism and for the spiritual view of the world” does not imply that the experience of what materialists account for with their concept of matter is not real. Nor is there necessarily anything “wrong” with that experience as such, apart from the kind of practical and moral dimensions which Ward will discuss later. It is just that matter is not what they think it is. Or, perhaps more precisely: what they think is matter is not what they think matter is.

But we mean here by the terms materialism and matter what the philosophers Ward refers to meant by them, and also what philosophers who have regarded and today regard themselves as materialists mean by them. Inasmuch as they do not all mean precisely the same, these are broad concepts. But this does not make any difference for the basic case, as long as the definition includes the negation of the central positions here formulated by Ward.

With regard to the question of the existence and nature of a ”material universe”, Ward includes philosophers who and forms of idealism in the broad sense which accept the existence of a universe which is really material in the sense accepted here. I.e., they accept the existence of matter without being materialists. Only they do not regard it as ”ultlimate reality”. Other forms of idealism do not accept the existence of such a universe, the existence of matter.

”Appearance” is an important word in this connection and in many forms of idealism; it is appropriate also for accounts of some central Eastern traditions. But it too can mean different things. It can mean simply non-creational causality, manifestation, emanation. But in addition to this and sometimes even instead of this it can also mean – and Ward certainly has this in mind too, having used the formulation ”ultimate reality” of that which is not appearance – that which is not real or fully real, not as real as that of which it is an appearance, and in which there is an element of illusion.

“Plato, Aristotle, Anselm, Aquinas, Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza, Locke, Berkeley, Kant, Hegel, and many others all shared this general view”, Ward reminds us. And it can of course be noticed how many the ”many others” are: some of the pre-Socratics, Socrates, Plotinus, Augustine, Pseudo-Dionysius, John Scotus Eriugena, the late medieval Franciscans, the Renaissance Platonists (not just the Italian but also the Cambridge ones), the rest of the German Idealists and the nineteenth-century idealists in France, Britain, America and elsewhere. Ward soon notes how few the materialists really are.

Even Hume, “a philosopher opposed to religious belief, who denied the existence of ultimate mind, did not suppose that matter could be ultimately real. Indeed, he thought that the material universe was a construct out of ‘impressions’ or ‘ideas’, and had no objective reality, or at least not a reality that could be rationally established.” This is of course only an argument against materialism. It could perhaps be clarified that it is ”the material universe”, i.e. a universe of matter as conceived by materialists, lumps of matter, like atoms, floating about out there in objective, absolute time and space, that has ”no objective reality, or at least not a reality that could be rationally established” – not what Hume regards as ”a construct out of ’impressions’ or ’ideas’”. The latter might be a valid expression of what the universe that materialists hold to be material actually is, but contrary to the purportedly material universe it does have objective reality of a different kind, a reality which can be rationally established. This, after all, is part of what is meant when Ward says with the classical, in a broad sense idealist tradition, as he does elsewhere, that the world is intelligible.

Keith Ward on Materialism, 3     1  2

I will, of course, leave out some parts of Ward’s text, like the last part of the first sentence where he mentions Nietzsche. The discussion of Nietzsche (and Schopenhauer) in The God Conclusion is of interest but not central enough to the case for idealism and personalism to be commented on here, so I will leave out the few references to it in this last chapter. Ward goes on to say: “I have shown how the great majority of these philosophers have expounded a basically spiritual view of reality.”

This is a wonderfully simple truth. Bracket for a moment all considerations of history, contexts, motives, speech acts, paradigms, epistemes, power-relations etc. that come to mind. Disregard the differences between the classical philosophers on other, less basic levels of issues. Just let the basic truth here expressed sink in. There is consensus, agreement, among the great majority of ”these philosophers”, i.e., according to the preceding sentence, among the great majority of ”some of the classical philosophers of the European tradition”, that reality is basically spiritual.

Most people have some understanding of the  concept ”spiritual”, and the language here easily and obviously conveys sufficient meaning and also quite satisfactory clarity and precision of meaning. Properly read, the metaphysical meaning of the sentence, despite the fact that it is merely written, is present in a way that could be described as in a certain sense logocentric.

Again, the great majority of some of the classical philosophers refer to something similar or even, conceived in the general way that is conveyed by the choice of the term ”spiritual”, identical. The ”reality” intended in this formulation of the shared view is conceived to be the basic reality, which can also be understood to mean the ultimate or highest reality. As such, it is also universal and independent of history, contexts etc., i.e. of phenomenal relativity. This in turn implies that all truths regarding phenomenal relativity, except the general truth of phenomenal relativity as being precisely phenomenal relativity, are relative, subordinate truths which do not affect or change the basic reality agreed to be spiritual.

The use of the term spiritual of course points directly, past idealism, to spirituality. The simplicity is beautiful. By this term, the depths and heights are already indicated – the horizon of real life. The spiritually highly developed and mature reader, whether learned or not, may go directly from here to guru, the genuine spiritual teacher. Guru is situated beyond philosophy. Guru is heavy, weighty (this is part of the etymology of the Sanskrit term), because he is present with what in the West could be conceived as logocentric truth and reality. Guru gives or shares that truth and that reality, the spiritual reality that is the basic reality. Guru will show the reader concretely, directly, experientially, what spirituality is, what the referent of the concept is. Guru will take him into the spiritual life. Everything else may rightly fade into relative insignificance and unreality. Heidegger knew nothing about this, let alone Nietzsche.

The spiritual life is the life that ideally begins where philosophy, successfully pursued, ends. It can be said in one respect to be wisdom, the love of and search for which is what philosophy is or at least what it originally was. Or rather, it can be said to be the goal of wisdom, since wisdom may also exist on the conceptual, ethical, humanistic level only, without developing and blossoming also on the spiritual level.

These considerations go beyond the case for idealism and personalism in terms of the specific discipline of Western philosophy. But they are included here in order to relate that case to the broader concerns of my writing.

Keeping to the philosophical case, we note that the classical philosophers in the European tradition referred to by Ward have conceptually expounded and conveyed the basic spiritual reality to some extent, and the goal and end of the highest wisdom, the attainment of this reality, can be said to be implicitly anticipated in the substance of their consensus and in Ward’s simple summary of it.

While spirituality proper goes beyond idealism as a product or manifestation of Western philosophy, it also includes it. Idealism, as understood by Ward and by me, is the terminological designation of the position or view which conceptually represents the basically spiritual view of the world (there are other, more limited definitions in modern philosophy). But it can also comprise in its signification at least large parts of the esoteric traditions of the West which, ever since antiquity, are to a considerable extent spiritual traditions which transcend philosophy yet sometimes overlap or merge with idealist philosophy. And the term can be used, as I sometimes do, to describe the spiritual teachings of the East. But it is then often important to keep in mind the distinct Western meanings and uses not only of the term idealism but also of the term spiritual. Ward has no reason to enter here into such distinctions, however. For his purposes, his usage is not just legitimately but constructively and fruitfully ”loose”.

Like the predominant idealism of the East which the comparative study of the global heritage of thought brings to light (for Westerners who might still not be aware of it), this consensus of the classical European philosophers is in itself highly significant. The number and stature of the thinkers speak in favour of the basically spiritual view of reality, and is thus part of the case for idealism and in some respects indirectly of the case for personalism, which is in those respects the same case. Each of the philosophers referred to possesses a real degree of authority, and the shared general position has a real degree of authority both because of the authority of the individual philosophers and due to the fact of its being shared by them. The case therefore includes the account of this authority and a legitimate appeal to it.

Keith Ward on Materialism, 2     1

I will, then, comment on the concluding chapter (pp. 130-47) of Keith Ward’s short book The God Conclusion: God and the Western Philosophical Tradition. Ward begins the chapter with the following part of the first sentence: “I have been considering the work of some of the classical philosophers of the European tradition”. This raises the question of the nature of philosophy, classical philosophy, and philosophy as a European tradition. It will remind the reader of what I have said about this in the introduction to this case for idealism and personalism by means of commentary, as well as of what I have often said about it elsewhere. For those who have read the book, it also recalls what Ward himself said about this in the Introduction (pp. 2-3):

”I intend to treat matters historically, moving from the ancient Greeks, by way of late medieval Christendom and the Enlightenment, to recent emphasis on problems of consciousness and artificial intelligence. It may seem an unduly European or ’Western’ history. But it is in Europe that philosophy, understood as the pursuit of ciritical and independent thinking, has flourished. It may only be part of a rich and much more varied global heritage of thought. But the problems it has dealt with, and the way it has dealt with them, remain characteristic of a specific tradition of thought that was born in Greece and flourished conspicuously in Europe after the Enlightenment. So it may be seen as one important tradition of human thought.”

As a comparative theologian and philosopher, Ward is of course eminently aware of this. What we will deal with here is the case for idealism and personalism in terms of the specifically Western, more or less institutionalized discipline of philosophy, and as understood within that tradition. This limited project is clearly indicated in Ward’s subtitle, as also, for instance, in the title of his main polemical book against Richard Dawkins, Why There Almost Certainly Is a God: Doubting Dawkins (2008).

We will keep to this particular discipline of Western philosophy here because this is expected by Western readers, but also because it is helpful, useful, and valuable in itself. It must never imply, however, that thought is limited to this discipline and tradition, even thought on idealism and personalism, although, as such philosophical isms and in the form of such isms, are products specifically of that tradition. Parallel to making the case in terms of Western philosophy, we must also continue to assimilate the comparative perspectives and explore the potential of new developments, deepening, and syntheses in these fields.

For other traditions within the broader global heritage of human thought, as Ward calls it, are clearly also of importance for thinking about idealism and personalism, and primarily the Eastern traditions, the Vedic, the Buddhist, the Taoist and the Confucian. The Western discipline of philosophy should simultaneously be preserved and opened up to such comparative perspectives and the dialogue that this inspires.

This is what Ward has done in the main body of his work. It is also what idealists and personalists have often been pioneers in doing, ever since the nineteenth century: it can often be seen as characteristic of their thinking, and not seldom to distinguish them favourably from the dominant strands of modern or modernist thought which are much more limited in their general outlook.

It is also characteristic of the thinkers that primarily inspired value-centered historicism, namely the New Humanists, Irving Babbitt and Paul Elmer More. Babbitt studied Sanskrit and Pali and translated the Dhammapada, and was also a keen student of Confucianism and much appreciated in China, where his wife had lived. The early More studied Sanskrit  and contributed to the ongoing introduction in the West of the wisdom of the Upanishads.

Finally, it is fundamental in the work of the strict traditionalist school first established by René Guénon and Ananda Coomaraswamy and represented in Sweden primarily by Tage Lindbom, a school whose broadly, esoterically “idealist” positions I argue must be selectively affirmed within the framework of the broad conception of idealism despite its objection to the term idealism as signifying exclusively one limited speculative school among many with perspectives constitutively limited by the distinctive rational framework and presuppositions of the, in Guénon’s sense, non-traditional Western philosophy as such (Coomaraswamy was more open to the important fact that traditionalist elements were incorporated in philosophy ever since Plato, and that, more generally, philosophy in antiquity, ever since Socrates, had wholly other dimensions than the ones it shared with emergent science, dimensions of the personal cultivation of wisdom, insight, and character through what Pierre Hadot called “exercises spirituels”).

One reason why this consideration of Eastern thought and not just Western philosophy is important, and the most relevant reason in this connection, is that it speaks strongly in favour of idealism broadly conceived, and thus also in favour of personalism, primarily to the extent that the latter is part of and presupposes idealism in general but also inasmuch as there are distinctive counterparts of aspects of  personalism in some Eastern ”schools” of thought (”schools” is another term which from the beginning assumed some distinctive meanings characteristic of the specificity of Western philosophy, and which, as Guénon pointed out, can therefore easily be misleading as applied to the East in comparative studies).

Materialism, and also other non- and anti-idealist/personalist positions that in this comparative perspective have been disproportionately dominant in the West, are seen to be even more exceptional than when we regard them exclusively in the perspective of the European tradition of classical philosophy. And this is in itself an argument, a part of the case.

Thus the Eastern traditions must in a certain sense be brought within the purview of the discipline of Western philosophy and juxtaposed with its “classical philosophers” in the way Ward himself does it in other works and for which he indicates the need also in this one. I will have to return briefly to this kind of comparative thought and its import in the course of this case for idealism, in order to explain further the relation of the case for idealism and personalism to the other themes of my writing. But this is not the main concern either of this case as such, as a case in terms precisely of Western philosophy, or of Ward’s similarly delimited chapter and book.