Abstract
Engaging the ontological issues involved in conceptualizing the supernatural, Chapter 4, entitled “The God-Signifier and the Ontological Continuum,” argues that religions/quasi-religions reveal God-conceptions of varied ontologies. Section 4.1, “From Beings to Metaphors,” claims that God is variously conceptualized along a continuum, as a being, a cosmic intelligence, a universal consciousness, a realm of the human consciousness, an impersonal force, a principle, and a metaphorical link among events/phenomena. Enchantment and disenchantment represent a movement along this continuum. Section 4.2 shows how natural, metaphysical, and quasi-metaphysical concepts are cognitive tropes that help deal with the complex world process. Section 4.3, “Attractive to Cathect,” addresses the question of what prompted a choice among these, with focus on psychic economy and the need for intervention.
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Notes
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Spengler recognizes eight Hochkulturen (high cultures), namely Babylonian, Egyptian, Chinese, Indian, Mexican (Mayan/Aztec), Classical, Magian, and Faustian, but devotes most of his discussion to the last three. Classical or Apollonian culture is his term for cultures of Mediterranean antiquity – the Graeco-Roman. Magian culture consists of Jewish, Aramaic, Nestorian, Zoroastrian-Persian, and Islamic elements, Islam being “the final expression” of the Magian soul. Modern Western or “Euro-American” culture is what he calls “Faustian.” The world feeling (or soul) of a culture expresses itself in political systems, structures and styles of government, social forms, laws, manners and morals, religion, art, science, mathematics, and economy. Spengler indicates the holistic cultural significance of myriad phenomena repeatedly using the famous lines from Goethe’s Faust II: Alles vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichnis (All that passes is a symbol). Every culture has an Ur-symbol, or prime symbol, chosen at the time of its awakening, through which it apprehends the world, and endeavours to overcome the fear of death. The symbols of a culture are an expression of its inner world feeling, and are meaningful to its members alone; they are incomprehensible to outsiders, who do not share its world feeling. The prime symbol of the ancient Egyptian culture was “the way” (even beyond life), actualized in the pyramid, the tomb temple, and the sarcophagus. The Magian soul expresses itself in the cavern-idea, symbolized by the central dome of a mosque. The prime symbol of the Classical/Apollonian culture is the definite, separate body, whose beauty was appreciated, but which conception, according to Spengler, accounted for the “limited” world view of the Greeks and their “rigid” forms in every sphere of life. The prime symbol of the Faustian culture is “pure and limitless space” (183). See Jibu Mathew George, “The Great War and the Course of Civilizations: Reading Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West” (2016) for a concise treatment of Spengler’s thesis.
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In its encounter with the other, labelling and stereotyping are the mind’s some of the many effort-saving devices.
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Buber’s philosophy is based on a distinction between two relations with the “other”: a You-relation, which recognizes the subjectivity of the other as another I, and an It-relation, which merely objectifies and uses the other.
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George, J.M. (2017). The God-Signifier and the Ontological Continuum. In: The Ontology of Gods. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52359-0_4
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