RELIGION AND THE ONE Philosophies East and West The Gifford Lectures, 1980 FREDERICK COPLESTON CROSSROAD : NEW YORK RELIGION AND THE ONE 1982 The Crossroad Publishing Company 575 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10022 Copyright © 1982 Frederick Copleston All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of The Crossroad Publishing Company. Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Copleston, Frederick Charles. Religion and the One. (Gifford lectures; 1980) Includes index. |. One (The One in philosophy)— Addresses, essays, lectures. 2. Many (Philosophy)— Addresses, essays, lectures. 3. Philosophy, Comparative— Addresses, essays, lectures. 4. Religion—PhilosophAyd—- dresses, essays, lectures. 5. Mysticism— Addresses, essays, lectures. I. Title. II. Series. BD395.C66 291.2 81-5372 ISBN 0-8245-0092-X AACR2 CONTENTS Page Author’s Preface ] Chapter 1 Introduction ........ccceecseccsecceecceeeeeeceueceneeeueeens 3 Chapter 2 The Metaphysics of the One and the Many 15 Chapter 3 The One in Taoism and Buddhism 40 Chapter 4 The Advaita Vedanta and Its Critics 68 Chapter 5 Islam and Mysticism ........cccecceccecsecceeeeeneeees 96 Chapter 6 Western Philosophy and the One 122 Chapter 7 The World and the One 148 Chapter 8 The Self and the One ou... cceeceeeceeeeeeees 172 Chapter 9 Mysticism and Knowledge ...........ee 196 Chapter 10 Ethics, Metaphysics and Social Ideals. ........ 222 Chapter 11 The Succession of Systems and Truth _........ 247 TNdeX coe eeccccccccccccccecccecceenccecececaccnncenseeuueeccees 274 AUTHOR’S PREFACE This book represents the Gifford lectures delivered in the Uni- versity of Aberdeen during the autumn terms of 1979 and 1980. The author regards it as a great honour to have been invited to give the lectures, and he expresses his gratitude to the University for all the friendliness and generous hospitality which he re- ceived during the periods of his residence in this ancient seat of learning. It was a great pleasure to have the opportunity of meeting and learning from colleagues, especially in the depart- ments of divinity and philosophy. The general theme of the lectures was suggested by two con- siderations. In the first place the author wished to choose a subject which fell within the area of thought envisaged by Lord Gifford, namely ‘natural’ or philosophical theology. In the sec- ond place the interest which he had developed in advanced years in the philosophical thought of non-western cultures prompted him to stray beyond the confines of Western philo- sophy. To yield to this prompting may well have been rash. But at any rate the selected theme, religion and the metaphysics of the One, seemed to meet both requirements. It is not only in Christendom, or in what passes as such, that the human mind has developed theories of one ultimate reality. Nor is it only in the West that such theories, or some of them, have had connec- tions with religion. The written text was prepared before the lectures were actually given. But the lectures did not take the form of simply reading the text aloud. For one thing, it was not possible to use all the material. For another, the lecturer wanted to allow him- self room for developing this point rather than that, and also for some measure of spontaneity. Thus the lectures were perhaps a little more lively than the printed text may suggest. As however in the actual lectures some lines of thought were either omitted or touched on only very briefly, it seemed better to publish the text as it stood than to try to make it conform more exactly to what was actually said. It is hardly necessary to say that after the delivery of the lectures the thought occurred to the lecturer that the text would l 2 Religion and the One benefit by extensive rewriting, not so much with a view to brightening it up as to give it a clearer structure and to eliminate what might seem to be inconsistencies. When however a writer is already in his seventies, it is understandable if he 1s reluctant to postpone publication of a work, already promised to a pub- lisher, until he is completely satisfied with his production. It has been traditional policy to publish sets of Gifford lectures, and in somewhat advanced years it is perhaps unwise to count on retaining sufhicient energy for serious literary activity. CHAPTER | INTRODUCTION It seems desirable at the outset to make a few clarificatory comments about certain ideas expressed in this book. It may seem to the reader that there are two lines of thought which find expression in the text and which it is difficult to reconcile. On the one hand there is recurrent reference to the need for an activity of synthesis which is wider in its scope than the synthesis achieved by any particular empirical science and which can be described as metaphysical. The author makes clear his agreement with Whitehead’s justification of speculative philosophy as an endeavour to form a coherent system of general ideas in terms of which the different kinds of human experience can be interpreted. The implication seems to be that metaphys- ICS possesses Cognitive value, that it can increase our knowledge, not indeed of particular empirical facts but of the structure or pattern of human reality as a whole. On the other hand the author sees the activity of synthesis on the metaphysical level as culminating in the idea of the One, and he makes it clear that his confidence in the metaphysician’s ability to pin down the ultimate reality in a conceptual web and to describe it is ex- tremely limited. He seems to regard the metaphysics of the One as expressing the movement of the mind towards an elusive goal, this elusiveness being shown in the history of philosophical thought by the succession of systems. Sometimes he even seems to look on the metaphysics of the One as a recurrent attempt to say what cannot be said. In other words, the author may seem to be trying to combine confidence in the cognitive value of metaphysics with serious doubt about its cognitive value. To put the matter in another way, he appears to be trying to combine the basically rationalistic approach of Whitehead with the line of thought which finds expression in the philosophy of Karl Jaspers and which some people would dismiss as mysticism (in spite of Jaspers’ criticism of the claims of mystics). But are these two approaches or lines of thought really compatible? To be sure, we can feel confidence at one time and doubt at another 3 4 Religion and the One time in regard to the same thing, a certain truth-claim for instance. This is a common enough phenomenon, which occurs not only in the sphere of religious belief but also in other areas, in regard to a person’s trustworthiness for example. It is also of course possible to experience hesitation, to feel unable to make up one’s mind definitely about the reliability ofa truth-claim or hypothesis or theory. But should not a philosopher make up his mind, one way or another, before publishing? It is hardly a satisfactory situation if the reader is presented with two conflict- ing estimates of metaphysics. According to William of Ockham, the question ‘What 1s the subject-matter of metaphysics?’ resembles the question ‘Who is king of the whole world?’ Each of these questions makes an erroneous assumption. There is no king of the whole world, and the word ‘metaphysics’ covers a number of different lines of inquiry. Ockham’s statement is doubtless open to challenge. That is to say, while we are all aware that there is no king of the whole world, it can be maintained that metaphysics has one definable subject-matter, for example the study of being as being. If however we prescind from recommendations about what metaphysics ought to be, it is clear that metaphysics as it has actually existed in history has been sufficiently variegated for it to be possible, without at any rate being entirely unrea- sonable, to make such distinctions as that between ontology and natural theology (made by some writers in the seventeenth cen- tury and, in particular, by Christian Wolff in the eighteenth century) and the distinctions made in recent years between descriptive and revisionary metaphysics (Professor P. F. Straw- son) and between immanent and transcendent metaphysics (Professor W. H. Walsh). It is not the present writer’s intention to endorse all these distinctions. But they are not meaningless. And if there are specifiable grounds for making them, we can hardly exclude the possibility that in one area of the territory covered by the general term ‘metaphysics’ the extent of the knowledge attainable by the human mind should be greater than it is in another area. Suppose that we regard it as part of the task of metaphysics to try to identify the basic and pervasive categories in terms of which we think the world and which find implicit expression in