Varieties of Transcendence

i thank You God for most this amazingday: for the leaping greenly spirits of treesand a blue true dream of sky; and for everythingwhich is natural which is infinite which is yes1—e. e. cummingsany student of philosophy can read with profit the pages of Richard J. Bernstein's final book, The Vicissitudes of Nature: From Spinoza to Freud (hereafter abbreviated as “VN” in the text),2 especially the pages that lie between the Introduction and Concluding Remarks. Bernstein's prose concerning the seven thinkers discussed in those pages—Spinoza, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud (hereafter, “The Seven”)—simply sparkles with fresh insights and philosophical erudition, displaying the kind of close and respectful reading typical of his scholarship. While he covers the old ground of some of the ideas typically taught in an introductory or even more advanced course in philosophy, Bernstein also elaborates on the problems and tensions in each philosopher's views and suggests where and how they may have been misinterpreted and/or where and how they dovetail. In these “between pages,” we find Bernstein at his best, that is, seriously considering what other readers had, perhaps, overlooked or elided. What joins together these thinkers? [They] are all thinkers shaped by Spinoza's philosophy of immanence. In different ways they seek to get rid of “God's shadows”—shadows that have and continue to distort the understanding of the human-in-nature. Although their respective conceptions of nature differ significantly from Spinoza's rationalistic conception, they are all naturalists in the spirit (if not the letter) of Spinoza, as most completely explicated in his Ethics. They believe that everything in this world can be given a naturalistic explanation. They are scornful of any appeal to conceptual normativity or morality that is “beyond” nature.3Bernstein writes in the Prologue to Part II of VN (titled “The Hermeneutics of Suspicion”), which treats of Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud, that “[w]e will now probe the thinking of these three ‘masters of suspicion’—these great demystifiers—who lead us into new ways of coming to grips with nature, including the nature of human beings.”4In the Introduction, the Coda, and the Concluding Remarks of VN, Bernstein sandwiches his analysis of The Seven between some critical worries about our human future, specifically the climate emergency and the implications of certain developments in the natural sciences and technology. However, his discussion of these critical worries, unlike his deep research and thoughtfulness concerning The Seven, is scant. Yet he wishes to argue that an understanding of the thoughts of The Seven (we must assume that it is The Seven he has in mind) is important to how we address these worries.I will pursue three primary objectives in this essay.First, while acknowledging Bernstein's careful readings of the critical works of The Seven (as well as of their critics), I will challenge the relevance of The Seven with regard to the practical environmental and other crises he references in the Introduction, the Coda, and the Concluding Remarks.Second, I will investigate, critically, Bernstein's apparent attachment to what I take to be an outdated division between “naturalistic” and “transcendental” forms of inquiry, as well as his apparent deployment of a traditional concept of God—a concept that has long ago been challenged and in some circles superseded within and by various divergent theologies that have more or less banished the idea of God as “a being” that casts “shadows” and that commands and directs human plans and conduct, replacing it with a concept that construes God as—without being utterly remote from human affairs—associated with human agency in ways that construe God as joining humanity in its journey, with no fixed goals and no guarantees, and which enlists human and other sentient and sapient beings as co-creators in an indefinite and open process. This latter notion of “God” is illuminated by Santiago Zabala: This new, weak way of thought not only opens up alternative [theological] directions, it also recovers tradition: the relationship between the believer and God is not conceived as power-laden but as a gentler relationship, in which God hands over all his power to man.5This sketch by Zabala summarizes the core notion of a good deal of modern and postmodern theology. It also runs counter to/is an alternative to John Dewey's views as outlined in his book A Common Faith, in which he held that any truck with transcendence (in this passage, in its Christian form) must make a certain kind of liberal, democratic future necessarily impossible. Dewey wrote: I cannot understand how any realization of the democratic ideal as a vital moral and spiritual ideal in human affairs is possible without surrender of the conception of the basic division to which supernatural Christianity is committed.6We have here one of the conclusions that arises from Dewey's abjuration of “two realms metaphysics,” as discussed in his Experience and Nature.This assumption that truck with transcendence must cease so that humanity may finally establish “the democratic ideal as a vital moral and spiritual ideal” or, in the case of Bernstein's worries, address its serious ecological and technological crises is, I would argue, an unfortunate holdover from the old wars of early modernity, and should now be set aside—as false. The more relevant impediments to the realization of the “democratic ideal as a vital moral and spiritual ideal” [emphasis added] is not the kind of “two realms metaphysics” that Dewey and so many other “naturalist” philosophers abjure, but failures of imagination and uncultivated sensibilities of quite a different type. Ironically, Dewey, often celebrated as the “philosopher of Democracy” (and with warrant), was eager to banish something that millions of his fellow citizens and billions of his fellow humans deemed vital as they fashion identities and live through the difficult quotidian challenges of life, including within robust (if imperfect) democracies. It would seem Bernstein is more than sympathetic to Dewey's views, yet a question remains: Is this a false dichotomy?Third, I will argue that there are many “transcendentalist” thinkers, including but not limited to theist theologians, who are quite useful in our considerations of the practical challenges Bernstein references, including those thinking from within far more traditionalist theologies (the type in which God does indeed cast “shadows”) than what is sketched by Zabala. They are as worried about them as Bernstein and, drawing on their theological traditions, they have important things to contribute. My focus will be, as I have indicated, not on Bernstein's treatments of the respective thinkers. 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passage, he in the kind of that is so critical we are to about and does this by of of environmental that are to the of but which and In the the three for of the the the and and what would have the at a more into the of the which the of the into the of Yet who the to the of by the and of the What the in this and had, the of these given us some or and have held there have been any into of new The of here and in on the of to the of by a kind and of human those their of which on the of we our on a of the of which we now by The is, at the an that these between and are important to be to even that of as these into this discussion they are those in a of thinkers, who are the various crises that Bernstein references and about which he is as well as many including the of human in the of our as one of our serious problems as a our and this for new of and that make and to and other thinkers the for new and the as he so in his Bernstein is to be about the here is the critical is that The Seven are 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only and imagination about the of our of the nature understand this as for they may from no or it in and and at in at and the and transcendence and the old “two realms metaphysics” has no in “the more than that it is Yet cannot other than to here I his the world of and we can and and power it is, it is to and to its not in its from human and but its on can construe in various as Bernstein so in his of The In some The Seven are in a in regard to of and should as most perhaps, in Bernstein's and of and between and who that the are to be as the for a and with life, and Freud, who to be no more than a and who held that the we can is understand well to the of life, including the with about our would have us pursue and from our nature on our to an human beings in a of that and us into a false most in which human beings from and from their and them the and the to lead human that in which human beings to and, to some from Richard to and identities or, in to of these of has to especially but 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climate and crises that are all to the natural but which wars and of an nature and of or these The to that question is not be it does not that or will it a of the the by thinkers as and who have may to the new and moral that are In that there will be and to cease between the of This kind of is The perhaps, is the old of the must for we have the crises to and we not have the to the old and wars as we seek to the things that us and many other Bernstein is I he that is on the we a in how we about our on this what we by of and how we set and I not this explicated in