James of all men must have understood the perennial problem of the Many and the One, profoundly. The title of his book is manifest evidence of his comprehension of the difficulty: A Pluralistic Universe.
NB: universe.
Here it is: how can an otherwise utterly solipsistic Many, that as an aboriginal Many, with none of them any basic original connection to any One, so that each and every of that Many have no inherent connection to each other – so that, e.g., they have nothing essentially in common as a forecondition of their very being – constitute together a coherent cosmos: a universe? How can an utterly unrelated set of events coordinate and indeed integrate in an intelligible whole – a whole intelligible as such, so that science about it is within it possible? How can a coherent and intelligible universe result from a radically raw polyverse?
Excursus: The raw pluralist ontology amplifies to an infinite degree the problem for Cartesian dualism of the radical ontological incongruence, and thus the inconceivable causal connection, between the utterly different sorts of entities that constitute res mensa and res extensa. For, what is the medium of connection between utterly disparate entities of a Many in which each such entity is radically solipsist? In which, i.e., each eternal and thus absolutely disparate entity, being each itself eternal, and thus nowise contingent upon any other, has nothing to do with any other? Has, i.e., no reason to care about any other, or even to know of any other – let alone, to accommodate itself to any other?
Relation per se of entities – any relation whatever – is the death of raw ontological pluralism, in which each entity is eternal, and thus nowise dependent upon or derivative from some One, or then from any other; for, an eternal cannot anywise continge. It is therefore the inescapable necessity of a transcendent and thus ubiquitously immanent Lógos, upon which all others continge, and are therefore able to interact, and coordinate, so as to procure a cosmos.
Excursus: it should be noted, prominently, that temporal and spatial relations among entities are subject to the same difficulty. If the purely and originally plural ontological entities of the Many have no fundamental relation to each other, that is founded in some prior matrix of relation – which, as logically prior, must be causally prior – then they cannot be temporally or spatially related. As each of them must be thus unrelated temporally (and spatially), they must then also be each atemporal; which is to say, eternal, and so, changeless.
Radical ontological plurality arrives then at Eleatic immobility.
As with mere atheism, mere pluralism can’t cut the necessary ontological ice. From the zero of the Lógos – which is to say, from atheism – there is no way (other than, “That’s just how things are” (which is in itself a Theist Argument)) to get to intelligible concrete actuality, or then to science; to human knowledge of any sort. Likewise, from the zero of the transcendent ultimate One (who is the Lógos) – which is to say, from ontological pluralism (or, as it used to be called, naïve polytheism, aka chaotic theomachy) – it is impossible to obtain a coherent coordinate Many, that can together cobble up an ordered cosmos.
You can’t even get a theomachy, or for that matter a conflict of any sort, except in virtue of a prior context of basic agreement. Conflict per se presupposes a prior general agreement. Any such context implicitly, and necessarily, then ultimately presupposes the One.
By the same token, even ontological creaturely freedom presupposes the One. One cannot be free except in respect to some other. Freedom in respect to what, exactly? Freedom in respect to nothing at all is just chaos, after all.
There’s just no way out from under God. Other than, of course, the Hell of alienation from him.
Sorry. The situation is quite digital: obedience to the Lógos, or … disobedience, with all that such entails.
All talk then of creativity independent of the Lógos is just noise, wishful thinking; is the high wide road to perdition.
The Orthosphere 
To my understanding, this assumed co-eternality with God is really just another expression of a “radical autonomy” where the notion of a <em>being</em> being capable of opting into a parallel eternity (and away from “its” own) comes at the price of “sin” ONLY WHEN choosing God’s particular eternity AND then opting out of His eternity. In other words, when a “Christian” pluralist suggests that opting out of God’s eternity, ie., opting out of “everlasting life,” is a SIN, ie., is a desire for annihilation, he is not doing so as a truly convictional co-eternalist.
Good post Kristor.
Intelligibility is for me the key question or concept. As you bring up there has to be a shared “realm” or “sphere” through which beings/creatures can have relations and by which creatures can experience each other (or anything).
William James and other pluralists often oppose abstract thinking against concrete phenomenological experience but I don´t believe that dichotomy is very helpful. There must be some “power” or “light” through which both abstract concepts and phenomenological experience becomes intelligible for a being. Or, even the most concrete experiences presupposes a kind of basic structure of cognition, by which the experience “can be experienced”. This structure must be shared by beings (unless one would claim that self-generated beings live in completely self-contained worlds, which I don´t think pluralists believe). This basic structure of cognition leads further on to questions about universals and such.
That the words or analogies used to describe this basic structure of cognition/intelligibility (or spiritual power) becomes abstract is perhaps unavoidable if this structure is indeed that which makes it possible to experience anything at all.
I hope this makes sense. English is not my first language (and even if it was it would be difficult to articulate my thoughts about these matters properly).
Thanks, Andreas. Allow me to compliment you on your English, which is better than that of almost all native speakers of the tongue.
I happen to agree with the emphasis James placed on concrete experience. So did Aristotle and Aquinas. It’s just that concrete experience *includes experience of pure concepts.* A neuropsychologist could put it this way: our experience of abstract concepts is concrete experience of the outputs of control systems in the cerebral cortex, just as our visual experience is concrete experience of the outputs of control systems in the occipital lobe (that modulate and integrate inputs from the retinae).
Furthermore, it is impossible to discuss the notion that we ought to emphasize concrete experience other than by employing abstract concepts. The notion is after all just such an abstract concept: a proposition about the right way to handle abstract concepts such as concrete experience!
So, yeah: there must be a common ground of experience per se, whether conceptual or sensory; a common ontological ground of both the objects and the subjects of experience, in virtue of which things can be intelligible to each other, so as to entertain causal relations.
Thank you, Kristor.
Another thought, though more theological than philosophical, that these discussions bring to mind for me is the relation between God and humans. Mormons sometimes claim that classical theology creates an unbridgeable gap between God and creatures. To some degree I can understand the argument but in one sense I also think the opposite is true. In a pluralist theology God can literally not be our Father in an existential sense since every creature is self-generating and always have been. So, a gap of another kind is created in a pluralist theology.
Yes. If each of us is eternal, none of us owe anything whatever to God, or to any other. For, nor in that case do any of us derive aught from any other. It’s a description of total ontological anarchy, indeed of theomachy (each of us equally a god at war with all others); of chaos.
If on the other hand all beings are creatures of an Ultimate Absolute God, why then each of us has that in common; in which case, our common origin in him is our inmost most basic fact; so that as things work out in practice, each of us has access to him always at the very center of our being (of such is the still small voice of conscience). In virtue then of that access, we can approach each other in charity and joy, so as to constitute together an ordered cosmos: a Sabaoth.
What transcends all things is in them all immanent, as their first forecondition; and, therefore, open to them, should they open themselves thereto.
This understanding predates Israel.
Kristor,
You’re probably at least aware of Bruce Charlton’s expressing his large scale disagreements with you, prompted by this post.
https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2024/05/how-not-to-conduct-metaphysical-enquiry.html
The disagreement seems to boil down to the following: you would like to find a universal (not sure what to do with that pun) language by which to understand, at the very least, whether or not two parties (in this case Charlton and you) agree with each other. Charlton seems to be saying that a pursuit of such a universal language is useless and evasive because you haven’t done a proper metaphysical enquiry.
Presumably you will know that you have done a proper metaphysical enquiry when you find yourself in accord with Charlton on these large scale questions. I realize this doesn’t sound like a very charitable rendering of Charlton. But I don’t know what else to do with it. Where do you begin a discussion with such preliminaries?
Thanks, Bucky. Yeah, Bruce alerted me via email that he had responded, but I have not yet had the time to read his response. Bruce and I are old friends – I totally respect that guy, such a brain on him, and so earnest – so our conversation goes way back, to before the point of his conversion to pluralist ontology, indeed to before the Orthosphere. Put it this way: when I go to Britain again, which I hope I shall, I shall certainly arrange to meet with Bruce face to face. I’d drive from Canterbury to Newcastle just for the sake of it. In my book, he’s right up there with Lawrence Auster, Zippy Catholic, Laura Wood, and of course our own Tom Bertonneau.
Bruce has several times suggested that I aver the metaphysics I do on account of the fact that I have never seriously considered another. I have several times responded that, on the contrary, I did at one time find pluralist ontology quite convincing. I read almost all the books that James, Hartshorne, DR Griffin, and Whitehead published (plus many others of their ilk, as, e.g., John Cobb). I am to this day as a result both a panpsychist and a panentheist. And I have a great deal of sympathy for the pluralist perspective: as the Many should not shove the One out of consideration, never should the One vitiate the consideration of the Many. So, e.g., naïve advaita Vedanta just cannot suffice, from my perspective.
Lo, when push came to shove, none of those pluralist thinkers I read utterly repudiated the One. And I kept reading; so, I read Augustine, Aquinas, Aristotle … and Whitehead again. I realized belatedly (thanks in part to Jorge Luis Nobo, who opened my mind to the possibility) that Whitehead thinks God is (unlike other actual occasions) eternal: that he is the eternal actual occasion (whereas all other actualities are either temporal, like us, or aeviternal, like the angels, or are some other sort of thing that is not eternal).
That got me started thinking hard about eternity. Which was almost a matter of sweating blood; it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever thought about. But, which was productive.
Anyway, Bruce seems stuck on this particular nubbin. He has seemed convinced that if I would just once seriously inhabit the pluralist metaphysic, I’d find it convincing. Well, I have, and I did, for a while. But I kept reading, and so graduated to a more expansive, comprehensive metaphysic, that could encompass – or, at least, recognize, and take into account – both the Many and the One.
So, that particular critique, as having no connection to reality, can gain no traction in the real (as distinct from the dialectical) world.
I’ll go look at Bruce’s response now, and see what to make of it.
One thing I have trouble with in trying to understand Bruce Charlton in these sort of posts is that he seems to use terms very idiosyncratically. For example, he claims that Kristor is starting with an assumption that everything is one or with the assumption of the necessary truth of God’s omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, but for the Thomist or for the Aristotelean or for the Neoplatonist, none of these is an assumption but are all conclusions. So I don’t know exactly what Charlton means by ‘assumptions’.
Or another one is his criticism of ‘abstractions’. But God for the classical theist – as I understand it – is not understood by abstraction, since existence or being – which is God’s essence – cannot be abstracted in our thought, it cannot be separated from the actually existing thing. God in fact is understood to be the most concrete reality there is. Now of course, according to the Thomist, we have to use analogous language to describe God, so maybe that’s what Charlton is trying to get at, but it’s hard to tell.
I don’t know if one of Charlton’s objections to classical theism is the one you often hear from moderns about it seeming to make God impersonal or distant. If it is, I think that’s hard to square with the deeply erotic (in the sense of ardent desire for union) love for God manifested among so many of the famous classical theists, such as Augustine or Maximus the Confessor.
Then in his comments, it was rather dispiriting to see him mocking the Eucharist and Real Presence just as the ancient pagans did.
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