Richard Rorty, a postmodernist mystic

BACKGROUND. The February 11, 2012 and February 21, 2012 posts present my preliminary notes on the general nature of postmodernism. This post looks at the ideas of one postmodernist in the USA, Richard Rorty (1931-2007). The fourth and final post in this series will examine Rorty's activism.

MY SOURCES. I have only sampled Rorty's writings. For this post, which is merely a collection of notes, I am drawing mainly from his first book: Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Thirtieth-Anniversary Edition, Princeton University Press, 2009 (adding material to the original 1979 edition), 439 pages.

For a partial summary of Rorty's main points in PMN, see Michael Williams, "Introduction to the Thirtieth-Anniversary Edition." Williams's "Introduction" also provides historical background information that makes this difficult book easier to understand. For an overview of Rorty's ideas and life, consult Bjørn Ramberg, "Richard Rorty," Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, substantively revised June 16, 2007, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rorty.

Among Rorty's many writings, why focus on Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature? Michael Williams, an admirer of Rorty and the author of the "Introduction to the Thirtieth-Anniversary Edition," says:

[Rorty's first book] Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature sent shock waves through the ranks of professional philosophers. ... Rorty's book is a visionary work that challenges us to rethink our understanding of the philosophical enterprise. It is the single greatest influence on the revival of American Pragmatism, one of the most exciting developments in philosophy today. [The book's] influence has been felt far beyond the confines of academic philosophy. (p. xiii)

OVERVIEW OF THE BOOK. In Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature Rorty examines philosophy as performed by academics in the 1970s. He sees philosophers making false assumptions. His main target is a certain set of related ideas, which Descartes created: (1) each person has a mind, (2) the mind is like a mirror reflecting reality ("nature"), and (3) truth is ideas corresponding to that reality. Rorty's intention is to destroy that set of ideas and that metaphor. Rorty's approach, through most of the book, is to critique in detail the ideas (and the accompanying metaphor) as presented by a range of philosophers, including Descartes, Locke, Kant, and a train of post-Kantians such as Ludwig Wittgenstein. In this way, most of the book is negative. Rorty devotes one chapter, the last one (Ch. VIII, "Philosophy Without Mirrors") to a presentation of his own views.

ATTACKS ON REASON AND REASON'S PRODUCTS. The index to Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature has no entry for either "reason" or "mysticism." Readers must collect clues as they read.

Rorty is determined to destroy reason. About his own book, he says:

The aim of the book is to undermine the reader's confidence in "the mind" as something about which one should have a "philosophical" view, in "knowledge" as something about which there ought to be a theory and which has "foundations", and in "philosophy" [centered on epistemology] as it has been conceived since Kant. (p. 7, emphasis added)

This passage is typical of Rorty's writing style. Clause by clause, it is moderately clear, but the sentence as a whole is hard to assimilate. It is long, but more importantly rational readers who are new to Rorty's philosophy will have trouble believing he means what he says. His statement is radically destructive of reason, but expressed banally. Let's take the sentence one section at a time. He says that he is writing for the purpose of destroying your confidence. In what? In four objects.

First, he intends to destroy your confidence in the idea of mind. He means what he says. He wants to obliterate "mind" from philosophical discussions. He does not say so, but without mind there is no reason, which is a faculty of the mind.

Second, he says that he wants to destroy your confidence in the idea of knowledge, in two ways. There is no value, Rorty is saying, in having a theory of it -- that is, a systematic accounting, an epistemology: What it is, where it comes from, how it relates to reality, and how the elements of it interconnect.

Third, Rorty holds, there is no value in looking for the foundations of knowledge -- which actually means elements of knowledge that cause and therefore explain other elements. He attributes foundationalism to Kant and praises Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Dewey for abandoning the "Kantian conception of philosophy as foundational." (p. 5) Integration of elements of knowledge -- concepts, propositions, and theories -- includes establishing the relationships among ideas, with some being more fundamental, that is, more causal than others. Integration is a function of reason. If there is no need for integration, there is no need for reason.

Rorty is both broad and deep in his approach. He evaluates philosophy as a whole; he also probes the foundations. For the latter, Rorty says: "... I have been trying to isolate more of the assumptions behind the problematic of modern philosophy, in the hope of generalizing and extending ... criticisms of traditional empiricism" (p. xxxi) Here, "traditional empiricism" seems to mean the view that we abstract concepts of things from sense data of things. (There is no entry for "empiricism" in the index.) If that is the meaning of "empiricism" here, then Rorty's target is again reason, the faculty that forms, connects, and distinguishes concepts drawn from sense-perception.

Fourth, Rorty says that another one of his purposes in writing the book is to destroy your confidence in philosophy as centered on epistemology. Epistemology is the branch of philosophy focused on the study of the origins and nature of knowledge. Wanting to destroy philosophy as an enterprise centered on epistemology is anti-reason. If philosophers do not know what and how they know, then all of their other conclusions -- such as principles of ethics -- are in doubt. To reject philosophy dedicated at least initially to epistemology is to reject philosophy, that is, any attempt to use reason to develop a worldview as a guide to living.

Michael Williams, the author of the Introduction to the Thirteeth Edition of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature elaborates:

Rorty sees philosophy, as it came to be understood in the last century, as an attempt to work through the consequences of a conception of knowledge as accurate representation, a conception rooted in the metaphor of mind as the mirror of nature. From its seventeenth-century origins, principally in the writings of Descartes, this metaphor leads to the emergence of what Rorty calls 'philosophy-as-epistemology', with its canonical list of textbook problems: the mind-body problem, [the problem of answering] skepticism, [the problem of] the nature of truth, and the rest. (Michael Williams, p. xiii)

[A]ntirepresentationalism -- the rejection of the idea of mind (or language) as the mirror of nature -- is the leitmotiff of Rorty's book. (Michael Williams, p. xv)

MOTIVE FOR OPPOSING REASON? What might be a motive in rejecting the idea of causation in ideas -- that is, for example, having foundations of one's ideas and having theories which set a context for evaluating ideas? One possible mystical motivation is rebellion against the "constraints" of objectivity. Rorty says:

I have argued (in chapter three) that the desire for a theory of knowledge [an epistemology] is a desire for constraint -- a desire to find "foundation"' to which one might cling, frameworks beyond which one must not stray, objects which impose themselves, representations which cannot be gainsaid. ... "On the contrary, hermeneutics [the interpretation of texts, as a substitute for philosophy] is an expression of hope that the cultural space left by the demise of epistemology will not be filled -- that our culture should become one in which the demand for constraint and confrontation is no longer felt. (p. 315)

RORTY'S MYSTICISM. Rorty advocates mysticism in at least three forms.

1. SOCIETY AS SOURCE. Rorty is a mystic through his view of the nature and origin of knowledge. He shares Dewey's view that knowledge is "what we are justified in believing." (p. 9) Rorty sees "[the act of ] 'justification' as a social phenomenon rather than a transaction between the 'knowing subject' and 'reality'." (p. 9) For example, Rorty defines "incorrigible knowledge ... as a matter of social practice -- of the absence of a normal rejoinder in normal conversation to a certain knowledge-claim ...." (p. 96) The position that Rorty takes is that "incorrigible knowledge" is "just a matter of what practices of justification" are "adopted by one's peers (the position which I shall call 'epistemological behaviorism' in chapter four) ...." (p. 99)

If we see knowing not as having an essence, to be described by scientists or philosophers, but rather as a right, by current standards, to believe, then we are well on the way to seeing conversation as the ultimate context within which knowledge is to be understood. (p. 389)

Rorty's view of objectivity illustrates his social mysticism. It is, Rorty says (p. 338), "a property of theories which, having been thoroughly discussed, are chosen by a consensus of rational discussants." Rorty says there is no need for epistemology, that is, theories of knowing. Instead of epistemology, "we need to turn outward rather than inward, toward the social context of justification rather than to the relations between inner representations." (p. 210) Further, Rorty says:

We have to drop the notion of correspondence [to reality] for sentences as well as for thoughts, and see sentences as connected with other sentences rather than with the world. (pp. 371-372)

2. EDIFICATION. What does Rorty offer as an alternative to systematic philosophy, that is, philosophy that uses reason, sees epistemology as the central concern, and strives to establish a secure foundation for its conclusions? He seeks "edification" rather than knowledge ("getting the facts right"). "From the educational ... point of view, the way things are said is more important than the possession of truths." (p. 359)

Rorty says that "edifying philosophy aims at continuing a conversation rather than at discovering truth .... I shall be claiming that ... the cultural role of the edifying is to help us avoid the self-deception which comes from believing that we know ourselves by knowing a set of objective facts." (p. 373)

Systematic philosophers want to put their subject on the secure path of a science. Edifying philosophers want to keep space open for the sense of wonder which poets can sometimes cause -- wonder that there is something new under the sun, something which is not an accurate representation of what was already there, something which (at least for the moment) cannot be explained and can barely be described. (pp. 369-370)

Rorty clearly states his theme:

[T]he point of edifying philosophy is to keep the conversation going rather than to find objective truth. Such truth, in the view I am advocating, is the normal result of normal discourse. Edifying philosophy is not only abnormal but reactive, having sense only as a protest against attempts to close off conversation by proposals for universal commensuration through the hypostatization of some privileged set of descriptions. (p. 377)

3. EPISTEMOLOGICAL BEHAVIORISM. What then is philosophy to be, according to Rorty? His "way out of philosophy-as-epistemology turns on a broadly pragmatic outlook that he calls 'epistemological behaviorism'. ... As an epistemological behaviorist, he examines human thought and knowledge from a public, third-person standpoint [not from introspection] ... treating knowledge as the result of argument and discussion." (Michael Williams, p. xiv) That means what it says: The source of knowledge is society. Knowledge arises from conversation with others.

Rorty is a "behaviorist" because he looks at behavior: what goes into a person (statements others make) and what comes out (statements directed to others). The behaviorist does not speculate about what goes on inside the person. The behaviorist does not seek to understand the essential nature of a thing, only its behavior. (p. 17)

CONCLUSION. Richard Rorty is a mystic in two main ways. Negatively, he attacks reason, mostly by disintegrating it. Positively, he also promotes mysticism in the form of "knowledge" ("justified belief") coming from the social world around us. Rorty's mild manner and understated style camouflage his power of destruction.

Burgess Laughlin

Author, The Power and the Glory: The Key Ideas and Crusading Lives of Eight Debaters of Reason vs. Faith, at www.reasonversusmysticism.com.

Postmodernism on reason and mysticism

This post summarizes my notes on two secondary sources on postmodernism -- reviewed here and here.[1] I am not documenting every statement. Consult the sources I have cited. In a much later post I will summarize my notes on Richard Rorty (1931-2007), perhaps including his book Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, as an example primary source.

WHAT IS POSTMODERNISM?. Postmodernism is an anti-worldview worldview. Postmodernists reject systematization in both philosophy and religion (specifically theology), but the pieces of their implicit worldview can be assembled into an explicit worldview.[2] It is neither a philosophy (distinguished by at least a claim to use reason in developing it) nor a religion (distinguished by reliance on mysticism). It is, I think, best described as a creed of radical skepticism, the claim that we can know nothing.

Postmodernism's advocates started to appear as the worldwide socialist movement began to falter, and evidence for socialism's inevitable failure began to accumulate in the USSR, China, and elsewhere. The "leading strategists" of the postmodernist movement -- the social movement advocating postmodernism and applying it to contemporary culture -- were Jacques Derrida, Michael Foucault, Jean-François Lyotard, and Richard Rorty. (Hicks, p. 1) Other postmodernists have specialized in particular fields such as architecture or psychology. For example, "[t]he architectural theorist Charles Jencks [b. 1939] has done more than anyone else to popularize postmodernism as a theoretical concept, particularly in a series of editions of his best-known book The Language of Post-modern Architecture (1st ed., 1977)." (Sim, 3rd ed., p. viii)

POMO TARGETS. One way to characterize postmodernism is by identifying its targets. Postmodernism is anti-modernism, where "modernism" means a collection of the most objective ideas of the Enlightenment period (c. 1700-1800) and their positive effects on 19th and 20th Century culture (especially in law, business, technology, and science). In philosophically hierarchical order, postmodernism's fundamental targets are:

- In metaphysics, naturalism (the idea that everything has a definite nature).

- In epistemology, reason (the faculty of understanding the nature of things, through observation and logical thought) and products of reason such as particular, integrated systems of thought, which postmodernists call "meta-narratives"). (Sim, pp. 272-273)

- In theory of man, the individual is born tabula rasa.

- In ethics, individualism.

- In politics, capitalism.

POMO PRINCIPLES. In direct opposition to its targets, postmodernism supports these ideas:

- In metaphysics, anti-naturalism, that is, the belief that we should not expect everything to have a definite, identifiable nature.

- In epistemology, linguistic social subjectivism, the idea that the language each of us learns from the society around us determines our view of reality.

- In theory of man, social determinism, the idea that individuals are constructed by their society.

- In ethics, collectivism, the belief that the individual is foremost a unit of a collective.

- In politics, socialism. (Hicks, pp. 5-15, for targets and principles)

These fundamental principles lead to particular themes advocated by specialized postmodernists. One example is an academic position such as "deconstruction," a form of literary criticism in which the postmodernist reader claims to discover multiple meanings in a particular text, meanings that the author may not have intended. (Sim, pp. 245-246). A second example is a cultural (ultimately political) theme such as denigration of Christopher Columbus. (Hicks, pp. 18)

WHAT ARE ITS HISTORICAL ORIGINS? The fundamental elements of the culture of the Enlightenment (c. 1700-1800, in Western Europe) -- its naturalism, devotion to reason, and individualism -- were a seedbed. From that seedbed, modernism grew, particularly in Anglo-American culture. Enlightenment values and incipient modernist values provoked an anti-Enlightenment reaction among mystics, particularly in Germany. (French culture was mixed.) That reaction eventually fueled postmodernism. (Hicks, pp. 21-22 and 24-29)

The two main roots of the Counter-Enlightenment were Rousseau (1712-1778) and Kant (1724-1804). Rousseau contributed a collectivist social philosophy. (Hicks, pp. 99, 100, 106, 108, and 109) Kant undermined reason. (Hicks, pp. 27-42)

The anti-Enlightenment road ran from Kant (and to a lesser extent, Hume, 1711-1776) through Hegel (1770-1831), Schopenhauer (1788-1860), Kierkegaard (1813-1855), Marx (1818-1883), Nietzsche (1844-1900), Heidegger (1889-1976), and Wittgenstein (1889-1951) to primary postmodernists -- Lyotard (1924-1998), Foucault (1926-1984), Derrida (1930-2004), and Rorty (1931-2007) -- and then to secondary postmodernists in our time. (Hicks, pp. 21-22, plus Chs. 2 and 3)

WHAT IS THE POSTMODERNIST VIEW OF REASON?. Reason is the faculty of perceiving things in reality and conceptualizing their nature. At its most fundamental level, the postmodernist rejection of reason is metaphysical: Postmodernists reject the idea that things have a nature. (Hicks, p. 2, citing Foucault and Rorty) This position immediately undercuts reason.

For some postmodernists, the justification for rejecting reason is political. Western Civilization -- defined philosophically as a complex of cultural elements, such as science and objective law, that grow from a foundation of reason -- oppresses women, homosexuals, the poor, and nonwhites, the postmodernists say. Therefore, to oppose oppression, postmodernists oppose its foundation in reason. (Hicks, p. 3)

Other postmodernist attacks on reason appear in different forms. One is polylogism, though postmodernists apparently do not use that term. Postmodernists hold one's class, race, wealth, or sex to be a guiding factor in interpreting the world and in deciding what actions -- especially political ones -- to take. (Hicks, pp.15-16)

Still other postmodernists purportedly do not completely reject reason or its applications, such as the scientific method, but propose "alternatives," which means mysticism in some form. (Hicks, p. 17)

WHAT IS THE POSTMODERNIST VIEW OF MYSTICISM?. Postmodernists are not usually outspoken champions of mysticism in its various forms (faith, revelation, intuition, and so forth). Rather, they support mysticism indirectly. For some postmodernist writers, their style of writing is their statement of support for mysticism. Their styles are generally not comprehensible; reason can learn nothing in reading nonsense. (Try "reading" Derrida, Of Grammatology.)

Other postmodernists seemingly do write clearly, but they supplant reason with some other persuasive value such as "attractiveness," as when Richard Rorty says:

Conforming to my own [postmodernist] precepts, I am not going to offer arguments against the [modernist] vocabulary I want to replace. Instead, I am going to try to make the vocabulary I favor look attractive by showing how it may be used to describe a variety of topics. (Quoted by Hicks, p. 177)

Some religious mystics, particularly those who are members of the emerging Christian Radical Orthodoxy movement, have embraced postmodernism "as a critique of a particular secular framework, that of universal reason." (Pamela Sue Anderson in Sim, p. 80) The distintegration of thought brought by postmodernist skepticism creates a vacuum that religious "meta-narratives" (worldviews) fill with conventional forms of mysticism (revelation, faith, traditionalism, and reliance on holy scripture).

CONCLUSION. The general payoff of postmodernism is disintegration of reason and all the values that grow from it; mysticism rushes in where reason dies. There is also a particular payoff of postmodernist attempts to supplant reason with mysticism. In Stephen Hicks's words, postmodernists can use their rejection of reason "to justify the personal leap of faith necessary to continue believing in socialism" despite the accumulating historical evidence of socialism's failure. (Hicks, pp. 179 and181)

Burgess Laughlin

Author, The Power and the Glory: The Key Ideas and Crusading Lives of Eight Debaters of Reason vs. Faith, at http://www.reasonversusmysticism.com

[1] In addition to Stephen R. C. Hicks, Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault, 2nd ed., and Stuart Sim, The Routledge Companion to Postmodernism, 3rd ed., another general, introductory resource is: Gayl Aylesworth, "Postmodernism," The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Winter 2010 edition, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/postmodernism/.

[2] Hicks, EP:SSRF, shows the assembled result, particularly in Ch. 1. For other, but lightly critical discussions by postmodernists about postmodernists' views of religion: Pamela Sue Anderson, "Postmodernism and Religion," in RCP, Ch. 7. For their views on philosophy: Stuart Sim, "Postmodernism and Philosophy," in Sim, editor, RCP, Ch. 1.

BkRev: Explaining Postmodernism

Stephen R. C. Hicks, Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault, 2nd ("Expanded") ed., China, Ockham's Razor Publishing, 2011, 276 pages.

INTRODUCTION. Stephen Hicks, the author of Explaining Postmodernism says the thesis of his book is this:

The failure of [Enlightenment] epistemology made postmodernism possible, and the failure of socialism made postmodernism necessary. (p. i)

That thesis statement captures the essential characteristics of the book, which is both historical and philosophical. Historically the author traces the roots of postmodernism back to the collectivism of Rousseau (1712-1778) and the anti-reason epistemology of Kant (1724-1804). Philosophically Hicks shows the causal nature of fundamental ideas, that is, particularly ideas about the nature of reality (metaphysics), how man can or cannot know reality (epistemology), the nature of man (theory of man), and what man should do (ethics and politics).

CONTENT. The Table of Contents shows the structure of the book:

Ch. 1: What Postmodernism Is.

Ch. 2: The Counter-Enlightenment Attack on Reason.

Ch. 3: The Twentieth-Century Collapse of Reason.

Ch. 4: The Climate of Collectivism.

Ch. 5: The Crisis of Socialism.

Ch. 6: Postmodern Strategy.

After identifying the essential characteristics of postmodernism in Ch. 1, Hicks proceeds in historical order. He shows that each fundamental position held -- for example, by Rousseau or Kant -- has led to later developments. For Hicks, ideas matter; they are the cause of history through a chain of ideas and a chain of events.

STYLE. Hicks's writing is direct and clear. His style overall is schematic, that is, he provides the minimum required and no more. (The main text, for the broad subject covered in the six chapters, is only about 200 pages long.) He presents the skeleton of an argument, with all of the bones connected, but with only a sketch of the flesh those bones will carry if the reader follows the footnotes to further reading in the writings of the postmodernists themselves. To give that skeleton a clear identity, Hicks briefly quotes postmodernists about each topic. Throughout, Hick summarizes the positions of the postmodernists, as he does here for the role of "deconstruction" in their writings:

If there is no world or self to understand and get right on their terms, then what is the purpose of thought or action? Having deconstructed reason, truth, and the idea of correspondence of thought to reality, and then set them aside -- 'reason', writes Foucault, 'is the ultimate language of madness' -- there is nothing to guide or constrain our thoughts and feelings. So we can do or say whatever we feel like. Deconstruction, Stanley Fish confesses happily, 'relieves me of the obligation to be right ... and demands only that I be interesting'. (p. 2)

In this book, Hicks is not primarily an academic writer, that is, he does not weigh before the readers' eyes the evidence pro and con for each issue of historical or philosophical detection. Rather he presents his conclusions and the reasons for them. His book is therefore a starting point. Readers can follow his citations to original sources and decide for themselves.

Adding to the clarity of his style, which is the style of a well organized lecturer, Hicks uses subheadings to show the "joints" in his argument. He also uses summaries for review, both in paragraph form and in the form of occasional charts and lists.

CAUTIONS. Working from the book alone, a careful reader can infer that Hicks is a classical liberal (a "liberal individualist," p. 232), that is, an advocate of naturalism, reason, individualism, and capitalism. He has been influenced by the philosophy of Objectivism, though perhaps indirectly through former Objectivist philosopher David Kelly, "a colleague and friend" (p. 223).

Hicks reveals the influence of Objectivism in his presentation of ideas in philosophically hierarchical order: metaphysics, epistemology, theory of man, ethics, and politics. However, the reader needs to be cautious in particular about the two essays Hicks added to the original edition. The first essay, "Free Speech and Postmodernism," provides a case study, an examination of postmodernists' arguments for censorship, particularly in academia. Hicks rejects their arguments, but his rejection seems, on first reading (which is all that I am willing to invest) to be a mixture of utilitarianism and an objective theory of rights. Reader beware.

Similar problems arise in the second essay, "From Modern to Postmodern Art: Why Art Became Ugly." This appended essay, like the first, provides a lot of useful leads for further research as well as a readable and sweeping overview of the postmodernist positions. However, in its final paragraph the second essay rejects postmodernist art not because of its nihilism but because, Hicks says:

The world of postmodern art is a run-down hall of mirrors reflecting tiredly some innovations introduced a century ago. It is time to move on.

It is indeed time to move on, beyond postmodernism in art, not merely because postmodernist art is "tired" but because it is evil.

CONCLUSION. For any serious student of contemporary culture, Explaining Postmodernism provides both a clear overview of the subject (its nature and origins) and leads to further sources, especially primary sources, the writings of the postmodernists themselves.

For a more detailed overview, a second step in reading might be Stuart Sim's Routledge Companion to Postmodernism, reviewed here. This anthology allows the reader to move from postmodernism in general to individual essays on each cultural area infected by postmodernism, such as architecture, music, politics, cinema, and many others. This longer volume also provides a very useful dictionary of postmodernist terms such as "deconstruction."

Related: "The Tragedy of Reason (Bk. Rev.) ," Sept. 27, 2009, The Main Event.

Burgess Laughlin

Author, The Power and the Glory: The Key Ideas and Crusading Lives of Eight Debaters of Reason vs. Faith, at www.reasonversusmysticism.com

BkRev: The Routledge Companion to Postmodernism

Stuart Sim, editor, The Routledge Companion to Postmodernism, 3rd ed., New York, Routledge, 2011, 328 pages.

SUBJECT MATTER. Studying postmodernism is difficult for two major reasons. First, postmodernism is an ideology that rejects ideology and other large-scale integrations; students of the subject therefore have trouble "connecting the dots." Second, some of postmodernism's most influential leaders write in a style based on the assumption that words, concepts, and reality do not connect.

Stuart Sim's The Routledge Companion to Postmodernism largely overcomes those difficulties. The book offers articles about postmodernism's positions on philosophy, "critical theory," politics, feminism, gender, lifestyles, religion, postcolonial culture, science, technology, organizations, architecture, the arts, popular culture, and "dissent." For Part I of the book, twenty authors have contributed nineteen chapters on specialized subjects. An example is Ch. 16, "Postmodernism and music." In eleven pages it has twelve subsections such as "'Art for Art's Sake' Challenged" and "Death of the Composer as Originating Genius."

Part II of the book is a 75-page, two-column lexicon of "Critical Terms" that frequently arise in the writings of postmodernists. Example terms are "deconstruction," "binary oppositions," and "double-coding."

THE AUTHORS' GOALS. Sim and the authors he has enlisted aim to show the meaning of this "diffuse cultural movement" (p. xii). The authors are not merely observers; they are advocates as well. They intend to demonstrate "why so many thinkers and creative artists consider [postmodernism] to be worth defending" (p. xii).

The authors answer three broad questions. What are postmodernism's roots intellectually and historically? What are its essential characteristics? What are its cultural consequences?

Generally, the authors are successful in achieving their goals. From this introductory work, a patient reader gains an understanding of the basic nature of postmodernism, notes the elements of postmodernism that even these advocates acknowledge are doubtful, and sees the footprints that postmodernists continue to leave on Western culture today. Though readers will not find in-depth philosophical detection here, they will see enough evidence to enable them to construct their own tentative theory and evaluation of postmodernism.[1]

STYLE. Most of the authors, especially in Part II, "Critical Terms, A-Z," write as clearly as readers could expect from advocates of a movement that values disintegration, pervasive irony, and neologisms. An example of one of the many straightforward identifications of characteristics of postmodernism is the following statement by Angélique du Toit, author of Ch. 10, "Postmodernism and Organizations."

[P]ostmodernism rejects the modernist perspective of a reality perceived through conventional scientific methods and focuses instead on the role of language in constituting reality. (p. 110)

Most of the assembled authors define their terms and offer examples as illustrations. Occasionally readers will encounter puzzling statements such as this one:

The assertedly obsolete body of a performer [in a theatrical production], referenced by Deleuze, above, yet performed for its other -- not wholly unlike the widely distributed self in multi-authored electronic arts where that distributed self is a vehicle for a differently modulated knowledge practice -- does nothing, in the event (taken literally) to erase the drive, in a spectator-other, to identify and to recuperate self from that dispersion and from that performed obsolesence. (p. 199)

On the other hand, the book has additional virtues. Three are: endnotes and bibliography that offer researchers an opportunity to go deeper into primary sources; frequent mentions of criticisms of postmodernism by modernists (which here generally means those who support Enlightenment values such as progress, reason, and universal logic); and cross-referencing, for example, by placing in boldface the postmodernist terms defined in the lexicon at the end of the book.

(A later post will describe postmodernists' views of reason and mysticism, using Sim's book as an initial resource.)

CONCLUSION. Reading The Routledge Companion to Postmodernism gives general readers an overview of the postmodernist movement; and it provides more specialized students of history a starting point for deeper studies.

Related, the postmodernist attack on Plato as the father of philosophy: "The Tragedy of Reason (Bk. Rev.)," Sept. 27, 2009, The Main Event.

Burgess Laughlin

Author, The Power and the Glory: The Key Ideas and Crusading Lives of Eight Debaters of Reason vs. Faith, at www.reasonversusmysticism.com

[1] For a clear historical and philosophical detection of postmodernism, I recommend Stephen R. Hicks, Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault, expanded (2nd) edition, China, Ockham's Razor Publishing, 2011, 276 pages. I have not yet read the two essays (on free speech and art) added to the end of the second edition. I may review this book later. The author appears to be influenced -- perhaps only indirectly and partly -- by the philosophy of Objectivism. The influence may have come through David Kelley, an ex-Objectivist.

Mysticism in the Christian New Testament

The two most fundamental branches of any worldview are its metaphysics and its epistemology. The third branch, ethics, is the payoff branch; it develops a code of behavior telling us how to act. In religious worldviews, the moral code comes from the supernatural world. To get that message and other items from the supernatural world to us requires special, supernatural means: mysticism.

Christianity, with more than two billion followers, is the largest religion. Its holy scripture is the New Testament. What elements of mysticism does it present to readers? The following notes, drawn from a ten-week reading of the N.T. for Study Groups for Objectivists, sketch an answer. As a beginning student of the Bible, I welcome corrections.

GENERAL NATURE OF THE N.T.. Jesus lived on earth c. 4 BCE to c. 30 CE. Christians believe he is the son of God.[1] The N.T. describes mainly the "good news" (gospel) of his model life and the message he brought to man: Believe in God and your soul will be saved after death of the body. The N.T. also records the doctrines, practices, and aspirations of Jesus's followers in the two generations after his execution.[2]

The Catholic version of the N. T. includes twenty-seven "books" written c. 50-110 CE by various authors, some anonymous. In sharp contrast to the actual author of the Qur'an, the N.T. writers generally do not claim that God revealed the content as it is worded; instead, Christians -- as men, but perhaps inspired by God -- wrote about God and about their own worries as leaders of a movement. (For mysticism in the Qur'an, see here first and then here.)

AN ANTHOLOGY, NOT A TREATISE. The N.T., considered as a whole, is an anthology of disparate documents. In some, the authors write as if the documents were eyewitness accounts; others are reports of the testimony of earlier Christians; and still others are letters purportedly written by famous Christians to other Christians. The later organizers of the Bible sorted the books in groups. Examples are: the four gospels together at the beginning of the Bible; fourteen letters written by Paul or writers posing as Paul; and, alone, the unusually sophisticated Letter to the Hebrews from an anonymous, perhaps philosophically trained writer living c. 100 CE.

ORDER. The arrangement of the "books" is very loosely from longest to shortest. However, the last, "The Revelation to John," is half as long (at 16 pages of small, two-column print) as the longest book, the third, "The Gospel According to Luke" (34 pages). The general order makes some sense. Jesus is the focus. So, the N.T. begins with the four gospel writers describing the life of Jesus; each writer provides somewhat different information. Then come a variety of letters by Jesus's followers, those spreading the doctrines of Jesus in a hostile pagan world. Last comes "Revelations," an account of visions that God presented to one man, visions presaging the end of the world and the beginning of the everlasting monarchy of Jesus.

A SOURCE OF POPULAR SAYINGS. Of special interest in evaluating the influence of the N.T. today is the high number of N.T. statements that circulate in our modern culture, even among non-Christians. Examples from Matthew are: "You are the salt of the earth" (Chapter 5, Verse 13), "No one can serve two masters" (6:24), and "[D]o not throw your pearls before swine" (7:6).

CHRISTIANITY'S SUPERNATURALISM. The metaphysical foundation of the Christian worldview is supernaturalism, that is, the belief (-ism) that there are two realms: the natural world we know through our senses, and another, higher (super-) world not knowable through our senses. The gap between the supernatural world, which is man's source of ethics, and the natural world, where man lives, requires mysticism, that is, "knowledge" gained through some form other than reason (which is limited to this world, if anywhere).

Consider the first book of the N.T., the 31-page "Gospel According to Matthew." Here supernaturalism is either quietly stated or assumed. The writer makes no effort to convince his readers (presumably already Christians) of the existence of God, his son Jesus Christ, and the otherwise unidentified Holy Spirit. (See, for example, 1:20.)

The writer simply reports supernatural events, that is, events in the natural world that cannot happen without intervention from the supernatural world. An illustration is the impregnation of the mother of Jesus, Mary, by the Holy Spirit (Matthew 1:20).

The importance of the supernatural world relative to the natural world is clear in passages such as Matthew 5:34-35, where the writer says "heaven ... is the throne of God" and "earth ... is his footstool." A few other examples of supernaturalism are: (1) Almost the whole book of "The Revelation to John," who is a Christian living and writing in Asia Minor (modern Turkey) c. 96 CE, including visions of Heaven's war against evil people on earth, at the end of time; (2) Paul (sometimes called the "second founder of Christianity") exorcizing a spirit from a soothsayer (Acts 16:16); and (3) God as "the builder of all things" (Hebrews 3:4).

OBJECTS TO BE "KNOWN" MYSTICALLY. What sorts of things do Christians learn through the various forms of mysticism identified below? First, Christians learn "facts" through mysticism. Angels who rebelled against God were punished by God by being confined "in the nether gloom until" the final day, the day of Judgment, as Jude reports in Verse 6 of his brief "The Letter of Jude." He does not cite a source. He simply speaks authoritatively. His mentions of faith, both a little earlier in the letter and a little later, set a mystical context.

Through mysticism, Christians also learn values -- evaluations, ethical rules, and so forth. One form is through the words and example of Jesus (the supernatural incarnation of God on earth), reported authoritatively by his chosen apostles. For example, from the Biblical accounts of Jesus using a whip to drive sheep, oxen, and moneychangers from the Jews' temple in Jerusalem (in "The Gospel According to John," 2:14-15), Christians learn the superiority of the religious over the mundane.

Sometimes mysticism conveys specific instructions to a single Christian, as when, at Acts, 10:1-9, an "angel of God" appears before Cornelius, a Roman centurion and Christian, to tell him to fetch the apostle Peter from the nearby town of Joppa. At other times, mysticism -- in the form of words from the God incarnate in Jesus -- conveys the defining ethical principles of Christianity, as at "The Gospel According to Luke," 6:27, "Love your enemies."

(1) FAITH. The New Testament is not a collection of philosophical essays. It is an anthology of articles whose authors either describe the divine actions and sayings of Jesus or give their own advice, as an application of divine (that is, mystically known) principles to particular situations.

Faith is one of the forms of mysticism displayed in the Bible. The anonymous author of "The Letter to the Hebrews," writing c. 90 CE, defines faith succinctly. In Hebrews, 11:1, he says that "faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." Faith is based on emotion (wishful thinking); and it is a belief in objects not evident to the senses. "By faith we understand that the world was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was made out of things which do not appear" (Hebrews, 11:3).

The key point is that faith is an acceptance of ideas without or even contrary to proof based logically on the evidence of the senses. Ideas are motivators; they cause human actions. Faith in God means accepting two ideas as a starting point: God exists and his words are reliable guides to action.

Much of the N.T. is less sophisticated than "Letter to the Hebrews." Most of the various writers merely beseech their readers to "believe" or "have faith." As at Acts, 5:14, followers of the way of life that Jesus had advocated a generation earlier are called "believers." Paul, writing, in part ironically, in "The First Letter to the [Christian] Corinthians," 1:21, reminds his readers that "it pleases God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe." Belief (faith) is required for eternal salvation of one's soul, which is the main point of being a Christian.

(2) REVELATION. Compared to the Qur'an, which is almost wholly a series of revelations passed directly to the reader by the person who said he received them, Muhammad, the N.T. contains little direct revelation from God to man. Two major exceptions in the N.T. are passages quoting Jesus in the four gospels (at the beginning of the N.T.) and "The Revelation to John" (at the end of the Bible).

The gospel accounts were written by men living a generation or two after Jesus. Jesus's statements are thus, to these writers, an indirect or traditional ("handed down") form of revelation. An example is the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew quotes Jesus throughout Chapters 5-7.

"The Revelation to John" begins with a note from an anonymous writer, c. 95 CE. The note tells readers that God gave a message to Jesus (who has been dead for sixty years and presumably resides in Heaven), and Jesus, in turn, has sent "his angel" (in Greek, angelos means "messenger") to carry the message to John of Patmos (Revelation, 1:1). John himself then writes a greeting "to the seven churches that are in Asia" (Turkey, today). The remainder of the letter from John is a statement of what he heard one day while living on the Mediterranean island of Patmos, to which he had been exiled for preaching Christianity (Revelation, 1:9, and Perkins, p. 8). John of Patmos writes:

I was in the Spirit of the Lord's day and heard behind me a loud voice saying, "Write what you see in a book and send it to the seven churches ...." Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking to me, and on turning I saw seven gold lampstands, and in the midst of the lampstands [I saw] one like a son of man, clothed with a long robe ..." (Revelation, 1:10-13).

John continues reporting the actions and words of Jesus and other figures John sees in his serial vision of mankind's fate at the end of the world. The peculiarity of this account, the most mystical in the N.T., is that the author and narrator is human, but quoting Jesus or describing visions which God has sent directly to this writer. "The Revelation to John" is thus a human account of a divine revelation to one man.

(3) SIGNS. The N.T. speaks of signs. An example is the star of Bethlehem. In Matthew, 2:9-10, "wise men from the East" follow a star -- first to Jerusalem and then to Bethlehem -- to see and adore the newborn Christ. The message of this form of mysticism -- "Follow me to the child you seek" -- is implied, that is, not stated in words in the text. The wise men somehow "just know" the star that moves above them is a guide. Perhaps, as usual, this passage of holy scripture was accompanied by an oral tradition that further described the star if any doubter asked questions.

John, 2:1-11, relates the story of Jesus turning water into wine at a marriage festival. This miracle -- that is, a supernatural intervention into the natural world -- is a "sign" of the power of Jesus.

"The Acts of the Apostles" (at 2:43, 4:16, and 5:1-12) speaks of the apostles as performing "signs and wonders." (The Apostles were individuals Jesus had named, during his life on earth, to be evangelists of his message after his death.) One example was an act of the Apostle Peter. He, through his words, struck dead a married couple who, apparently in preparation for Christian communal living, had sold their property but had given only part of the proceeds to the Christians. Their deaths were signs of the power of God.

(4-7) HEARTS, INSPIRATIONS, VISIONS, AND DREAMS. In the N.T., Christian writers mention a variety of other forms of mysticism, again without elaboration or argumentation.

THE HEART. Some of the N.T. writers speak of the heart as a source of ideas that guide our actions. "For man believes with his heart ...," says Apostle Paul, at "Letter to the Romans," 10:10.

INSPIRATION. In one scene, the Spirit of God in the form of a dove alights on Jesus and "a voice from heaven" speaks, says Matthew, 3:16. Matthew does not further describe this spirit. However, in the "First Letter to the Corinthians," 2:10-14, the apostle Paul says:

... what God has prepared for those who love him, God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. ... So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. ... The unspiritual man does not receive the gifts of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.

Thus, Paul seems to be saying that a Spirit of God is separate from God, perhaps in the same mysterious manner that Jesus is the son of God. Paul further notes that mystical knowledge -- at least in the form of knowing God's thoughts as delivered by the Holy Spirit -- is available only to the spiritual man.

VISIONS. Another way in which God communicates from the supernatural to the natural realm is through visions. The most vivid and large-scale are the visions John the exile saw and then describes in "Revelations." For example:

Then God's temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant was seen within his temple; and there were flashes of lightning, loud noises, peals of thunder, an earthquake, and heavy hail. (Revelations, 11:19)

Such a vision conveys "knowledge" in that it confirms through sight the existence of items in the supernatural realm, such as the ark of the covenant described in the Old Testament.

DREAMS. After they have adored the Christ child in Bethlehem, a dream warns the wise men from the East not to return to King Herod in Jerusalem as the king had ordered. They obey the dream and depart back to the East (Matthew, 2:12). Likewise, a dream orders Joseph, the husband of Mary, the mother of Jesus, to take his family to Egypt as a refuge from the wrath of King Herod in Israel; and when King Herod dies, another dream informs Joseph, living in Egypt, that he should return to Israel (Matthew, 2:19). Dreams seem to generally convey specific knowledge to particular individuals, not broad principles that would be applicable to all men, at all times, and everywhere.

CONCLUSIONS. Like the Qur'an, the N.T. is saturated with mysticism. Despite the variety of types of text included in this anthology seemingly selected by a committee, the N.T. beats a steady cadence of mentions of mysticism: praise for "believers"; directions for travelers via dreams or moving stars; a voice from heaven; and foremost the sermons or aphorisms of a prophet who is the Son of God in human form, a prophet who delivers a divine message to sinful man.

Also like the Qur'an, the N.T. offers no intellectualizing -- no explicit, principled identification of the nature of mysticism in any of its forms, no argued defense of mysticism, and no advocacy of mysticism. Those tasks would go to theologians, religious philosophers, and religious intellectuals in the following generations.

Burgess Laughlin
Author, The Power and the Glory: The Key Ideas and Crusading Lives of Eight Debaters of Reason vs. Faith, at www.reasonversusmysticism.com

[1] For this post, which is only a collection of notes, my guide to the N.T. is: Pheme Perkins, Reading the New Testament: An Introduction, sec. ed., New York, Paulist Press, 1988 (a revision of the original, 1978 ed.). I chose Perkins, a Catholic scholar, as my guide because I wanted a source that many Christians would support. Secular scholars may offer different details. Many particulars and interpretations of particulars in the Bible are controversial, even among Christians. Perkins's work is sufficient for my initial study.

[2] The Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version, New York, Penguin Books, 1962.

Mysticism in the Qur'an

This post is the second summarizing my notes taken in the Koran Reading Group organized by Amy Peikoff. See the first post, for a bibliography.

GENERAL NATURE OF THE QUR'AN. The Qur'an is an anthology of sermons which, Muslims believe, God revealed to Muhammad c. 610-632. Muhammad recited them to his followers and others in Mecca and Medina. The Qur'an covers subjects ranging from the nature of God to rules of inheritance. Sprinkled throughout the Qur'an are elements of every branch of Islam's crude philosophy -- its metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and politics.

God is the cause of everything (2:29, 117). Principles of God's nature -- particularly His omnipotence (2:20), omnipresence (7:7), and omniscience (2:29, 32) -- comprise the metaphysics of Islam. Further, this all-knowing God is wise (24:18); He is clear in his revelations (27:1); He wants men to understand (23:80); He says belief is crucial for attaining Paradise (23:10-11; 29:56-58); and He sends Truth (23:90). The Qur'an is thus intently concerned with human cognition.

ISLAM'S NEED FOR MYSTICISM. The Qur'an assumes ideas motivate human actions, but God's perfect ideas are in a supernatural realm (16:2, 25:6) beyond man's grasp. To convey those ideas to severely limited human minds here in the natural realm, God relies on mysticism. That is the only way to bridge the gap between God and man.

Islam's theory of man is a second factor requiring mysticism. Man has a corrupt nature (16:61), a nature that hinders his ability to understand (especially the "Unseen," as implied at 13:9). Man has a "soul ... prone to evil" (12:53). Man has arisen from a "fluid despicable" (77:20). Though created by God with great potential, man becomes the lowest of the low (95:4-5). Man sees himself as self-sufficient, but he is not (96:6-7). Man is easily manipulated by Satan (12:42, 12:100). In the final judgment, "Man will be evidence against himself" (75:14)."If God were to punish men according to what they deserve, He would not leave on the back of the (earth) a single living creature," Muhammad says (35:45).

In summary, the problem for man is that "God knows, and ye know not" (24:19). The solution is a mystical relationship between God and man. God tells Muhammad (who will speak to other men): "The Qur'an was sent down by Him Who knows the Mystery that is in the heavens and the earth" (25:6). The supernatural requires the mystical.

OBJECTS TO BE "KNOWN" MYSTICALLY. For Islam, as presented in the Qur'an, what sort of ideas must mysticism convey to man? Man must have as guides at least three ideas: God exists; God's apostle is Muhammad; and the Light which God has sent down through Muhammad to man is trustworthy (64:8). Once man has mystically acquired those fundamental ideas, beyond doubt, man needs only to look to the Qur'an and traditional descriptions of Muhammad's life for guidance.

FAITH AS ACCEPTING IDEAS. The Qur'an does not explicitly define faith. Inference from numerous uses of the term leads to the conclusion that the term/concept "faith" in the Qur'an (at least in Ali's translation) matches the usual meaning elsewhere: Holding an idea without evidence or even contrary to the evidence of the senses. In his footnote 983 to verse 6:158, translator and commentator Ali confirms that meaning. He defines faith as "the belief in things which you do not see with your eyes but you understand with your spiritual sense." This meaning is partly confirmed in passages such as 13:9, in which God "knoweth the Unseen." Man is limited to his senses, so God can know other things that He can either keep to himself or reveal mystically. Man must either reject them or accept them on faith.

As in Christian literature, Ali's English translation of the Qur'an uses the word "faith" in two meanings: (1) the act of accepting an idea without evidence; and (2) the set of ideas to be accepted. An example of the latter appears in 59:9 ("adopted the Faith").

The last point is that faith, as acceptance of ideas without evidence, is not the same thing as the source of the ideas. God, of course, is the ultimate source of all things, including ideas. What are the intermediate sources through which God conveys ideas to man?

REVELATION AS A SOURCE. God has several ways to mystically convey Truth to man. Revelation is the main one. The Qur'an itself is a collection of God's revelations to Muhammad. The messenger who brought those revelations to Muhammad was the angel Gabriel (also called "The Spirit of Faith and Truth," 26:192-194). Muhammad, in turn, recited each revelation to an appropriate audience in Medina or Mecca. (The Arabic word al-qur'aan means "the recitations".) Some audiences were "Believers" (5:99, 104-105). Other audiences were Jews (4:153-161), Christians (2:138-140), or pagans such as the Quraish (54:43-46), Muhammad's own tribe of origin.

The Qur'an itself tells readers (3:7) that some of its revealed verses are "fundamental" (to be taken literally) and others are allegorical. The allegorical passages have hidden meanings known only to God. "Men of understanding" will nevertheless grasp the meaning. The Qur'an does not tell readers how they will come to understand. In the Qur'an, "understanding" is a synonym for "mystical insight," the methodless method of coming to know something.

SIGNS AS A SOURCE. The God of the Qur'an presents "Signs" as a source of ideas in the form of indirect communication from God to man. An example comes from 2:164: "Behold! In the creation of the heavens and the earth; in the alternation of the Night and the Day; in the sailing of the ships through the Ocean for the profit of mankind ... -- (here) indeed are Signs for a people that are wise." (Sometimes the term "Signs" refers to verses in the Qur'an, as at 8:31.)

In Sura 6, God identifies three levels of cognition, each for a different audience. God says, "We detail Our Signs for people who know [6:97] ... people who understand [6:98] ... [and] people who believe [6:99]." According to translator Abdullah Yusuf Ali (n. 928, p. 318), God is making a distinction: Knowing is for people who merely look at the Signs in the world around them, which is nature; understanding is a higher form of cognition, one required to grasp mysteries; and believing is the highest form of cognition, faith, which brings us closer to God. All three levels of Signs are mystical; they are not functions of reason.

HEARTS, INSPIRATIONS, VISIONS, AND DREAMS AS SOURCES. The Qur'an mentions other intermediate sources of ideas. One is the heart. When God penalizes some individuals, He "set[s] a seal on their hearts," blocks their hearing, and veils their eyes (2.7). The exact meaning of "heart" here is not clear. In Muhammad's time was it synonymous with soul? Was it thus a conflation of emotion, thought, and the "voice" of the subconscious -- as it was among some prephilosophical Greeks? (For the latter, see E. R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational.)

Second, God sometimes uses "inspiration" -- sending a "spirit" into someone -- as a way to download information into an individual's mind. Inspiration is thus a form of revelation (as at 41:6). God chooses to send inspiration (of His "Command") to only a few individuals; He then directs them to warn others.

Third, the Qur'an also notes a use of interpretation of daytime visions (12:43) and nighttime dreams (12:44). Perhaps these are holdovers from Muhammad's pagan culture.

RELATED PHENOMENA. Islam includes several supernaturalist phenomena related to cognition, but Muslims have no choice about these.

1. GOD DOWNLOADS STATES OF MIND. God sometimes downloads a state of mind into a particular individual. "It is He Who sent down tranquility into the hearts of the Believers, that they may add Faith to their Faith, " says Muhammad at 48:4; and, at 58:22, the Qur'an says, "For such [individuals] He has written Faith in their hearts, and strengthened them with a spirit from Himself."

2. GOD MANIPULATES THE SENSES. At the Battle of Badr, early Muslims faced pagan enemies. God distorted the pagans' sense-perception and therefore their assessment of the strength of the Muslim army (3:13, 8:43-44), causing the pagans to miscalculate and lose the battle.
(Before the battle, God also made the Muslims more confident than the sense-perceptible facts would have justified.) Combining this interference in sense-perception with God's omnipresence and His inscrutable (arbitrary) decision-making explains why Islam has an epistemology of philosophical skepticism (the notion that we cannot know anything using sense-perception and reason). In the Islamic worldview, faith -- especially in fundamental ideas -- is not merely desirable but required.

3. GOD INVERTS COGNITION. The Qur'an
accuses nonbelievers (some of whom refuse to abandon sense-perception in favor of 
faith) of lacking the power of hearing and seeing -- for example, at 11:20, 24, and 28. At 12: 108, God tells Muhammad to say that the evidence for the existence and power of God is as "clear as the seeing with
one's eyes" (12:108).

CONCLUSIONS. The Qur'an shows God sending philosophical and other messages to man through a variety of sources: God's revelations in the verses of the Qur'an itself; Signs of various kinds; the human heart; visions; dreams; and inspiration.

God expects Believers to accept on faith all the ideas that come from those sources. Further, by implication but never explicitly, God undercuts man's reason. God does so by manipulating man's senses (the basis of reason); by insisting on man's moral corruption as an implied corruption of man's ability to think for himself; by controlling states of mind; and by reminding man ceaselessly that God knows all, both the seen and the unseen, a task impossible for man.

Islam, as presented in the Qur'an, is saturated with mysticism. An iron chain connects the metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and politics of Islam. God is the first link. Mysticism is the second link; it connects God to Islam's altruism and statism. Mysticism is thus indispensable to the religion of Islam.

Burgess Laughlin

Author, The Power and the Glory: The Key Ideas and Crusading Lives of Eight Debaters of Reason vs. Faith, at http://www.reasonversusmysticism.com

The Qur'an: Notes from a First Reading

Acknowledgment. I am grateful to Amy Peikoff, JD, PhD (dontletitgo.com), for organizing the Koran Reading Group (KRG). It ran from May to September, 2011; it met, for a nominal fee, weekly for an hour on audio through Webinar and in emails through Google Groups; and it achieved its goals: to do a slow, scheduled reading of the Qur'an and Robert Spencer's commentary on it, especially noting passages used by jihadists today to justify their attacks on non-Muslims. KRG also fulfilled my individual purposes: to become acquainted with the Qur'an as a whole and to learn Islam's view of reason and mysticism, as stated or implied in the Qur'an.

Definition. The Qur'an is the holy scripture of Islam, which is the religion of submission to the one, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent God whose final apostle was Muhammad. Muslims believe that God revealed every word of the Qur'an to Muhammad, who then recited the revelations to his followers, who in turn recorded them in their memory and in individual writings.

The Early History of the Qur'an. Following are the major milestones in the development of the Qur'an. Unless specified otherwise, all items come from "Muhammad," Glasse, CEI. (See Bibliography at the end.)

570 -- Birth of M. in Mecca, near w. coast of Arabia. (p. 279)

590? -- In Syria, on a caravan trading expedition, M. meets a Christian monk who tells M. that M. is a prophet. (p. 280)

605? -- M. has visions. (p. 280)

610 -- M. receives his first revelation, in a cave near Mecca. (p. 280)

632, March -- M. receives his last revelation, three months before his death. (p. 284)

632-656 -- Under the direction of the first three caliphs (Abuu Bakr, 'Umar, and 'Uthmaan), Muslims (such as M's secretary, Zayd ibn Thaabit) collect and sort written copies of M's recitations of individual revelations. ("Koran," CEI, p. 230) The edited collection, an artifact of human action, is the Qur'an, developed, Muslims believe, by God at the beginning of time.

The Organization of the Qur'an. The Qur'an consists of 114 primary divisions, the suras (chapters). The compilers of the Qur'an generally arranged the suras by length, with the longest suras first. Each sura, in turn, is divided into verses of one or more lines. For example, Sura 110 ("Help") has three verses. As usual, after the first line, God speaks to Muhammad:

In the name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.

1. When comes the Help of God, and Victory,

2. And thou dost see the People enter God's Religion in crowds,

3. Celebrate the Praises of thy Lord, and pray for His Forgiveness: For He is Oft-Returning (in Grace and Mercy).

The italicized line at the start is one of the standard invocations. In the last line, the translator and commentator, Abdullah Yusuf Ali, inserted the words in parentheses to make explicit the meaning he thinks is implicit in the Arabic text.

The Style of the Qur'an. The Qur'an is poetic, but the lines have variable lengths and meters. The text is sometimes austere and emotive, but often repetitive, bombastic, and authoritarian.

The Muslim View of the Qur'an. Muslims believe the Qur'an is perfect theologically, doctrinally, historically, and poetically. No one, Muslims believe, can evaluate it by an external standard; the Qur'an is the standard of judgment, says Muslim scholar Cyril Glasse, "Koran," CEI, p. 228.

The Philosophy of the Qur'an. A philosophy, even in implicit form, is a set of fundamental principles about: the nature of reality (metaphysics), how we can know that reality (epistemology), what we should do (ethics), and how we should relate to each other in society (politics). Philosophical detection reveals the philosophy of Islam as presented in the Qur'an.

In the Qur'an, the metaphysics of Islam is supernaturalist, positing the existence of (1) an omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, most merciful, most gracious, and vengeful being, who is otherwise ineffable, who has knowledge not available to man through man's limited faculties, and who created man knowing ahead what each individual will do, yet holding the individual -- not his Creator -- responsible for failure; and (2) two worlds, this natural world, which manifests God, and the other world, the world of heaven and hell, which is the world of the hereafter, that is, the world in which the souls of dead men continue after life on earth.

In the Qur'an, the epistemology of Islam is mystical. The Qur'an rarely acknowledges the existence of reason, and, even then, only by implication and in truncated form. The Qur'an implies that reason is impotent to develop an ethics that will guide man not only for this life but for man's efforts to secure a happy life in the supernatural realm. Man needs mysticism to gain knowledge of what to do. The forms of mysticism appearing in the Qur'an are many: faith in God; revelation from God to man; reading "signs" of God in nature or in miracles; and others. (Quranic mysticism will be the subject of the second post in this series).

In the Qur'an, the ethics of Islam is altruist, that is, focused on The Other not oneself as the primary beneficiary of one's actions. In the Islam of the Qur'an, in the supernatural realm, The Other is God; in the natural realm, this world, The Other means society, especially family, but also the ummah, the Muslim community, including the needy.

In the Qur'an, the politics of Islam is theocratic, that is, supporting a government that implements God's ethics. The Islamic political system, shown in the Qur'an in incipient form under Muhammad's reign, is a direct inference from the central Islamic principle, the doctrine of unicity: one God, one message, one set of rules for living for all individuals, everywhere, and at all times.

Sura 1, the first chapter of the Qur'an, is unusual in being a short chapter at the beginning of the Qur'an and in being spoken by God's worshippers not by Muhammad or God speaking through Muhammad. Sura 1 suggests the first three elements of the philosophy of Islam.

1. In the name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful

2. Praise be to God, the Cherisher and Sustainer of the Worlds;

3. Most Gracious, Most Merciful;

4. Master of the Day of Judgment.

5. Thee do we worship and thine aid we seek.

6. Show us the straight way,

7. The way of those on whom thou hast bestowed Thy Grace, those whose (portion) is not wrath, and who go not astray.

Supernaturalism is shown by the invocation of God. He has created this world on earth and another realm of heaven and hell. God did more than create this world back in time; readers of the Qur'an learn later, that God also sustains the world from moment to moment and can change it at any time. Mysticism is suggested here, by implication, in that praising God requires faith in God's existence and nature, and explicitly in that God's followers must have faith in His Word, worship Him, and seek His aid for humans in this world. Altruism is implied in the focus on God, who will tell us how to live ("the straight way"), which includes our duties to others, as Muhammad explains in later suras.

Conclusions. From reading the Qur'an, I have reached two conclusions. First, Islam's holy scripture, which is essentially a collection of ad hoc sermons, is written in such a way that it makes Islam one of the "cafeteria" religions. (Two other examples are Christianity and Judaism.) A reader can easily pick elements to fit his already formed approach to life, and ignore or downplay contradictory elements. This is why some Muslims can be personally pacifistic and others can be at war with the infidel world around them.

Second, Islam is definitely a religion, which is a mystical worldview consisting of a metaphysics, an epistemology, an ethics, and a politics -- all meant to apply universally, that is, to everyone, everywhere, and at all times. Islam is not an ideology, which is an application of a universalist worldview (religion or philosophy) to a particular milieu for the purpose of developing a strategy suitable to changing current society. It is also true, however, that Islam's holy scripture, the Qur'an, shows Islam's model man, Muhammad, engaged in political action in the form of warfare, negotiation, deception, enslavement, and execution of opponents. Those and other elements shape the various Islamic ideologies active today.

As presented in the Qur'an, Islam is a rotting log from which various ideological mushrooms grow. All are poisonous, some more quickly than others.

Burgess Laughlin

Author, The Power and the Glory: The Key Ideas and Crusading Lives of Eight Debaters of Reason vs. Faith, at http://www.reasonversusmysticism.com

Bibliography

Ali, Abdullah Yusuf, editor, translator, and commentator,The Qur'an: Text, Translation and Commentary, 3rd ed., Elmhurst (New York), Tahrike Tarsile Qur'an, Inc., 1938 (1934, 1st ed.), 1862 pages. Muslims I met at Portland State University, Oregon, in 2000, recommended this translation and commentary. Robert Spencer also recommends it as an acceptable translation and mainstream commentary. Approximately one-third of each page is Arabic text, one-third is English translation, and (in small type) one-third is footnotes that explain the meaning of items such as place names; provide background information; and interpret the often terse and confusing verses.

Glasse, Cyril, The Concise Encyclopedia of Islam, New York, HarperCollins, 1989, 472 pages. (Later editions are called The New Encyclopedia of Islam). The entries vary from a single paragraph to several pages; they include cultural, theological, and historical terms. Aids to readers include photographs and maps. The author is an articulate Muslim familiar with Western criticisms of Islam.

"Revelation Order of the Qur'an," missionislam.com/quran/revealationorder.htm (in the address, "revealation" is the site creator's misspelling). This Muslim site presents the most widely accepted Muslim view of the proper traditional order of the chapters and verses. The site then lists the 114 suras in chronological order, the sequence, Muslims say, in which Allah sent the suras down to Muhammad.

Spencer, Robert, "Qur'an Commentary," jihadwatch.org/quran-commentary.html. Spencer is a Christian activist and opponent of jihadist Islam. He summarizes the Qur'an, sometimes verse by verse, explains implications of some of the texts (for example, on jihad), and helps the reader integrate the disorganized elements of Islam in this holy text. In this commentary, Spencer generally describes rather than evaluates. He does not critique any element of Islam that also appears in Judaism and Christianity -- for example, supernaturalism, mysticism, and altruism.