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Sitaram · Site Admin Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 1079

Date: Wed May 14, 2003 7:15 am
Subject: An Analysis of Holiness

http://www.sulekha.com/chpost.asp...ilosophy&show=0&cid=59052

http://www.geocities.com/tulsidas_ramayan/page386.htm

The mere recognition that there is such a thing as holiness and that
it is to be desired is the beginnings of holiness. - Sitaram

If I am ugly, yet I know that beauty exists.

If I am foolish, yet I know there is Wisdom.

If I am mortal, yet I know there is something Eternal.

If I am unclean, it is Purity which teaches me of my uncleanliness.

If I am sinful, yet I am not so sinful as to say there is nothing
Holy.

- Sitaram

=====================================

(excerpts: see url below for complete article):

It is in nonreligious thought that we find the intuitive sense of
metaphysical holiness expressed in firmest outline. A poetic
intimation of the metaphysically holy (as something distinct from the
religiously holy) is behind Parmenides notion of Being, Plotinus'
distinction between the One and God (Nous), Spinoza's Substance,
Schopenhauer's noumenon (as revealed in mystical ecstasy), and
Heidegger's Being of beings. But the person who has come closest to a
grasp of metaphysical holiness and its difference from religious
holiness is the contemporary analytic philosopher Milton Munitz. It
is true for Munitz but for none of the above thinkers that the
phenomenon intuitively sensed as the metaphysically holy is
conceptualized as the existence of things, what Munitz
calls `Existence`,[16] rather than as the One, the Substance,
or `Being' in some unspecified or nonexistential sense. Furthermore,
Munitz more clearly than others evinces a recognition of the holiness
of Existence. `Existence, as a mysterium tremendum et fascinans,
needs to be recognized as the principal target of religious
experience'.[17] Munitz is here using `religious experience' in a
wide sense to refer to a type of experience of which the theistic
experience of God is only one subtype. The experience of existence as
a mysterium tremendum et fascinans is a religious experience of the
nontheistic type. In my terminology, it is an experience of the holy
that is metaphysical rather than religious in nature. Munitz comes
nearest to capturing this difference in the following passage.

Moral holiness, the property of being a moral phenomenon of the
highest possible kind, is a distinctive property of holiness in that
it is both a complete property of holiness and a part of another
complete property of holiness, namely, religious holiness. In order
to be religiously holy, it is necessary to be morally holy
(specifically, to have a perfectly good character), but it is not
necessary to be religiously holy or even derivatively religiously
holy in order to be morally holy. It is important to make this latter
point, since some may confuse derivative religious holiness with
moral holiness. Certain duties, acts, etc., that pertain to humans
are holy by virtue of their relation to God and others are holy in a
different sense by virtue of their moral quality. A pilgrimage to
Mecca or a prayer is a `holy act' or a `holy duty' in a derivative
religious sense but not in a moral sense, whereas `defending the
natural rights of humans' or `preserving knowledge for the
generations to come' is consistently thought of as a sacred duty in a
moral and nonreligious sense. The idea that moral holiness is not
religiously derivative may be resisted by some, but there are plainly
many instances of ascriptions of moral holiness that are consistent
with an atheistic world-view. The belief in the `sanctity of human
life' is consistent with the belief that humans are not made in God's
image and that there is no God; this belief may be based solely on a
conviction of the unsurpassable value of the human person and of the
natural possession of inviolable rights by humans. Many atheistic
poets and writers in the i and early 20th centuries believed their
pursuit of art to be a sacred calling and duty, and believed this on
the basis of their conviction of the supreme value of art. During the
Nazi era, many intensely patriotic Germans believed `the Fatherland'
to be a secular nation that possessed a moral sacredness to it, and
they fervently believed it was their `sacred duty' to defend the
Fatherland against the morally inferior forces of the outside world.
This is not to say that these moral beliefs are necessarily correct
(it may well be doubted that the Fatherland is morally sacred), but
that they are consistent-the property of moral sacredness is ascribed
without contradiction to phenomena that are not connected to God.
Supreme moral value is not logically dependent upon the existence of
a supreme person.

Although the distinction between existential and personal supremacy
has been obscured by the Christian and other monotheistic traditions,
it has not gone wholly unnoticed. The concept of metaphysical
holiness or its difference from the concept of religious holiness has
not been completely, precisely or accurately articulated, but this
concept or difference has been partly and poetically glimpsed. The
distinction in Taoism between God and Tao is arguably a (partially
adequate) poetic attempt to distinguish the supreme in the class of
persons from the metaphysically supreme item. (The Way or Tao is not
God but `is like a preface to God', as is said in Poem #4 of the Tao
Te Ching.) The concept of nirvana or emptiness (sunyata) and its
distinction from Brahman in some strands of Buddhist thought
expresses a partial intimation of this difference. Even in the
Christian tradition, there is an occasional recognition of some sort
of a distinction; witness Meister Eckhart's distinction between the
person God and the metaphysically greater Godhead, which does not
have the property of personality. The Godhead or `unconditioned being
is above God and all distinctions'.[15]

===========================

http://www.qsmithwmu.com/an_analysis_of_holiness.htm

QUENTIN SMITH

AN ANALYSIS OF HOLINESS

I. THE ANALYSABILITY OF HOLINESS

Originally Published in: Religious Studies, Vol. 24, December 1988,
pp. 511-527.

This inquiry is motivated by the question: if atheism is true, is it
nevertheless the case that holiness or sacredness is exemplified? I
believe the answer to this question is affirmative, and that the path
to its affirmation lies in the rejection of the traditional
assumption that holiness is a single and simple property of a
divinity that eludes analysis. The opposite view, that there are
several complex properties comprising holiness, makes it manifest
that there are holy beings, even a holy `supreme being', even if
there is no God and no gods.

The main thrust of this paper is to show that there are four
different but partially analogous complete properties of holiness,
namely, religious holiness, moral holiness, individually relative
holiness and metaphysical holiness. The respect in which they are
analogous is twofold. First after all, the bearer of each of these
properties, by virtue of bearing the property, is supreme in its
class. What is religiously holy is supreme in the class of persons;
the morally holy is supreme in the class of moral phenomena; what is
holy relative to some individual person is supreme in the class of
phenomena cherished by that person; what is metaphysically holy is
supreme in the class of existents. `Supremacy' must be understood
here in a special sense. The supreme phenomenon is not merely in fact
highest in its class, but is also the highest that is possible in its
class. There could be nothing more excellent in that class than the
holy phenomenon. It is the perfect member or one of the perfect
members of the class.

2. RELIGIOUS HOLINESS

The religiously holy being possesses the most excellent personal
properties. Persons have such excellent properties as consciousness,
agency, and capacity for happiness, love and moral goodness; the very
highest kind of person has these personal properties in their perfect
mode: omniscience, omnipotence, omnibenevolence, perfect happiness,
perfect freedom and perfect loving. The bearer of these properties is
God, the divine person. `God is (religiously) holy' expresses a
proposition logically equivalent to that expressed by `God is the
supreme person', and this in turn expresses a proposition logically
equivalent to the one expressed by `God is omniscient, omnipotent,
omni benevolent, perfectly happy, free and loving'. The further
analysis of each of these divine properties — omniscience, etc.
belongs to the complete decompositional analysis of religious
holiness.

There is a difference between the religiously holy and what is
believed to be religiously holy by some cultures and persons. The
Babylonians believed Anu and Enlil to be religiously holy, the
Egyptians believed the same of Re and Shu, and the Greeks believed
likewise of Chronos and Zeus. But these persons are not of the
highest possible kind; they suffer some or all of the following
defects: limited knowledge, limited power, imperfect happiness,
imperfect goodness and imperfect love. These persons were nonetheless
believed to be persons of the supreme kind; the Babylonians, etc.,
could not conceive of a higher kind of person perfect goodness,
omniscience, etc., were simply beyond their ken. They mistakenly
ascribed the property of being the supreme kind of person to these
persons and consequently their religious worship was misdirected.

The claim that Anu, Zeus and the like are not in truth religiously
holy is controversial, and to make it more palatable I will ask the
reader to consider a certain scenario. Imagine that we discover some
person who lives above the earth and who has some exceptional powers,
such as being the force behind thunderstorms, lightning, and cloud
formation. This person knows more than we do and is superior to us in
many other of his personal properties. But this person, like us, is
sometimes depressed, vain and greedy and occasionally commits immoral
actions. We would not find this person worthy of religious worship,
and we would say of anybody who did religiously worship this person
that the worshipper had a misconception of the religiously holy.
Moreover, we would expect this worshipper not to possess the concept
of what is in truth the supreme kind of person an omniscient,
omnipotent, etc., person and we would expect this worshipper would
cease to worship the storm-gatherer once the worshipper fully and
correctly understood the concept of the supreme kind of person.

3. MORAL HOLINESS

The class of moral phenomena include moral duties, laws, acts,
objects and characters. A morally holy or sacred duty is a duty of
the highest possible sort; it is an unconditional duty, one for which
everything should be sacrificed if need be. The word `holy'
or `sacred' is used to express this property in such moral claims
as `Protecting the natural rights of all humans is our supreme
obligation; it is our sacred duty'; `The pursuit of art is my sacred
calling and duty'; `Soldiers, it is your sacred duty to defend the
Fatherland'. A morally holy law is one that is unconditionally
imperative; it cannot, under any circumstances, be violated. One
expresses this property of laws when one talks of the `sanctity of
law'. A morally holy act is an act of the best possible kind; an
example may be making the supreme sacrifice, sacrificing one's life,
for something genuinely worthy of that sacrifice. Sacrificing one's
life for a morally sacred cause is not merely `good' or `virtuous' in
the ordinary sense but belongs to a different and higher order of
moral excellence. It is morally awesome and profoundly moves those
aware of it, rendering mere `moral approval' inappropriate. One is
silent before a supreme ethical act. A morally holy object of ethical
conduct is an object of the highest possible sort, something that
should be preserved or enhanced in preference (if need be) to other
possible moral goods. Ascriptions of holiness to objects of our
conduct is expressed in such phrases as `the sanctity of human life'
and `the sacredness of our national institutions'. A person who has
or develops a morally holy character is a perfectly good person; such
a person is actuated solely by moral principles and performs the
morally best action relevant to each situation she is in. Such moral
purity is more of an ideal than an actuality for human persons and
has its prime instantiation in God.[7]

Moral holiness, the property of being a moral phenomenon of the
highest possible kind, is a distinctive property of holiness in that
it is both a complete property of holiness and a part of another
complete property of holiness, namely, religious holiness. In order
to be religiously holy, it is necessary to be morally holy
(specifically, to have a perfectly good character), but it is not
necessary to be religiously holy or even derivatively religiously
holy in order to be morally holy. It is important to make this latter
point, since some may confuse derivative religious holiness with
moral holiness. Certain duties, acts, etc., that pertain to humans
are holy by virtue of their relation to God and others are holy in a
different sense by virtue of their moral quality. A pilgrimage to
Mecca or a prayer is a `holy act' or a `holy duty' in a derivative
religious sense but not in a moral sense, whereas `defending the
natural rights of humans' or `preserving knowledge for the
generations to come' is consistently thought of as a sacred duty in a
moral and nonreligious sense. The idea that moral holiness is not
religiously derivative may be resisted by some, but there are plainly
many instances of ascriptions of moral holiness that are consistent
with an atheistic world-view. The belief in the `sanctity of human
life' is consistent with the belief that humans are not made in God's
image and that there is no God; this belief may be based solely on a
conviction of the unsurpassable value of the human person and of the
natural possession of inviolable rights by humans. Many atheistic
poets and writers in the i and early 20th centuries believed their
pursuit of art to be a sacred calling and duty, and believed this on
the basis of their conviction of the supreme value of art. During the
Nazi era, many intensely patriotic Germans believed `the Fatherland'
to be a secular nation that possessed a moral sacredness to it, and
they fervently believed it was their `sacred duty' to defend the
Fatherland against the morally inferior forces of the outside world.
This is not to say that these moral beliefs are necessarily correct
(it may well be doubted that the Fatherland is morally sacred), but
that they are consistent—the property of moral sacredness is ascribed
without contradiction to phenomena that are not connected to God.
Supreme moral value is not logically dependent upon the existence of
a supreme person.

4. INDIVIDUALLY RELATIVE HOLINESS

The class of phenomena cherished by a person is a class of phenomena
each of which possesses the relational property of being cherished by
a person. It is possible that among these phenomena are ones that
belong to the highest possible order of the cherishable, what is
sacred to the person. These phenomena may be people and our
relationships with them, experiences, possessions, memories, and the
like. The ascription of individually relative holiness or sacredness
to such phenomena is made in sentences typified by the following: `My
memories of my husband, who died years ago, are sacred to me'; `This
land (said while pointing to a farm tract) is sacred to me; my family
has made a living from it for generations and I will hand it down to
my son'; `My children are sacred to me—I would die for them if need
be'. What is being expressed here is that the people, memories,
experiences, etc., are not merely cherished by the person but are
supremely cherished. It is not possible that anything could be more
cherished by the person; the phenomenon is unconditionally cherished
in that the person would not forget or be indifferent to it under any
condition and would not sacrifice it for anything else he or she
cherishes. The phenomenon stands above the other phenomena the person
cherishes as the supreme focus of meaning in his or her life; what is
sacred to the person constitutes the ultimate meaning in the person's
life or is an experience, symbol or manifestation of this ultimate
meaning. If what is sacred to the person is the ultimate meaning in
her life, then it has original or primary individually relative
sacredness. If the sacred is an experience, symbol or manifestation
of the ultimate meaning in her life, then it has derivative
individually relative sacredness. For example, the sacredness to the
widow of her memories of her husband is derived from the sacredness
to her of her husband himself. But not every person experiences
something as sacred to himself; for some, `nothing is sacred' and all
phenomena stand on a more or less uniform plane of the ordinary.

It is manifest that `sacredness' in the individually relative sense
expresses a different complete property of holiness than
does `sacredness' in the religious or moral sense. If I assert
something to be morally holy or religiously holy (in the original or
derivative sense) I am ascribing a non-individually relative property
to it, one that belongs to the phenomenon nondependently upon its
relation to me. A temple is holy by virtue of its relation to God,
not by virtue of its relation to me, and the sacredness of the duty
to pursue art is dependent upon the sacredness of art and not upon
the fact of my existence. But If I find certain memories,
possessions, experiences, etc., to be sacred, it is clear to me that
they are sacred relatively to me and by virtue of their relation to
me, such that the cessation of my existence would entail the loss of
their sacrality (assuming they do not happen to also be sacred
relatively to some other individuals; e.g. the farmland may also be
sacred to other members of the family). Of course one's child may
have moral sacredness as a human being, which is not individually
relative, but that is something different from the child's sacredness
to his parent, which is something the child possesses only by virtue
of being supremely cherished by his parent. His moral sacredness, by
contrast, is something he possesses regardless of whether or not his
parent supremely cherishes him.

Implicit in these last remarks is the fact that a person may
supremely cherish something that is religiously, morally or
metaphysically holy, such that what has individually relative
holiness for her is the supreme person, existent or a supreme moral
phenomenon. The supreme cherishing may or may not be based on the
item's religious, moral or metaphysical holiness. In the case of the
parent supremely cherishing her child, it is not so based; the parent
does not supremely cherish her child because he is a morally sacred
human being, but because he is her child. If the cherishing were
based on the child's moral sacredness, the parent would then
supremely cherish all humans equally—which she manifestly does not.

It is only in rare instances that a person supremely cherishes
something because it is religiously, morally or metaphysically holy.
This sort of cherishing is the precondition for anybody living a holy
life, the paradigmic instances of which are the life of the religious
mystic, the ethical idealist, and the metaphysical sage, where these
phrases are understood in a suitable sense. Every religious mystic
supremely cherishes the supreme person because he is the supreme
person, every ethical idealist finds morally holy phenomena sacred to
herself because they are morally holy, and every metaphysical sage
supremely cherishes what is supreme in the class of existents because
of its supremacy.

5. METAPHYSICAL HOLINESS

What is metaphysically holy is supreme in the class of existents; it
is the existent that possesses the highest possible mode of
existence. A mode of existence is something's existence qua
possessing certain properties. The mode of existence constitutive of
metaphysical holiness is something's existence qua possessing the
properties of permanence, independence, logical necessity,
indispensability and reflexivity. The existent whose existence
possesses these five properties is the metaphysically holy existent.
All other existents—i.e. existents whose existence does not have all
of these properties—are not metaphysically holy. This requires some
explanation and substantiation.

The above reflections provide a way of substantiating and
articulating the metaphysical intuition that the pure existent is
existence itself, and thus that one of the properties of the
existence of the supreme existent is reflexivity. These reflections,
as well as our explications of the permanence, independence, logical
necessity and indispensability of the existence of the supreme
existent, can be deepened if we contrast our conception of the
supreme existent with historical accounts of `the supreme existent'.
This contrast is important, since historically the supreme existent
was frequently confused with the supreme person and the categories of
metaphysical and religious holiness were conflated with each other.
This confusion is due mainly to the predominance of monotheistic
religions—principally the Jewish, Christian, Islamic and Hindu
religions—and their influence upon philosophical thinking and
spiritual attitudes and experiences. In Western culture, the
Christian influence has been decisive; its confusion of the two
categories crystalized in the Anselm-inspired `perfect being
theology', which defines God as the perfect being. A recent and lucid
expression of this theological tradition can be found in Thomas
Morris' essay `Perfect Being Theology',[11] in which metaphysical
greatness is identified with religious greatness. Morris lists (in
ascending order of greatness) the following `great-making
properties': (a) consciousness, (b) conscious agency, (c) benevolent
conscious agency, (d) benevolent conscious agency with significant
knowledge, (e) benevolent conscious agency with significant knowledge
and power... and so on until we arrive at the perfect personal
properties, omniscience, omnipotence, omni benevolence, etc. This
provides us, Morris avers, with the concept of `a greatest possible
or maximally perfect being'.[12] But I suggest that the
expression `maximally perfect being' is ambiguous between its
existential and quidditative senses and that these two senses have
not been clearly distinguished or not been distinguished at all by
Morris and others in the tradition of `perfect being
theology'. `Being' in the existential sense relates to the existence
of something, to the fact that it is at all, rather than is
not. `Being' in the quidditative sense relates to the nature of
something, to what it is (i.e. to the necessary and accidental
qualitative properties of some thing.) The maximally perfect being in
the existential sense is the perfect existent, but the maximally
perfect being in the quidditative sense is the item which has a
perfect nature, the best possible qualitative properties. Existential
perfection is a property of the existence of something, whereas
quidditative perfection is a property of the thing itself and
constitutes the nature of the thing. Manifestly, the principal `great-
making' properties listed by Morris and others in the Anselmian
tradition are not properties of the existence of something but
constitute the nature of something. It is simply nonsense to assert
of something that the existence of the thing is conscious, that the
existence of the thing has conscious agency, that the existence of
the thing is benevolent and that its existence possesses significant
knowledge. The existence of something is not the `sort of thing' that
can be benevolent or cruel or wise or ignorant. If God exists, his
existence is not benevolent and all-knowing; rather God himself is
benevolent and all-knowing.[13]

Omniscience, omnipotence, omnibenevolence, perfect happiness, etc.,
are the perfect quidditative properties and comprise the nature of
the `perfect being' in the quidditative sense of' being'. On the
other hand, permanence, independence, logical necessity,
indispensability and reflexivity are the perfect existential
properties and comprise the manner of existing of the `perfect being'
in the existential sense of `being'. It is the existential properties
alone that are properties of the existence of something. While it is
senseless to say that the existence of something is all-knowing, it
makes sense to say that its existence is permanent, necessary,
independent, indispensable and reflexive.

[1] A partial exception to this tendency can be found in Richard
Swinburne's The Coherence of Theism (Oxford, 1977), pp. 292-4, where
holiness is regarded as a complex property of the divinity. This
exception is only partial, since Swinburne shares the common
assumption that holiness is exemplifiable only by God.

[2] Max Scheler, Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values
(Evanston, 1973), trans. Frings and Funk, p. 108.

[3] Rudolph Otto, The Idea of the Holy (Oxford, 1953), trans. Harvey,
p. 5. Otto recognizes some complexity, however, inasmuch as he
considers the numinous to be one element in the meaning of `holiness'
as currently used, the other element being the element of complete
goodness.

[4] Charles Kielkopf, `The Sense of the Holy and Ontological
Arguments', The New Scholasticism LVIII (1984), 24.

[5] Ibid. p. 25.

[6] Quentin Smith, The Felt Meanings of the World. A Metaphysics of
Feeling (West Lafayette, 1986).

[7] Kant recognized a sort of moral holiness inasmuch as he defined a
holy will as a will perfectly in conformity with the moral law.
Nevertheless, he did not recognize or did not clearly recognize the
logical independence of moral holiness from religious holiness, for
his conception of a holy will was developed within the framework of
theism. See his Critique of Practical Reason.

[8] George Nakhnikian and Wesley Salmon, `"Exists" as a Predicate',
The Philosophical Review LXVI (1957) 535-42; David Kaplan, `Bob and
Carol and Ted and Alice', in J. Hintikka et al. eds. Approaches to
Natural Language (Boston, 1973); Alvin Plantinga, The Nature of
Necessity (Oxford, 1974), chapter VII.

[9] G. Frege, The Foundations of Arithmetic (Oxford, 1950), trans. J.
Austin, pp. 64-5; B. Russell, Logic and Knowledge (New York, 1956),
ed. R. Marsh, pp. 228-41.

[10] The Felt Meaning of the World, op. cit. chapter iv.

[11] Thomas Morris, `Perfect Being Theology', Nous XXI (1987), 19-30.

[12] Ibid. p. 26.

[13] We know of course that some medieval theologians, such as
Aquinas, claimed that God is identical with his omniscience and that
his omniscience is identical with his omnipotence and that his
omniscience and omnipotence are both identical with his existence.
But this doctrine is plainly self-contradictory, and its hold on some
people's minds testifies to the predominance of faith over
intellectual coherence in some Christian circles.

[14] The Felt Meanings of the World, op. cit pp. 181-4 and n. 77 on
pp. 344-5.

[15] Meister Eckhart, trans. R. Blakney (New York, 1941), p. 231.

[16] Milton Munitz, Existence and Logic (New York, 174), p. 197.

[17] Ibid. p. 203.

[18] Munitz, The Ways q Philosophy (New York, 1979), pp. 347 and 344.

[19] Munitz explained this to me in a letter of Nov. 30, 1981

[20] The Ways of Philosophy, op. cit. p. 348.

[21] Existence and Logic, op. cit. p. 200.

* [Note added in proof: In a conversation in Sept., 1988 Munitz
allowed that existence may he conceived as a property of a special
sort, one that constitutes or indicates the ontological status of
something.]

[22] Munitz, Cosmic Understanding (Princeton, 1986), p. 234.

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