On living/organic thinking as conceptual/symbolic order (rather than a conceptual "system")
We often refer to 'living thinking' here, but it's probably difficult to discern what this phrase means exactly, in contrast to the normal conceptual thinking we are raised into and mostly familiar with. Another way to phrase it is 'organic thinking', as opposed to thinking which only grasps 'inorganic nature' (which is basically an oxymoron, since only our own mechanical systems can exist - temporarily - isolated from living processes in the World). Our thinking must become living in order to grasp what is Living in nature, since life is the image of higher ideational activity projected into the spatiotemporal dimension of our convoluted consciousness. With the phrase 'organic thinking', we immediately have the connotation of a thought-organism which is rooted within and around central organic structures, i.e. reasoned principles, but never ceases to grow, adapt, and evolve.
The central means through which organic thinking proceeds is that of
symbols, rather than definitional constructs that have been (temporarily) stripped of symbolic value. The symbolic approach treats concepts as open-ended portals that simultaneously distinguish between phenomenal appearances and unites them, while the systematic approach tends towards closed loops of reductive thinking. The definitional concept or conceptual system presupposes a known unity to which all phenomenal details can be reduced in thought, while the symbolic concept or conceptual ordering presupposes a mysterious unity which is progressively and
experientially revealed through the phenomenal details. The archetypal example of this - the Symbol of all symbols - is the Cross. Through the symbolic ordering of the Cross, we can distinguish the elements of nature, the kingdoms of nature, the planes of existence, the poles of existence, and much besides, while simultaneously perceiving their interrelations which weave them into higher Unities.
Of course, we can't simply stare at a Cross and hope all these relations are revealed to us without any effort. Symbols are promptings for us to go searching inwardly with our spiritual activity for how their essential relations are expressed in our stream of becoming. For ex., I once used the image below for an essay on the spiritual value of music. We can contemplate such an essay and symbol to begin exploring the structured musical quality of our willing-feeling-thinking, body-soul-spirit, and steer towards our spiritual ideal of harmonizing their activities within us - "
Life, like a musical instrument, being harmonized by remission and intention, becomes more agreeable." (Pythagoras). We will not be too bothered if the correspondences don't always line up or sometimes willing-feeling-thinking is associated with the spirit-soul-body, respectively, rather than the other way around. Life does not obey any mechanical rules. If we wanted to create a 'system' out of it with dead/inorganic thinking, on the other hand, we would take note of the correspondences expressed, perhaps combining them with some other correspondences we have been
given by others, cement them in stone, and then try to explain all aspects of musical experience and perhaps the experience of our entire inner life in terms of those correspondences.
Even this conceptual explanation of the distinction between conceptual systems and symbolic orders should be treated as an open-ended symbol, pointing towards a path of experience by which mysterious unities of our conceptual thought-life are unveiled. It provides a basic principle or ideal of conceptual thinking around which our thoughts can grow. We are not interested so much in fixing parameters and boundaries which make it convenient to think about the thought-organism, but actually experiencing with the 'shape' of our thinking the real-time growth of that organism. The generous use of metaphors, analogies, diagrams, illustrations, etc. cultivate this symbolic/organic thinking and provide a viable means of communicating essential knowledge to ourselves and others without reducing any of that knowledge to rigid metaphysical systems that presuppose a top-level view of the World, thereby forestalling our spiritual growth in its tracks.
***
In what, then, does the essence of the "monovalent" concept (the concept strictly limited to a single meaning) and of the "system" consist? Let us take as an example the concept of freedom and consider its meaning in different con- texts. In international law, for example, one speaks of the "freedom of the seas," meaning that beyond the boundaries of the so-called territorial waters the ocean is open to the ships of any nation. The ocean does not belong to any state, and the freedom of the sea thus means "free use" of it by countries, particularly for the purposes of navigation and fishing.
Then again, when we speak in ordinary usage of the freedom of persons or citizens, we do not mean the "free use of persons or of citizens by a third party". On the contrary, we mean that the person or the citizen alone disposes of himself. To free a slave means to dispense with the right to dispose over him, and to hand this right over to the former slave himself. But when we speak of our "free will," we mean neither that our will is at everyone else's disposal (like the ocean is at the disposal of states for their use) nor that the will disposes over itself, since the will can just as little dispose over itself as Baron von Munchausen can pull himself up into the air by his pigtails. What we mean by our free will is the capacity to
choose between objects, actions, good and evil, etc.
The concept of freedom is given a different content in Hegel's work. By "freedom" Hegel understands not the will's capacity to choose, but the will's obedience to reason. For Hegel, being free does not mean doing what one wants; it means wanting, and doing, what reason commands. The concept of "freedom" has still another meaning in Schiller's work. For Schiller, freedom means a state of consciousness in which the irrational play-instinct and the strict command of reason are united in the experience of the beautiful, and that these contract an alliance for the sake of the beautiful. Then both the mind's control of instinct and instinct's control of the mind come to an end: we are free.
The concept of "freedom" has yet another content in Indian religious philosophy, in the Vedanta and Yoga. There, freedom means the state of having been freed from the bonds that tie consciousness to maya (the illusion of separate existence in the world of appearances). Here the content of the concept of "freedom" is the repose of consciousness that is without desires.
If we turn to the New Testament, to the epistles of the apostle Paul, we meet another concept of freedom, distinct from those just introduced. "Freedom in Christ", which there contrasted with "unfreedom under the law", is the freedom from fear and doubt in life and in death. Death's sting has been removed, as well as the reason for fear and doubt. For the human being's task will henceforth no longer be completed out of fear of punishment, but out of love. The content of the Pauline concept of freedom is love of God and humanity.
Finally, Nikolai Berdyaev, who continued work begun in Jakob Boehme's and Schelling's thinking about freedom, gave the concept of freedom the content of "creation out of nothing." For him, freedom means the capacity to bring forth being from non-being.
In order, then, to obtain a strictly limited or concept of freedom, we will have to choose one monovalent particular concept from among those introduced above (or from among other concepts of freedom not discussed here), or else seek an all-embracing concept that contains all these concepts and to be obtained by abstracting from them.
... How should we define "freedom" in order to simultaneously and equitably do justice to such varied concepts of freedom as those put forward by Berdyaev, the apostle Paul, Hegel, theology, and jurisprudence? Should we nevertheless surmount this difficulty and recover our peace of mind by means of some sort of definition (such as "freedom is a being's unrestricted and uncoerced development" or "freedom is the capacity for uncaused causation" or "freedom is the state of the subject in which it legislates for itself"), we would still have to deal with the question of what is actually gained by such a definition. Certainly, we would acquire thereby a clear-cut concept bringing together the different aspects of the concept of freedom under a single heading, but this will have been achieved at the expense of the comprehensiveness of the concept of freedom. For such an all-embracing concept or definition of freedom could only be a "remainder" left after stripping away the individual particularities of the various concepts of freedom. What is common to all (or to many) of the conceptions of freedom will have been found and defined, but at the price of having lost what is particular to each of them singly. Conversely, however, if we concentrate solely on the particular, we lose what is held in common. How, then, might we express the concept of freedom so as to do justice both to what is com- mon to all the possible ideas of it, and to what is particular to each of those ideas?
Since the very earliest times, and in every part of the world, human consciousness has found an answer to this question in the
symbol. The symbol is intended to be a means of expression that has a single meaning as well as a multiplicity of meanings. In the symbol, what is held in common and what is particular abide together; they are combined, not in a definition, but in an
emblem.
If, rather than bringing the various conceptions of freedom to under the single heading of an all-embracing definition, we combine them in the emblem of a central point from which rays emanate to the periphery, we acquire a form of exposition that can contain many monovalent concepts, and yet bring them all into a unity. A symbol never collapses, no matter how many distinctly different concepts we might want to create out of it. Neither does a symbol ever wither away into a mere abstraction, no matter how far we might progress in seeking and finding its final and ultimate content. The cross placed above churches, and inside them, means a great many things; and yet, in these many things, it means only one thing. It is a true symbol.
...
At this juncture it is important to point out that an
ordered thinking represents something essentially different from the result of systematic thinking. Whereas thinking under the rubric of a system is built around a single ruling principle, thinking in accordance with order (ie, ordered thinking) takes into account many principles at the same time, while still retaining the quality of order. This ordering quality may become evident in how issues set before it for consideration follow from one from another in an orderly way according to their actual content...
Now, every course of thinking... is intent on an ultimate unity concealed by multiplicity of appearances, the unity revealed in those appearances. Indeed, the ultimate unity of the world is a postulate of "knowability itself", for if in its essence the world were not a unity, knowledge as such would not be possible. This is why the vennern of every striving knowledge is directed at discovering and knowing the unity lying concealed behind multiplicity, the unity made known by means of multiplicity. The difference in this respect between a system and an order is that a system elevates a single experiential content (or something deriving from that content) into the "principle" by means of which the multiplicity of experience is to be explained, whereas an order has to do with an ultimate mystery that it aims to solve by means of the multiplicity of experience.
A system knows one thing, and aims to explain many other things with its help; an order aims to solve one ultimate mystery, and to do so invokes many other things. Thus, the whole doctrinal edifice of St Thomas Aquinas has knowledge of the mystery of the Holy Trinity of God as its ultimate goal; it is ordered in such a way that, by making use of many things and methods (Scripture, the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, logic, and philosophy), he brings his readers ever closer to this goal. He establishes many secondary and partial insights stemming from the one mystery he is seeking to solve. Builders of systems proceed in quite another way: they take one thing as known or given, and, by reducing multiplicity (that is, many other things) to this one thing, propose to explain them with its help.
Whether this one thing underpinning and explaining multiplicity is discovered among outer experiences or such things as "libido," "will to power", or "reason", there are no real differences in each case... Systematic thinking may in principle be described as a
mechanism, whereas "ordered" thinking (if adequate to its content and thus, as it were, "fully grown") should instead be compared with an
organism. Organic order stems from a series of independent investigations, and is as different as can be from systematic postulates, which, having been fixed from the beginning, determine the content of individual concepts. Organic order is a pattern of thoughts that emerges at the end of the process. In principle, moreover, such a pattern of thoughts can never be brought to an end: it remains open to further growth.
In systematic thinking, the content and value of each individual concept is determined by its preconceived ruling principle. By contrast, the summarizing proposition stemming (rather like a blossom or fruit) from ordered thinking is determined by the content of the individual concepts it takes under advisement in the course of its unfolding. Thus, for instance, the pattern of thought Kant set out for the world is not a system. It is, rather, a summation of his investigation of the theoretical capacity for knowledge, of practical moral consciousness, and of the power of aesthetic judgement - arrived at in three different ways, and yielding different and mutually conflicting results.
- Valentin Tomberg, "
Personal Certainty: On the Way, the Truth, & the Life"
