30 pages
Subheadings:
The Never-Ending Trail of Tears of Imperialistic Empires
Part I.
Letter to a Deceased Philosopher:
1. The Non-historical Type of Interpreting History
A. The Historical Type of Interpreting History
B. So Then, What Time is It?
C. The Mathematics of Bankers' Compound Interest Time
2. The Paradigmatic Construction of Reality
A. The Functions of Paradigms
B. Ptolemy and Copernicus on the Obits of the Planets
C. Summary of Paradigm Characteristics
3. Mythological Consciousness
A. Mythos and Logos
B. A Phenomenology of Myth
C. The Dialectic of Mythic Consciousness
Part II. In progress....
The Never-Ending Trail of Tears of Imperialistic Empires
“Remembrance of the past may give rise to dangerous insights, and the established society seems to be apprehensive of the subversive contents of memory.”
This essay is about the American 1830 Indian Removal Act passed through Congress by President Andrew Jackson and the State of Georgia. The first part of this essay will address philosophical questions 1.) about historical (time) and non-historical (space) ethnocentric ontologies of different cultural worldviews, 2.) the paradigmatic construction of reality that make societies, and 3.) mythological consciousness in both ancient and advanced industrial societies. Part II of this essay will review the removal of indigenous Native Americans known as the Five Civilized Tribes (Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, Cherokee, and Seminoles) from their native lands. These particular tribes were known to the European immigrant settlers as "civilized" because they enthusiastically accepted the White settlers' invitation to assimilate into colonized culture. These tribes intermarried with the White European settlers producing mixed American/Indian children some who became famous political statesmen. The term “civilized” is considered demeaning today in referring to the tribes so “The Five Tribes” is used instead to name those Indian Nations who in the early 19th century were in fact better housed, better dressed, and more literate in their own languages than their settler counterparts.
In part II, I will examine the 1.) money problems during the 1830s American Wildcat Banking Wars, and 2.) the physical expulsion, known as the “trial of tears,” during the 1830s of Southeastern Native Americans from Georgia, part of Alabama, Western Carolina, Eastern Tennessee, Florida, and Mississippi to the territory of Oklahoma that later gained statehood in 1907 and lastly, 3.) The Politics of Aporia, or how Alabama waged “lawfare” against the Five Tribes to expel them from their native lands.
My renewed interest in the history of the Trail of Tears Indian removal is partly a result of serendipity. The word “Serendipity” is ultimately derived from Sanskrit and an ancient fable about The Three Princes of Serendip who were always making discoveries by accident of things they were not first seeking. Sometimes the things they discovered by accident were more valuable than what they originally sought.
Vine Deloria is the "star of the American Indian renaissance."
Serendipitously my Native American cousin suggested I read the book, “God Is Red: A Native View of Religion,” (1973, 1st edition) (pdf.) by Vine Deloria Jr. (1933–2005). Deloria is a theologian, historian, and activist for Native American rights. According to Deloria's Wiki entry, his father, Vine Victor Deloria Sr. (1901 - 1990) transferred his children's tribal membership from the Yankton Sioux to Standing Rock. Deloria Jr.'s paternal grandfather was a leader of the Yankton band of the Dakota Nation.
Deloria Jr.'s early education was “at reservation schools, then graduated from Kent School in 1951. He graduated from Iowa State University in 1958 with a degree in general science.[7] Deloria served in the United States Marines from 1954 through 1956.[8] Originally planning to be a minister like his father, Deloria in 1963 earned a theology degree from the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, then located in Rock Island, Illinois.[7] In the late 1960s, he returned to graduate study and earned a J.D. degree from University of Colorado Law School in 1970.[2]“
In addition, Deloria Jr. was executive director of the National Congress of American Indians from 1964 to 1967. In 1970, he attended Western Washington State College at Bellingham, Washington, and became Professor of Political Science at the University of Arizona from 1978 to 1990 where he established the first master's degree program in American Indian Studies within the United States. He taught at the University of Colorado Boulder in 1990 and then returned to Arizona in 2000 to teach at the College of Law.
Deloria's academic credentials are outstanding and so is his record of political activism as director of the Congress of American Indians, then founder of the Institute of American Indian Law, and The Institute for the Development of Indian law. He was an expert witness for the defense in the Wounded Knee Trials of 1974. He won fishing rights for Native Americans in court case United States vs. Washington (1974). In short, “Reflecting widespread change in academia and the larger culture, numerous American Indian studies programs, museums, and collections, and other institutions have been established since Deloria's first book was published.” His first book was “God is Red: A Native View of Religion” (1973) which we will now turn.
“The book's singular achievement, for instance, was its systematic and consistent analysis of the distinction between spatiality and temporality
If Deloria's book “God is Red” only had the one chapter, “Thinking in Time and Space” (Chapter 5 in 1st edition) it still would have been a great groundbreaking book. This chapter is Deloria's critique of temporal, or historical ontology of European cultures. Not only is Deloria's insight into the Westerner concept of historical time revealing, but he brings to light the American Indigenous Indian ontological worldview as primarily spacial, of place— or nonhistorical.
And there is another serendipitous discovery: Deloria quotes the Lutheran Christian Socialist theologian, and Christian existentialist, Paul Tillich, three times in all the editions of his book. After fleeing Nazi Germany in 1933 and joining the New York City Union Theological Seminary. Paul Tillich's theological project is to deliteralize—but not to demythologize—Christian theology so to make Christianity comprehensible in the modern age of quantum physics.
Shortly after Deloria Jr. was executive director of the National Congress of American Indians from 1964 to 1967, the American Indian Movement (AIM) was founded in 1968, so Deloria Jr. emerged during an American Indian renaissance when Native Americans were becoming self-conscious and politically active nationally.
A Letter to a Deceased Philosopher
The word “essay” comes from the French word essai, meaning “trial” or an “attempt.” Going further back the French term originates from the Latin word exagium or “a weighing.” The Latin exigere means “to drive out; require; examine; try, test, and “to sort through.” So, we can say an essay is “an attempt to think along” with the author's narrative which in this case is about historical and non-historical ontologies. The Greek word “ontology” (ὄντος: part sg pres act neut gen) is the study of “being, of things, to be, existing.”
I consider Deloria Jr. a philosopher and as a philosopher he would expect—even demand—his written works be subject to philosophical critiques. Deloria's book “God is Red” is itself a powerful critique of Indian stereotypes of Native American culture and can be traced back to Tillich's own project of reinterpreting Christian theology for this post WWII age of empirical-positivistic-sciences and cyberculture where physical space is superseded by cyberspace. Some writing tutors teach their students a method for creating a narrative voice for writing by the author imagining they are writing a letter to a dead philosopher. My critique is meant to strengthen Deloria's insights, criticism, and his entire academic Native American project.
Dr. John Vervaeke, philosophy professor and cognitive scientist, makes the distinction in his lectures between “adversarial processing,” and “opponent processing.” One network is adversarial in an argument, its winner takes all in a debate for example. Another network is opponent processing that appears to the external observer to be similar to adversarial processing, but the difference is that with opponent processing both persons share the same goal. (see “Ep. 30 - Awakening from the Meaning Crisis - Relevance Realization Meets Dynamical Systems Theory,” @ 50:30 minutes).
With the above distinction between adversarial and opponent processing in mind, I want to criticize Chapter 8, “The Spatial Problem of History.” (p. 129-151) of the First Edition 1973 about the Russian psychoanalyst Immanuel Velikovsky and his famous book, “Worlds in Collision,” (1950) that is today rightly considered pseudoscience. Velikovsky theorizes that in the 15th century BC the planet Venus emerged out of Jupiter and passed near the Earth causing changes in its orbit, even stopping the earth's rotation which explains the miracles of the Old Testament and many ancient observations of the stars by ancient peoples. Velikovsky then claims in the 8th and 7th centuries Mars was displaced by Venus and caused other strange observations and disasters.
Velikovsky's thesis is absurd. Deloria unfortunately attempted to use the proposed planetary collisions to show how different opposing theories, and ideologies can seemingly coherently explain the same observed phenomena. Deloria even endorses Velikovsky's theory in a footnote of “God Is Red,” (2003) 3rd edition (DR3., here after), p. 132. And in the 1st edition (DR1., p. 148). * Because the editions are worded differently, and a new chapter added, I must quote from all three editions.
Deloria writes:
“There appears to be no doubt that Velikovsky has been vindicated and that we are on the verge of an incredible reordering of our conception of both the world and history... Science and the academic community have revealed themselves as superstitious, dogmatic, narrow-minded, and spiteful little people as a result of their treatment of Immanuel Velikovsky. For nearly two and a half decades, they have refused to allow him to discuss the theories that have produced such a plenitude of newly verified facts about the universe as to make the basic theory the most revolutionary explanation of the creation we have ever seen. Some men have borrowed Velikovsky's ideas almost totally without giving him any credit or even mention. Others have reversed themselves completely without apologizing for their past errors or acknowledging Velikovsky's earlier and correct contentions (“God Is Red,” 1st edition, p. 148).”
But it gets worse. A new chapter 9, “Natural and Hybrid People” (p. 150-165) is added in “God Is Red,” 2nd edition, 1994 (pdf.) wherein Deloria presents Zecharia Sitchin's thesis in his book series, “Earth Chronicles” (2009) that posits ancient astronauts invaded the earth and were enslaved by ancient sub-human peoples to work in mines until the alien astronauts rebelled and created a new worker by genetically producing the first human being, or Homo Sapiens. This narrative could be made into a good science fiction movie—a combination of War of the Worlds and Planet of the Apes. Deloria is a little more cautious with the ancient astronaut thesis, but he still brings Sitchin into his book as an effort to show how the internal logic of myths function.
Velikovsky's thesis of planetary chaos and Sitchin's ancient astronaut thesis were the worst possible examples that could have been used to understand the internal logic of ideologies, and mythologies. The theses are so absurd that they become distracting, and if I were to explain why these theories are absurd, then I also would be distracted just like Deloria. Instead, a better strategy would be to explain the structure of paradigms and scientific revolutions. And in the case of Sitchin's theory, a study and description of mythological consciousness would be much more interesting and truthful.
Deloria's intended insights sought in these flawed chapters can be untangled and clarified! His intuitions and goals were valid and even noble. Instead of focusing on Velikovsky's absurd theory, I will introduce the famous, but not infamous, science historian Thomas S. Kuhn and his study of scientific paradigms in his book, “The Nature of Scientific Revolutions,” (1962) (pdf.) (SSR). And instead of Sitchin, a more comprehensive study of mythology is by the Neo-Kantian philosopher Ernst Cassirer, in his book, “The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms: Vol. II, Mythical Thought,” (1925) (here after referred to as PSF2) (pdf.).
Deloria's Critique of Temporal, or Historical Ontologies
Deloria writes about the problem of literalism in Christian Orthodoxy:
“At best we can conclude that the Christian doctrine of creation has serious shortcomings. It is too often considered not only as a historical event but also as the event that determined all other facts of our existence. It is bad enough to consider Genesis as a historical account in view of what we know today of the nature of our world. But when we consider that the Genesis account places nature and nonhuman life systems in a polarity with us, tinged with evil and without hope of redemption except at the last judgment, the whole idea appears intolerable (DR3, p. 86).”
Tillich’s rejection of biblical literalism that defends the cosmological argument’s conclusion that God is the Creator, and First Cause because rationalistic theism is based on the category of causality: "...the category of causality cannot 'fill the bill’...In order to disengage the divine cause from the series of causes and effects, it is called the first cause, the absolute beginning. What this means is that the category of causality is being denied while it is being used. In other words, causality is being used not as a category but as a symbol (ST, vol. I, p. 238; italics added).”
Deloria's most concise statement on historical ontologies is the following:
“When the domestic ideology is divided according to American Indian and Western European immigrant, however, the fundamental difference is one of great philosophical importance. American Indians hold their lands 'places' as having the highest possible meaning, and all their statements are made with this reference point in mind. Immigrants review the movement of their ancestors across the continent as a steady progression of basically good events and experiences, thereby placing history 'time' in the best possible light. When one group is concerned with the philosophical problem of space and the other with the philosophical problem of time, then the statements of either group do not make much sense when transferred from one context to the other without the proper consideration of what is happening (Deloria, “God Is Red,” 1973,1st edition, p. 75-76).”
One ontological view of the world is in spatial terms and another in time that progresses in a linear direction paired with the belief Western Europeans were the destined global guardians resulting in the Crusades, Imperialism, and the war against Communism. In other words, the temporal (historical) ontology give rise to imperialistic empires so that “Western political ideas came to depend on spacial restrictions of what were essentially non-spatial ideas (ibid., p. 76).” From Deloria's insight additional conclusions can be made such as the struggle over untapped resources and high finance predicting: “As undeveloped nations continue their own growth, severe modifications of exploitation must occur as well as more sophisticated forms of colonialism, if Western countries are not to suffer economic collapse (ibid., p. 77).”
Deloria writes of the mutually supporting concept of time and imperialistic empires—another important insight:
“The very essence of Western European identity involves the assumption that time proceeds linearly; further it assumes that at a particular point in the unraveling of this sequence, the peoples of Western Europe became the guardians of the world. The same ideology that sparked the Crusades, the Age of Exploration, the Age of Imperialism, and the recent crusade against Communism all involve the affirmation that time is peculiarly related to the destiny of the people of Western Europe (DR3, p. 62).”
Deloria predates modern Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis' claim that modern Neoliberalism transformed itself into a digital Neo-Feudalistic fiefdom. Deloria wrote in 1973 about the feudalization of countries, and ecological threats even before the oil company Exon announced the coming dangers of climate change in the late 1970s warning, “At worst the end of one form of colonialism means the beginning of a movement to feudalize political systems around the globe so as to stabilize the economic conditions of the more affluent nations. Either approach means that the ecological problem is not dealt with, the problem of technological dehumanization is not reduced, and the breakdown of individual and community identity is not reversed (DR1., p. 77-78).”
Place is material existence: time is a transcendental idea. Deloria mentions Tillich's systematic theology at least three times in his book, “God Is Red,” and seemingly supports Tillich's critique of Christianity by statements such as this paragraph: “The needed basic change depends on a realization of the revolutionary reorientation of definitions that must occur when time is negated and space becomes more dominant. Religion has often been seen as an evolutionary process in which mankind evolves a monotheistic conception of divinity by a gradual reduction of a pantheon to a single deity. The reality of religion thus becomes its ability to explain the universe, not to experience it. Creeds and beliefs replace immediate apprehension of whatever relationship may exist with higher powers. As time becomes less important in understanding religion, the whole monotheistic thesis is threatened. Yet our supernatural experiences do not necessarily lead to a monotheistic conclusion (DR1., p. 79).”
The focus on space is a greater attention to material existence. Deloria is ready for a reinterpretation of Christian Orthodoxy—a very Tillichian spirit. In fact, Tillich does exactly as Deloria described with the gradual reduction of polytheism to monotheism. And, Tillich argues for time over place in interpreting existence. The Ancient Greek polytheistic gods of Olympus were fittingly lousy gods because they ruled over a lousy Greek world—the Greeks' worldview understood spatial existence as the closed realm of ubiquitous irrational undeserved tragedy in a never-ending “circle of genesis, and decay, greatness and self-destruction (Tillich, “Theology of Culture,” pdf., p.32; here after, TC).”
Also, in Tillich's three volume systematic theology, he constructs a typology of polytheism and monotheism. (see, Tillich, Paul, Systematic Theology Vol. I of III, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1951, p.222; here after ST., Vol. I). In this sense, Greek polytheism was a realistic theology of human existence. The Olympic pantheon of gods ruled over a circular spatial cosmology wherein “space is tragic,” and god is a stranger. In post-lapsarian Christian ontology (The Fall of Man) humans are essentially connected to the divine, but are not strangers to God as in Deism—instead, human beings are alienated, or estranged while still possessing an embedded pre-existing inherent connection. The concept of time, Tillich writes, as circular prevented Ancient Greek thought from developing a philosophy of history. Space and time are the structures of all existence that can be thought of symbolically as the fundamental struggling forces that determine human life and history.
According to Tillich the types of polytheism are universalistic (animistic), mythological (deities are not fixed characters representing the realms of being), and dualistic (the holy is based on the conflict between the divine and the demonic). The types of monotheism are categorized as monarchic monotheism (the Greek god Zeus), mystical monotheism (all conflicts between gods are overcome by an ultimate One), exclusive monotheism (cannot relapse into polytheism), and trinitarian monotheism (the ultimate, and the concrete in existence are united). (See ST., Vol. 1, p. 222-230). This section on the typologies of religion by Tillich is not easy reading.
“Nothing historical completely represent a particular type, but everything historical is nearer to or farther away from a particular type.”
(See my essay titled, "The Struggle of the Olympic gods of Space with The God of Infinite Time" for Tillich's views on “a-historical” and historical ontologies.)
Tillich's view in his book, “The Protestant Era,” (1948) (pdf.) (PE) identifies two main types of forms for interpreting history: "... the first type in which history is interpreted through nature and the second in which history is interpreted through itself.... These two types exhibit entirely different structures. In the first type space is predominant; in the second, time is predominant. This does not overlook the fact that no pure types appear in history, that always elements of the one type can be found in the other type, since there is no time without space and no space without time in human existence (PE; p. 16-17)." The first type of interpreting history is through nature, or non-historical (space), and the second type is historical interpretation through time, i.e. through events themselves that have a (τέλος, télos) meaning “goal,” or “end.”
The Non-historical Type of Interpreting History
“A religion defined according to temporal considerations is continually placed on the defensive in maintaining its control over the interpretation of historical events.”
In his book, “The Protestant Era,” Tillich gives fewer abstract descriptions and more concrete examples of the two types of historical interpretations than in his systematic theology. He names four specific forms of nonhistorical doctrines of significance: Chinese Taoism, Indian Brahma, the Greek nature doctrines, and the late-European life-doctrine. Consciousness needs both categories of space and time to have experience. We can't even think of any object, or point that is not in space and time otherwise we would be unconscious. But life in culture and community can emphasize one category of perception over the another. In Taoism, however, the “present is a consequence of the past, but not at all an anticipation of the future.” The past is dominate over the future in Chinese Taoism thinks Tillich. Indian Brahma doctrine experience itself negates time and space and all being of any reality. Only the illusion from the point of view of Maya is the real, except for Brahma-Atman which is the really real. Tillich again concludes that no event of time has any ultimate meaning in this doctrine. (See details in PE, Chapter II, Historical and Nonhistorical Interpretations of History: A Comparison, p. 16-31).
The Greek nature doctrine of history is particularly interesting because Tillich thought this worldview is where advanced Western industrial societies was gradually moving toward. The ancient Greeks also lacked any concept of the future since time was for them circular. Tillich writes:
“Nature is the structural necessity in which empirical reality participates. But empirical reality participates within the limitations of its material nature; by the latter it is prevented from realizing fully its essential nature. The mark of perfection in nature is the circular motion of a thing, in which it returns to itself. 'Being' as such has the form of a sphere, equally perfect in all parts, not needing higher perfection, immovable and eternal, without genesis and decay. Temporal things, conversely, show contradictory, irregular motions without a circular connection of end and beginning and therefore with genesis and decay, self-destruction and death. History cannot claim any point of perfection because it is not a circular motion. The great Greek historiography shows the genesis, acme, and decay of cities and nations.... It wants to shape the present according to the experiences of the past, as, for instance, Aristotle's Politics shows. But there is no expectation of a more perfect future. Aristotle describes Greece as the country of the 'center' between north and south, east and west. He knows a center of space, but he does not know a center of time, 'Time is nearer to decay than to genesis,' he says, quoting a Pythagorean. Time for him is endless, repeating itself infinitely, while space is limited, full of plastic power, formed, defying infinity (PE, p. 18-19).”
Interestingly, there are many other similarities between the Ancient Greeks' nonhistorical spacial interpretation of life, and Deloria's descriptions of Native American Indian views of nature, life, and fate. Many scholars of world history consider Ancient Greece the greatest culture of Western civilization.
The last form of nonhistorical ontologies in Tillich's typology is post-Renaissance Modern European naturalism, and is Tillich's interpretation of modern Western industrial societies during his lifetime. Modern naturalism is described by Tillich as a monistic totality formulated in mathematical terms by the philosopher mathematician Leibniz, or in organic terms (Bruno), or dynamic terms (Bergson), or in sociological terms (Spengler).
Note what Tillich writes about the tragic outlook of Ancient Greece culture returning to modern times. Post-Renaissance Modern European naturalism views time ambiguously and acknowledges the possibility of “...self-destruction or circular motion or infinite repetition; but in no case is the directed line of history decisive. Billions of years of physical time frustrate any possible meaning for the utterly small sum of historical years. In the mathematical type, time has been made a dimension of space. He who knows the mathematical world formula in principle knows all the future. In the organic and dynamic types of modern naturalism, time is considered a deteriorating force. In the organic and historical process, life becomes more complex, more self-conscious, more intellectualized. It loses its vital power and is driven toward self-destruction.... There is no universal history, crossing the life-and-death curve of each culture, overcoming the spatial 'Beside' by a temporal 'Toward.' On this basis even the tragic outlook of Greece tries to return. In nationalism the gods of space revolt against the Lord of time. Nation, soil, blood, and race defy the idea of a world-historical development and a world-historical aim. This recent development shows that a nonhistorical interpretation of history, even if arising in Christian countries, must return to paganism in the long run, for Christianity is essentially historical, while paganism is essentially nonhistorical (PE., p. 19-20; bold text added).”
The word “pagan” is from the Latin term paganus meaning “villager,” “rustic” and originally meant a small parcel of land in a rural countryside. “Pagan” at one time meant a “country hick,” but today it means any non-Christian polytheistic religion. Some religious thinkers believe that an overly Neoplatonic Christianity would benefit from an injection of paganism that recognizes space and material existence (place) as a significant force shaping spirituality within a culture.
Tillich summarizes seven characteristics of nonhistorical interpretation of history: 1.) Reality is interpreted through nature. 2.) Space is the superior category to circular infinitely repeating time. 3.) The temporal is less real. 4.) The good, the true and eternal are above becoming, genesis, and decay. 5.) Salvation of community is not through time and history. 6.) History is the process of deterioration and self-destruction in time. 7.) The nonhistorical interpretation of history either deifies special places as in polytheistic religions or deifies a transcendent “One” that negates both categories of space and time for interpreting history. (See details PE., p. 20).
The Historical Type of Interpreting History
As with non-historical doctrines, the historical doctrines of history also has multiple forms such as dualistic Iranian Zoroastrianism (Light vs. Darkness); monotheistic Old Testament Jewish prophetism, and apocalyptic Christian teleological orthodoxies that interpret time as the divine revealing itself in and through history to its end (Hegelian view of history); Anabaptists; English revolutionary peasants; bourgeois utopianism; and proletarian utopianism; religious socialism and communism. From here Tillich argues that Ecclesiastical conservatism has influenced most Christian countries to be politically conservative, and this monotheistic division expresses itself as a secular struggle between political conservatism and revolutionary progressivism. Historical doctrines of history are very political.
A summary of the contrasting main characteristics of the historical interpretation of history will better show the differences with the nonhistorical ontologies of history:
1.) History is the superior category for interpreting what is really real.
2.) Unlike space, teleological time has a definite goal and end.
3.) Time is the arena that good and evil struggle against one another, but the world is essentially good.
4.) True being, or the ultimately good is a “dynamic process of self-realization within and above existence.”
5.) Salvation from evil is won in and through a “history of salvation.”
6.) History has a center from which meaning is created by becoming a new being that overcomes self-destruction and the meaningless circular temporal movement of nature.
7.) “The historical interpretation of history is exclusively monotheistic.”
(See details PE., p. 27).
In another book Tillich authored, “Theology of Culture,” (1959) with chapters “The Struggle Between Time and Space” and “Nationalism and Space” shows the political nature of a historical interpretation of teleological time:
“Time and space should be treated as struggling forces, as living beings, as subjects with power of their own... time and space are the main structures of existence to which all existing things, the whole finite realm, are subjected. Existing means being finite or being in time and space. This holds true of everything in our world. Time and space are the powers of universal existence including human existence, human body and mind. Time and space belong together: We can measure time only by space and space only in time. Motion, the universal character of life, needs time and space. Mind, which seems to be bound to time, needs only embodiment in order to come to existence, and consequently it needs space. (“Theology of Culture,” p. 30).”
So Then, What Time is It?
Existentialist philosophy, and phenomenology both describe and analyze the concrete structures of conscious experience such as time consciousness which is differentiated by the phenomenologists (Edmond Husserl, Jean-Paul Sartre) into types of time, or modes of time. There is clock time, or scientific time. Also, we experience lived time, or phenomenological time: phenomenological time is just as real as scientific time—just as real as a slow lunch line on a short break. Musicological time is experienced as carefully measured units of sound and silence in quantitative time, and there is historical time (the Ancient Greek word Χρόνος, or chronos). Linear mathematics is time applied to space, or time could be experienced as circular. And isn't there sacred time? Paul Tillich writes and speaks of a qualitative time (καιρός, kairos) meaning right, proper, exact, or critical time. And Tillich describes another existentialist mode of time referred to as Eternity that is “neither timelessness nor the endlessness of time. The meaning of olim in Hebrew and of αἰώνιος (eternal) in Greek does not indicate timelessness; rather it means the power of embracing all periods of time (ST., Vol. I, p. 274).”
(More details in my essay: “Tillich on Chronos and Kairos Time Experience.”)
Deloria's great insight into the differences between historical and nonhistorical ontologies has opened up these issues and revived interest in Native American culture and philosophy during the 1960s and now for yet another generation of young people who must somehow reclaim remembrance of the past.
However, there is yet another mode of time we have not considered, but is relevant to the historical study of the 1830s Indian Removal Act....
The Mathematics of Bankers' Compound Interest Time
Another kind of time is banker's compound interest time. Economist Michael Hudson has studied four-thousand years of debt and interest rates going back to Ancient Babylonia, Greece, and Rome. Mesopotamia as early as 1800 B.C. moneylenders discovered the magic mathematical Rule of Seventy-two compound interest rate calculation—how loaned money could double in a desired amount of time: where (t) is the time it takes for a loan to double. And (r) is the annual interest rate (in percentage form). For example, if the annual interest rate is 6%, the time it takes to double a loan would be: 12 days ≈ 72 / 6%. So the interest earning loan will double in 12 days. The contemporary mathematical formulas are more exact, and not just an estimate. Hudson notes the Ancient Babylonians had a “far superior more sophisticated than any model put out by the National Bureau of Economic Research, or other official agencies (“Michael Hudson Discusses the Financial Crisis and Politics with Class Unity,” @ 5:43 minutes).”
The 1830s forced Indian removal by the president Andrew Jackson was during a time of great economic instability caused by a plenitude of currency (banknotes) that had little to no value since it couldn't easily be converted to specie (gold and silver) especially if the note issuing bank is located deep in a snake infested Louisiana swamp. For example, around 1837 the bankrupt conservative Commonwealth of Massachusetts Bank had $500,000 of notes in circulation, but only held $86.48 in gold reserves. (“Money, whence it came, where it went,” John K. Galbraith, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1975, p. 107) (pdf.). One good substitute for gold and silver is fertile agricultural land. The economic school of Mercantilists believed the source of all wealth was gold and silver metals earned from international trade. However, the school of Physiocrats believed the ultimate source of all wealth is the sun, and argued all national prosperity is created by agricultural output grown by free sunlight. President Andrew Jackson and his gang were land speculators. Any bank would want to sell debt to a private landowner, but it could not be communal land so both the current economic conditions, and monetary system demanded Indian land be divided into privately owned allotments and then put under bank debt. In other words, privately owned land could be immediately converted into cash. Privatization of communal land was a key goal of the Indian Removal Act. If the lender and the creditor both go bankrupt, the collateral becomes an alienated asset, but never again will it be communal Indian land. Just by embracing the settlers' monetary system the Indians were doomed. Imposing, or taking over a society's monetary system is the more effective way colonial powers seize a host country's wealth.
The Paradigmatic Construction of Reality
“That proliferation of versions of a theory is a very usual symptom of crisis.”
Early in this essay I proposed replacing Deloria's choice of a Russian psychoanalyst and pseudo-scientist, Immanuel Velikovsky, with the more credible philosopher and historian of science, Thomas Kuhn. Deloria goes into detail of Velikovsky's theory that ancient records, and the miracles of the Old Testament were actual events caused by the disrupted obits of Mars, and Earth. All this effort by Velikovsky to give naturalistic explanations of ancient biblical text assumes the religious narratives, such as in Genesis, literally occurred.
Deloria does write about the literal interpretation of religious text, but does not treat the problem of literalism, or symbolism with any depth, but only expresses skepticism toward a literal interpretation of religious history, and yet, Deloria relies on, and even endorses Velikovsky's effort to construct a literal interpretation of biblical stories. Deloria mentions the problem of literalism and the theological “demythologizing" project of theologians such as C. H. Dodd, Rudolf Bultmann, and Martin Heidegger. Tillich is not mentioned, however, maybe because Tillich understood the importance of mythic symbolism. But Deloria doesn't make these distinctions, nor attempt to defend an alternative to biblical literalism—his attitude toward the literalists and nonliteralists is, “a plague on both your houses!” Deloria never asks how two different, and even contradictory theories can coherently explain the same phenomena--the same appearances. Yet, Deloria endorses Velikovsky's literalistic alternative interpretation of ancient religions with a planetary chaos theory to explain recorded ancient astronomical events and biblical text.
Dr. Thomas Kuhn’s book on a history of science, “The Nature of Scientific Revolutions,” (1962) (pdf.) (SSR) explores the evolution and revolutions of scientific paradigms and provides us with examples of how paradigms organize sense experience into a coherent intelligible whole. Dr. Kuhn develops the term “paradigm” extensively in his work:
“Paradigm has been used in science to describe distinct concepts, and theories. It's derived from the Ancient Greek term 'παράδειγμα' (paradeigma) meaning 'pattern, example, sample' from the verb "παραδείκνυμι" (paradeiknumi), 'exhibit, represent, expose,' and that from 'παρά' (para), 'beside, by' + 'δείκνυμι' (deiknumi), 'to show, to point out.' The original Greek term παραδείγματι (paradeigmati) is used in Greek texts such as Plato's dialogue Timaeus (28A) as the model, or the pattern that the Demiurge (god) used to create the cosmos (Wikipedia).”
(I have written in detail about the characteristic of paradigms in another essay titled, “Ideological Paradigms,” and this section will necessarily repeat some parts of the first essay.)
The Functions of Paradigms
Dr. Thomas Kuhn does not provide a formal definition of paradigms; the concept is given definition by ostensive historical examples resulting in about twenty-two different uses of the term according to Kuhn himself (SSR., p. 181). He employs the concept of “paradigm” much like the term “hypothesis” is used in the physical sciences. A hypothesis postulates objective, or independently external entities that account for our experience of the world. Atoms, electrons, substance, and the classic laws of physics are hypotheses that give form and significance to phenomena. Kuhn names those commonly shared hypotheses “paradigms” (SSR, pp. 10-11).
“Kuhn, however, is Kant on wheels.”
The concept of the scientific paradigm emerged out of Kuhn's research during the 1960s on scientific revolutions. However, Kuhn's description of paradigm functions is compatible with Kant's definition of categories which are necessary for experience with one exception: paradigms are not themselves necessary for experience. Consequently, there is not a good reason the concept of paradigms cannot be applied to any discipline:
"It has since become widely applied to many other realms of human experience as well even though Kuhn himself restricted the use of the term to the hard sciences. According to Kuhn, 'A paradigm is what members of a scientific community, and they alone, share.' (The Essential Tension, 1997). Unlike a normal scientist, Kuhn held, 'a student in the humanities has constantly before him a number of competing and incommensurable solutions to these problems, solutions that he must ultimately examine for himself.' (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions). A scientist, however, once a paradigm shift is complete, is not allowed the luxury, for example, of positing the possibility that miasma causes the flu or that ether carries light in the same way that a critic in the Humanities can choose to adopt a 19th century theory of poetics, for instance, or select Marxism as an explanation of economic behaviour. Thus, paradigms, in the sense that Kuhn used them, do not exist in Humanities or social sciences. Nonetheless, the term has been adopted since the 1960s and applied in non-scientific contexts (Wiki: paradigm shift)."
The scope of a paradigm can be a single proposition, theory, hypotheses, conceptual model, a picture, or axiomatic postulates—all these terms refer to relative ideological categories which organize and give significance to the otherwise chaotic world of sense impressions. Although, all these terms like “theory” are too weak for Kuhn's uses of the word paradigm. Kuhn explores the characteristics of “paradigms” in his selected historical examples of scientific paradigmatic revolutions: “In its established usage, a paradigm is a accepted model, or pattern, and that aspect of its meaning has enabled me, lacking a better word, to appropriate 'paradigm' here (SSR, p. 23).”
After defining the general concept of paradigm, Kuhn examines historical examples of paradigm shifts such as Ptolemaic geocentric astronomy (2nd B.C.) in contradiction with Copernicus' heliocentric model (16th A.D.) of the solar system; Aristotelian dynamics opposed to Newtonian physics; the phlogiston theory of thermal-dynamics (fire); electric current traveling in a circuit understood as analogous to flowing water; and corpuscular optics in conflict with the wave model of optics. All of these theories were able to describe phenomena that two opposing models could coherently explain and successfully predict experiment results. The Ptolemaic and Copernicus models of planetary movement are particularly good examples of incompatible paradigms explaining the same phenomena.
Ptolemy and Copernicus on the Obits of the Planets
Claudius Ptolemy (100 – 170 A.D.) was the first person to present mathematical tables and arguments in the book Almagest in Arabic “the greatest compilation”) supporting antiquities’ widely accepted geocentric model of the solar system wherein the sun's obit is around the earth just as the moon obits the earth. The moon's obit didn't exactly follow Ptolemy's mathematics, so he needed epicycles to correct his false theory. His incoherent astronomical model was supported by the Catholic Church of his time and stood for about fifteen centuries.
Greek philosopher Aristarchus (310 – 239 B.C.) in the third century was the first to propose the heliocentric view of the solar system. When the Turks invaded Constantinople in 1453 A.D., Ptolemy's geocentric paradigm also began to collapse when in 1491 A.D. a student, Nicolaus Copernicus, (1473 A.D. – 1543 A.D.) read a restored copy of Ptolemy's Almagest and wrote in response On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres (1532 A.D.) presenting his heliocentric model of the solar system, but delayed publication of his final printed copy until the very day of his death.
Kuhn does this same kind of paradigm analysis of the theories of Newton, Lavoisier, and Einstein.
1.) Paradigms are in principle not factual but are interpretations of facts. A range of phenomena will appear differently according to the paradigm through which the world is viewed.
2.) Paradigms set up or organize phenomena according to a pattern unique to itself and supply a context to an otherwise chaotic mass of facts. Paradigms form patterns within experience.
3.) Paradigms are attention directing by emphasizing a certain range, or domain of phenomena while other phenomena are viewed as less relevant, or irrelevant all together. What is considered a “fact” is relative to the paradigm from which one operates. A “fact” is paradigmatically defined. Any phenomenon that does not coherently fit a model is simply classified as an unexpected abnormal appearance, or “anomaly.” Too many anomalies could indicate a collapse of a school of scientific thought. A scientific model that fails to explain inclusively all appearances within its phenomenal domain fails to “save the appearances” suffers from “paradigm entropy.” Widely accepted paradigms are applied a priori by scientists who sometimes uncritically interpret phenomena leading to bias blindness. Paradigms are themselves non-factual. Recognition of paradigmatic patterns are perspectival and not the result of crude Lockean empiricism, “tabula rasa” (Latin for “blank slate”). This aspect of paradigms makes them enigmatic when a scientist must choose between different competing theories accounting for the same appearances. The epistemological question of paradigm choice cannot be resolved by appealing to experience alone since the model itself circularly validates what is accepted as factual.
Summary of Paradigm Characteristics:
Universal: Paradigms attempt to form a transcendental (a prior) universal whole to give meaning to the world of singular sensible impressions. Paradigms relate particulars to a universal frame of reference so that a particular sensible impression (using our five senses) is related to a universal frame of reference to give order, unity, structure, and context to experience.
Non-Empirical: Since singular sensible impressions are understood through a conceptual principle, paradigms define the factual by providing a medium, or concept through which experiential datum can be interpreted as fact. A paradigm relates facts to concepts to form a unified picture of the whole experience.
Interpretative: Sensible information is not given without first being filtered through a medium, or concept. This information is organized or structured according to some point of reference. Sensory information is modified by exclusion of experience and inclusion of unconscious meanings. Henri Bergson wrote: “...concepts, laid side by side, never actually give us more that artificial reconstruction of the object, of which they can only symbolize certain general, in a way, impersonal aspects; it is therefore useless to believe that with them we can seize a reality of which they present to us the shadow alone (Henri Bergson, “An Introduction to Metaphysics,” trans, T. E. Hulme ,Indianapolis; Bobbs-Merrill, 1978, p.29).”
Totalities: Ernst Cassirer speaks of this same process as the mind, “weaving the particulars into a system.” Paradigms attempts to form this totality which we call the “world,” or better yet Husserl’s term, “Lifeworld.” Cassirer described this activity of consciousness as... “The aim of theoretical thinking as we have seen, is primarily to deliver the contents of sensory or intuitive experience from the isolation in which they originally occur. It causes these contents to transcend their narrow limits, combines them in a definite order, in an all-inclusive context. It proceeds ‘discursively,’ in that it treats the immediate content only as a point of departure, from which it can run the whole gamut of impressions in various directions, until these impressions are fitted together into one unified conception, one closed system. In this system, there are no more isolated points; all its members are reciprocally related, refer to one another; illumine and explain each other. Thus, every separate event is ensnared, as it were by invisible threads of thought, that bind it to the whole. The theoretical significance which it receives lies in the fact that it is stamped with the character of this totality (Ernst Cassirer, “Language and Myth,” trans, S.K. Langer, New York: Dover Pub., 1946, p. 32).”
Relatively Categorical: Paradigms reduces the world of objects and events to generalized notions of which any individual event, or object can belong. Categories are classes, or types, through which experience is organized and known. “Category” is understood here in a Kantian sense: categories such as space and times are the fundamental a priori forms through which the phenomenal world is perceived. (see, The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. II, Macmillan Pub., 1967 ed., “Categories,” by M. Thompson, p. 46). Paradigms are not necessary for experience like absolute Kantian categories; however, paradigms function the same way as categories. The absolute categories of space and time are necessary for experience, but the concepts that time is linear, or circular are not necessary to experience time. Neo-Kantians would describe paradigms as “relative categories,” or “relative a priori.” Relative categories are what builds the social construction of reality. See my essay “The Social Construction of Reality.”
Ontological: Paradigms are concerned only with the particular object, or entity. Intellectual reflection is directed toward the factors which give the world of particular experience meaning, and context. Reflection in this case seeks to examine those categorical factors which make the empirical possible—to examine those, “invisible threats of thought” that unites the whole. Paradigms provides a foundation for empirical concreteness by going beyond the facts to the “factors which make facts recognizable (“One-Dimensional Man,” Herbert Marcuse,1964, p. 106).”
·Circular: “When paradigms enter, as they must, into a debate about paradigm choice, their role is necessarily circular. Each group uses its own paradigm to argue in that paradigm’s defense (SSR, p. 94).”
This summary list does not mean truth is relative, or unknowable. Copernicus' heliocentric paradigm is true, and the Ptolemaic geocentric paradigm is false. * A paradigm that is coherent, able to consistently explain and give meaning to phenomena, is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for soundness. A paradigm must be consistent, and true in order to be sound.
*(See details in my essay on “Part I: Paradigms of Truth and Logic.”)
For some philosophers the problem of knowledge is not that we can't know reality, but that we can know reality in so many different ways.
I have only explored here parts of Kuhn's study of scientific revolutions, and he has more to say about the institutions of scientific study, and the role of the community of scientists. And we can see some of the difficulties that Deloria encounters agreeing with Velikovsky's catastrophic narrative of a wayward planet that “... During the time of the Exodus and later in the eighth century B.C., Venus came into near collision with Earth and Mars, disrupting the orbits of each and at one point saving Earth from a fatal collision with Mars (DR3., p. 120).” Velikovsky's complete narrative (Ibid., p. 120-132) may not even meet Kuhn's criteria of a paradigm, and it fails the traditional scientific tests of verification and falsification while the problem of literalistic interpretation of a “comet's tail parting the Red Sea for the Israelites,” (DR3., p. 124) is presupposed by some of his adherents. If the miraculous events of the Old Testament actually occurred, there is no way to verify any of Velikovsky's proposed events especially if those events by definition are “miracles” i.e. not subject to physical laws. Velikovsky's alleged events cannot be repeated for scientific verification even if they were not miraculous. We cannot commit the informal logical fallacy known as “Appeal to Ignorance,” or Argumentum ad Ignorantiam that states, “X is true because X has not been proven false.” There are other counter Velikovsky arguments.
Mythological Consciousness
“But the literal is not more but less than symbolic.”
Deloria's book “God Is Red,” is about “A Native View of Religion” and directs the reader's attention to problems involving literalistic interpretations of Old and New Testament biblical events concluding, “We now recognize that the command of Genesis is not to be taken literally (DR3., p. 267).” He refers to the “.... 1925 Scopes trial in Tennessee...marking the conflict between literal believers of Genesis and those who regard it symbolically, either as an analogy or as a mythological representation of a greater spiritual reality (DR3., p. 84).” Deloria is critical of the deliteralization project by modern theologians such as Rudolf Bultmann, Thomas J.J Altizer, and Paul Tillich for a literalistic interpretation of some biblical events such as the appearance of the Christ of Saint John, but nonliteralistic interpretation of other narratives such as Genesis:
“Christians ask us to accept that there is a history, that there is a central event making the rest of the history intelligible, and that because there is a central event, there must necessarily be a history. The logic is clearly a precursor of the catch-22 rule. Whenever we focus on one of the very important events of that line of history, we are told by Protestants, Roman Catholics, and Jews alike that what happened was really just the growth of legend, folklore, and glorification, not a spectacular event. Yet these thinkers insist that a whole chronology of nonexistent events constitutes an important historical timeline that is superior to any other explanation of human experiences (DR3., p. 120).”
“At first sight, to be sure, nothing seems more disparate than truth and mythology: and accordingly, no two spheres seem more opposed
Deloria believes a literalistic interpretation of certain biblical narratives also has incoherencies that prepare the way ultimately to dogmatism, and oppressive hegemony: “There is another, more serious problem involved in the Christian doctrine of creation. For most of the history of the Christian religion, people have been taught that the description of the event of creation as recorded in Genesis is historical fact. Although many Christian theologians have recognized that at best the Genesis account is mythological, it would be fair to conclude on the basis of what is known of the Christian religion that many Christian theologians and a substantial portion of the populace take the Genesis account as historical fact (DR3, p. 84).”
Embracing either the nonhistorical or historical interpretation of religious texts and doctrines leaves one with either irrelevant secular legends, or dangerous dogmatic orthodoxy:
“A religion defined according to temporal considerations is placed continually on the defensive in maintaining its control over historical events. This is the problem of literalism that demands literal interpretation to maintain religious hegemony, not just abstract time.... If, however, the separation becomes more or less permanent, as in Christianity and Western concepts of history, then religion becomes a function of political interpretations as in the Manifest Destiny theories of American history, or it becomes secularized as an economic determinism as in Communist theories of history. Either way the religion soon becomes helpless to intervene in the events of real life, except in a peripheral and oblique manner (DR1., p. 82).”
I believe that Deloria would agree with Tillich on the question of literal, and nonliteral interpretations of Christian texts. Tillich writes:
“These symbols must be understood as symbols, and they lose their meaning if taken literally. In dealing with christological symbols, we were engaged not in a 'demythologization' but in a 'deliteralization.' We tried to affirm and to intercept them as symbols. “Demythologization” can mean two things, and the failure to distinguish between them has led to the confusion which characterizes the discussion. It can mean the fight against the literalistic distortion of symbols and myths. This is a necessary task of Christian theology. It keeps Christianity from falling into a wave of superstitious 'objectivations' of the holy. But demythologization can also mean the removal of myth as a vehicle of religious expression and the substitution of science and morals. In this sense demythologization must be strongly rejected. It would deprive religion of its language; it would silence the experience of the holy. Symbols and myths cannot be criticized simply because they are symbols (ST., vol. II, p. 152).”
Mythos and Logos
“Schelling recognized... myth as an essential modality of human thought.”
When philosophy looks into a mirror, it will see mythos. Logos (λόγος meaning 'reason') first emerged from mythos (μῦθος) meaning broadly anything delivered by word of mouth, word, or speech such as a proverb, or a purpose, or design. Myth also means, “a tale, story, or narrative.” The symbolic is much more than the literal, or the particular, but instead represent "universal" principles of reality in human experience. Mythological consciousness is not the spirit of advanced industrial society. The particular objects and beings in mythology correspond with spiritual consciousness, and the invisible dynamic creative/destructive forces within nature and life: mythos is not merely a vast collection of fantastic fictional ancient narratives but are symbolically the truest stories of all. We must distinguish between three mythical narrative forms. The first is Legend that hand down oral traditions to younger generations, laws, and general rules of conduct. Secondly, Myths that explain creation, fire, medicine, and wildlife. And lastly, Fables teach life lessons often through animals characters and tell trickster stories.
There is much mythology in modern movies such as the 1975 film written by Ken Kesey, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.” The book's introduction is narrated by an apparently deaf and mute American Indian, Chief Bromden played by actor Will Sampson, who is a psychiatric patient preparing to talk about his experiences in the hospital. The Chief tells the reader:
“It's gonna burn me just that way, finally telling about all this, about the hospital, and her, and the guys--and about McMurphy. I been silent so long now it's gonna roar out of me like floodwaters and you think the guy telling this is ranting and raving my God; you think this is too horrible to have really happened, this is too awful to be the truth! But please. It's still hard for me to have a clear mind thinking on it. But it's the truth even if it didn't happen (“One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,” Ken Kesey, 1962, Signet, p.13; bold added) (pdf.).”
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest: Chief Bromden leaveshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3c2cXiEUHo
Mythological consciousness distinguishes between signs and symbols. By inventing symbolism we are able to access other dimensions of existence that ordinary pragmatic instrumental language--i.e., scientific object language devised as a means to achieve an end-- fails describing human reality. Tillich writes of the symbolic in myth:
“The sacramental is nothing else than some reality becoming the bearer of the Holy in a special way and under special circumstances. In this sense, the Lord's Supper, or better the materials in the Lord's Supper, are symbolic. Now you will ask perhaps, 'only symbolic?' That sounds as if there were something more than symbolic, namely, 'literal.' But the literal is not more but less than symbolic. If we speak of those dimensions of reality which we cannot approach in any other way than by symbols, then symbols are not used in terms of 'only' but in terms of that which is necessary, of that which we must apply. Sometimes, because of nothing more than the confusion of signs with symbols, the phrase 'only a symbol' means 'only a sign.' And then the question is justified. 'Only a sign?' 'No.' The sacrament is not only a sign (TC., p. 64).”
A Phenomenology of Myth
“Mythology is inevitable; it is an inherent necessity of language, if we recognize language as the outward form of thought; it is ... the dark shadow which language casts on thought and which will never vanish as long as speech and thought do not fully coincide, and this can never happen.”
Deloria had no need for Zecharia Sitchin's alien astronaut thesis and could even be interpreted as itself a longing for mythic consciousness missing in a post-Enlightenment millennium that only understands myth as fictional stories of imagination, and science as the totality of brute facts about the world. This was a serious concern for the Marburg Neo-Kantian philosopher Ernst Cassirer when he was appointed as professor at the University of Hamburg in 1919 and where he discovered a vast collection of library books on philosophy, art, literature, religion organized in the Warburg Library of the Cultural Sciences by founder Aby Warburg in a way that would resolve some of the philosophical problems he was studying. Cassirer told Dr. F. Saxl, “This library is dangerous. I shall either have to avoid it altogether or imprison myself here for years (PSF2., p. ix).” Cassirer describes a phenomenology of myth from his research in the Warburg library.
Cassirer thinks that art and religion develop out of the expressive language of myth, and from natural language science emerges. Mythic consciousness is the symbolic residuum of language so that, “The fundamental Kantian 'categories' of space, time, substance (or object), and causality thereby take on a distinctive configuration representing the formal a priori structure, as it were, of mythical thought (SEP: Cassirer),” These structures are the 'relative a priori,' or “relatively categorical” that is included in the summary list of the characteristics of paradigms.
The Dialectic of Mythic Consciousness
Cassirer writes: “The new ideality, the new spiritual dimension, that is opened up through religion not only lends myth a new signification but actually introduces the opposition between 'meaning' and 'existence' into the realm of myth. Religion takes the decisive step that is essentially alien to myth: in its use of sensuous images and signs it recognizes them as such--a means of expression which, though they reveal a determinate meaning, must necessarily remain inadequate to it, which 'point' to this meaning but never wholly exhaust it (PSF2., p. 239).”
An important influence on Cassirer was philologist Herman Usener (1833 – 1905) who traced the dynamic history of mythical gods from the earliest “momentary deities” described as momentary fleeting objectification of human experience, appearing and then dissolving overwhelming a single individual. “Special gods” are limited to certain human activities and are like the functional ceremonial gods in Greek and Roman religions. These two earlier stages of religion prepare for the conception of “personal gods” who are given names and act like human beings.
Myth offers a reality that can never be grasped or achieved and so consciousness must use concepts as symbolic forms as representation of reality, or organs of reality. Mythology is the science of the “forms of religious conception.” Philosopher Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767 – 1835) influenced Cassirer's views on myth by defining humans as a “language animal” that "makes infinite use of finite means,” (meaning an infinite number of sentences can be created using a finite number of grammatical rules). Unlike Aristotle who defined humans as a rational animal, Cassirer defined humans as an animal symbolicum (symbolizing animal), “the same process whereby he spins language out of his own being, he ensnares himself in it; and each language draws a magic circle around the people to which it belongs, a circle from which there is no escape save by stepping out of it into another (“Language and Myth,” E. Cassirer, 1946, Dover, p. 9) (pdf.).” Schelling viewed language as a “faded mythology” having developed out of itself a formalized abstract linguistic logic-structure from a mythic point of view embedded in a living natural world of seen and unseen forces that speaks and acts.
Cassirer summarizes Schelling's view of mythological thinking:
“Nature itself is nothing other than a stage in the development and self-unfolding of the spirit--and the task of a philosophy of nature consists precisely in understanding it and elucidating it as such. What we call nature--and this is already stated in the system of transcendental idealism--is a poem hidden behind a wonderful secret writing; if we could decipher the puzzle, we should recognize in it the odyssey of the human spirit, which in astonishing delusion flees from itself while seeking itself.”
Part II pending....
