Pluralist theory of religions: Illustrated in the case of the Tao-te-ching’s Tao.

        This theory is motivated by a hermeneutic concern

1. Syncretistic combining of insights from different religions is often a good thing.
   1.    It is more intellectually honest, and avoids intellectual confusion, if we treat such combinations as syncretism, rather than treating them as “discovering the universal core” or as gaining a more comprehensive view of the truth.
   1.    Syncretism is not necessarily identical with shopping for personal convenience in the spiritual supermarket.  All the great religious traditions have been syncretistic both in their origins and in their historical development, and there is no reason why persons today cannot develop great religious visions by the same processes.
   1.    In general such syncretism seems to me best dealt with as a personal matter.  There are so many religious traditions available for study, and their teachings and practices can be combined in so many different ways.  When considering what is a good combination, I think it is important to consider the particular circumstances, opportunities, and problems facing a given individual, and to pay attention to what this individual in her best moments finds most moving.  This makes me hestitant to propose my particular syncretistic mix for general acceptance.

1. The main problem this theory faces is the ontological status of cultural particulars.
   1.   The problem
      1.    The usual view is that truth is one, and that only what is real for everyone is truly real. What is not real for everyone has a different ontological status, as “nothing but meanings constituted by human culture or creativity.”[1]  These are given non-cognitive explanations (as in the “sociology of knowledge”) which point to psycho-social “causes” that make these meanings appear to be part of reality when they really aren’t.
      1.    Thus a theory that focuses on non-universal aspects of religions is generally assumed to be non-realist, or at least agnostic about the ontological status of the objects of religious belief (as in Max Weber, Clifford Geertz).  This kind of theory has to treat religions in a purely descriptive way; it lacks any critical leverage for distinguishing well-founded religious beliefs from ill-founded religious beliefs
   1. My theory claims to be realist.  It needs a basis in some more fundamental formal ontology of meanings in general, countering some common assumptions.
      1.    My basic formal-ontological theses:[2]
         1.    Meanings are part of the real world out there.  (I.e. The world-as-experienced is the real world.)
         1.    Meanings are constituted (“semiotically”) by their relation to other meanings in the world-as-experienced by a given person.  (A “culture” is a meaning-system shared by a group of people.)
         1.    Meanings that appear in some peoples’ worlds and not in others are not less real than meanings that appear in all human worlds.  There is not just one world out there, there are many worlds out there.
         1.    Axiological aspects of reality-as-experienced (goodness, “oughts”, value, worthwhileness, meaningfulness, “what matters”, etc., henceforth “The Good”) are a kind of meaning.  These are aspects of immediately experienced reality (along with color, weight, etc.) and do not need further “grounding.”  Further, to try to provide axiological truths with grounding in some non-axiological (“metaphysical”) truths is to make the logical mistake of trying to derive an axiologically weighted “ought” from an axiologically neutral “is”.
         1.    Religions have to do with axiological meanings (“Tao gave birth to the world” is a statement about a kind of meaningfulness the world has for some people; it is not a competitor with the big-bang theory of modern physicists).
      1.    This theory also claims to be critical.  This is based on the following propositions:
         1.    There are a plurality of Goods, but not just anything is Good.[3]  Truths about what is Good or not Good are universally valid truths (truly Good courage is Good in all human worlds).
         1.    The problem is not that there are no universally valid truths about what is Good, but that there are too many such truths.   Universal truths can actually serve as a guide to someone’s life only if there is a relatively small set, and if there is some universally valid hierarchy among these truths.  If in a survey of world cultures I become acquainted with, say, 3,000 different truly Good virtues, this offers little practical guidance, unless I select some relatively small set and give certain ones priority in my life.  What we lack is any universal truths about which small set to select and which to give top priority.
         1.    In general, good religions differ from each other 1) in the categories they use to define what is Good, and 2) in the priority given to certain Goods over others.
      1. A set of religious beliefs is well founded to the extent that it represents the world-as-experienced by someone converted to some particular superlative Good or ordered set of Goods.
         1.    “Conversion” refers partly to the structuring of personality that happens as a result of one’s fundamental orientation to perceived meaning and Goodness in the world.
         1.    But genuine personal conversion not only changes a person, but also changes reality.
         1.    Everyone is always already “converted” to some world structured meaning-wise in some particular way.  There is no “plain brown wrapper” world one can live in in the absence of any conversion.
         1.    Conversion is prior to truth.  We cannot judge the validity of some given religious worldview by peeking around behind the world-as-experienced by the converted person, to find out by some other means if her view of the world corresponds to reality-as-it-really-is.
         1.    There are degrees of Goodness.  “Transcendent” realities are transcendent in their superlative Goodness, not in their universality, objectivity, or “deeper” metaphysical status.
         1.    Practically, this theory has most implications for the interpretation of a given religion, how to construe elements of a given relation in relation to each other (E.g. many religious beliefs, taken in themselves, allow for a calculating-utilitarian construal of beliefs: one obeys God in order to get afterlife rewards; one “rules by Tao” to maintain one’s privileges by manipulating one’s subjects.  Such construals result in “ill-founded religion”.)
2. Some philosophical arguments in defense of a particularist, “many worlds” formal ontology.
   1.   To be human is to be socialized, i.e. to have “culturally conditioned” perceptions of the world.  We cannot peek around behind the veil of these culturally conditioned “appearances” to see reality-as-it is.  Reality-as-it-is is thus an empty, otiose notion, and cannot serve in any theory as a point of contrast, giving reality-as-experienced a second-class ontological status.  Reality-as-experienced is the only referent for the phrase “the external world” that can figure in our knowledge or our theories.
   1.   Even if we could have some knowledge of reality-as-it-is outside of any framework of meaning, such knowledge would be literally meaning-less.  It could acquire axiological significance-for-us only by finding some place in a (culturally conditioned) meaning-framework.  (E.g. the current search for truths that transcend all cultures is itself a cultural phenomenon.)
   1.   The notion that meanings are creations of human minds “projected” onto the external world is insufficiently radical, in attributing an ontological status to “the mind” superior to the status it accords to the world-as-experienced.  In fact both the mind and the mind/world contrast are aspects of the way that reality-as-experienced is organized meaning-wise.[4]
   1.   The “many-worlds” thesis implicit in the present theory does not deny that diverse cultural worlds have massive elements in common, or that for certain purposes (such as intercultural and interreligious harmony) it is important to focus on these commonalities.  It only denies that commonality has any necessary ontological or axiological significance.  Those elements that might be particular to some given culture or religion, not widely shared, are not necessarily less real or less important than those elements which it shares with many other cultures or religions.
   1.   This theory has a neo-kantian basis similar to the neo-kantian realism recently argued by Hilary Putnam:[5] That all humans experience the world as a meaning-filled world is a universal “transcendental” feature of reality-as-experienced; theparticular way in which any given world is structured meaning-wise (contrary to Kant) varies from culture to culture.
3. About postmodernism: Parts of this theory resemble postmodernist views, although it draws several opposite conclusions
   1.   Two theses resembling postmodernism
      1.    Each religion is a semiotic system of mutually defining elements; the meanings that the elements get through this mutual definition are essential to this religion; even if there were elements that transcend this system, they would not be more real or more important than the meanings determined internally within the system.
      1.    No religious belief-system is, or should try to be, a non-perspectival representation of reality-as-it-is.  In the ideal case, religious belief-systems describe the way the world looks to one “converted” to something superlatively good; such conversion alters one’s perspective on the world, and so transforms the character of reality-as-experienced.  A belief-system is well-founded, religiously or axiologically, to the extent that it is what results from conversion to the good.
   1. Some opposite conclusions
      1.    The perspectival and semiotically-structured character of reality should not be shocking; it should lead us to take seriously the determinate Lebenswelt each of us actually lives in, since this is the only kind of reality any human can actually live in.  If absolutely all worldviews are “culturally constructed” worlds, then revealing the cultural construction of some particular worldview (de-constructing it) in itself has absolutely no substantive implications about its validity or its claims on our loyalty and commitment.
      1.    The fact that Goodness (values, importance/non-importance, rightness/wrongness) has no absolute grounding should not lead to skepticism about its reality.  Nothing needs absolute grounding to be real.
      1.    Texts have determinate meanings.  When people speak or write, their words normally have definite meanings within some determinate semiotically and perspectivally determined system.  Understanding others in their otherness means understanding their words within a certain configuration of meanings, determined by their perspective, the function of their words in relation to their practices, etc.
      1.    Religious belief-systems are “incommensurable” on a theoretical level, but this is no barrier to empathic understanding, vicariously and imaginatively entering the world of another, and becoming to some degree a vicarious connoisseur of the Goodness to which someone else is converted (able then to distinguish good Buddhism from bad Buddhism).
4. The status of this theory in relation to particular religions
   1.   This theory does not intend to say anything substantively about what the truth is religiously, but only to serve as a pragmatic framework determining the kinds of questions one ought to ask when giving second-order descriptions of first-order religious beliefs.  Such second-order descriptions are not “more true” in a religious sense (they are often “less true” in that they can undermine one’s commitment to the Good to which one is converted.)  Such second-order descriptions are necessary for the pragmatic purposes of
      1.    Trying to rationally evaluate religions as to their well-foundedness
      1.    Trying to situate religious beliefs in relation to one another and/or to other kinds of knowledge.
   1.   This theory claims to be good for this pragmatic purpose, not for answering the religious question about “the one thing necessary” in life.  Answers to this latter question are best come by through personal conversion to something superlatively Good, not through second-order theorizing.
   1.   This theory deals with problems accompanying the rise of the modern physical sciences and modern multicultural awareness, which were not important shaping factors in premodern religious traditions.  So in general these traditions, understood in their own historico-cultural context, have little interesting to contribute directly to this kind of theorizing.  (I developed this theory in the process of trying to understand NT Christianity, Gnosticism, Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism; but this theory does not consciously incorporate the contents of teachings from any of these traditions.) 
   1. This theory has to do with elements normally lying in the implicit background of religious worldviews.  Making them into an explicit part of a belief-system alongside other beliefs, and taking a rational attitude toward the whole, changes the belief system itself.  Often this will not be a change for the better, religiously speaking.
      1.    This is why adherents of some traditions (Taoism, Zen Buddhism, Barthian-Pauline Christianity) rightly resist rational analysis of their beliefs.  Not that such analysis is by nature incorrect; but making everything explicit changes the system in such as way as to destroy what these adherents find most moving and inspiring in their beliefs (just as explaining a joke makes it not funny).
      1.    It is of course possible that incorporating some rational explication into one’s beliefs, artfully done, could result in a good religious worldview, as for example the Christian theology of Aquinas or Tillich, or the Buddhist system explained in The Awakening of Faith.  From the present point of view, such systems are best regarded as syncretism — a good syncretistic mix of not-rationally-reflective religion and of religious rationality.  It results in a religious belief-system suited for intellectuals, different from (not necessarily superior to) the belief-systems of those in the same traditions who are not so rationally reflective.
      1.    The present theory is in general not well suited to this purpose.  It gives rise to too many psychological problems for believers.  (E.g. having on some occasion stood back and reflected that God is not necessarily real in all worlds, most people would probably find it difficult to treat God as fully real in their everyday world, even though this is what the theory itself implies that they should do.)
5. An illustration in the case of the Tao Te Ching’s “Tao”
   1.   A hermeneutic point: The key issue here is not simply the content of the term “Tao” taken in itself, but the role that Tao played in the total meaning-configuration of the world of the Tao Te Ching’s original authors and audience (henceforth “Laoists”),[6] determined by their concerns, assumptions, concrete practices, etc.
      1.    Tao was a determining part of the meaning-structure of the world for Laoists, and understanding it means understanding the part it played in this structure.
      1.    For example, metaphysical thought as such plays a certain role in the meaning-structure of the world for those who engage in it.  That is, it is typically related to certain felt problems (the need for transempirical grounding), and to specific practices (explicit conceptualization & critical examination of the basis for one’s beliefs),  and is part of a rational/intellectual way of life (orienting oneself in the world by a set of conceptually articulated intellectual beliefs).  To understand Tao as the content of some beliefs about metaphysics[7] greatly affects the way it relates to the total meaning-structure of the world for a given person, and in this sense determines the meaning Tao has for this person.
      1.    Thus before we interpret Laoist Tao as an element in a system of metaphysical beliefs, we need to ask the question: What is the historical evidence that Laoists were or were not engaged in metaphysical thought?
         1.    This question is seldom explicitly asked or seriously pursued.  Metaphysical interpretations seem governed by the intention to make Laoist thought into something understandable and important for people today, by showing the contribution it has to make to a serious modern project.
         1.    I think that if evidence on this question is seriously weighed, it points to a negative answer.  If I am right, then interpreting the Tao Te Ching as metaphysics is comparable to attempts to incorporate single elements of Chinese medical theory (like ch’i) directly into modern Western theories of anatomy and physiology, ignoring the fact that these two bodies of thought are associated with entirely different sets of practices, assumptions, and so on.
   1. The following are some hypotheses I arrived at by trying to reconstruct the way that sayings in the Tao Te Ching were probably originally related to each other and to the concrete lives of Laoists.
      1.    Central to the Laoist life-project was the practice of self-cultivation: Fostering in oneself a certain mental state, which was also a way of being, and which expressed itself in certain patterns of behavior.  Self-cultivation was done partly through meditation exercises, partly through trying to maintain a certain state of mind and perspective on things in everyday life.
      1.    The mental state involved is best described as one of “organic harmony.”  “Organic” means that the harmony is the result of relatively spontaneous mutual adjustment between various psychological and physiological forces within a human being (organic harmony is disrupted, for example, by prolonged strain at accomplishing some work, by prolonged excitement, by forced repression of certain socially-rejected elements of one’s personality, by trying to replace concrete direct perceptions of the world by intellectual concepts, and so on).  Organic harmony is also a social ideal, the way that people in groups spontaneously adjust to each other when no individuals try to stand out or take control.
         1.    I interpret organic harmony as a kind of goodness: all other things being equal, organic harmony raises the axiological quality of a human existence. 
         1.    Organic harmony must not be confused with “naturalness” as often understood in modern Western philosophy, opposing nature to culture in general.  Giving high priority to organic harmony is part of a unique Laoist culture; and organic harmony is a state that needs to be deliberately cultivated if it is to be attained to a high degree.
      1.    The Tao Te Ching uses several terms to describe what a mental state feels like when one is in a state of organic harmony: Still, Soft, Feminine, Clear, One, Uncarved/Simple, Virtuous (Te). It is hypostatized as “the Mother” because it is experienced as an internal nourishing presence (see ch. 20).  It is also hypostatized as Tao, because some circles in China had begun to use this as a term to designate an ideal state of mind or internal spirit that expresses itself in the right Way (tao) of acting (the closest antecedent to the Tao Te Ching in this respect is in the 4th century Nei Yeh found in the Kuan-tzu.)
      1.    The primary thrust of cosmogonic sayings in the Tao Te Ching, picturing Tao/Femininity/Oneness as world-origin, is to express the axiologically foundational role of this state of mind in the life-world of the “converted” Laoist.  These sayings reflect quasi-ecstatic experiences resulting from self-cultivation.  They are not the result of cosmological or metaphysical speculation.
      1.    The meaning of some passages in the Tao Te Ching could be described in something like the language of traditional metaphysics: organic harmony is “really real,” and appearances not based on organic harmony lack full reality.  But, if we understand “metaphysics” to mean a system of Absolute necessary truths that transcend all cultures, then this language must be interpreted non-metaphysically.  “Really real” refers to that Supreme (particular Laoist) Value that gives everything its “true” meaning (the meaning it has in the particular world of the converted Laoist).  What is not in accord with the organic lacks axiological substance.
         1.    For example, ch. 24 says that boasting is self-defeating (“one who shows off will not shine”).  It compares a boaster to a person trying to stand taller by standing on tiptoe.  And it says, “In Tao this is [like] overeating. Things suspect and reject this, so the ambitious person does not reside [here].”  Explanation: The social shining that happens by itself organically is in accord with the supreme value, and so has substance.  Someone boasting is trying to forcibly add some shining over and above this.  Such additions are something “excessive” with respect to organic shining.  They lack axiological substance and so can be said to be “rejected by things” (by the “true” Laoist  world, organized organically).  Cases in which boasting backfires (by turning people off) serve as a concrete representation of this rejection.  Cases in which the self-effacing person succeeds in fulfilling his ambition (“He does not show off, so he shines”) serve as a concrete representation of the way that this “true world” lends (axiological) substance to the organic and unforced shining of the self-effacing person.
         1.    This is what it means to say, “The world has an origin, the Mother of the World. Once you get the Mother, then you understand the children.” (ch. 52)  “Children” are concrete events in the world, such as the conduct of the boaster or the self-effacing person.  Appearances might seem to favor the attention-getting boaster, but in this case the appearances lack positive axiological substance, having a negative value when seen in the light of the supreme value, organic harmony.  One “gets the Mother” when one feels a certain subtle internal presence that accompanies the attaining of an organically harmonious mental state, and allows the value of the organic to organize one’s perception of the world and of events in the world.  One who sees events (“children”) in relation to this meaning-source (their “Mother”) sees their “true meaning.”  (“True meaning,” however must be explicated to mean the meaning they have to the “converted” Laoist.  Laoists were trying to convert people to their particular kind of Goodness, not to reveal Absolute/universal truths to them.)
      1. My thesis is that terms like Tao, and “The Mother” primarily represent a certain hypostatized internal feeling that became the focal point for Laoist commitment to something(s) superlatively Good, because of the meaning that this feeling took on in relation to the rest of the Laoist worldview.  What needs to be critically evaluated is the implicit claim that this is something superlatively Good that is worthy of being made an object of overriding commitment. 
         1.    This claim is not necessarily in competition with claims made by others, such as the Christian claim that God should be the focal point of our commitment to some Good(s) deserving one’s overriding commitment.  There are a plurality of such superlative (“transcendent”) Goods.
         1.    There is no reason why someone should not combine commitment to this Laoist Good with commitment to the Christian God.  Such a combination would represent yet a third conversion to a third set of Goods, and should be judged in the same way one would judge classic Taoism and classic Christianity.

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^[1]This is the position Mark Heim attributes to me, and how he describes the difference between us (Salvations p. 151).  I don’t hold this position, but I admit the principal problem I face is providing a convincing argument that other aspects of my theory don’t necessarily imply this.

^[2]By “formal ontology” I mean one’s assumptions about the most general cateories of being (as in Aristotle’s 10 categories).  I separate this from substantive ontology (as in Heidegger), an attempt to describe those realities that ought to be ultimate for us axiologically.  More detailed explanations and support for the theses barely outlined here will be found in my “Radically pluralist, thoroughly critical: a new theory of religions” (JAAR 60:4, Winter 1992, 693), and in chapters 1,2, and 11 of my Tao and Method (SUNY Press 1994).

^[3]A realist theory of meanings and Goodness means that cultural norms do not make something Good, but can themselves be critically evaluated as to whether or not they reflect some true Goodness; in a forthcoming book I will present a version of Socratic reasoning as an inductive procedure for distinguishing those things which are truly Good from those that merely appear or are declared by convention to be so.

^[4]Henry Allison argues that this is the position Kant takes up, as “transcendental idealism” in contrast to Berkeley’s “empirical idealism.”  See his Kant’s Transcendental Idealism.

^[5]in The Many Faces of Realism.

^[6]This is a term suggested by A.C. Graham to distinguish the teachings of the Tao Te Ching from the somewhat different teachings of other early Taoist writings like the Chuang-tzu.

^[7]I have in mind, for example, Kaltenmark Lao-tzu and Taoism, p. 28-46, Fung Yu-lan History of Chinese Philosophy vol. 1 p. 177-83, Schwartz The World of Thought in Ancient China p. 192-205.