Religions, Milbank (Beyond Secular Order) argues, do not necessary aim for the
ultimate. “Many human religions relate themselves, both
theoretically and practically, to a cosmic level which they talce to be less
than ultimate – often marked by a mythically narrated violent ‘brealc’ which
leaves a reserved space of mystery that is sometimes occupied by a posited but
unlmown ‘high god’” (11).
This limitation of religion opens up an opportunity for “philosophy”
to claim the ground of ultimacy as its own: “While philosophy usually remained
linked to modes of ritual and ascesis, it nevertheless tended (especially to
begin with) to reserve ‘being’ as a contemplated reality beyond and above
‘practice’. Insofar as
it did so, however, this ‘being’ tended to be construed
in immanentist terms, since the removal of ancient reserve initially coincided
with a new boldness of myth itself that tended to identify the ‘high’ with the ‘all’
through concepts of the Macranthropos (or cosmic man- evidenced in ancient India,
the ancient Near East and in ancient Greece) which allowed the transition from
myth to philosophy – or from the rule of synecdoche and metonymy to that of a
univocalist monism – to occur” (11).
As philosophy separated itself from studies of nature and
physics, and claimed to be the wisdom of metaphysics and being, it became more
mythological: “the more a level of transcendence that only an element of
reconstrued original myth could invoke in terms of an independent ‘activity’
was appealed to – as by Socrates, Plato and Aristotle and to a degree also by
the Upanishadsand the traditions of the Vedanta.”
This involved a reversal of the original aim of
philosophy: “original philosophy was a monistic revolt against myth
(whose impulse is sustained by Stoicism, with the same disconnect between
normal ethical action and the indifference of being, to which one must just be resigned)
whereas later more humanistic and political philosophies were ‘conservative’
hybrids of philosophy and mythology” (12).
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