The metaphysical impulse

I came across the work of English philosopher A.C. Grayling while browsing in the wonderfully named Hill of Content Bookshop in central Melbourne.

Grayling’s book, The Meaning of Things: Applying Philosophy to Life caught my attention. In it he devotes short chapters to various aspects of life, some classed as “virtues and attributes”, others as “foes and fallacies” and “amenities and goods”. He ruminates on such things as death, fear, courage, Christianity, faith, health and leadership with admirable simplicity and clarity. His aim is to encourage people to think more about their lives and the world. 

From my perspective and interests, one paragraph in the book’s introduction particularly caught my eye. Grayling is a secular humanist, a follower of the Enlightenment line of Western liberal thought. He’s an atheist with little tolerance for any aspect of religion, yet he says that he believes passionately in “the value of all things spiritual”. By that he means “things of the human spirit, with its capacity for love and enjoyment, creativity and kindness, hope and courage.”

“The value of all things spiritual”: this phrase struck me. No matter how anti-religious or materialist a person is in their views, it seems impossible to find anybody who doesn’t at least entertain some measure of the metaphysical. By metaphysical I mean not of material, objective functioning. “Things of the human spirit” cannot be measured, analysed empirically or talked about in any conventional scientific way. Notwithstanding belief in a material objective universe, it seems all of us ultimately cling to something else as well. Grayling, like other humanists, turns the metaphysical impulse away from organised religion to humanity. Whereas in other times God was the source of all meaning and value, now it is Man. 

The metaphysical or transcendent impulse need not be synonymous with otherworldliness or the supernatural. It simply recognises that there is a level of reality beyond the senses and human reason. Indeed, the transcendent and the material are inextricably linked in a mutual dance. Take sexuality – making love is a physical act of two bodies coming together, yet it’s also an occasion for metaphysical union that can touch us deeply and rejuvenate our spirit. Or as another example we can think of how being in a particular place triggers certain emotions or thoughts – the material conditions of that place relate to non-material levels of experience. 

Of course, modern science is limited to purely rational, material explanations: all human responses, it would say, are ultimately the result of the triggering of certain chemicals in the body, neurones in the brain etc. within a genetic structure. One of the main problems with scientific explanations as the sole, objective descriptions for reality is that they are never ultimately objective, but constantly changing and evolving. The other problem is their tendency to reduce everything to a mechanistic soullessness that denies life rather than enhances it. As a result of this tendency other forces, social and psychological, act as counterbalance. The arts – music, film, dance, painting, poetry – are one important outlet for the metaphysical impulse. The other major component of counterbalance is the unconscious: when we deny or suppress apprehension of the transcendent, we shift its potency elsewhere. Addictions, depression and many forms of anti-social behaviour arise from an inability to comprehend and experience life at meaningful depths. 

For most people in the West there is an uneasy and somewhat schizoid relationship between science and the metaphysical. On the one hand science provides the basis for all knowledge, while at the same time it is tacitly assumed that it does not play a definitive role in many areas of life – such as the emotions and relationships. Creativity, intuition and spontaneity are some of the human attributes science finds difficult to grasp and understand. Because it is too big a leap for us to define ourselves wholly in scientific materialist terms – effectively as complex machines – we are more comfortable for science to have complete sway in the natural world. Any experience of transcendence in nature is said to come from human feelings and imagination, not from the life of nature itself. Rocks themselves don’t speak, nor trees or mountains, and any suggestion that they do is mere anthropomorphism – projecting the human onto the non-human. The modern excision of “soul” from nature means we have lost the direct, close relationship we had with it in earlier times and the resulting distance has made it easier for us to exploit and destroy it.   

The challenge, as I see it, is to bring the metaphysical up from the margins and back into the heart of Western culture: it needs to be openly acknowledged, and its importance recognised. Science would have to cede some of its power to a spiritual way of seeing and being in the world. Material and spiritual explanations would coalesce in service of the fullness and renewal of life. And the wheel does not have to be reinvented too much as we move forward – we can look for inspiration to the myriad wisdom teachings over the thousands of years of Western culture as well as learning from the traditions of others.  

I suspect secular humanists like A.C. Grayling wouldn’t agree with these thoughts. But then humanism itself has been around for hundreds of years, and, like much in our culture, is in sore need of reinvigoration, new ideas and new ways of applying them in the world.