The Metaphysics of William James and John Dewey —— Process and Structure in Philosophy and Religion

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ISBN: 9781330329955 出版年：2016 页码：225 Thomas R Martland, Jr Forgotten Books

Chapter I presents some religious examples. In which certain features appear that later chapters will show to be congruent to philosophy. This chapter includes ancient religions which provided a cradle for our Western civiliza tion, Canaan, Greece, and Christianity. Whatever else we may say about their witness, these religions reveal a common polarity of process and structure. By means of the attributes of their gods, they reflect an orientation to changing life and its significance in the construction of the future, plus a seemingly conflicting orientation toward the direction of life and its measure and control of the changing process itself. The illustrations which the book presents show that this polarity is not identically the same in each case, but that within each particular cultural variation it does exist. For instance, within the predominantly agricultural society of Canaan, a paramount concern of the people is the coming of the new rainy season and the birth of the new crop. In so far as this concern expresses itself in the people's attempt to affect the crop and in their acceptance of its coming and going as ultimately significant in the meaningof the world, we have an orientation which accepts changing life as significant in the construction of the future. Baal, the fertility god who brings the seasonal growth, is its religious symbol. The people believed that by allying themselves with Baal they and he could affect the world in which they lived. The other pole is the one that expresses itself in the acceptance of the necessity for a structural measure which controls and directs the changing life process itself. Within the predominantly agricultural society of Canaan, the people express this awareness in a concern for the regulation of the seasons and an acceptance of measure as of ultimate signifi cance. El, the chief god of the pantheon, to whom all the gods must do homage even if only to fulfill their seasonal chores, is its religious symbol. In this case the people bow to the ordered world in which they live and acknowledge El as the overarching director of the processes of this world. Baal and El fulfill the needs that stem from basic patterns of mental behavior, from basic orientations that incline the people either to the process pole or the structural pole.