"Pantheism" is a term in philosophy, which in literal translation from Greek means "all god." This is a system of views that seeks to bring together, even the identification of the concepts of "God" and "nature." Moreover, God is a kind of impersonal principle, he is present in everything, he is inseparable from the living.
The essence of pantheism
Since pantheism unites the God-substance and the world-universe, it becomes necessary to correlate the signs of the static nature of the divine nature, such as infinity, eternity, immutability, and mobility, constant variability of the nature of the world. In the ancient philosopher Parmenides, God and the world are not separate from each other, while the static nature of the deity in a peculiar form is also characteristic of all living things (like infinite cyclicity). And pantheism in Hegelian philosophy endowed God with abilities of movement and development, which were unusual for him, thereby eliminating the main contradiction between the divine and the living. Proponents of immanent pantheism tend to see God as a kind of higher regularity, an eternal and unchanging force that rules the world. This direction of thought was developed by Heraclitus, adherents of Stoicism, such in general terms was the pantheism of Spinoza. In the framework of Neoplatonic philosophy, an emanational variety of pantheism arose, according to which, nature is an emanation, derived from God. Emulation pantheism in the philosophy of the Middle Ages did not contradict the prevailing theological doctrine, but only represented a variation of realism. Pantheism of this kind can be traced in the writings of David Dinansky and Eriugena.
Pantheism
In the history of philosophy, there were two areas that unite all pantheistic teachings:
1. Naturalistic pantheism, represented in the writings of the Stoics, Bruno, partly Spinoza, deifies nature, all life. It is characterized by such concepts as the infinite mind and the world soul. This trend gravitates to materialism, the reduction of the divine principle in favor of the natural.
2. Mystical pantheism developed in the doctrines of Eckhart, Nicholas of Cusa, Malbranche, Boehme, Paracelsus. To define this direction, there is a more precise term: “pantheism” - “everything is in God”, since philosophers of this direction tend to see not God in nature, but nature in God. Nature is a different level of being of God (objective idealism).
There are many examples of mixing both types of pantheism in the framework of the teachings of one thinker.
History
For the first time, the term "pantheism" (or rather, "pantheist") was used by John Toland, an English materialist philosopher at the turn of the 17th-18th centuries. But the roots of the pantheistic worldview go back to the ancient Eastern religious and philosophical systems. Thus, Hinduism, Brahmanism and Vedanta in Ancient India and Taoism in Ancient China were clearly pantheistic in nature.
The most ancient religious and philosophical texts that carry the ideas of pantheism are the ancient Indian Vedas and Upanishads. For Hindus, Brahman is an infinite, constant, impersonal entity that has become the basis for all life in the universe, everything that has ever existed or will exist. The text of the Upanishads constantly affirms the idea of unity between Brahman and the outside world.
Ancient Chinese Taoism is a deeply pantheistic teaching, the foundations of which are set forth in the work "Tao de Ching" written by the semi-legendary sage Lao Tzu. For Taoists, there is no creator god or any other anthropomorphic hypostasis, the divine principle is impersonal, it is akin to the concept of the path and is present in all things and phenomena.
Pantheistic tendencies are present to one degree or another in many ethnic religions of Africa, interwoven with polytheism and animism. Zoroastrianism and some movements of Buddhism are also pantheistic in nature.
In the 14-15 centuries in Western Europe, pantheism was in decline. The teachings of prominent Christian theologians John Scott Eriugen, Meister Eckhart and Nikolai Kuzansky were very close to him, but only Giordano Bruno spoke openly in support of this worldview. The ideas of pantheism were further spread in Europe thanks to the work of Spinoza.
In the 18th century, under the influence of his authority, his pantheistic sentiments spread among Western philosophers. Already at the beginning of the 19th century, pantheism was spoken of as the religion of the future. In the 20th century, this worldview was pushed aside by the ideology of fascism and communism.
The origins of pantheism in ancient philosophy
Pantheism is in the philosophy of antiquity the main element of all knowledge of the world, nature and space. It is first encountered in the teachings of thinkers of the pre-Socratic period - Thales, Anaximenes, Anaximander and Heraclitus. The religion of the Greeks at that time was still characterized by convinced polytheism. Therefore, early ancient pantheism is a belief in a certain animate divine principle, inherent in all material things, living organisms and natural phenomena.
Pantheistic philosophy reached its peak in the teaching of the Stoics. According to their doctrine, the cosmos is a single fiery organism. Stoic pantheism unites and identifies all living things, including humanity, with the cosmos. The latter is both God and the world state. Consequently, pantheism also means the primordial equality of all people.
In the days of the Roman Empire, the philosophy of pantheism spread widely due to the influential position of the school of Stoics and Neoplatonists.
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a time of domination of monotheistic religions, for which it is characteristic to define God as a powerful person, dominating man and the whole world. At this time, pantheism persisted in the emanation theory of the philosophy of the Neoplatonists, which was a kind of compromise with religion. For the first time pantheism as a materialistic concept manifested itself in David Dinansky. He argued that the human mind, god and the material world are one and the same.
Many Christian sects, recognized as heresies by the official Church and subjected to persecution, gravitated toward pantheism (for example, the Amalricans in the 13th century).
Rebirth
In contrast to medieval theology, Renaissance thinkers turned to the ancient heritage and natural philosophy, paying more and more attention to the natural sciences and comprehension of the secrets of nature. The similarity with the ancient views was limited only to the recognition of the integrity and animation of the world, of the cosmos, however, the methods for studying it differed significantly. The rationalistic views of antiquity (in particular, the physicist Aristotle) were rejected and the ideas of magical and occult knowledge of nature as a single spiritual principle were carried out. A great contribution to this direction was made by the German alchemist, physician and astrologer Paracelsus, who, using magic, tried to control the archaea (soul) of nature.
It was the pantheism of the Renaissance, which was characteristic of many philosophical theories of that time, that was the unifying principle between such extremes as natural philosophy and theology.
The interpretation of pantheism in the teachings of Nicholas of Cusa
One of the prominent representatives of the pantheism of the Early Renaissance was the famous German philosopher Nikolai Kuzansky. He lived in the 15th century (1401-1464). At that time he received a solid education and became a priest. He was very gifted, devoted to the church and made a successful career, becoming in 1448 a cardinal. One of the main goals of his life was to strengthen the authority of Catholicism. Together with an active role in the church life of Europe, Kuzansky devoted much time to philosophical works. His views were closely related to the teachings of the Middle Ages. However, the pantheism of Nicholas of Cusa acquired the features of an inextricable organic integrity, constant movement and development of the world and, therefore, its inherent divinity. He contrasted the self-confident knowledge of the Middle Ages with God and the world with the theory of "scientific ignorance", the main idea of which was that not a single earthly teaching could give an understanding of divine greatness and infinity.
Philosophy of giordano bruno
The thinker and poet, follower of Cuzansky and Copernicus, the 16th-century Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno was a true pantheist. He considered all life on Earth spiritualized, endowed with a spark of divine conduct. According to his teaching, God is contained in all parts of the world without exception - the great and the smallest, invisible. All nature together with man is one whole living organism.
In an attempt to create an ideological justification for the teachings of Copernicus, he put forward the theory of the existence of many worlds and the Universe, which has no boundaries.
The pantheism of Giordano Bruno, an Italian thinker of the 16th century, later became a classic concept for the Renaissance.
Pantheism in the philosophical doctrine of B. Spinoza
The philosophical heritage of B. Spinoza is the most striking concept of pantheism, created by the New Age. To use his vision of the world, he used the geometric method, as he called it. He was guided by him when creating the fundamental work Ethics, devoted to philosophical metaphysics, nature, God, man. A separate section is devoted to the human mind, feelings, moral and ethical problems. The author on each question sets out in a strict sequence definitions, after - axioms, then - theorems and their proofs.
At the center of Spinoza's doctrine is the thought of the identity of God, nature and substance. The priority of the divine, its dominant role in the overall picture of the world, is characteristic of the philosophy of the New Age. But Spinoza after Descartes defends the point of view that the existence (being) of God must be proved. Based on the arguments of his predecessor, he significantly supplemented his theory: Spinoza abandoned the original given, a priori existence of God. But proof of this is possible thanks to the following postulates:
- in the world an infinite number of knowable things;
- a limited mind is not able to understand unlimited truth;
- knowledge is impossible without the intervention of an external force - this force is God.
Thus, in the philosophy of Spinoza there is a combination of the infinite (divine) and the finite (human, natural), the very being of the latter proves the presence of the former. Even the thought of the existence of God cannot appear independently in the human mind - it is God who puts it there. This is the manifestation of Spinoza's pantheism. The existence of God is inseparable from the world, impossible outside of it. Moreover, God is related to the world, he is intrinsic to all its manifestations. It is simultaneously the reason for the existence of all living and nonliving things in the world and the reason for its own existence. Following the established philosophical tradition, Spinoza declares God to be an absolute infinite substance endowed with many properties characterizing its eternity and infinity.
If other representatives of pantheism built a dualistic picture of the world, where there are two poles - God and nature, then Spinoza rather deifies the world. This is some reference to the ancient pagan cults. Living nature in its eternal cyclic development is a god who gives birth to himself. Divine nature is not something separate, delimited from the material world, on the contrary, it is immanent, intrinsic to all living things. The anthropomorphic, personalized current of God, accepted in most religions, is absolutely alien to Spinoza. So, natural philosophy and pantheism of the Renaissance found their most complete embodiment in a single doctrine.
