Transcendence Un-Extra-Ordinaire: Bringing the Atheistic I Down to Earth

Abstract

I examine challenges to images of a personal god definitive for normatively policed theism (often called “traditional theism”), questioning whether a subject can be conscious of a transcendent being. I examine the challenges to show that disappointment with such images calls for rethinking terms like “transcendence” in horizontal rather than vertical registers. Through this, I indicate an irony in yearning for transcendence, one in which there is movement toward—rather than beyond—the utterly ordinary. We will see that such un-extra-ordinary transcendence makes a difference once difference is no longer determined under the hegemony of what Levinas calls “the atheistic I.” I bring together resources from feminist philosophies and Asian religions both to elaborate on the nature of the atheistic I and to rehabilitate a redeeming appreciation of the ordinary. My hope is to ameliorate disempowered estrangement by indicating ways the ordinary generates, not inhibits, becoming. However, my broader intent is to contribute to shifting sands in contemporary philosophy of religion due to recent calls for diversifying the field by including multiple religions, questioning the centrality of belief, and engaging multiple methods relevant in religious studies.

Why do we assume that God must always remain an inaccessible transcendence rather than a realization—here and now—in and through the body?

Irigaray ([1], p. 148)

The modern subject, the “I”, finds itself estranged from one’s self and body, one’s world and others in it, one’s language and nature itself. Levinas calls the modern subject’s self-enclosed system of estrangement “the hegemonic and atheistic I” ([2], p. 222). Alone, the atheistic I constitutes its world without the possibility of metaphysical transcendence or connection, stuck in a stubborn solipsism. If the I is all there is, then there seems to be no transcendence. Levinas thinks this temptation of the I toward atheistic solipsism results from being struck by the idea of the infinite. Levinas emphasizes the affective quality of perceiving the infinite in his analysis of Descartes’s meditator’s cosmological argument for the existence of a god. The infinite cannot be cognitively grasped because it exceeds any concept a finite thinker can formulate for it. Thus, knowledge of the infinite—as a mental representation corresponding to mind-independent objects—cannot be realized ([3], p. 84). Instead, the infinite is felt. The meditator is, in Levinas’s words, “bedazzled” by the infinite [2]. The experience is overwhelming, and it either rouses the “finitude of being”—the I, consciousness—to responsible service for others, or wounds one to withdraw into the atheistic I. In other words, feeling the infinite, one either dilates toward a “transcendent” connection with others or contracts to solipsistic enclosing without possibility for transcendence.

The atheistic I’s stubborn solipsistic immanence makes realizing transcendence seem impossible to the I, as if either possessing something transcendent or absorption into something transcendent exhausts our spiritual potential. Both feeling deprived of transcendence in solipsistic immanence, and—perhaps worse—believing one is connected to a transcendent entity misinterpret “transcendence,” according to Levinas ([2], p. 222; [4], pp. 71–73). Why is it difficult to interpret? As I develop, there are two orders of transcendence: as imagined by the atheistic I, and as realized by the finitude of being opened to sociality (see [2], p. 222). In light of this distinction, I unfold one way transcendence may be otherwise than what the atheistic I anticipates it to be.1 I explore “the ordinary” to consider just how otherwise transcendence may be. Perhaps the eschaton is the ordinary, that which the atheistic I takes as merely banal or mundane?

The procedure I undertake is as follows. First, I develop three challenges to presuppositions about transcendence in normatively policed Christian theism. Second, I provide a semantics of metaphor to think otherwise about transcendence, situating it within what I call “the poetic redemption of the real.” Third, I shed light on the ordinary as an eschaton, as that which might fulfill existential transcendence, in order to bring the atheistic I down to earth and to explore potential areas for further research.2 I seek to contribute to shifting sands in contemporary philosophy of religion due to recent calls for diversifying the field by including multiple religions, questioning the centrality of belief, and engaging multiple methods relevant in Religious Studies (see [11]).

1. Challenging Normative Theism

No one can secure themselves from succumbing to the hegemony of the atheistic I simply through social identification with a religion. Indeed, it may be tempting especially for religious practitioners to believe they have overcome the atheistic I’s self-enclosure. They identify with a religious community, argue for beliefs, revise doctrines, practice rituals, perform service, and feel fulfilled.3 Yet, even the most nominal participants in religions are sensitive to idolatry and heresy. Many not only see the “wrong” religions as ultimately vacuous, but also see members within their own communities as merely “going through the motions” or hypocritical. Further still, the most sophisticated of philosophical theologians may misrecognize already succumbing to the atheistic I, despite protests to the contrary. In this section, I show a way this is the case for participants debating in the orbit of so-called “traditional theism.” I examine three challenges to images of a personal god definitive for normatively policed Christian theism, challenges that turn to the subject who thinks of one’s god. The challenges clarify characteristics of the atheistic I operative in normatively policed theism. At stake is not if a thinker has justified belief in or rejection of a transcendent entity’s existence. Instead, at stake is the I’s desire for and conception of a peculiar kind of transcendence.

Much of contemporary philosophy of religion and philosophical theology is merely normatively policed Christian theism. In these disciplines, “religion” is approached predominately as synonymous with—or at least oriented by—Christian accounts of the divine [11,13]. It is so concentrated that accounts are called, more generically, “traditional theism.”4 Most who are familiar with philosophy of religion know what to expect from descriptions of “the traditional concept of God.” This concept typically includes a number of properties of perfection—such as omniscience, omnipotence, omnibenevolence, having no body and standing apart from the universe, and so on. Moreover, these properties coalesce in one personality ([14], p. 22; [15]). Further still, this god is said to have power over nature through language, deploying discourse for control more than understanding (see [16], p. 43). This god, then, seems to be a “transcendent self-sufficient monarch” ([17], p. 144).5 It possesses the one exclusively true perspective, and to align oneself with it through personal commitment is to gain epistemic privilege of access (“revelation”) to this perspective (see [19]).

This concept appears traditional because it seems to have dominated varying histories of Greek influenced Christian thinking about the divine, and—through patent isegesis—is often said to have “biblical” roots (see [17], p. 144). What is the function of the word “traditional” so qualifying various accounts of a god? It shores up institutional power to give a present description of a god an aura of transhistorical authority, a uniformity and consistency above cultural and historical particularity. It is not that a specific conception has in fact been dominant and so gets called traditional; it is that a specific conception at stake seems to have been dominant because it is called traditional in the present. Apologist guardians police discourse in philosophy of religion through boundary-making and boundary-preserving uses of the term.6 Even with revisionists like Hick or Schilbrack, their use of the term inadvertently reinforces normatively policed Christian theism’s institutional hegemony over philosophy of religion.7 While some might propose an alternative edgy concept, such as Rubenstein’s appeal to tzimtzum in his proposal of the “Holy Nothingness” [22],8 it is only the edge of a continent over which traditional theism purportedly holds dominion.

This use misrecognizes the meaning of “tradition,” and so we know it is solely bullying to perceived outsiders and policing uniformity of discourse. A tradition is a complex historically evolving phenomenon, determined by an interplay of both innovation and sedimentation ([24], p. 125).9 The word “tradition” gets at a historical phenomenon defined by conventions and contextual contingencies within which sedimentation and innovation occur, and is not a term for denoting a transhistorical entity unaffected by history. To call this or that a tradition constructs a history, highlighting an expediently relevant past while orienting anticipation for a preferred and expected future. When the scholar of religions reinscribes “tradition” in their own scholarship, deference is paid to the interests of religious institutions and their telling of “history,” rather than dealing with the laborious work and messiness of genealogical historicism.10 Because of this, any deployment of “traditional” as a qualification of some presently articulated account of the divine is to police the boundaries of what or who is inside and outside legitimate discourse about the topic. Conservative uses make it appear as if history is on their side when that is not so; progressive uses of the phrase as a target of criticism make it appear as if critics are more advanced than they probably are. In other words, the usage serves the current interests of the subject who thinks with—or against—a purportedly traditional concept.11 There is no concept of a god that has been dominant throughout variegated global human histories, however much it might be predominate in the contemporary Christian influenced philosophy of religion publication industry.12 Thus, spending time identifying what is or is not the traditional notion of a god is shadow-boxing, establishing social hierarchies like those dwelling inside Plato’s cave. I underscore this to help us turn around to examine the I so investing its time this way. At issue is not some entity to which a mental representation (in)adequately corresponds, but us—the subjects thinking a concept and our need for our concept to align with or go against tradition.

Focusing on one’s god as if it were the traditional one deflects attention away from the I for whom this god is an issue right now. Why does the I deflect attention away from itself? More than the psychology of denial is relevant for explanation here. As we know from phenomenology, the glacial drift toward the object pole of consciousness is a function of doubling within the structure of subjectivity itself (see [28]).13 The origin point of thinking is systematically elusive to consciousness. The “ego” is, as Sartre explains, transcendent to consciousness [31]. When we think about ourselves, we can never think about the active thinker, but only always what the thinker is thinking about. In this way, consciousness of subjectivity divides into the poles of what we can call the “I” and the “me” [28]. What is significant is that in this light, we recognize the constitutive role the I plays in determining the being of what it thinks about.14 The I conceptualizes what it thinks.15 The important question to ask is what interest such conceptualization of a god as “the traditional” one serves for the I. What is the nature of the subject for whom traditional theism is at stake? I am interested in three key challenges to the I’s naiveté as it rests contentedly in traditional theism.16 These challenges clarify characteristics of the atheistic I.

My first challenge centers on existential projection (see [14,37]). Subjective ideals and projects are taken as sentential subjects referring to things “out there.” Through imagination, as Feuerbach explains, we make our ideals into entities distinct from ourselves, as divine beings ([14], pp. 22–23). This reification alienates humans from their gods, where gods are constructed as radically different from us. In this way, the I escalates ordinary existential transcendence into a metaphysically transcendent entity. We misrecognize such impact of the I through inverting grammatical subjects and predicates. What are properly predicates are used as names. Indeed, language itself is interpreted as essentially naming—to the point where naming seems like an occult process.17

To illustrate: Many Buddhists today refer to the historical Buddha in the abbreviated form of “Buddha,” as if it is a proper name (see [38]). However, that honorific is not the historical Buddha’s name.18 By comparison, contemporary Christians often call Jesus of Nazareth “Christ.” However, obviously that is not Jesus’ last name (see [39], p. 97). The same applies to the word “god.” The word “god” is not a name.19 Yet, many today expediently refer to their deity simply as “God.” Indeed, some uninformed Americans fear Muslims because they purportedly worship a “false” and different god named “Allah.”20 In the effort to respect the sacredness of their god’s name, many contemporary Jews replace the letter “o” with a dash when writing the word, as in “G-d.” However, just as Marduk is a high god in Mesopotamian mythology, the tetragrammaton signifies the personal name of the god of Jewish religious texts. Words like “buddha,” “christ,” and “god” modify the subject of which they are predicated, like the word “hero.” There is obviously something grammatically off with the question “Does ‘hero’ exist?” Asking if “god” exists is the same. This is especially troubling in philosophy of religion, and the litany of arguments for or against the existence of a god. Which “god,” exactly? Yet, arguments for (or against) the existence of the so-called traditional god are taken so seriously that a publication industry surrounds it and the theme normatively defines the discipline.21 The word “god” is a “predicament,”22 not a subject. Thus, “god” is never personal.23 Yet, a person may be given the honorific of being called “god.” The mystery of “god” is not really in the entity named, but in the copulating relation between a subject and such a predicate.

It is no wonder many theologians deny positive predicates apply to this supposed entity. It is not because the divine entity transcends human conceptualization, but because predicates properly apply to sentential subjects—not to other predicates.24 The inversion of subject and predicate generates illusions, an illusion of another world behind this world. In seeking transcendence under this illusion, we are—as Feuerbach and Nietzsche differently clarify—desiring nothingness, willing nonbeing (see [44]). It is not merely that we seek a better world beyond the ordinary one. Feuerbach writes,

In the inmost depths of thy soul thou wouldest rather there were no world, for where the world is, there is matter, and where there is matter there is weight and resistance, space and time, limitation and necessity. Nevertheless, there is a world, there is matter. How dost thou escape from the dilemma of this contradiction?…Certainly the act of creation does not suffice to explain the existence of the world or matter, but it is a total misconception to demand this of it, for the fundamental idea of the creation is this: there is to be no world, no matter; and hence the end is daily looked forward to with longing.25

([14], p. 110, my emphasis)

The fundamental ideas of creation and apocalypse are not merely symptoms of the wish that there be no world, though. To go one step further: for the atheistic I, there already is no world. The atheistic I is alone without being lonely because there is no other for it to miss. The desire for a kind of transcendence to a transcendent place or to a relation with a transcendent entity plays a corrupting role in taking an object as the absolute rather than as symbolic for existential transcendence.26

My second challenge focuses on patriarchy, specifically a feminist critique of masculine subjectivity (see, for example, [45]). The orientation toward solipsistic domination is in part also a function of patriarchy. A utilitarian stereotype of “the Other” rests at the heart of patriarchal Western philosophy, according to Anderson ([13], p. 197). As Irigaray explains, the male subject defines gender by subordination and exclusion of the female subject. Anderson elaborates, “Man creates his gender in relation to projection of the self-same subject” ([13], p. 197). The obsession with naming or labeling is peculiar to masculine subjectivity’s interest in sameness. Language is reduced to an instrument of fortification and mastery, for organizing knowledge and ordering society around it. It idolizes words as mere names, presupposing “the One,” one truth and one perspective on that truth. It strives for a perfectly exact language to name reality.27 Men’s understanding and wisdom promotes agreement through sameness, destroying alterity by reducing others to the logic of the same ([46], pp. 34–40). Speech merely transmits rather than reciprocates, in idle-talk which everyone can snatch up and which divests speakers of the task of understanding (see [37], p. 161). In this way, masculine subjectivity develops a dispassionate and distanced objectivity, an indifferent intelligibility from which nothing is closed off from taxonomic labeling ([37], p. 158). For this sort of subject, language is experienced as a prison where labels always get between one and pure reality in itself ([46], p. 34).

Reification of the divine into an alien entity is distinctively male, according to Irigaray ([44], pp. 104–20).28 The masculine subject looks for difference or transcendence in the wrong spaces, where one wonders if there is life on other planets rather than right next to one in the same house. The masculine subject looks vertically to the skies for salvation from aliens and gods. Moreover, the masculine subject defines himself as a subject in this abstract and illusory metaphysical world, and so “nature” is also already abstract from lived embodiment ([16], p. 96). The illusory world no longer corresponds to the natural universe. For Irigaray, without properly situating ourselves in this world without reference to a non-abstract nature, we oscillate between the extremes of mere abstractions without anchorage in our own natures or as regressions to sheer animality ([16], p. 96). Rooted in an absolute and universal perspective, this exposes the gendered character of the Ifor whom traditional theism is an issue.29

While only the male and his god are subjects in contemporary discourse, women do possess the power to reverse subject and predicate ([18], p. 67). For Irigaray, women are in need of their own subject and predicate, their own elemental sentence by which to articulate their existential transcendence, which would require bringing words down from abstraction. In guiding others to this power, she asks, “Is God sick in never being married?” ([18], p. 70). She seems to ask this in a playful way in order to undermine the neutered abstraction of masculine subjectivity. This is not the sort of question typically considered in debates surrounding “traditional theism.” Why repress sensible faculties for a “hypothetical beyond” such as a reified heaven or nirvana? Why diminish the ordinary for a hypothetical and abstract transcendent? The atheistic I is both nihilistic and patriarchal. What makes it “atheistic”?

My third challenge focuses on Levinas’s identification of the intrinsic atheism of the modern subject’s conceptualization of thinking itself ([2], p. 222). Knowledge and answers are determined by the correspondence between thinking and what is thought about. If the representation is the same as the reality represented, then we are satisfied. If they do not coincide, then we need to do more research about the reality and revision of the representation until they do. The fixation on mathematical sameness is, for Levinas, a function of the hegemony of the One conceived as the “I think” ([2], p. 220). Thought is essentially, he writes, “atheistic precisely as thought equaling the thought that fills and satis-fies it…” ([2], p. 220; [3], p. 84). It plays the game of unveiling by which immanence always wins out over transcendence ([47], p. 56).30 The I seems devoted from the start to truth as representational adequation, grasping the given in its ideal identity ([48], p. 127). The logic of the atheistic I absorbs and assimilates what is different.

The words “god” and “transcendence” seem to gesture toward what is inherently unequal, toward that which is beyond the immanent sphere of intentionality. Thought is, for the atheistic I, a relation to what is equal to it. In such instrumentalized or calculative reason, the word “god” is taken as a label for an entity. For Levinas, taking the word “god” as a label indicates a mind incapable of understanding the meaning of the word “god” ([4], p. 75). Labels cut off this I and its thinking from “the beyond.” However, we need to be careful here because the “beyond” just is the ethical sphere for Levinas. As Kant explains, there is no transcendence to a realm beyond objective appearances, to things in themselves independent of how they appear to us [30].31 All application of categories beyond the field of sensibility generates illusions. The atheistic I is dissatisfied with mere appearances, and demands access to things in themselves. That is, we interpret phenomena as “mere” appearances instead of working on and with them as the reality they are. In this way, we expect transcendence to be wholly outside the world of ordinary finite experience. However, “inside” and “outside” are spatial forms of sensibility.32 To believe we can get to things themselves outside space and time is, as Gadamer underscores, to think as if one were like a god or like Lucifer ([26], p. 445).33

In light of this, Levinas asks, is it possible for thought to think better than it thinks ([2], p. 221)?34 Can the I do better than it thinks? How can we make sure we predicate “god” of fitting subjects? The question is not whether or not a god exists. It is, rather, who or what will be my god (see [51], p. 27)? To expect the word “god” to reference a specific entity is precisely the atheism of the atheistic I. The word “god” is a predicament in which to situate a subject, and not itself a subject term. The irony here is that even theists are atheistic in this sense. Proofs for or against the existence of a god are a subterfuge for the atheistic I, deflecting attention away from its insidiousness toward metaphysically transcendent alienness. Instead, let us re-orient ourselves to what Levinas calls “the fall of ‘god’ into meaning” ([52], p. 173). This is, Levinas emphasizes, the path of return from “heaven” to earth ([2], p. 221).35

I seek to articulate, as Simmons encourages, a robust epistemic humility regarding “god” and “transcendence”–not in terms of a god’s metaphysical withdrawal, but in terms of critique of the atrophied atheistic I (see [43], p. 42). My three challenges to the atheistic I for its drift toward nihilistic reification, its masculine hegemony, and the intrinsic atheism of its instrumentalized reason humble the atheistic I’s pretense to know reality. Since I have made all three challenges converge on language, particularly on the predicative link of discourse, I now turn to a semantics of metaphor to develop a path by which to bring the atheistic I down to earth.

2. A Semantics of Transcendence

Since transcendence is not about getting to another metaphysical place than the one we are already in, then can we make sense of “transcendence” in a different way? For Levinas, metaphor is itself the “movement beyond” ([4], p. 71). I take this as my lead for this section. How is metaphor the movement beyond or transcendence? In this section, I first examine a semantics of metaphor. Then I turn to the function of religious language in light of that. Third, I draw out implications this has for existential transcendence by emphasizing the ubiquity of metaphors in ordinary discourse.

If we approach metaphor as “mere” metaphor, then we will miss what is at stake. Such an approach to metaphor centers on names, privileging nouns over verbs or identification over predication (see [35]). This approach defines metaphor as the substitution of a nonconventional name in place of a conventional one. For example, “Hubert is a lion.” This tempts us to believe there is some subject matter (Hubert, himself) that can be said without superfluous metaphorical decoration (in that he is obviously not a lion). Diminishing metaphor to word substitution serves the atheistic I by preserving its myopic focus on discourse as names and its inversion of subject and predicate. Normatively policed Christian theism benefits from this. We cannot—so they say—positively describe “God,” and so our discourse about this god is merely anagogical or apophatic (see [54], p. 71; [55], p. 77; [56]).

In light of my challenges to the atheistic I, let us think metaphor otherwise. Ricoeur is helpful for formulating an alternative, defining metaphor as “impertinent predication” [35]. Rather than word substitution, metaphor is sentential where a subject is characterized, embellished, or enhanced by a predicate. A predication is “impertinent” when what appears as a first-order absurdity or contradiction sublates into a second-order reconciliation in understanding meaning ([57], pp. 50–55). We neither merely find meanings nor merely make them, because the difference between invention and discovery dissolves in metaphor. Rather, successful predication is where we “elevate” life to the logos, where a moment is illuminated by the light of discourse ([57], p. 19).36 However, this is the heart of predication as such. Via predication, a specified subject is reconciled with a more or less determinate field of intelligibility in understanding—intelligibility constituted by forms of life, communities of practice, narrative traditions, and so forth. By virtue of predication, human beings live in a world and not merely survive in an environment. Through language, we transform our environments into meaningful worlds ([58], pp. 108–9).

The atheistic I’s solipsism would have us believe that there is no communication with others. However, predication is a clue to our essential belonging with others.37 Fields of intelligibility are neither mine nor yours, but emerge through cultural accumulations or traditions (see [26,59]). This is why Levinas says transcendence is the opening of the finitude of being to “sociality” ([2], p. 222).38 When the hegemony of the atheistic I decreases, when we stop demanding all words be names, we can finally start speaking with each other and work together in the project of raising experiences to shared understandings. As Zhuangzi asks, “Where can I find [one] who has forgotten words, so I can have a few words with [them]?” ([61], p. 114). We carry (-phor) over (meta-) or translate mute events we experience into the verbally constituted intelligibility of understanding through dialog. In this light, as Levinas says, “metaphor is language” ([4], p. 71). The movement beyond is not from one metaphysical place to a wholly other one, but from isolated experiences to shared understandings. Predication is what someone has to say to another about a subject matter, putting it in its fitting intelligible predicament with and for others.

I emphasize the plurality of understandings because the atheistic I forgets the diversity of perspectives in its metaphysics, those points of view dependent on cultural accumulation and differentiation.39 There are multiple empirical languages and language-games, and every language-game reflects a distinctive shared form of life (see [60]). Each Lebensform opens its own field of intelligibility. However, the atheistic I imposes its “intelligibility” on this diversity, claiming to be the one exclusively true perspective.40 Indeed, in its insidious and unconscious conceit of exclusive accuracy, it loses the very factor definitive for what it is to have a perspective. As both Zhuangzi and Irigaray promote in distinct ways, perspectives are defined by (and thereby humbled by) their differences with other perspectives—that is, alternative perspectives put any particular perspective into perspective as what it is, one perspective among others. To recognize one’s perspective as a (not “the”) perspective is to recognize that there are some other perspectives meriting respect. For illustration’s sake, perhaps our perspectives on era dating can clarify this. Many take for granted that it is 2016 CE, despite knowing that it is merely an attempt at secularizing the Christian era dating system. Our exclusivity is unconscious, complicit with institutional norms that undermine alternative practices, such as sending mail on Sunday. In light of this, there is a growing movement among Muslims advocating for Mecca Time, objecting to Greenwich Mean Time as intrinsically colonialist and Christian. Recognizing alternative timeframes can help expose our ordinary unconscious complicity in not seeing our own perspective as a perspective. One might be tempted here to turn to the carbon dating system of physics for the “true” date.41 Its accuracy is not at issue. It is simply that one cannot (yet) write a carbon date on an application for a job or birth certificate. How we organize time is developed through cultural accumulation, and cultures articulate time differently (see [62], p. 95). These perspectives on time are different languages.

Languages or fields of intelligibility are not only cultivated in distinct conventions and forms of life, but are also rooted in our biology. Intelligibility involves and invokes carnal tangibility. Predicative transcendence in metaphor takes place in this time and space. Irigaray calls this the “sensible transcendental” (see [63]) character of language that reaches out and touches others. Lakoff and Johnson, in corroboration, elaborate on numerous ways our fundamental conceptual metaphors are rooted in our biology. Conscious awareness is characterized as “up,” for example, by virtue of our walking erect, whereas unconsciousness is characterized as “down” by virtue of lying down to sleep ([64], p. 15). The word “concept” derives from grasping things together with our hands. This tangible intelligibility of metaphor may be leverage for what Hershock—working from a classical Chan perspective—calls “nonduality,” the elimination of social conflict and hegemony but not difference ([65], p. 85). Differences are always already interconnected, incarnated, and interwoven in human beings’ bodies preceding interpretive or ideological imposition ([66], p. 117). By virtue of biological and lived difference, we are enabled to reach one another in trying to accomplish shared projects.

Attention to predication in this way preserves carnal embodiment the atheistic I neutralizes.42 The differences sought by the atheistic I establish utter separations, whereas embodied differences facilitate integration and connection without assimilation.43 Exclusive monotheism of the atheistic I draws an absolute yet abstract distinction between the divine and the human. As Irigaray puts the alternative, divinity arises from attraction between us ([44], pp. 147–51). That is, attraction amidst carnal differences gives us something of which to predicate “Oh, god!”44 Emphasizing predication in this way helps bring the atheistic I down to earth. The abstraction performed by naming and identification is overcome by situating the sentential subject in intelligible yet tangible predicaments.

The atheistic I is insidious, though. Words such as “transcendence” and “god” and “metaphor” are not all that is at issue. All our terms are questionable. Is a term being used as the atheistic I would have it or otherwise than that? In the atheistic I’s taking an object for the absolute, it forgets the metaphorical and predicative character of the bond between understanding and the object. Forgetting this makes the metaphor or symbol into an idol ([13], p. 197). Thus, treating transcendence metaphysically seems to actualize as idolatry, whereas schematizing it as regulative is instantiated in elevation of subjects into intelligible predicates (see [13], p. 197). Nevertheless, as Simmons emphasizes, we cannot ignore the ontological and metaphysical in that the experience of transcendence does not seem limited to the merely linguistic, social, or ethical spheres. Certainly, religious apprehension includes yet exceeds moral and linguistic dimensions of experience (see [43], p. 147). However, are we talking about “moral” and “religious” and “ontological” and “metaphysical” within the terms set by the atheistic I? This is just what the atheistic I expects, and is a symptom of the glacial drift in consciousness toward reification. Like our calendars, these terms are coordinates in varying fields of intelligibility by which our experience is elevated to shared discourse and understanding. Understanding is as real as any other reality.

Like cardinal directions and calendars, religions are not mere descriptions of reality, as if they are just big names either identifying or misidentifying reality. Thinking that one religion is wholly true at the ultimate exclusion of other religions is a function of the atheistic I. Rather, religious discourses consist of metaphors—or symbols and myths—by which communities elevate their experiences into shared understanding with one another ([12], pp. 47–62).45 The word “god” is one such symbol. In a culture where the word “god” structures and is structured by a broader field of intelligibility, a participant in that culture may look for something of which or someone of whom to predicate “god” (see [32,51]). This is what one does in asking, “Who will be my god?” (Other religious communities are structured by other symbols, such as “buddha” or “dao.”) When a community is touched by the fitting use of the predicate for that thing or person, it is the fall of “god” into meaning that Levinas stresses. It is the living operation of the predicate in shared understanding. The early followers of Jesus, looking for one of whom to predicate “messiah” or even “god,” found in Jesus an answer to their question of “Who or what will be my god?” As Scharlemann explains, “One can understand why Jesus’ career ran the course it did if the essence of God, what it means for God to be God, is to be other than God” ([32], p. 84). Words like “god” take on meaning only in between us, conferring meaning on existence through our predicating it of experiences, events, things, persons, sex, and more. Yet, the word “god” also designates the reach of existential transcendence in predication to include but exceed itself in a surplus of further predications, and understanding builds on itself through the hermeneutic circle ([67], p. 168). The self-surpassing element in the word “god” opens our minds to what is truly mysterious—the miracle of shared understanding in conjunction with the mystery of subjects copulating with predicates (see [57], p. 16). Such transcendence cannot be reified into a mere nameable supreme being ([67], p. 168).46

As metaphorical predicates, representations of the divine are brought down to earth. As Irigaray emphasizes, divine representations are mere idols if they do not support natural growth and becoming ([46], pp. 144–48). Through fitting predications, we transubstantiate our matter into subtler divine matter ([46], p. 173). However, this is no escape from some prison of the material or natural world, as the atheistic I might have it. In our transubstantiation, we become even more what we truly are in the joy of recognition. This is not a progression toward some transcendent state of perfection, but an ever-renewing blossoming in further understanding. Both material and spiritual supports should serve such blossoming. Dominant abstract concepts of “nature” and “culture” occlude this, though. Nature is usually treated as that which grows by itself, while culture is treated as where we make things ([46], pp. 112–25). Blossoming requires both making and letting be, involving both invention and discovery. What blossoms often bears fruit. The fruit of understanding is “meaning.” The blossoming of experience into understanding occurs through metaphorical predications. In all this blossoming, we cultivate a surplus of meanings.

Once we reserve our use of the word “god” to predication rather than denomination, we open ourselves to the superabundance of meanings available in varying uses of the word. We are freed from having to restrict our use to this or that context, as if some uses are inherently blasphemous while others are inherently sacred. We can recognize that a god is only personal if the subject of the sentence refers to a person or character with a personality. However, the word need not be restricted to predications of persons. Indeed, as Tillich underscores, anything that one treats with ultimate concern—that is, anything one lives one’s life around—is one’s “god” ([12], p. 2). Things as diverse as money, success, nations, and more can be and have been gods for people. The blasphemy comes not from use of the word “god,” but from how the subject of the sentence—say, money—is treated.47 When one lives for money and sees another person treat money with disrespect, that is what is blasphemous.48 These considerations help us develop the intelligibility of the word “god,” where we cultivate a spiritual and intellectual elevation in literacy that is neither a subordination of oneself in debt and guilt to a supreme god nor an absorbing communion with a god in an emotional orgy. As Feuerbach writes, “The Word of God is really the divinity of the human word” ([14], p. 79).

My proposal is that a semantics of transcendence provides sufficient groundwork for an alternative to the hegemony of the atheistic I and its forcing us to see transcendence in a peculiar way. However, is this semantics of transcendence patronizing or unethical to historical participants in religions, as Simmons raises the question?49 In other words, it seems that many participants in religions—perhaps so-called “evangelicals” or “fundamentalists” or “literalists,” but even more just the lay practitioner regularly involved in worship or meditation—take their religion as the most adequate description of reality, where their gods exist as metaphysically transcendent entities. The approach taken here to explain the discourse of religions seems to undermine them to the point of dismissing them in favor of what they may see as mere rhetoric. They might take my argument as merely about words, whereas they are truly concerned with “God Himself.”50 This is a particularly relevant concern for Religious Studies scholars navigating their relation(s) with their “objects” of study (see discussions surrounding, for example, [69]). How ought “outsiders” treat “insiders”?

While this is an ongoing and complex discussion in Religious Studies (and probably more relevant for philosophies of religions than many professional philosophers may think), I want to contribute to it in terms of how “insiders” see “outsiders.” I want to sketch a consideration by way of an analogy with how we enjoy and explain “sunsets.” I am confident many people have enjoyed a sunrise or a sunset. I am also confident that the majority of these people learned that the earth rotates around the sun. That is, they know that the sun does not technically set or rise, but instead realize they are under an illusion if they take “sunrise” or “sunset” as descriptions of what is happening outside of what appears to them from their perspective. Nevertheless, this bothers few. Most of us genuinely enjoy sunsets. There might even be some people who believe it actually rises or sets. However, we would not suggest a textbook is patronizing or unethical to them. If we were with them, and said something such as “What a beautiful earth-spin!” we all would likely laugh together rather than bristle up in adversarial argument. I go into detail not because there is an analog between enjoying a sunset and worshipping a god, but because there is an analog between the textbook and the scholar of religion. Just as the textbook as it is read in a science class is not subject to a moral criticism, neither ought the scholar of religion be subject to such a criticism when communicating with other scholars. It is not like we are at the sunset telling them how wrong they are!

Approaching transcendence semantically opens up what I call the poetic redemption of the real. Through predication, we lift subject matters into the light of discourse. This is liberating because discourse needs no purpose beyond itself. The atheistic I instrumentalizes discourse to some extrinsic purpose or interest. Discourse, however, has its ultimate end in itself.51 However, this does not reduce discourse to “jibber jabber” or “idle talk” ([61], p. 66). We escape “mere” words, Zhuangzi encourages, in order to take poetic delight in them ([73], p. 60). Like Socrates, we are freed to follow the logos, which is like the wind taking us whatever way it blows ([74], p. 73). Moreover, metaphors permeate our lives. They are so ordinary they form the tillable sediment of fertile intelligible potential and growth of ever more metaphors. Most events in our lives are things metaphors are made of! This phenomenon is the heart of discourse, as discourse is defined by predication, by having something to say about things. However, this is so ordinary that it often goes on without notice. Let us turn in conclusion to dwell on features of ordinariness that shed further light on bringing the atheistic I down to earth.

3. Toward a Rehabilitation of the Ordinary as an Eschaton

In conclusion, I explore aspects of the ordinary as that which orients transcendence as its fulfillment, as a possible eschaton.52 I first elaborate on ways in which various oppressions may distort ordinary life, particularly with their normalization. Second, I turn to try to isolate the generative and transformative essence of the ordinary. Third, I conclude reflecting on what seem to be forms of life consummated in the ordinary. Although transcendence is usually juxtaposed with immanence in most contemporary philosophy of religion, transcendence is defined by reference to ordinary circumstances. Relative to the god(s) of the atheistic I or traditional theism, the ordinary may seem empty or even futile.53 The atheistic I expects the extraordinary. The ordinary is, as Weiss and Heidegger differently elaborate, the multifaceted horizon contextualizing all concentration and interpretation, which is distorted by oppressive values. Making us self-conscious about the insidious constitutive character of the atheistic I provides leverage for resistance to multiple oppressions that people face, and helps exhaust the invisible effect of what Anderson calls “white solipsism” on theology and philosophy ([13], p. 206).

It is difficult to elaborate on the ordinary as if there were some universal or pure essence uncoverable if we work through all its distortions. I want neither to re-inscribe the polarity of the sacred and the profane as definitive for religious experience as with Eliade [76], nor to turn to the secular as the default interpretive frame for the modern world as with Taylor [77].54 I also do not think it is synonymous with the “heavenly” natural flow of things in early philosophical Daoism. Nevertheless, there is always a dynamic horizon or background taken for granted from which anything extraordinary stands out. Perhaps it is illustratable by Shinto torii that stand amidst everyday life, integrated in a city street or standing alone in a natural clearing ([79], pp. 138–39). As one passes through such a gate—purporting to transport one from the profane world to a sacred realm—one ends up right back where one already was. Such a moment might be called “transcendent,” not because one moves beyond this world to another metaphysical plane, but because one is opened to living here and now.

Yet, it is undeniable that for many people severe oppression is normalized, where everyday life is structured by sexism, racism, and classism [66]. In the midst of war, people directly face destruction and the threat of their own death on a daily basis. Even the horrors of suicide bombings are routinely wrestled with [80]. Only someone from a position of social privilege could say these are somehow distortions of normal life as if there were some ideal of universal normalcy in light of which all these should be judged. As Weiss writes,

One must always be cognizant of the fact that sedimentation of everyday experience into recognizable patterns can serve to codify oppression as readily as it can promote a reassuring sense of existential stability… To avoid complacency, one must be attentive to continual possibilities for transformation offered by those aspects of the world that cannot be rendered intelligible within established horizons, and that therefore demand new ways of thinking, feeling, and being.

([66], p. 5)

However, criticism of—say—heteronormativity and the accompanying bullying that tries to preserve normalized patriarchal values involves an ethical criticism, that there is a different way to be besides this one structured by oppression (see [81]). Where do these “possibilities for transformation” that “cannot be rendered intelligible within established horizons” come from?

Even our desires for how things may be can be a source of frustration and alienation from the ordinary. Our desires can prevent us from seeing what really goes on. Under the condition of the atheistic I’s distorted sense of “self,” we entrench our horizons for relevance, picking and choosing experiences and information according to whatever serves our self-interests ([65], p. 139). As Hershock illustrates, suffering is not as easily addressed as pain because responding to suffering involves knowing the expectations violated, the cultural and personal impasses reached, and which parts of the situation are even negotiable ([65], p. 15). Hershock elaborates on this by pointing to how many perceive the death of a child as more traumatic than the death of someone several decades older. There is not any difference in the process of dying. The difference is in our desires, and these desires are often determined by hegemonic interests of the atheistic I. However, this is not a conscious act or choice.

Heidegger approaches the inculcation toward self-interest as the everydayness of dasein where one is colonized by the they ([37], pp. 112–74). The they, for Heidegger, names who one is on the whole and for the most part. One does not live in reflective contemplation, but is immersed in the task of getting on with one’s life with others. We all fall back on the they in rationalizing what we do each day. The they is always peculiar to an age or culture.55 Our everydayness is structured by discrete conventions of activity and discourse. The they always seeks what is new, and take distanced aesthetic pleasure in things through idle talk, curiosity, and ambiguity. In our era of social media, these aspects of the they are exacerbated and amplified (see [82]). The speed at which memes pass through digital culture is overwhelming, where everything is always new (yet always the same!). Absorbed into this world, one lives as everyone does: as no one in particular. The they pre-interpret the world for one, determining the significance of things for one ahead of time. Thus, the drift toward the atheistic I is not merely a reaction to being wounded by the infinite, as Levinas has it, but is also a function of our absorption in the everydayness of the they.

Following Irigaray and Huang, one source of oppression and leveling in this everydayness is not respecting differences (see [45,83]). The atheistic I treats all things on the logic of sameness. Thus, recognition and respect for difference might provide an alternative way forward. As Huang explains, this need not involve subordination of one to the other. One can respect others for who they are or even for who they think they are. Zhuangzi illustrates this in a parable questioning the tendency to treat all other things according to one’s preferences:

The emperor of the southern sea was called Swoosh. The emperor of the northern sea was called Oblivion. The emperor of the middle was called Chaos. Swoosh and Oblivion would sometimes meet in the territory of Chaos, who always attended to them quite well. They decided to repay Chaos for his virtue. “All men have seven holes in them, by means of which they see, hear, eat, and breathe,” they said. “But this one alone has none. Let’s drill him some.” So each day they drilled another hole. After seven days, Chaos was dead.56

([61], p. 54)

Even with the best of intentions, without respecting differences one might—without even realizing it—negate the other. Differences are ordinary. Perhaps, as Huang emphasizes, only something like water can respect the plurality of things. Water accepts the mold of things without changing what either is (see [83], p. 81). However, in addition to respect for differences, I think we also need to look further into the condition in which there is a production of a surplus of differences. What I am calling the ordinary seems to be, in large part, this locus of generativity of differences.

Despite the codification of oppression and absorption in the they, possibilities for transformation or authenticity still seem available—such as through owning one’s death in angst or reconnecting with our bodies or through Zhuangzi’s approach to the dao. Bringing the atheistic I down to earth involves, foremost, bringing it back to the body. The body is a key limitation on the breadth of one’s perspective. Feminism’s “corporeal politics” is especially clear on this in critiquing the question of transcendence as if it led above and beyond the ordinary material world (see [84]). Getting back to one’s body not only provides leverage for critique of masculine subjectivity, but is crucial for health (see [45]). The body is taught to detach itself from sensibility in favor of an abstract culture. We grow up separating “culture” and “nature,” separating “corporeal life” and “spiritual life,” forgetting that “the soul corresponds to the life of the body cultivated to the point of acquiring autonomy and spiritual becoming…” ([16], p. 75).57 Every point of view or perspective is cultivated in relation to a specific body. Moreover, the body is the guarantee that individuals will be different, that no two individuals will occupy the same space and have the same horizons ([66], p. 117). Transformative and generative possibilities emerge, as Weiss elaborates, from the body’s dynamic interactions with different others in varying contexts ([66], p. 138).

A virtue of both contemporary feminist social epistemology and classical Zhuangzian contextualism58 is the attentiveness to seeing reality from alternate perspectives. But what is this phenomena lending itself to a multiplicity of perspectives? I propose exploring it as something approximating Zhuangzi’s “dao,” a purposeless furnace of transformations (see [61], p. 46). Despite the variety of perspectives, Zhuangzi suggests there is some underlying unity, a oneness of what he calls “the Heavenly” ([61], p. 48). In Zhuangzi, the dao functions as a regulative ideal exposing not only that there are multiple perspectives available at any moment, but even more that every perspective is limited ([61], pp. 18, 74–75).59 It is the purposeless background to every purpose or “way” in the foreground ([87], p. 43). In light of Zhuangzi’s “dao,” I want to describe the ordinary as the undifferentiated background or horizon from which particular things or purposes stand out. With Weiss, this indeterminacy should not be understood as on the fringes of perception, but permeating all aspects of it from the fringes to the center ([66], p. 37). How can disruption of normalcy be a hope for those subject to systemic oppression or constancy of violence? It opens possibilities for disrupting oppressive normalcy.

The atheistic I quests after what is “extra-ordinary” or “outstanding,” or even its own “originality.” It obscures the fact that such objects are foregrounded from the background that transcends all of them. By so obscuring this fact, the I treats outstanding things as transcendent entities to which it clings for security. However, in attending to the undifferentiated background from which “special” things are differentiated, I hope we can start to overcome the hegemony of the atheistic I.60 Rather than seeing these special things as transcendent, it is the background that transcends the limited narrowness of particular perspectives focused on this or that as extraordinary ([61], p. 12). The contrived and utilitarian thinking of the atheistic I oscillates between “this” or “that,” but such thinking stands in opposition to the fluidity of the ordinary. Fluid thinking with the flow of the ordinary is not trapped by the rigidity of representations imposed by the atheistic I (see [73], p. 56). When one lets go of forcing things to fit pre-established representations, we can forget the need for things to fit only in a certain way.

If it is fitting to approach the ordinary this way, then we need not treat it as something from which one needs to escape. Instead, it may be precisely what fulfills one. Being opened toward the ordinary makes possible existential transformation, where one’s identity is fluid and responsive to changing circumstances. In this way, the fecundity and natural blossoming of the ordinary is like the self-presenting and self-justifying character of play. In his ontology of play, Gadamer underscores that play is not merely in the power of the subject playing, but really is an unfurling of the subject matter through the players. As he states, “All playing is a being played” ([26], p. 106).61 Play absorbs the players—including the audience—in the self-presentation of the game or play itself. It involves a dynamic and fluid to-and-fro movement. What makes such moments worthy of being predicated as “transcendent” is when the play brings one into true being, in the joy of recognition and knowledge of the really real (see [88]).

In this eschatology of the ordinary, such consummation in the ordinary seems to be the ultimate spiritual state underscored in Zhuangzi’s daosim. It is not where one is transported to a transcendent place above or beyond this world, but a centered and adaptive responsiveness in this world ([89], p. 160). This is not a mere “flow state,” but a state of self-conscious concentration. Zhuangzi’s famous illustration of such a concentrated state is the story of Cook Ding, who never has to sharpen his knives because he is so attuned to the dao (see [85]). Ding says,

What I love is the Course…I depend on [Spontaneous] perforations and strike larger gaps, following along with the broader hollows. I go by how they already are, playing them as they lay… Whenever I come to a clustered tangle, realizing that it is difficult to do anything about it, I instead restrain myself as if terrified, [keeping my eyes on what I’m doing]. My activity slows, and the blade moves ever so slightly.

([61], pp. 22–23)

Ding still needs to stop and think in particularly difficult circumstances. Reflection and thinking are not in strict opposition to the “flow state” of concentrated effort. Nevertheless, resting transparently on the ordinary liberates one from this or that contrivance and obligation to do or to force things. The thinking is fluent, in accord with the fluidity of the dao. Similarly, Kierkegaard—writing as Silentio—describes the paradoxical character of knights of faith ([90], pp. 49–50). They seem indistinguishable from other ordinary people. Whereas knights of infinite resignation can be detected through their awkwardness in the everyday, knights of faith relish this life. They are, he claims, just as graceful in their landing as in their leaping ([90], p. 41). Living in the ordinary involves not longing for another transcendent world but being gracefully concentrated in this one.

The grace to live in the ordinary affirms this life itself as sacred. It is not that institutionally sanctioned ritual acts in religious communities confer sacredness on ordinary activities such as breaking bread or drinking wine. Instead, these religious rituals are readable as affirming the intrinsic sacredness of the ordinary practices themselves. As Feuerbach says,

If thou art inclined to smile that I call eating and drinking religious acts, because they are common everyday acts, and are therefore performed by multitudes without thought, without emotions; reflect, that the Lord’s Supper is to multitudes a thoughtless, emotionless act, because it takes place often; and, for the sake of comprehending the religious significance of bread and wine, place thyself in a position where the daily act is unnaturally, violently interrupted...It needs only that the ordinary course of things be interrupted in order to vindicate to common things an uncommon significance, to life, as such, a religious import. Therefore let bread be sacred for us, let wine be sacred, and also let water be sacred!

([14], pp. 277–78)

Religions serve to remind one that every bath is a baptism, that every meal is communion.62 Religions are poetic redemptions of the real, returning sacred significance to the ordinary as this is distorted through normalization of hierarchical differences and accompanying oppression. I think it is worth considering that it is the interruption or distortion of the ordinary course of things that one could want to overcome; not transcendence from the ordinary to some other world. The inversions performed by the interests of the atheistic I lead to expecting transport to this other world from religious rites. The point is not to placate oneself in one’s interpretation of the world, but is to change it.

This is not merely a problem in Western religions. Meditation in Buddhism is often approached instrumentally, as a means by which one can deliberately bring about an inner experience of enlightenment or realization of nirvana. This construal occurs as much today as always. Yet, the duality of such instrumentalization incapacitates one to recognize the interconnectedness of all things, the Buddha’s fundamental insight of pratitya-samutpada (see [91,92]). Many Chan masters were already teaching against such conceptualization in the early phases of Chan (see [93]). Mazu, for example, teaches “Ordinary mind is the Way!” (see [94,95]). As the twelfth century Soto founder, Dogen, teaches: “Your very mind is Buddha” ([96], p. 24). Faure explains this:

The founder of the Soto sect, Dogen, transformed the practice of zazen (which he referred to as shikan taza or “sitting only”) into a sort of absolute... It is no longer about introspection, but is instead a kind of ritual imitation of the emblematic posture of the buddhas. Followers sit and meditate not to achieve Awakening, but because this is exactly what buddhas do.

([97], p. 78)

Just as eating bread is itself sacred, meditation is itself enlightenment and not a means to enlightenment. This is not to say that there are not peculiar subjective experiences that characteristically accompany enlightenment, but that seeking subjective experience or subjective transformation misses the intrinsically public and performative character of awaking.63

In all these ways, getting back to the ordinary helps bring the atheistic I down to earth. Affirming the ordinary in these ways seem to encourage us to transcend and escape the inverted world constructed by and imposed by the atheistic I. Through the ordinary, we might transcend the theisms of the atheistic I, perhaps meeting what Tillich calls “the God beyond God” ([100], pp. 176–90). It lets us see the magic in the ordinary (see [101]). The most profound growth occurs in our quotidian day in and day out conventions, where discursive culture continually lifts our spirits to ever more refined blossoming.64 As Plato closes his reflection on the ideal integration of a soul and a city, he affirms Odysseus’s selection of a simple life despite drawing the short straw ([74], pp. 300–1). Philosophy does not help him find transcendence, in that it does not liberate him to a transcendent realm of so-called “Platonic Forms” (see [9]), but helps him make a respectable decision by which he can realize the good life in a simple life here and now.