With the arrival of “reign of Quantity” and submergence of qualitative approach to life, a host of existential issues have arrived floating in our lives. The scientific doctrine that “what can’t be measured can’t be known” was ruthlessly applied to all domains and dimensions of human life which led to chaos of unforeseen order. The failure to appreciate Transcendence and to contextualise everything in terms of immanence brought with it the ” courage to disbelieve”. The transition of epistemology and ontology from expansion of human understanding to its limitation has proved to be most grievous crime committed by pundits of Western philosophy. Philosophy, in the post renaissance era operated under the influence of science and this led philosophical methodology to be characterised by same shortcomings as were inherent to the science of the times. In placing entire emphasis on the sensory faculties of man, the philosophers of this era paid no attention to the rational and spiritual facilities of man. Hegel, Kant and others of their species metamorphosed the landscape of western philosophy which later had its repercussions of widest and worst possible nature. From what one can know the nature of question was now changed to what one cannot know. From what one can understand the emphasis was laid on what one can perceive by mere sense organs. Locke thought that the role of philosophy was not to extend the boundaries of knowledge but precisely to limit it. This limited epistemology and consequently bounded ontology constricted and constrained the trajectories of human imagination. Human mind, with its sensory, rational, imaginative, intellectual and spiritual possibilities of understanding is intrinsically infinite. The infinity of human imagination is not circumscribed by the finitude of human physicality. Man’s quest for infinity with all its possible implications finds its satisfaction in the perception of God, the institution of sacred and the concept of divine. Despite his physical finitude, man is infinite in terms of his rational and spiritual dimensions.
When this infinitude of human mind is made to vibrate on the membrane of finitude and made to feast on half backed philosophies of logical positivism, materialism, existentialism, Marxism or Freudian philosophy it starts revolting its own essence the – essence of infinite and feels a sense of isolation, dread and despair. That’s why religion, anticipating this self revolting essence of man’s finitude introduced the concept of God in the paradigm of infinity. The issue of stress emerging between classical theology and modern philosophy was addressed by Kierkegaard in his “Fear and Trembling”. Kierkegaard resolved this dichotomy by his “leap of faith” doctrine. Kierkegaard opined that faith ought not to be a subject matter of philosophical rationalisation or scientific materialisation. He stressed the notion the greatness of belief lies not in the theorisation but in complete surrender to the object of belief. Kierkegaard in his own words said that “but he who expected the impossible became greater than all”. But his successors, particularly failed to appreciate this leap and henceforth from Nietzsche to Sartre, we come across a series of thinkers who couldn’t escape this self imposed finitude. Nietzsche, perplexed by his individual context went on to pronounce the death of God. His famous statement that “God is dead” seems to have earned him a universal fame. By substituting the notion of God by his superman, he laid the foundation of modern day philosophical atheism. But many later day philosophers like William James, Wittgenstein, Plantinga, Rashdall, Tillich and scores of others reclaimed for religion, its philosophical merit.
Anthony Kenny pertinently reminds us of the phenomenon that though Nietzsche declared the death of God, but he couldn’t kill religion. Though the notion of religion without the concept of divine remains a hoax with its own shortcomings. The zest of reconfiguration of religion and theology didn’t come without a cost. For a long time it led to the all round pervasiveness of notions like chaos, dread, anxiety, each term having a specific philosophical connotation. One of the deleterious aftermaths of this constrained epistemological approach has manifested itself in the form of blind scienticism and unchecked materialism that has made the entire civilization to crawl on the surface of material finitude and utterly failed to let man discover transcendental aspects of being and intuitive and spiritual aspects of learning. This has been the tragedy of prominent philosophers like Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre and others who in their quest for higher possibilities of being were shackled by their own limited epistemological paradigm which led them to deny the transcendental realms of existence. This approach to reality has instead of opening human finitude into the ocean of infinite confined the human infinite within material finitude. The failure to look beyond the manifest and to fix our gaze on actuality and denying the future of possibility has made man to revolve in short circuited immanence. Focusing their attention on handpicked issues of theodicy and eschatology the later day philosophers have completely severed the roots of religious tradition. The overwhelming evidence pointing to the existence of God and transcendental realm is rubbished against a bunch of misplaced scientific statistics. The veracity of religious scriptures is sacrificed by the single stroke of a pen. This reflects the dismal state of scholarship that is taking over the intellectual world. What is needed at this instant is that people may resort to genuine scholarship before drawing any conclusions having its bearings on man’s individual and collective life. Simultaneously, religious scholarship is expected to raise its standards in addressing the issues encountering modern mind. The postmodern era has put us in a volatile state where the institutions of tradition need to be furthered and strengthened to ensure that society doesn’t fall apart.
World today, with all its conundrums stands in a dire need to grasp and perceive things and the realities beyond the manifest. The journey to Transcendence is not only necessary but the only condition to ensure mitigation of human anxieties. Any failure in this direction will intellectually, morally and spiritually leave our world an ugly place to live in. Deepak Chopra, realising the same urge has put it eloquently by saying “Then God matters, more than anything else in the creation, because God is the word we apply to the source of creation. It isn’t necessary to worship the source, although reverence is certainly deserved if we want to give it. The necessary thing is to connect. Across the gap in the Transcendent world are some totally necessary things that can’t be created, not by hand, by imagination, or by thought”. World is crying for ideological and philosophical beautification and this restoration of beauty calls for look back at tradition, Transcendence and our glorious religious heritage. In these perennial treasures of wisdom we shall discover panacea to the posers of existence.