How do you take your metaphysics?

Metaphysics: all so-called knowledge that goes beyond the possibility of experience, and so beyond nature or the given phenomenal appearance of things,

in order to give information about that which, in some sense or other, this experience or nature is conditioned [...]

[... ] that which is hidden behind nature, and renders nature possible.
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But the great original difference in the powers of understanding, and also their cultivation [...] cause so great a variety among men that [...]

no one metaphysical system can suffice for all.

Therefore in the case of civilized nations we generally come across two different kinds of metaphysics, distinguished by the fact that the one has its verification and credentials in itself, the other outside itself.

1. Philosophy

[...] A system of the first kind, that is, a philosophy, makes the claim, and therefore has the obligation, to be true sensu stricto et proprio in all that it says, for it appeals to thought and conviction

[Because it requires] reflection, culture, leisure, and judgement for the recognition of their credentials, [it] can be accessible only to an extremely small number of persons [...]


2. Religion

A religion, on the other hand, has only the obligation to be true sensu allegorico, since it is destined for the innumerable multitude who, being incapable of investigating and thinking, would never grasp the profoundest and most difficult truths sensu proprio.

[Religions] are exclusively for the great majority of people who are not capable of thinking but only of believing, and are susceptible not to arguments, but only to authority.


Before the people truth cannot appear naked.

[...] Therefore, not only the contradictory but also the intelligible dogmas are really only allegories and accommodations to the human power of comprehension

[...] This allegorical nature of religions also exempts them from the proofs incumbent on philosophy, and in general from scrutiny and investigation.

[...] We therefore see that in the main, and for the great majority unable to devote themselves to thinking, religions fill very well the place of metaphysics in general, the need of which man feels to be imperative.

They do this partly for a practical purpose as the guiding star of their action, as the public standard of integrity and virtue, as Kant admirably expresses it; partly as the indispensable consolation in the deep sorrows of life.

In this they completely take the place of of an objectively true system of metaphysics, since they lift man above himself and above existence in time, as well, perhaps, as such a system ever could.

In this their great value, indeed their indispensability is quite clearly to be seen. For Plato rightly says:

"It is impossible for the crowd to be philosophically enlightened."

The controversy between supernaturalists and rationalists, carried on so incessantly in our own day, is due to the failure of both to recognize the allegorical nature of all religion.

[...] Religions are necessary for the people, and are an inestimable benefit to them.

[...] to require that even a great mind - a Shakespeare or a Goethe - should make the dogmas of any religion his implicit conviction, bona fide et sensu proprio, is like requiring a giant to put on the shoes of a dwarf.

[Arthur Schopenhauer]
The World as Will and Representation, Volume II, p.164, 166-8

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The gods are within us

Our time has committed a fatal error; we believe we can criticize the facts of religion intellectually. Like Laplace, we think God is a hypothesis that can be subjected to intellectual treatment, to be affirmed or denied.

We completely forget that the reason mankind believes in the "daemon" has nothing whatever to do with external factors, but is simply due to a naive awareness of the tremendous inner effect of autonomous fragmentary systems [instinctual products of the unconscious].

This effect is not abolished by criticizing it - or rather, the name we have given it [God, Jesus, Holy Spirit, etc] - or by describing the name as false.

If we deny the existence of the autonomous systems, imagining that we have got rid of them by a mere critique of the name, then the effect which they continue to exert can no longer be understood, nor can they be assimilated to consciousness.

We think we can congratulate ourselves on having already reached such a pinnacle of clarity, imagining that we have left all these phantasmal gods far behind. But what we have left behind are only verbal spectres, not the psychic facts that were responsible for the birth of the gods.

We are still as much possessed by autonomous psychic contents as if they were Olympians. Today they are called phobias, obsessions, and so forth; in a word, neurotic symptoms. The gods have become diseases; Zeus no longer rules Olympus but rather the solar plexus, and produces curious specimens for the doctor's consulting room, or disorders the brains of politicians and journalists who unwittingly let loose psychic epidemics on the world.

It is not a matter of indifference whether one calls something a "mania" or a "god." To serve a mania is detestable and undignified, but to serve a god is full of meaning and promise because it is an act of submission to a higher, invisible, and spiritual being.

[C.G. Jung]
Psychology and the East, p.37, 38, 39

The human psyche has many levels. What is religious exists at the very deepest of those levels. What is religious is what is fundamental.

People are religious, whether they know it or not, because they must have fundamental beliefs. Otherwise they cannot act. They can’t even perceive. They can be very confused about the nature of those fundamentals. Their psyches can be fractured, disjointed and incoherent.

Without axiomatic beliefs, however, we cannot simplify the world enough to act within it. 

[Jordan Peterson]
'Maps of Meaning: Suggested Readings and Russian Translation'

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