Man and God
(Outside back cover)
Man and God (El hombre y Dios) is the book upon which Xavier Zubiri was working when he died on Sep. 21st, 1983. Fortunately, he left it almost complete, and that is the reason why the present text constitutes a systematic work and not a miscellany of fragments or essays. It is the first of his trilogy about God, The Theological Problem of Man (El problema teologal del hombre), which is followed by The Philosophical Problem of the History of Religions (El problema filosófico de la historia de las religiones), and Christianity (Cristianismo). Man and God has a profound relation of homogeneity with other books published by the author: On Essence (Sobre la esencia), and the trilogy Intelligence and Reality, Intelligence and Logos, and Intelligence and Reason (Inteligencia y Realidad, Inteligencia y Logos, Inteligencia y Razón), which together comprise Zubiri’s major work, Sentient Intelligence (Inteligencia Sentiente). In these works Zubiri sought to overcome the centuries old conceptualism and idealism of Metaphysics (On Essence) and the Theory of Knowledge (Sentient Intelligence). In Man and God Zubiri proposes to carry out a similar task with respect to the philosophical investigation on the theme of God. This leads him to a profound revision of the history of Theodicy. Natural Theology has generally approached God in a conceptual way, making of Him what Zubiri calls a “reality-object” and concentrating all its efforts in establishing ways of “demonstrating” his existence. Zubiri thinks that, on the contrary, God, if He is something, is not a “reality-object”, but what he called “reality-fundament”. A fundament to which, if it exists, we will be “re-ligated” (religados), that is, re-connected. In contrast to the demonstrative ways, purely idealistic, Zubiri proposes the way of religation, for him the only one truly real. In fact we are religated to reality, Zubiri says, since it imposes itself on us as ultimate, possibilitating and impelling. The experience of this imposition, of this power of the real which is a fact, is, Zubiri says, the experience of the fundament of reality, the fundamental experience which each man possesses as a theist, an agnostic or an atheist. The divergences begin at the time of intellectual discernment and volition when confronting this fundament. For the theist, the experience of the fundament is an experience of God, a God which is not transcendent “to” things, but transcendent “in” things. To reach God it is not necessary to leave the world, but to enter more into it, reaching its foundation or ground. God is at the bottom of things as their fundament; and in his experience of things man has the fundamental experience of God. The life of man is woven into his experience with and of things; and as this experience is in itself an experience of God, it turns out that the life of each man is in some way a continuous experience of God. This means that the real God of each person is not a concept or the result of reasoning, but the very life of man. In making his own life, configuring his life, man configures (or disfigures) God in him, because the life of man, Zubiri concludes, is always and formally “experience of God”.
—Dr. Diego Gracia, Director, Fundación Xavier Zubiri, Madrid, Spain.
Xavier Zubiri
MAN AND GOD
Translated by Joaquín A. Redondo, M.E., M.A.(Phil)
Critically reviewed by Dr. Thomas B. Fowler, Sc.Dr.
(From El hombre y Dios, Alianza Editorial, 4th Spanish edition, Madrid, 1988)
(Numbers in braces "{ }" refer to the pagination of the above 4th Spanish edition)
TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION
In his last formal university lecture (1942) at the University of Barcelona, Spain, Xavier Zubiri mentioned that philosophy, more than any other form of knowledge, is built by personal effort upon a tradition because it is radical and ultimate. Already in 1927, at the beginning of his university teaching career in Madrid, he had stated that while science is concerned with a clear object, philosophy on the other hand is an effort towards the progressive intellectual constitution of its own object, requiring strength to bring out what is constitutively latent, and then manifest it clearly. Consequently, philosophy consists in its very process of maturation in each philosopher, and its history is precisely the history of the idea of what constitutes philosophy. In turn, Zubiri displays what philosophy is —a philosopher philosophizing.
Zubiri’s last private conversation with Heidegger in 1930, just before leaving Freiburg im Breisgau for Berlin, had important consequences for both philosophers, as he later mentioned to his wife, Carmen Castro de Zubiri in 1931. He also told her that in his opinion Heidegger would never publish a continuation to Sein und Zeit (Biografía de Xavier Zubiri, Carmen Castro de Zubiri, Madrid, 1992, p. 86). Heidegger’s metaphysics had not fully satisfied Zubiri. At the last moment before saying good bye to Zubiri, Heidegger said to him, “Why, Herr Kollegue, did you not mention all this before?” Zubiri had already started on a different metaphysical quest. Years later Zubiri would write: “Fundamentally, the entire philosophy of Heidegger is a commentary to this idea that man is the one that comprehends being... To be, then, is the possibility that things show themselves and that man may comprehend them. With this, the radical characteristic of man becomes the comprehension of to be. This, however, cannot be upheld: first, because the primary function of man is not to comprehend to be, but to confront the reality of things sentiently and, second, because to be lacks the note of substantivity; to be is only respectively, and this respectivity is not the respectivity to man, but to the reality of everything. Therefore, it is reality and only reality that has substantivity.” (...) “Reality and to be are two different and distinct moments of the real, but not because reality is a type of to be, as Kant and Heidegger assert, but quite the reverse, because being is a further moment or actuality of the real, a moment which has nothing to do with intellection” (Sobre la esencia, Madrid, 1962, pág. 453) [On Essence, tr. by A. Robert Caponigri, Washington, DC, 1980, p. 407].
In a special prologue Zubiri wrote (1980) for the English translation of Naturaleza Historia Dios [Nature History God,, tr. by Thomas B. Fowler, University Press of America, 1981], he elaborated further, “Indeed, Is metaphysics the same as ontology? Is reality the same as to be? Well inside phenomenology, Heidegger glimpsed the difference between things and their being. This led him to affirm that metaphysics was founded upon ontology. My reflections followed an opposite course: being is founded upon reality. Metaphysics is the fundament of ontology. What metaphysics studies is not objectivity, or being, but reality as such. Since 1944 my reflection constitutes a rigorous metaphysical period.” (...) “A task which was not easy. Because modern philosophy, despite all its differences, has been riding upon four concepts which, from my point of view, are four incorrect substantivations: space, time, consciousness, and being. It has been thought that things are in time and in space, that all are apprehended in the acts of conscience, and that their entity is a moment of being. Definitely, to my way of thinking, this is inadmissible. Space, time, consciousness, being, are not four receptacles for things, but only characteristics of things which are already real, they are the characteristics of the reality of things, and things, I repeat, are already real in and by themselves. Real things are not in space or time, as Kant thought (following Newton), but rather real things are spatial and temporal, something quite different than being in space and time. Intellection is not an act of consciousness, as Husserl thought. Phenomenology is the great substantivation of consciousness which has been current in modern philosophy since Descartes. However, there is no conscience; there are only conscious acts. This substantivation has already been introduced into a great portion of the psychology of the end of the XIX cent., for which “psychic activity” was synonymous to “activity of consciousness”, and conceived all things as “contents of consciousness”. It even created the concept of “the” subconscious. This is inadmissible, because things are not contents of consciousness, but only terminus of consciousness: conscience is not the receptacle for things. From its own perspective, psychoanalysis has always conceptualized man and his activity with reference to consciousness. It has told us about “the” consciousness, “the” unconscious, etc. Man would be, ultimately, a stratification of qualified zones with respect to consciousness. This substantivation is inadmissible. “The” activity of consciousness does not exist, “the” consciousness does not exist, and neither does “the” unconscious, nor “the” subconscious; there are only conscious, unconscious, and subconscious acts. But they are not acts of consciousness, or the unconscious, or the subconscious. Consciousness does not perform acts. Heidegger took a step further. Although in his own way (which he never managed to conceptualize or define), he accomplished the task of substantivizing being. For him things are in and through being; because of this, things are entities. Reality would only be a type of being. This is the old idea of “real being”, esse reale. But real being does not exist. The only thing that exists is the real being real, realitas in essendo, I would say. Being is only one moment of reality.”
“Facing these four gigantic substantivations of space, time, consciousness, and being, I have attempted an idea for the real anterior to them. This has been the theme of my book Sobre la esencia (Madrid, 1962): philosophy is not philosophy of objectivity, or being, it is not phenomenology or ontology, but rather philosophy of the real qua real, it is metaphysics. In turn, intellection is not consciousness, but the mere actualization of the real in the sentient intelligence. This is the theme of the book which has just been published, Inteligencia Sentiente: Inteligencia y Realidad, (Madrid, 1980) [Sentient Intelligence: Intelligence and Reality, tr. by Thomas B. Fowler, Washington, DC, 1997]. Consequently, the present book, Naturaleza Historia Dios, is a period not only surmounted, but subsumed into this metaphysics of the real, on which for the last thirty five years I have been laboring. This, I repeat, is the period directed by the common inspiration of the real qua real. It is a rigorously metaphysical period. In it I have found myself compelled to provide a different idea of what intellection is, what reality is, and what truth is. These are the key chapters of Inteligencia Sentiente.”
Man and God is divided by Zubiri into three parts. The first serves as an essential introduction to the core of the work. This first part together with the excellent translator introductions by Dr. Thomas B. Fowler (Nature History God; Sentient Intelligence) and Dr. A. Robert Caponigri (On Essence) should provide the attentive reader with the necessary preparation to enjoy the philosophical riches of this book. The following will only give a summary idea of the content of Zubiri’s thought. Nothing can substitute reading what Zubiri has written.
When dealing with the philosophical problem of God, Zubiri embarks in a rigorous metaphysical examination which takes him to reflect on the many perspectives taken in the past to reach an understanding of the existence of God as an intellective goal. In the end, he considers they do not have sufficient intellectual precision to reach God qua God. This precision can only come from the realization that God qua God is fundamentally real, and the problem centers around God’s reality. It would seem obvious that the existence of God does not depend on whether we think of Him or not. The question is the proper intellectual perspective to reach the truth of His real existence. For Zubiri the philosophy of “being” is not sufficient. God is not a modified “Being”. Not even when festooned with “infinity”. After all, we obtain the concept of “being” from everything that exists in our cosmos, and God is not just one more being “in” this cosmos, even if we call Him “infinite being”. God qua God is more than infinite being. As Zubiri puts it, “being” is the second moment of reality. We have to reach the fundament of the power of the real which grounds our notion of “being”. All human life is fundamentally an experience of the power of the real. To reach the real God qua God we have no alternative but to proceed intellectually through our personal experience of the real, for He is the fundament of the power of the real. The “and” of the title reminds us that for Zubiri God is already a structural essential part of the reality of man.
Man is experience of God. He experiences God at the level of person, as inter-personal reality. God gives Himself to man, and man surrenders to God through simple faith. Man realizes himself with the reality of things, and ultimately with God, the fundamental reality. We put our life on the line. This realization takes place whether one is a theist, an atheist, or an agnostic. The difference comes from the intellectual justification each provides for taking God into account or not, which results in a greater or lesser radical intellection of what it is to be human.
This analysis of human reality will lead us to its fundamental reality, which is at the same time ultimate, possibilitating, and impelling. Because reality is foundational it serves as real ultimate support of my life. It will also serve to possibilitate my realization, and to impel me towards my realization. These three characteristics have an intrinsic unity, they form the fundamentality of reality. On our human side this fundamentality consists in being “religated” (fr. Latin re-ligare, re-tied)) to my fundament in order to be. From the side of reality to be a foundation means that it has power over me. The power and strength of the real as a dominance moves me to realize myself as a person. This dominance of the real is a seizure, and in this dimension man is “relatively absolute”. He needs both the power of, and the religation to, fundamental reality.
Religation is a fact with three characteristics. First, it is experiential as physical probation of reality, which later appears as a radical way of rational intellection. Second, this experience manifests the power of reality. Third, through this living experience we learn what the power of the real is. Therefore, the power of the real in things is nothing but the occurrence of the fundament in them. Because of this, man, whether he likes it or not, is always hurled by reality towards his fundament. This hurling is a strict intellective progress. Here the dynamic of intelligence is felt as an attraction towards the ultimateness of the real. Yet, I must configure my life with this ultimateness, and here my will to reality will be the deciding factor when choosing to configure it with one form of reality or another. In order to activate my will to reality it must then present itself to me in its real truth. Consequently, will to truth is will to reality, and in the case of religation, to reality of fundament. In order to know what this fundamenting reality is, which serves me to realize myself, and to which I am religated, Zubiri discloses what this intellective progress towards God is.
There are different attitudes in this progress, which a will to both intellection and appropriation can follow. The agnostic attitude searches for the fundament of his own belief, but his searching intelligence defends the proposition that fundamentality is not knowable. This leads to frustration in the intellectual order. For the agnostic what is finite possesses complete satisfaction. His God is the finite, and nothing alien to finite reality can be accepted as existing. However, for Zubiri, God is not an alien reality to man, and exists while giving existence to whatever exists.
The attitude of indifference is just the will to the bare desire to live. It is the will to truth as just living, and affirming that no proof can lead to the conclusion that God exists. To this intellectual indifference there corresponds a mode of appropriation called "unconcernedness". There is no search here. But the one that is unconcerned “feels” that underneath his lack of concern there is the mute beating of a presence which he ignores. Consequently, Zubiri affirms, he is being directed towards God surreptitiously. Because of this he has to justify intellectively his indifference for reality.
For the atheist life rests upon itself, and that is why he has no will to fundamentality. The atheist considers life and the reality of man as pure facticity. An atheist life means a life lived without any God, “outside” of God. The atheist is not against God, merely outside of Him. When the atheist appropriates being as pure facticity he is living a life of auto-sufficiency; he does not need fundamentality. For him auto-sufficiency is the absolute.
Finally we have the attitude of religation which consists in the human will uniting “this” reality, which ties all real things, with “the” divine reality through the transcendental reality. With his way of religation Zubiri wishes to unite the cosmic and anthropological ways, and supersede them in their way towards God since they do not reach God as a personal reality, fundament of the cosmos and of man.
The intellectual justification of God is not accomplished by Zubiri as a demonstration because God is not an object. Man encounters God realizing himself as a person. We do realize ourselves with things. Each real thing brings its own power, and the power of “the” reality. It is the power of “the” reality which gives power to this reality. The power of “the” reality is not founded upon another concrete reality because this would give us an infinite regress. Since “the” reality must fundament my relatively absolute reality, “the” reality has to be an “absolutely absolute” reality. This is the metaphysical essence of God. God is the One who is founding the power of reality.
Without God as fundament of all things they would not be useful to realize myself simply because they would not be real things, they would not be reality. Only being real would they have that power; they are real only if they are in God. Real things while giving me their own reality, are giving me God in them. To intellectually justify our belief in God is simply to explain the truth of this simple sentence. The fullness of reality is something fundamenting the real as the ultimate, possibilitating, and impelling power. The fundament of real things is “at one and the same time” fundament of the ultimateness, the impellence, and the possibilitation of reality. And this is what God is qua God. Yet, this fundamentality of the ultimateness of God formally consists in being a transcendent God not with respect to things, but “in” the things themselves.
Transcendence does not mean “outside”, but rather something which is distinct and fundament of things. Certainly there is a distinction between God and things, but what we do not have is separation. And there is no pantheism. God does not consist in being the fundament, but his presence in it is fundamental. God is formally in things, but making them be in God as realities distinct from God. God is present in things with a fontanal presence, as fountain of their reality. The manifestation of the divine in things is called “deity”. “Deity” is not God, but is the manifestation of God by His presence “in” them. This is the intellective justification of God according to Zubiri.
God, as a personal reality has to be an accessed reality, otherwise it would not be useful for my life. And God is accessible because He is an open reality, a personal reality. The presence of God in my life is a trans-personal presence, from person to person. God is present in me because I am an intelligent reality. Because of this the divine reality is a verifiable reality insofar as it is actualized in my intelligence. God in His own real truth is a manifest truth. This actualization of God in my person takes the form of a donation. A donation which is a dragging with which a divine person drags each finite thing. God presents Himself to man as love, as a donating reality.
To this donation there corresponds, from the side of man, an acceptance in the form of a surrender. Surrender is an appropriation of the personal reality which is being donated to me, and incorporating it to my reality. This surrender manifests itself in three dimensions. If we accept God as ultimateness we have the form of surrender expressed in the veneration manifested in adoration. If we accept God as possibilitation of my life the surrender is carried out in the form of a supplication, and its manifestation is prayer. Man finds refuge in God when he is taken as an impelling reality. Here, between God and man, the functionality of the real is being activated under the form of an “inter-personal causality”.
The access of man to God is in the form of a surrender, and this surrender is formally “faith”. Faith is not a problem of authority, but of admission of the personal reality which is being donated to me. Faith formally consists in surrendering myself to the transcendent depth of my person, and not abandoning it. This personal surrender to God is carried out, therefore, in a concrete way, in my person. Indeed, faith is concrete, but above all, because each one of us has an idea of God by reason of the terminus. For each one of us God is “his” God. And this occurs in a very precise manner in the History of Religions. Because of all of this God is a concrete God: individual, social, historical.
The fontanality of God in man acquires the form of donation. God is an “absolutely absolute” reality, and man in this donation is a “relative absolute”, therefore, it is in the moment of “absolute” where God is present as personal donation. The “absolute” is the point of convergence between man and God. Other forms of experience from the side of God are, besides the experienced absolute, the presence of God in the form of “grace”, the Incarnation, and the actual presence of Christ in the Eucharist. We may take note of the tensive presence of God in the person of Christ. Christ, as reactualization of the person of the Word, is a form of experiencing God. In Christ the experience is also present, although in a subsisting way, between God and man. Christ is true God and true man. In Christ we can say: while more divine, more human, and while more human, more divine.
The experience from the side of man consists in man experiencing God while making his own being foundationally. God is the fundament and the possibility of my own relatively absolute being. The experience of God is the very experience of the “absolute” acquired when I realize my being foundationally. We may be able to express more precisely in what this unity of “man and God” consists. The form of encounter between persons at the level of fundamentality is in the form of truth as conformation. This conformation adopts the forms of implication, and interpenetration. The unity of “man and God” is a unity of implication where God is fundamenting and I am fundamented.
The intellection of God is sentient. At the level of fundamentality this experiential intellection is also determined by the senses. Through the sense of kinesthesia we apprehend this implication or personal tension between God and man. Thanks to the intelligent sense of kinesthesia we apprehend the “towards” or “tensiveness” existing between man and God. For this reason the unity between man and God is a unity of donation and experientiality, this is the type of unity which constitutes the unity of theological tension. The enigma of life is inscribed in the enigma of reality. An enigma which adopts the form of restlessness as expression of the “tensive unity” between man and God. We must keep in mind that the problem of religation is resolved in the problem of this experience between man and God, where both are experiential aspects of each other. These thoughts should provide the reader with some preparation as he encounters the profound meditations of a master philosopher.
The gracious and expert review of the whole translation by Dr. T. Fowler, President of the Xavier Zubiri Foundation of North America, has been essential in providing a clear and polished English version of Zubiri’s philosophical insights. My grateful thanks for all his careful suggestions. My thanks also to Dr. Diego Gracia, Director of the Fundación Xavier Zubiri in Madrid, Spain, and his valuable advice concerning the translation of the Spanish teologal by the English theological. For Zubiri the term “theologic” (teológico) would concern itself primarily with knowledge about God himself, and “theological” (teologal) with the knowledge of God through all the reality of which He is the ultimate transcendent fundament.