Final Questions - And No Answers? E-Book

Thea und Bruno Johannsson

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Edition Socrates
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 398

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

"Final questions" is a term used by the Australian philosopher Karl R. Popper, which indicates a field of philosophy in which Popper would esteem scientific proof impossible. The field is also called metaphysics. In this book Thea and Bruno discuss the problems of God's existence, eternal love and spirit, life after death, good and evil, evolution and creation. They do it in their modified Socratic midwifery method. The reader can follow the birth of thought as it emerges in a mixture of logical discipline and spontaneous reaction. He can pause and pursue his own promptings. He is not confrontes with ready-made results, but involved in a discourse that ist open-endet and comprehensible.

Leseprobe

This book is an invitation to think and reflect on the value of philosophy, its capabilities and its limitations. The reader is encouraged to realize the motto of the Austrian philosopher Karl R. Popper, which reads “Every man a philosopher”. Through the authors modified Socratic midwifery method, the reader can follow the birth of thought as it emerges in a mixture of logical discipline and spontaneous reaction. S/he can pause and pursue his/her own promptings. Here s/he is not confronted with ready made results, but involved in a discourse that is open ended and comprehensible. Perhaps this will wet his/her appetite to engage with classical philosophers as well. But it is more important to us that s/he forms his/her own opinion. If s/he wishes, s/he can share his/her thoughts on this matter with us. This would be uncomplicated via our website with the following link:

https://bruno-johannsson.jimdofree.com/contact/

Dedicated to Thomas Aquinas, who built a bridge between the Christian tradition and Aristotle.

Contents

Preface

Dialogues

Love – a universal power?

Spirit - does it exist, does it not exist?

The end or do things go on after death?

An old-fashioned pair: good and evil?

Already decided: Evolution or creation?

God - reality or illusion?

Exkursus

Interview by Helmuth Müller with Thea and Bruno Johannsson on the topic God – reality or illusion?

Appendix

Preface

Our dialogue method is based on the "midwife method" of the Greek philosopher Socrates, which was handed down by his student Plato. In order to adapt this method to our personal situation and to make it even more productive for finding the truth, we have modified it in several ways to make it an "equal, constructive and two-phase dialogue about a thesis". To this end, the reader will find an essay by Bruno at the end of the first volume of this series "Spielregeln der Gesellschaft [Rules of the Game in Society]", which explains and justifies the how and why in more detail.1 In the second volume of our philosophical dialogues, our method is discussed in detail in the interview with Helmuth Müller, the editor of Radio Darmstadt.2

The fact that the texts of this series are only formally smoothed live dialogues has a drawback for the reader: Despite the elimination of filler words and similar derailments in the spoken word, the linguistic quality of the texts remains deficient, if one takes the average written language as a yardstick. We ask for the reader's understanding for this. It is the price of the authenticity of the live dialogues that we wanted to preserve.

Our approach might make it easier for the reader to impartially contrast their own views with those expressed here - after all, they are not dealing with "expert philosophers" here3 - and thus become a fellow philosopher in spirit. Not only when a reader has an "aha" experience and discovers an aspect that is new to him, but also when he thinks: "But I see that quite differently, because ..." this book would have served its purpose.

This time, Helmuth Müller himself also felt inspired to enter into a philosophical conversation with the philosopher couple on the topic just discussed and some of their particular concerns. This interview was so extensive that he was able to create a second broadcast from it. We thank him and Radio Darmstadt for this work. Helmuth Müller was again impressed by the fact that philosophy can be so comprehensible, something he was not used to from university philosophy. We hope that also the readers of this English translation will agree with him. This is then to a large degree the merit of Hilary Teske, our translator, whom we thank very much for her great work.

We would be pleased to receive comments, opinions, criticisms − positive and negative − from readers. They could be made on the internet via

https://bruno-johannsson.jimdofree.com/contact

As long as it does not exceed our capacity, we would also respond to them.

January 2023

Thea and Bruno Johannsson

1 1Cf. Bruno Johannsson (2017): Die Hebammenmethode modifiziert [The midwifery method modified]. Essay, in: Thea and Bruno Johannsson: Spielregeln der Gesellschaft. Was uns zusammenhält und auseinandertreibt. [Rules of the game in society. What keeps us together and drives us apart]. Philosophische Dialoge [Philosophical dialogues] Volume 1 in Edition Sokrates, BoD, Norderstedt, pages 232 ff.

2 Cf. Thea and Bruno Johannsson (2018): Der Weg zur Wahrheit holprig und schmal? [The way to truth is bumpy and narrow?]

3 Thea Johannsson is a retired lecturer in the subjects German and History. As a graduate of economics Bruno worked in research and teaching and had philosophy and theology as subsidiary subjects during his studies. After he retired these became his “main subjects.“

Dialogues

Love – a universal power?

B: Today is Thursday 25.11.2004 and today we are discussing a thesis from Bruno. This is: Love is the basic principle of is and ought. Thea has the floor for the first question of comprehension.

T: There I have great difficulties in comprehending. Love as a basic principle of ethics would have made sense to me immediately. But in what way is love for you the basic principle of being?

B: That exactly is the more daring part of the thesis. I'm not quite sure myself. It's more of a conjecture that I want to put out there so that we can think it through together in this way. The basic idea is that what makes up reality, that which some philosophers have called being, all that is, is suffused with spirit. This spirit causes everything that happens to be in some sense under control. The One who controls it, or who "holds it in His hand," as the saying goes, is a God of love. And since He directs and is in control of all things that happen in this way − even evil, mind you − I would like to suggest that, indeed, what exists is ultimately characterized by love.

T: Since you start from a Christian philosophy, a philosophy based on Christian teachings, and you take them as a starting point, it makes sense to me: If you start from the premise that everything that exists is owed to a loving Creator, and consequently love is what underlies everything as a fundamental principle, then it is true that without this love, without the Creator's will, it could not exist. But if one takes the thesis even more comprehensively, does this thing, that love is the basic principle, also apply to the Creator Himself, who then is also, and even to a potentiated degree, a being? Can it also be said of Him that love is the basic principle, and if so, whose love for whom?

B: I have quite consciously used terms which also occur in philosophy a little bit, for example the principle of is and ought and also the term "basic principle", while it occurs to me that the term basic principle is already a duplication, because the Latin "principium" actually means basis, beginning. From there I would already be ready to change the thesis as follows: Love is the principle of is and ought. This would make it a bit clearer. You have raised the question about the one who brings this love into play. This is indirectly a question about the origin of all being, thus also about the origin of God. I would like to narrow my statement somewhat in this respect temporally and not apply it immediately to all eons of the past, also not to an eon where perhaps God was not yet God, which is not completely impossible. I would like to limit myself to the civilization of this planet, to this creation which is one of billions or at least millions of existing civilizations in my opinion. When this creation took place, the Creator was already God and was permeated with love. He was a being who can be understood only on the basis of love. The principle of God Himself is love. John says, "God is love." And if you rightly say that God is also a part of being, then this very part of being is also characterized by love, permeated by love.

T: If you presuppose His existence, He must be a part of being. If the principle underlying God is also love, I would like to repeat my question: Whose love for whom is meant here and does it underlie God's being?

B: With this you assume a certain concept of love, in which you presuppose a relationship between one who loves and one who is loved. This is very obvious and has also been part of my concept of love in the past decades. I said this thesis here is somewhat daring in that it goes beyond what I have thought at all up to now. So it's a daring thesis for me, too, where I don't yet know how it will hold up and what will come of thinking about it. In that sense, your question is a provocation in a positive sense to think about it. The whole thing is a very mysterious thing and is not something that can be proven so readily, perhaps not even proven with holy scripture. But my answer to your question would be that one does not have to see love, the essence of love, in the very first place as a characteristic of a relationship, perhaps one should not see it either, but as a basic structure of being. That is also where the thesis leads. I would like to express a little boldly how I imagine it. You already know this to be my opinion. Many people do not believe in it, but I believe there is a fine matter, which we call spirit. This fine matter exists in different variants. It may have a mass and a volume, especially when it occurs in large quantity. This matter also exists in elementary form. One must imagine a spirit element as a chip. This is an element which carries a program. And the basic structure of this chip is love. That is my basic idea.

T: Now you're making it a little difficult for me, because it's a vicious circle. To understand your thesis I am trying to find out your concept of love with the question "Who loves whom?". If you say love is defined as the basic principle of being, then it is clear. Then, of course, the thesis must be true. Then it is a tautology without much meaningfulness.

B: It may be that we have to do with a tautological structure here. I don't want to rule that out. We are moving toward first principles at the moment, toward the foundations of being. It is obvious that one very quickly comes to a circular conclusion in this area. You don't have to be put off by that right away. It is not a nice thing for our logic, but I assume anyway that human logic fails here finally to understand it and that we can only grope our way. It may be that in this approach one suddenly finds, 'Now I'm moving tautologically.' That's not something that worries me yet, but something that I rather expect when I'm dealing with this kind of thing, because it's difficult to say which is first. And that question is on the table.

T: In the question of origins, we always get into very difficult waters, that's true. Let's see if we can agree a little faster on the question of ought. For you, is ought more or less the same as ethical demands?

B: That's exactly it. That's where I, too, feel on safe ground, which is that Christian ethics ought to be grounded in love when it comes to the question: how ought I to behave as a human being? But perhaps at this point I may build a bridge between is and ought that may shed some light on being. If I say that what we find is ultimately based on the love of a Creator, not only in its being now, but also in its having been and in its future being, then this means that the whole development is characterized by love. This raises the question as to what the role of man is in this relationship? One possible answer would be: When a person attains the attitude of love, they can participate in the entire evolution of the universe. Then they are in harmony with the One who is in charge of the whole thing, namely God, and can play a productive role in this process. That would perhaps be a justification of the commandment of love as given by Jesus, namely that by attaining this attitude, being permeated by this spirit, we can come into harmony with God and in this way productively participate in His work.

T: We are somewhat contrary in our movements. You're thinking of the vistas and expansions that your thesis, if it proves solid, could bring, while I'm still in the process of testing the thesis itself − in a small way, if possible − to see how tenable it is. First, I agree with you on this: I, too, would accept as an ethical and moral requirement only that which can ultimately be traced back to love. In this, however, I say that it is possible to set ethical requirements as a personal maxim of life, or to open oneself to those that are not marked by love. In the second part of your thesis you say that love is the basis of all being. According to Christian doctrine, the adversary also exists. I think we are pretty much in agreement that he has largely stripped away love for both God and man, and rather wants the opposite. Does that mean that we have to deny him being?

B: Clever question. I was expecting it to some extent, or rather I already had this problem a bit in mind. I can only try to answer it very roughly. Perhaps we will have to go into it in more detail. The basic idea is that the loving Creator said: 'In order to make love possible in this creation, in this civilization, I must give it freedom, especially to humans. If I want to give them freedom, I have to give them an alternative.' In other words, evil is in the world, on earth, in the universe, so that freedom can exist, and freedom is a prerequisite for love. Without freedom, there would be no love. Part of the nature of love is that you can't force it.

T: I agree with you on that. And it is precisely this thought that makes me doubt your thesis. Because your thesis implies: Even someone who is inclined towards evil still has a grain of love in them; because otherwise they would have to cease to exist, if your thesis is correct. Then existence would not even have to be withdrawn from him. If love is the basis of being, that would mean that non-being would occur as soon as love is gone

B: Difficult question. We also have to break off at some point today. That's a very hot issue. We wouldn't want to suppress it in any way, but perhaps can't resolve it today. Here, the matter is a bit mysterious for me as well. I'm looking for a short formula to answer it, but I don't know if I can find that formula today. Even evil serves good. And consequently it serves a good purpose. Someone who is evil does not pursue that good purpose, but the one who is behind him, the Creator, pursues that good purpose.

T: So that means that it does not depend on love of the being. It can also exist without having any love. But it depends on the fact that something is loved by God, so that its existence becomes possible. Would that be the thesis?

B: That may be. But it leads somewhere else a little bit. You have to raise the question again occasionally. It's more about the fact that the drama that takes place, for some reason, should also have tension or, as I said earlier, should also have freedom, and that's why the dramatist has built in evil. But the dramatist acts with a loving intention, in the interest of the audience, to bring this simile.

T: I am not concerned with God's intentions here. I am concerned with where the love is that is the basis of everything. And in this case, that means you would say: It is with God in any case. Even when He gives viability to evil, He does so for a good purpose. He builds it in as a dramatist and thus has a kind of love and meaning in that act as well. He wants the existence of the negative for whatever reason and thus has some benevolence towards it. And now I ask again, is it the love that the Creator has for things that forms the basis of their existence, or must they also have love within them to be existent?

B: That's taking the whole thing to the extreme. Rightly so! At that point, it really becomes very difficult. I mean, clearly you have to think about the first part of my thesis accordingly. I will try to give a short answer, and then maybe we should stop the whole thing. It will keep on occupying us anyway. If I may use another simile and compare love with light, or the colour white, and evil with black, then I see or suspect in this model that the white somehow underlies the black. One can perhaps also justify it with the theory of opposites, that white is perhaps only white because black exists. Or let's take another example, let's take thesis, antithesis and synthesis. The idea is that opposites are necessary to accomplish a certain work. The spirit of this work, or the spirit of synthesis, necessarily pervades thesis and antithesis: it must pervade both, although there is a contrast between thesis and antithesis such as cannot be greater. But there is something that pervades them both. Or to put it more simply: If someone asks how evil comes into the world, there would be a short explanation, which would of course baffle the person concerned: Because of the love of God. And I stand by that answer. Although evil, if it knew that or if it could, would resist it, but it is nevertheless permeated by good. It is held, controlled, and directed by God, and the controller permeates it. But it is true that below the synthesis there is the thesis and the antithesis. Let's stop at that today.

B: Today is Friday 26 November 2004, and we are still in the question phase. Thea has the floor.

T: At the beginning of our conversation, allow me to recapitulate how I see the state of our conversation and what I think I have grasped of your thesis.

B: Certainly

T: Thank you. We were pretty much in agreement on the thesis, "Love is the basic principle of ought." I too agreed that all ought that I recognize as obligatory must be traceable to love somewhere, so that I recognize it. I leave open whether there are not ideas of others that cannot be traced back to love, but I would not recognize those as binding. So that was the point we agree on. With the second part of the thesis − love is basic principle of being − it became much more difficult. First of all, I have acknowledged that. If you start from basic Christian teachings, then everything created goes back to the love of the Creator. But I raised the question as to how it is then with the Creator Himself, whether love is also the basic principle for His existence. It then became clear that for me love is always a relationship. That means there must be someone who loves and someone or something who is loved. I had asked who, in the case of God, is the lover and who is the beloved. We had come up against the question of whether it is enough that everything has its basis in the love of God or whether everything that exists must also have a spark of love in itself somewhere in order to exist. The latter would imply that even the adversary, who according to the Christian view wants evil, would still have to have a spark of love somewhere, because otherwise, according to this thesis, he could not exist at all.

B: That was your summary? Do you have any new questions?

T: At the end of the conversation came your excursus about thesis, antithesis and synthesis, which I have not yet understood one hundred percent in what way it should be an answer to my question above.

B: I had emphasized that the thesis is also somewhat new and adventurous for me, so that I too can only feel my way towards it, especially since I have not thought about it for hours. Of course, these conversations do haunt you a bit and you occasionally have another thought about it, which may not even occur to you again today. It is about understanding a paradox possibly also here, thus something which cannot be grasped at all completely with human logic. Of course, I don't want to talk my way out of it and say, "It's a paradox and consequently we can't explain it." I want to approach somewhat this paradox that I suspect here, which is not at all clearly defined. One attempt was the thing with thesis, antithesis, synthesis. I want to take another example. We have in Scripture or elsewhere this phrase, "Death is swallowed up in victory!" Do you happen to know where that's written, roughly? Is it in Paul?

T: I think it's Paul. But I can't say with one hundred percent certainty.

B: We have life and death as two opposites. People experience this opposition not only in the form of living for a while and then dying, but also in the form of death already creeping into life in the form of illness, preparing itself, as it were. We say that man is mortal. Although he lives, he carries mortality with him. It can catch him any second if the circumstances are appropriate. Thus, in a certain sense, our existence is based on an opposition: life is in us - especially if we are spiritually reborn, as Jesus said to Nicodemus - and death is in us, in the form that - as some authors say - we have inherited mortality from Adam. Although two opposites are in us, we exist. But what I actually want to do is answer your question. I have lost sight of it a little bit. Can you repeat it quickly?

T: Whether it is enough for you that everything has its basis in the love of God, so to speak, or whether everything that exists must also have love in it?

B: That would be, so to speak, the spark of love that is also still contained in the adversary or not.T: It would have to be contained, if you affirm this question and as far as one ascribes existence to him.

B: These are things that I have not yet thought about in this pointed form, although I have already thought about the adversary relatively much. I can't answer it so spontaneously either. It's not something where it's obvious for me to answer it one way or the other. I approach it in the form that I formulate it in such a way: Also the adversary is somehow accepted by God, that is by the loving God, respected also in his sphere of power, which he has possibly granted to him Himself. He has assigned him a role, even if the adversary does not accept it at all or perhaps does not know or see through it. We believe all this as Christians more or less. Perhaps we go briefly to Goethe, to Faust, in the introduction, where the adversary says, "From time to time I like to see the old man and beware of breaking with him." Goethe has suggested here the idea that even the adversary respects the boss, the old man, that is, God, in a certain sense. In any case, I don't think this idea is far-fetched. I cannot really imagine that in the darkness, which we take as a symbol for the adversary, there is a spark of light somewhere, and yet we say: it is dark. Perhaps my thesis can still be held by saying: Just as life and death are simultaneously in one being, so in the opposites of light and dark there is something that is even more comprehensive. And it would be finally the love of the Creator by which it is embraced. It embraces the darkness and makes it usable. This darkness is even completely indispensable to achieve certain purposes of creation. The presumption, then, would be that love is not in the adversary himself, but that he is encompassed by love. That would be a picture. Shall we perhaps leave it like that?

T: Let's leave the picture like that. The thesis is for you, as I have heard, a tentative attempt, not a firm conviction. I suppose I have already shown with my questions that one comes to certain limits especially with this thesis. You have to think very comprehensively if you really want to take this thesis seriously. It is a very interesting idea for me that you place God and the adversary on one level, identifying God with light and good and the adversary with darkness and evil. And that you place love on a level that is still beyond good and evil. That would bring into play the thing you said about thesis, antithesis and synthesis and about paradox. But that puts us in a realm that is probably beyond human imagination. Would you agree with me there, or do you think that human imagination can still grope its way there as well?

B: Certainly one should not overdo it. We should perhaps think about whether we should even leave it at that, because a lot has already been said in the question phase, which could, for my sake, also be used to criticize this thesis or to defend it. We should consider whether we want to reflect further here or whether we should leave it at that. You can then also consider for yourself whether you want to formulate further questions.

T: I would say that this thesis is indeed so fundamental that one either has to erect an entire philosophical world building on it and see whether it is possible to sustain it without contradiction in itself, which would be an enormous amount of work, or that one simply leaves it at the statement that this thesis has this character and says: Let's move on to something else. Those are the two options I see here. Which would you prefer?

B: Maybe we shouldn't decide it off the cuff like that. but I totally agree that what we're talking about here could be a basic thesis for a whole philosophical system. The second part of the thesis about ought is, so to speak, a basic thesis for ethics, and the first part is a basic thesis for ontology, that is, for the doctrine of being. I have seen it that way from the outset. From that point of view, it is not absolutely necessary to think about it further now, because we will come back to it again and again.

T: I would not say that it is a basic thesis, but that it could be one. If it is possible to build a theory on it without contradiction, this would be a proof not of its truth, but of its actual suitability as a basic thesis.

B: Sure. I suggest we leave it at that today. I'll refrain from a closing statement. We'll think calmly whether we want to work on this further or whether we'll leave it at that. And in the meantime you can start thinking about your next thesis.

B: Today is Saturday 27 November 2004, and we want to continue our philosophical conversation. I must admit that in the meantime, meaning since yesterday, I have been thinking about these things a bit more than usual and already have the wish that we continue the conversation on my thesis at least today. I think we also had the impression yesterday that there is still a question open.

T: You had indicated that you wanted to put a question mark on my definition of love. My definition included that love is definitely a kind of relationship where the preconditions are: one who loves and someone or something who is loved. And that's where I'm really curious about your definition of love. I had thought that was really a minimum requirement for love anyway, and it was just a matter of what kind of relationship it might be. But if you don't even agree with that, I'm really curious about your definition of love.

B: I don't want to say I don't agree with that, especially since you have some freedom in defining terms. But in the context of this conversation, some thoughts did come to me afterwards that suggest I might slightly change my definition of love, which you already know from many previous conversations. However, I have to say that if I look back on how I defined love in the past decades, I would not have chosen "relationship" as the generic term, but the generic term "attitude", i.e. the attitude of a subject. Then you could of course say − and indeed this was included with me − an attitude towards whom? And with that you have already indirectly addressed a relationship. I had defined love very nobly in the past as wanting the good of another something. This other something can be one's own person, then it would be self-love, it can be God, then it would be God-love, it can be one' s neighbour, then it would be neighbour-love. Of course, it can also be an animal, then it would be animal-love. This definition, which has stuck with me for decades, may come up again when we talk about ethics. In the context of the doctrine of being, ontology, another thought has come to me, and that is to define love as wanting pleasure. Very stretched economically defined: wanting a maximum of pleasure. Through this maximization approach of the economists, a certain pressure comes into the whole thing. There is in it the wanting of progress in terms of more joy. Another word for joy would be contentment, happiness, and the word definitely comes back into play here as well. What is new here is the bridge I make to the concept of joy. If I imagine a perfect being, God, then it is part of my knowledge of God that God is filled with this wanting of joy. But this wanting is not related to a particular something at all, but to the universe. It is, so to speak, a wanting of joy related to the whole universe, to His whole creation. In it, of course, is His wanting joy in relation to my person, in relation to your person, in relation to human beings, in relation to animals, in relation to our whole civilization. But it is a kind of state. The being is completely filled with this wanting and this penetrates outwards. This is the light that emanates from God and that permeates everything. And now we come back to the doctrine of thesis and antithesis and the doctrine of opposites: to want joy I must accept suffering, to want good I must have evil, I must accept its existence in the universe. With that, I solved a little bit of the problem that came from you saying that love is actually a relationship. There are billions or trillions of relationships in that universal wanting of joy. But it is the state of a being. It is the spirit that is in God and that emanates from Him. This mind is programmed to "want joy." We are approaching the solution to the problem we had when we said: If even in the adversary there is still to be a spark of love, then it is not all darkness, then there is some spark of light. Then the mysterious thought would be − we agreed: we are moving at the foundations of existence − that indeed the essence of evil is ultimately to be justified with the wanting of joy on the part of the Creator. Evil is also invisibly flooded by this wanting. Evil must remain evil in itself, but it is nevertheless built into His creation, and thus it serves joy without willing it.

T. I would say that your execution does not bring anything essentially new to what we concluded yesterday. For even with God, I have presupposed that He loves everything, and therefore wills the joy or good of that which is loved. There I would agree with you that that is in a love relationship. Only I think it's the case with God that he thinks progress even more important than joy, though of course you can say progress is long-term joy. But in any case, that would also be a relationship. That, as you said, God's relationship then is not just to a few things, but to everything that is, I had assumed that anyway. In that respect, I think you did specify what you mean by love, but the specification did not undermine what we said before, which is that love is a relationship. It was certainly not your intention to undermine that.

T: You went into linguistic specifics, where I agree with you: there is a difference between saying 'I love someone' or 'X loves Y' and saying 'someone has love'. There I imagine love more like a possession, something that you have and then you could also formulate it like this: 'Someone is filled with love' or 'he is loving' and then I imagine a being. We will certainly find the same thing with faith. For me it would be interesting: Is there for you also the case that one says: X loves X, that is, themselves, self-love?

B: Yes, that is fully implied. If I imagine God who is filled with love, then that means that the spirit that is in God is − to put it in modern terms − programmed for love. I would say there are elements, fine matter, that make up this spirit body, that carry a program, that carry quasi-structured information that has as a basic element the love structure, that is, the attitude of wanting joy, to use my last definition. There is no other way than that this being, which approaches the universe with this attitude, also meets itself with this attitude. A being so imbued with love must also love itself. Inevitably.

T. I started looking at the adversary quite early in testing your thesis. Because he and God are the extreme cases: God as a being whom we imagine as totally filled with love for everything that exists. With regard to the adversary, however, the question arises: Is evil the exact opposite, is it devoid of all love, or does the adversary at least still have love for himself? The exact opposite would be no love at all, but only the wanting of destruction and suffering. Or does love still have a small part in this being so that it only loves itself, even if it is very narrow? But that would be a question about the structure and nature of evil. Those are the questions you get into, and that's probably because of the term "fundamental principle" that you've chosen here.

B: We also want to come to an end. I suppose we won't necessarily be heading for another session on this thesis. I will try to formulate a preliminary conclusion. Maybe then you can at least accept it as a conclusion without necessarily having to agree with it. I just thought of the following: We have in Christian teaching on the history of mankind the basic idea that the real antagonists are Jesus Christ and the adversary. Roughly speaking, Jesus Christ embodies good and the adversary embodies evil. I can bring this relationship to the scheme of thesis, antithesis and synthesis by seeing Jesus Christ as thesis, the adversary as antithesis and God the Father as synthesis. A very rough attempt that just occurs to me: He is, so to speak, the one who encompasses everything, who brought forth Jesus Christ and who brought forth Lucifer, who then fell and became Satan. But the Father encompasses everything.

T: Here the interesting case would occur that the synthesis would have been there temporally before the thesis and the antithesis.

B: But with this it also becomes clear that with the scheme of the opposites one needs something which then brings them together, so to speak brings them under one hat. There it helps us if we say that in the history of mankind good and evil at first as seemingly irreconcilable opposites literally confront and also fight each other. This is prophesied. And yet, both are ultimately subordinated to a higher purpose. However, there is a slight weakness in the matter: in some form, good triumphs. However, we know that evil will not disappear from the universe. It will only be banished from the earth, but it will remain, so that the trinity of thesis, antithesis and synthesis will actually remain existent, possibly forever. Only spatially there will be a shift.

T: You toned it down again at the end. Otherwise, you moved strongly towards Onesimus. That was the Christian thinker who dared to raise the thesis that there will be an all-reconciliation after all. He reckoned that God would have the power to redeem even the devil.

B: Let's leave that open for the moment. It has also been my thought independently of Onesimus, whom I unfortunately do not know in this detail. I thank you for connecting me with one from the deep past. The question is whether we should at least end this conversation, because otherwise it might get a little too exhausting. We can think about whether to let the thesis rest with that. I have to say, the conversation has been extraordinarily fruitful for me and has given an enormous amount of food for thought. In any case, purely from a feeling, I will continue to pursue this thesis. The things that you have brought forth through your midwifery, so to speak, strengthen me in this, especially since in the meantime I have also seen considerable relationships to approaches to thinking that I had already had before. It's not that it's necessarily something new, but perhaps an extension.

Spirit − does it exist or does it not exist?

B. Today is Friday 16 June 2006. It is already evening. We have had a little thunderstorm and now we want to tackle the next thesis, which comes from me and which reads as follows: Into the cosmos of the natural elements like hydrogen, oxygen etc. a cosmos of spirit elements is woven. These substances are so fine that they are difficult to detect with our sense organs and scientific measuring instruments. The spirit elements can be combined into systems. The result is, for example, the soul of a human being. In this, reason is an organ with the task of bringing about knowledge. Language plays an important role in this.

I have taken the opportunity to raise the question "What is reason?", which has arisen with us, and to link it to a much broader thesis. Thea's task now is to make the thesis a little more understandable by asking questions.

T: First of all, it's very good that you wrote down the thesis beforehand, because I don't think anyone could just memorize it in their head. When I read it, I asked myself whether the thesis belonged to the series of philosophical conversations at all or whether it had to be regarded as a statement of faith. Philosophers already differ on the question of what spirit is and whether there is such a thing as spirit at all. Here you are still trying to introduce a structure or composition of spirit as a thesis. I have my questions as to whether one can approach this at all with the means of philosophy. But at least we want to try it now.

I take it from the thesis that you still want to subdivide what spirit is into elements. Let's start with your definition of spirit!

B: First of all, may I state that I am aware that it is a very bold thesis. In particular, it is a thesis that contains statements that are very difficult to prove. But I thank you anyway for being willing to talk about this thesis and thus not to apply a very narrow concept of philosophy. You had asked about the definition of spirit. I have already conceded that spirit is difficult to prove. We normally cannot see it. With the present state of the art we also find it very difficult to prove its existence with the help of any measuring instruments. I would like to compare this situation of knowledge perhaps with the situation where natural science had already proved a large number of elements. The assertion was made that there must be still more elements on the basis of certain logical considerations. And lo and behold, the time came when one then discovered and evidenced these elements and added them to the catalogue of the elements. The situation before the verification of the new elements corresponds to the state of my knowledge in the matter of spirit. There is a whole set of facts which assume the existence of spirit. However, I do not simply claim that there is the additional element spirit beside copper, oxygen etc. I rather suspect that there is a similar cosmos of elements in the spiritual realm as we have scientifically proven in the gross material realm in the meantime. That means that there is not only the substance spirit in general but different kinds of it. That is my assumption. I can also give arguments for it. But your question referred first to what spirit is in the first place.

T: Right.

B. And there I am relatively at a loss. I put myself back into the situation of the natural scientists who said: There must be another element. I don't know exactly the situation in which the scientists were at that time. I don't know whether they could already make certain statements about what properties this element that they had not yet proven must have. That would be the situation that one does not know yet exactly whether there is something, and nevertheless already postulates properties of this unknown something. It is similar with me. Spirit is a substance which is so fine that it can penetrate into all grosser substances known to us. That is, spirit can penetrate into iron, into copper, into every molecule, into every atom. By the way, in my opinion, it is also everywhere; the universe is permeated by spirit. The earth is permeated with spirit. I don't know if I could make such statements if I had not read the modern revelation corresponding to this. When I first read it, it was something I immediately accepted. I also don't have such a good memory to know if I haven't had such thoughts before. I just do not know. But I immediately accepted it and recognized it to be true. Another property that I also suspect is this: spirit is an information carrier. Each spirit element carries information, possibly carries a program. It is a kind of chip. That would be a comparison from current technology, with spirit possibly being orders of magnitude smaller than the chips we can make right now.

T: First of all, one could filter from your answer: spirit elements are so fine that they cannot be detected by our senses or by our current measuring devices. Does that mean that you assume that everything that is not materially detectable is spirit, or do you assume that among the things that are not materially detectable there is also something else than spirit, for example actual pure nothingness or something that you would not subsume under the spirit elements?

B: I have no judgment about that. I simply assume that there is the gross material world and the ethereal world. For this we have modern revelation, which you also know. I do not dare to say more. Whether there is an empty space in this whole universe I do not know. But I would like to doubt it. I assume there is no empty space. And in this sense there is also no nothing. But the question of nothingness is already a special question. I would not like to burden myself with it here. I'm talking about a very specific something.

T: In any case, for you spirit is not only a cipher for everything that we can't explain or that we can't see, but you imagine a bit more about it, namely something material. Does spirit necessarily have a connection with something living or can spirit also belong to things that we humans perceive as dead matter