The last book Milton K Munitz published before his death in 1995 is entitled Does Life Have a Meaning? (Prometheus, 1993). It is a fitting capstone to his distinguished career and exemplifies the traits for which I admire him: he is clear and precise like a good analytic philosopher, but he evinces the spiritual depth conspicuous by its absence in most analysts. Philosophy for him was not a mere academic game: he grappled with ultimates. Herewith, some notes toward a summary and critique of Munitz's position on the meaning-of-life question. I will also draw upon his penultimate book, The Question of Reality (Princeton 1990), as well as Existence and Logic (NYU Press, 1974) and The Mystery of Existence (NYU Press, 1974). These titles will be abbreviated by 'LM,' ' QR,' 'EL,' and 'ME,' respectively. Words and phrases enclosed in double quotation marks are quotations from Munitz; otherwise I use single 'quotation' marks.
1. Two Central Distinctions
Munitz's views on the meaning of life find their place within a conceptual framework articulated by two major distinctions. The one distinction is between existents in the observable universe and the "Boundless Existence" of the observable universe. (QR 207, LM 10) The other distinction is between two senses of 'intelligibility,' one Platonic the other Kantian. (QR 207) Our first task is to understand these distinctions and how they fit together.
A. The Distinction Between Interactive Existents and Boundless Existence
Munitz maintains that there are "two principal dimensions of Reality." (LM 9-10) One he calls the domain of interactive existents. These are the various entities that make up the observable universe, among them human beings. They are revealed to ordinary experience and science. But the observable universe does not exhaust Reality. There is something more, a second dimension of Reality, Boundless Existence, transcendent of the observable universe. (QR 192) Boundless Existence is described as " a wholly unintelligible, transcendent aspect of Reality manifested by the observable universe, though not to be confused with common theistic conceptions of God." (LM 10) The adjective 'transcendent' makes clear that Existence for Munitz is not the sum total of existents, but something distinct from them that they manifest. Existence is that which is common to them and constitutes them as existents. Talk of the boundlessness of Existence is not to be taken spatially or temporally. Existence is boundless in that it has no conceptual bounds, no definition, no nature. As such it has no essence and cannot be described or explained or known or understood. It cannot be known because it lacks all properties. It lacks properties because it is not a 'what' but a pure 'that.' (LM 58, QR 200) We could say that for Munitz Boundless Existence is the sheer unintelligible and inexplicable thatness or thereness of the interactive existents that constitute the observable universe. "It [Boundless Existence] is simply the ontologically fundamental fact that the universe exists." (LM 99)
Despite the last quotation, however, Boundless Existence for Munitz is not merely the fact that the universe exists, but this fact plus the fact's being unintelligible. The Existence of the universe is a brute fact for Munitz: it has no cause or purpose. Lacking a cause, it cannot have a causal explanation either in terms of a transcendent being such as the God of Aquinas or the One of Plotinus, nor in terms of anything immanent to the universe such as some proper part of the universe or the universe itself. Thus the Existence of the universe has neither a metaphysical explanation, nor any physical or naturalistic or scientific explanation. All causal explanations remain within the domain of interactive existents; none can account for the very Existence of these existents. Lacking a purpose, the Existence of the universe cannot have a teleological explanation. Lacking properties, it is impenetrable by the intellect. Not being God and not deriving from God, the Existence of the universe cannot be said to be good. More fundamentally, since the Boundless Existence of the universe is a pure thatness lacking all properties, it cannot have any axiological properties whatsoever. So it cannot be said to be either good or evil. One cannot say, with such metaphysical optimists as Aquinas, that ens et bonum convertuntur, that 'being' and 'good' are convertible (equivalent) terms. It cannot be said that to be as such is good. Nor can one say, with such metaphysical pessimists as Schopenhauer, that to be as such is evil. For Munitz, then, Boundless existence is valueless, meaningless, unintelligible and absurd, where 'absurd' means: without cause or reason. Munitz denies "that there is any inherent intelligibility or value in the Existence of the universe." (LM 111, emphasis in original)
As the Existence of all that exists, Boundless Existence does not itself exist. As radically other than every existent, it is nonexistent. And so it comes as no surprise when we read that ". . . Boundless Existence is another way of interpreting and sanctioning the use of the concept 'Nothing.'" (LM 96 cf. QR 64) As other than every thing, it is no-thing, Nothing. And yet Boundless Existence is real, a "dimension of Reality." This of course paradoxical. On the one hand, we are told that Reality is not exhausted by the interactive existents of the observable universe. There is more to Reality, namely, the Existence of these interactive existents. On the other hand, Existence cannot itself be an existent. If it were, it would have to have a nature, but it cannot have a nature because it is bare of all properties, devoid of all form and intelligibility. (QR 64) Hence Boundless existence is not some thing. So it is no thing, Nothing. It is, however, a 'positive' Nothing as opposed to a nihil negativum, a 'negative' or nugatory nothing. Boundless Existence is not a 'negative nothing' because, after all, the universe exists! It is just that the Existence of the universe is cognitively inaccessible and inexplicable. Munitz's approach to Existence is reminiscent of the negative theology of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, et al. "Just as in the theistic tradition, 'negative theology' proclaimed the total impossibility of saying anything literal and informative about God, so, for us, 'negative ontology' asserts a parallel ultimacy and cognitive inaccessibility of Existence." (EL 203) Munitz's ontology, then, is a "negative ontology."
But why, you ought to ask, do we need this second dimension of Reality at all? What motivates the introduction of Boundless Existence? Why not be satisfied with the domain of interactive existents? There are actually two distinct questions that ought to be prised apart. The logically prior one is: Why introduce Existence as opposed to existents as a theme of philosophical reflection? And then, supposing we have reason to introduce Existence, why maintain that it is conceptually boundless and hence lacking in form and intelligibility? After all, one could maintain that there is Existence as opposed to existents, while denying that it is unintelligible. That is indeed the classical line, one that I rehabilitate and further develop in my A Paradigm Theory of Existence (Kluwer 2002).
As for the first question, I would urge on Munitz's behalf that we need to speak of Existence in its difference from existents because Existence cannot be identified with any one of them or with all of them taken together. Why not? Well, Existence is in some sense common to all existents and so cannot be any one of them or all of them. Stretching the term 'property' a bit, we can say that Existence is a 'property' that all existents have in common. Of course it is no ordinary property, and certainly not one that contributes to anything's nature or description. Now there are those who will balk at this and say that there is no sense of 'property' according to which Existence is a property of existents. These Existence-blind individuals will deny the difference between Existence and existents and mantain that 'Existence' has no use as a term denoting this putative 'property' but has a use only as a term denoting existents collectively. But there is no need to go deeper into this on the present occasion since Munitz and I agree that there is a crucially important difference between Existence and existents.
Where I disagree with Munitz, however, is in his identification of Existence with Boundless Existence. You might say that I disagree with his theory of Existence but not with his introduction of Existence as an important philosophical topic. We agree that 'there is' Existence in distinction to existents. For him, Existence is so to speak 'by its very nature' boundless. Note, however, that from the fact that there is Existence, it does not follow straightaway that it is boundless. It is epistemically possible that it have its own form and intelligibility. That is a possibility that needs to be examined and cannot be lightly dismissed, namely, the onto-theological possibility that Existence itself exists as a paradigm existent with a nature all its own. Nevertheless, Munitz has a way of excluding this possibility, which fact brings us to his second main distinction.
B. Platonic Versus Kantian Intelligibility
"In what does the the intelligibility of the contents and the structure of the universe consist?" (QR 204) That the contents and structure of the universe are (partially) intelligible is a given. Munitz's question concerns the source of this intelligibility. Using 'Platonic' and 'Kantian' as handy labels we can say that on a Platonic approach, the intelligibility of the universe is intrinsic to it. The universe is intelligible in itself as opposed to being intelligible only in relation to us and the conceptual schemes we deploy. On the Platonic approach, then, the understandability of the world is not imposed by us but discovered by us. The universe possesses a unique intelligible order implanted in it by a Divine Intelligence. (QR 205, QR 27) There is exactly one quite definite way things are, and while it is knowable, it is independent of human cognitive abilities, conceptual operations, languages, schemes of classification, and the like. Coming to understand the world is coming to discern its unique logically antecedent order, an order that derives from God. The Platonic approach thus implies theism: God is the source of the world's intelligibility.
This is the approach that Munitz rejects. His approach is broadly Kantian: we are the source of the world's intelligibility. We create "conceptual schemes for purposes of description and explanation" and apply them to "the materials of observational experience" (QR 205) thereby rendering intelligible to us what is not in itself intelligible. (QR 205). God has no role to play either as source of the world's structure and intelligibility or as the ground of its existence. Human beings are the sole source of the world's structure and intelligibility, though they are not the ground of its Existence. Like Kant's Ding an sich, Existence for Munitz is indispensable but unknowable. It is the sheer THAT of the world, a THAT without its own WHAT; the WHAT of the world being supplied by us.
But why does Munitz reject the Platonic approach? He does not attempt decisively to refute Platonism and the theism it implies. Indeed, he claims that "one cannot refute the theist." (QR 201) But he thinks that by "persuasion" he can "bring about a change in the groundless commitments that define his [the theist's] world picture." (QR 201) Saying this, he of course begs the question in favor of the Kantian-Wittgensteinian view according to which any possible philosophical view including that of the theist is a world picture (Weltbild) the foundational beliefs of which are groundless. Clearly, if the views of the Platonist and the Kantian are mere world pictures the foundational beliefs of which are groundless, then the two pictures are incommensurable: there is no common Measure by which their differences could be adjudicated. This makes it difficult to understand how "persuasion" could be rational. When it is said that the foundational beliefs of a world picture are groundless, the claim is not merely that they lack grounds or reasons, but that they cannot be given grounds or reasons.
What does Munitz say to persuade us to adopt his Kantian world picture? Munitz and the theist agree on the fact that the universe Exists. (QR 202) But whereas the theist asks why it Exists and how it came into Existence, Munitz asks, "Why need the very Existence of the world . . . be explainable?" (QR 203) "Why should we not regard the very Existence of the observable universe as a metaphysical datum in the same way as God's existence is accepted by the theist as that which must remain forever unintelligible?" (QR 203)
Munitz is here offering a variation on a well-worn theme. Crudely put, if God explains the Existence of the universe, what explains God's existence? If the reply is that God's existence needs no explanation, then the objector will say that the same is true of the Existence of the universe, in which case the introduction of God as ultimate explanans is without rational motivation. What Munitz is suggesting is that God's existence would be as unintelligible as the Existence of the universe were God to exist; so nothing is gained in point of intelligibility by adducing God as the cause of the Existence of the universe. This reasoning will not persuade the sophisticated theist, however. He will insist that there is a crucial difference between the mode of existence of Munitz's universe and the mode of existence of the sophisticated theist's God. The universe for Munitz exists as a matter of brute fact: it exists without cause or reason. It's just there. The sophisticated theist's God, by contrast, does not exist as a matter of brute fact: he exists necessarily and is causa sui. Whereas the Existence of Munitz's universe is completely divorced from the essence (structure and content) of his universe, God's existence is entailed by his nature or essence, which is logically equivalent to his being a necessary being. This implies that God, contrary to what Munitz says, is the ultimate in intelligibility, in himself, if not for us. For Munitz, however, the idea of a necessary being is "opaque to human reason." (ME 125)
Above, I questioned the inferential move from Existence to Boundless Existence. We are now in a position to appreciate why, for Munitz, Existence must be boundless. The boundlessness of Existence is a logical consequence of his Kantian theory of intelligibility. All intelligibility comes from us and is imposed by us on "the materials of observational experience." (QR 205) But the Existence of these materials is not our creation or anyone's creation and hence is devoid of intelligibility. When the difference between Existence and existents is interpreted in the light of a Kantian theory of intelligibility, the consequence is that Existence must be boundless and thus "totally impervious to all efforts at human description and understanding." (LM 58) Existence in Munitz's system plays the same role that the Ding an sich plays in Kant's, and is subject to similar objections.
2. The Meaning of Human Life
We have seen that for Munitz there are two dimensions of Reality, the existent observable universe and the Boundless Existence which the former manifests. The question of the meaning of human life can be raised with respect to each of these dimensions. It is a plain fact that we human beings are among the interactive existents that make up the observable universe and that our interactions with human and nonhuman existents are meaningful to ourselves, whether in a positive, negative, or neutral mode. But it is also the case that, as existents, we participate in Boundless Existence, and more importantly, have an awareness of Boundless Existence. It follows that we can approach the question of the meaning of life in a two-fold way: we can ask about meaning as it arises within the domain of interactive existents from our conscious interactions with human and nonhuman existents, and we can ask about the meaning (or lack thereof) of our sheer Existing and of our awareness of Boundless Existence.
A. Meaning Among Interactive Existents
At this level there is no general answer to the meaning-of-life question. There are "plural meanings in individual lives" (LM 75) but no one meaning for all lives, or even one single meaning for any particular life. That there is a plurality of meanings across lives and in each life follows from the fact that there are many different ways of consciously interacting with many different existents each of which gives rise to meaning of some sort. At this level, the "locus and source of meanings" is the consciously appreciated interaction of human existents with other existents including human ones. (LM 76, 83) There is no transcendent source of meaning, and a fortiori no unitary transcendent source. All meanings are immanent to the domain of interactive existents.
Interactive meaning has both a subjective and an objective side. Interactive meaning is subjective in that "the finding and judgment of meaning with respect to some particular interaction is a matter for each individual, as conscious, to specify and decide." (LM 84) But this, for Munitz, does not amount to subjectivism since the various meanings of our lives arise in interactions with existents the properties of which are independent of what we specify and decide. Neveretheless, one could fairly characterized Munitz's approach to meaning as subjectivist inasmuch as he denes that there is any one objective transcendent source of life-meaning that is the same for all human beings. Munitz would therefore reject answers like the following: the meaning of life is to realize the identity of Atman and Brahman; the meaning of life is to enter into Nirvana; the meaning of life is to serve God in this world and be happy with him in the next; the meaning of life is to help other people.
If we want to know what is the meaning of human life, where 'the' implies uniqueness, Munitz's answer is that it has none at the level of interactive existents. "The notion of the meaning of life . . . is a mirage and wholly gratuitous." (LM 109) So to the classical question -- which presupposes that there is one ultimate meaning for all humans -- Munitz gives an eliminativist answer at the level of interactive existents. The problem of the meaning of life vanishes or dissolves once the uniqueness presupposition is isolated and rejected. We now need to inquire whether, for Munitz, the classical question has an answer at the level of Boundless Existence. At this point matters become very interesting.
B. Ultimate Meaning and Cosmic Spirituality
Munitz maintains that we have a need for "cosmic spirituality," a need that cannot be met by the observable universe or any of our interactions within it. (LM 95) This strikes me as true and important: (i) we, or at least some of us, have a deep spiritual need for ultimate meaning , and (ii) this need cannot be satisfied by any mundane interaction no matter how intense or long-lasting, or by any series or combination of interactions. We rightly judge those who are satisfied with mundane meanings to be spiritually superficial, as lacking 'depth,' as devoid of 'interiority.' Extending Munitz's point in a way he may not have agreed with, I would go so far as to say that even if one's life on this earth were unending, no satisfaction of the need for ultimate meaning would be forthcoming no matter what sorts of interactions one engaged in. The finite just cannot satisfy a being who is in touch, however fitfully, with his spiritual depths. So if the need for ultimate meaning is to be met, there is, on Munitz's principles, only one other 'dimension' in which to look, that of Boundless Existence. Compare the theist for whom ultimate meaning cannot be found among creatures, finite existents, but only in God who is Existence itself and boundless in the sense of infinite, though of course not boundless in Munitz's sense.
Boundless Existence quite plainly has a religious or quasi-religious significance for Munitz. This is especially clear from his 1974 book Existence and Logic: "Existence, as a mysterium tremendum et fascinans, needs to be recognized as the principal target of religious experience, and not as the subject of either conceptual analysis or scientific exploration." (EL 203) I agree with this wholeheartedly if the sentence is embedded within my theory of Existence. But of course the meaning intended by Munitz can be discerned only by embedding it in his theory of Existence according to which Existence is boundless where this term signifies not an infinity of perfections but "the total absence, inapplicability, and radical unavailability of any form of description or explanation . . . ." (QR 200) "An awareness of Boundless Existence would then consist in the realization that the Existence of the observable universe is unintelligible . . . ." (QR 203) Now Munitz recommends that we cultivate "cosmic spirituality" by cultivating "an intensified awareness of the characterlessness of Boundless Existence." (LM 104) Rather than losing ourselves in the realm of interactive existents, we are to maintain an awareness of Boundless Existence as a "co-present background" of our ordinary activities. The practice of "cosmic spirituality" thus requires that we live both "horizontally" and "vertically." We are to live horizontally among "interactive meanings" while remaining vertically aware of Boundless Existence. (LM 105) This is reminiscent of a Christian's practice of the presence of God, except that Boundless Existence is not God or from God. And yet it is obviously a religiously charged surrogate 'object' for Munitz.
But it is an 'object' only in a strained sense. It is not an existent, nor can one interact with it. It is "wholly other" than every existent. (LM 102) It cannot be conceptualized, known, understood, explained, or imagined. Nevertheless there is an awareness of it, one that is non-propositional and non-conceptual. (LM 111) The awareness of Boundless Existence is simply the awareness that the universe Exists and Exists inexplicably, without cause or reason. That there is an awareness of Existence I do not dispute. But this awareness does not deliver the result that Existence is boundless, or so I would argue. We must therefore distinguish the awareness of Existence from the awareness of Existence as boundless. The boundlessness of Existence cannot be imported into the sheer awareness of it; it is rather the result of a process of reasoning built upon an acceptation of a Kantian theory of intelligibility. In other words, Existence is in some sense given; but that Existence is boundless is not given but a matter of theory.
What Munitz seems to be saying, then, is that the classical meaning-of-life question does in the end have a positive answer at the level of Boundless Existence though not at the level of interactive existents: the meaning/purpose of life is to cultivate an "intensified awareness" of Boundless Existence. He seems to be saying that a life in which one cultivates "cosmic spirituality" via an "intensified awareness" of Boundless Existence is a life that is ultimately meaningful whereas one that does not cultivate any such awareness is not. Accordingly, someone who loses himself entirely in his interactions with existents, but never attends to the Existence of these existents, would be living a life devoid of ultimate meaning. And since we all partake of Boundless Existence in virtue of the fact that we exist, and since the content of the awareness of Boundless Existence will be the same for all, and since the cultivation of this awareness is possible for all, the implication seems to be that life does have one ultimate meaning available to all. All of us can and should cultivate "cosmic spirituality," and if we do our lives will be meaningful.
But this is not quite what Munitz says at the end of his last book. What he says is that what I am calling the classical problem of the meaning of life vanishes as it did at the level of interactive existents. At the level of interactive existents it vanishes because there is no one ultimate meaning but only a plurality of meanings within lives and across lives. At the level of Boundless Existence, however, the problem vanishes because "Boundless Existence is Nothing, Emptiness . . . [so that] in this respect life has no meaning either. (LM 109)
In sum, Munitz is telling us that human life has no one ultimate meaning either at the level of interactive existents or at the level of Boundless Existence. At the former level there are only proximate and relative meanings different for different people and different for the same person at different times, but no one ultimate meaning that can be put forth as the meaning of human life in the way that a theist might say that the meaning of human life is to serve God in this world and be happy with him in the next. At the latter level our lives in Boundless Existence have no meaning because Boundless Existence has no meaning: we exist as parts of the universe and so our existence is as absurd, valueless, and unintelligible as the Existence of the universe itself.
And so it seems fair to say that Munitz at the end of the day gives a nihilist or eliminativist answer to the classical question, Does Life Have a Meaning? which question is also the title of his last book. He in effect answers his title question in the negative. In the very last section of LM, however, he claims that his answer is "yes and no." (LM 113) What he means is that, yes, there is meaning at the level of interactive exists; but, no, there is no meaning at the level of Boundless Existence. But please note that one who says that there are meanings but no one single ultimate meaning at the level of interactive existents is in effect claiming that the answer to 'Does life have a meaning' is No even at the level of interactive existents. For many different meanings imply no one meaning. If a nihilist is one who denies that human life has a meaning, then Munitz is a nihilist.
But then what was the point of the rigmarole about "cosmic spirituality"? It is time to turn to critique.
3. Critique
1. Our first critical point is that there is a deep tension in Munitz's final position on the meaning of life. Is he saying that life has a meaning and that it is to cultivate "cosmic spirituality" by cultivating an "intensified awareness" of Boundless Existence? Or is he saying that life has no meaning? Munitz's official answer as revealed in the ipsissima verba of his final statements is the nihilist one that there is no one ultimate meaning. But this comports none too well with his talk of Existence as "the principal target of religious experience" (EL 203) or with his repeated talk of "cosmic spirituality." If there is a target of religious experience, and if talk of cosmic spirituality makes sense, a spirituality that is not a merely personal matter, but takes as its target the Existence of the one common cosmos, then it is difficult to see how life could lack an ultimate meaning. To appreciate the connection between religious goal and meaning-of-life, consider the case of Thomas Aquinas. For Aquinas, the ultimate target of religious experience is Existence Itself, which he identifies with God. (Deus est ipsum esse subsistens.) The awareness of Existence, ultimately, occurs in the Beatific Vision. Despite profound differences, Aquinas and Munitz have this in common: both maintain that there is Existence in distinction from finite/interactive existents, and both maintain that Existence is the ultimate target of religious experience. Clearly, for Aquinas, there is one single ultimate meaning (purpose) of human life, and that is the attainment and endless enjoyment of the Beatific Vision. One cannot within his system coherently decouple the ultimate target of religious experience from the ultimate purpose of human life. There is the one if and only if there is the other. This holds, I should think, for all religions worth taking seriously.
Take Buddhism, to which Munitz alludes, LM 104, n. 29 et passim. The ultimate goal of the religious quest according to Buddhism is entry into nibbana or nirvana. This is not a merely subjective state, but a state in which the very Being of beings is revealed as an ultimate voidness or emptiness. Clearly, pursuit and attainment of the ultimate goal is what give life meaning and purpose. This is a purpose for all human beings, indeed, for all sentient beings, since, via rebirth, all sentient beings eventually attain the goal.
The point I am making is that any system in which there is an ultimate target of religious experience is a system in which there is a single ultimate meaning of life, a meaning or purpose that is achieved by pursuit and attainment of the ultimate target of religious experience. It follows that there is a deep tension amounting to a contradiction within Munitz's system. For while he holds that there is an ultimate target of religious experience, Boundless Existence, he denies that life has a meaning. It would be futile to object that for Munitz there are many meanings at the level of interactive existents; for as I have made clear, many meanings imply no one meaning.
2. At the root of this tension is the instability if not contradictoriness of Munitz's theory of Existence. Existence is said to be boundless, which implies that it is without form or intelligibility. But how can something formless or unintelligible be the "principal target" or intentional object of religious experience? Munitz refers to Existence as a mysterium tremendum et fascinans. (EL 203) The Latin phrase could be translated as 'mystery fearful and fascinating.' It is associated with Rudolf Otto's classic Das Heilige (1917), translated into English as The Idea of the Holy. (Paging through Das Heilige just now, I fail to find the whole phrase mysterium tremendum et fascinans in the German original, but Otto does treat of mysterium tremendum and mysterium fascinans in successive chapters.)
Is Munitz suggesting that there is something holy or fear-inducing or fascinating about Boundless Existence? Presumably this is implied by his claim that Existence is the "principal target" of religious experience. But Boundless Existence is supposed to be bare of all properties. Now it cannot be bare of all properties and yet possess the property of being holy, or mysterious, or fearfully mysterious or fascinatingly mysterious. It cannot be propertyless and yet worship-worthy and awe-inspiring. It cannot be something closer acquaintance with which would transform or improve us. Religion is a quest for salvation; but contemplating Boundless Existence won't save us. Arguably, Boundless Existence is an anemic secular substitute for a genuine religious object such as the God of Aquinas, the One of Plotinus, Brahman, etc.
One might attempt a defense of Munitz along the lines of saying that Boundless Existence is bare of all intrinsic properties, which qualification would allow it to have some relational properties. But this defense won't work since the relational property of being regarded as holy could not confer upon Boundless Existence the status of being "the principal target of religious experience." If Existence really is the cynosure of cosmic spirituality and the main target of religious experience, then it must have intrinsic properties that equip it to play this role. Just as a theist cannot worship a God whose worship-worthiness is nothing more than his being regarded as worship-worthy, so too a 'cosmic spiritualist' cannot take the Boundless Existence of the universe as the focus of his spirituality and the target of his religious attitudes if Boundless Existence's worthiness of being so taken reduces to the cosmic spiritualist's taking or regarding.
3. The instability of Munitz's theory of existence also shows up as a tension between the claim that Boundless existence is real, and the implication that it is not real inasmuch as it is no more than an element of the world picture he adopts. Permit me to explain.
Boundless Existence is a form of Transcendence, albeit a radically attenuated form. But it is a form of Transcendence nonetheless, and as such real. For it is not a mere thought, or a mere object of thought, an ens rationis excogitated by the philosopher. It is, as Munitz repeatedly says and implies, a "dimension of Reality." It is real, where 'real' implies an ontological status independent of us, our concepts and categories. It is there objectively as the sheer facticity of the universe no matter how the universe is construed and rendered intelligible. (LM 71) The Existence of interactive existents is as real as the interactive existents themselves.
Unfortunately, this realism about Boundless Existence is inconsistent with the conceptual idealism which is a consequence of Munitz's Kantian-Wittgensteinian approach to intelligibility. There are two key ideas ingredient in this approach. One is that the universe is devoid of intrinsic intelligibility: whatever intelligibililty it comes to acquire it acquires from us. Intelligibility is imposed by us; it is not somehow inherent in the universe or derivative from God. This idea, by itself, does not imply conceptual relativism: it is consistent with there being exactly one historically invariant scheme of conceptual imposition. Kant, after all, is no conceptual relativist: his Verstandeskategorien do not vary from time to time, place to place, or even from species of finite intellect to species of finite intellect! The other idea is the specifically relativist one according to which there are 0r could be a plurality of equally valid schemes of conceptual imposition.
The problem is that Boundless Existence cannot be 'there' independently of us and our conceptual schemes as it must be to be a form of Transcendence if (i) there is a plurality of competing world pictures the foundational beliefs of which are groundless, and (ii) the belief that there is Boundless Existence is a foundational belief of Munitz-style world pictures. Talk of the groundlessness of foundational beliefs is of course Wittgensteinian. On Certainty #253 reads, "At the foundation of well-founded belief lies belief that is not founded." The idea is that the foundational beliefs of a world picture do not and cannot have grounds. Thus the foundational belief that there is Boundless Existence cannot have as its ground the actual existence of Boundless Existence. But this implies that the belief that there is Boundless Existence is both groundless and not groundless. It is groundless because it is a foundational belief of Munitz's world picture. It is not groundless because it is grounded in a fact of Reality, namely, that the universe exists independently of us.
This contradiction surfaces on pp. 71-72 of LM. On p. 71 we are told that Boundless Existence is there, objectively there, no matter how the observable universe is construed. But on p. 72 we hear that Boundless Existence "is not replaceable except by discarding the world picture with which it is associated." This implies, in contradiction to the claim on p. 71, that Boundless Existence is dependent on us and our world picture. For it implies that Boundless Existence is replaceable by replacement of a world picture.
4. In #2 above we saw that Boundless Existence both has and does not have such intrinsic properties as being worthy of being an object of religious contemplation. And in #3 we saw that Boundless Existence both does and does not have Reality. The dialectic of Munitz's position, I suggest, points toward the liquidation of Boundless Existence much as the dialectic of Kant's position led in Fichte and the other German idealists to the liquidation of Kant's Ding an sich.
5. In any case, why does Munitz need Boundless Existence? He thinks that the cultivation of cosmic spirituality via an intensified awareness of Boundless Existence affords two important benefits (LM 107-108):
a. "We are saved from falling prey to" such escapist and life-denying philosophies of life as Buddhism. As is well known, Buddhism places primary emphasis on the allegedly all-pervasive fact of suffering or unsatisfactoriness. In Buddhist ontology, every (samsaric) being is anicca, anatta, and dukkha, impermanent, devoid of self-nature, and unsatisfactory. As Munitz sees it, Buddhists and other pessimists wrongly project into the nature of Existence features of human life such as fear, despair, and anxiety. This can lead to a "withdrawal from and attenuation of life" and a concomitant "meditative absorption in and mystical contemplation of emptiness (sunyata) . . . ." (LM 107) Awareness of "the characterlessness of Boundless Existence" prevents any such illicit projection and concomitant denigration of life among interactive existents.
b. Cultivation of an intensified awareness of Boundless Existence in its boundlessness (characterlessness) also has the benefit of securing us against "a blind optimistic faith in the supposedly fundamental, overall goodness and long-range beneficence of God or reality, such as one finds in some traditional theistic philosophies, as well as in those of a neo-Platonic variety. Such optimistic faith is found, for example, in religious viewpoints that have a conception of personal immortality and an afterlife . . . ." (LM107-108)
Munitz is here rejecting both pessimistic and optimistic views of the Being of beings (the Existence of interactive existents) on the ground that "Boundless Existence has no properties of its own that work for good or ill with respect to human life . . . ." (LM 108) Rejecting both pessimistic and optimistic projections, we ought to turn away from Existence as a "source of enlightenment or salvation" and turn toward "the interactive meanings realized between the limits of birth and death for human existents." (LM 108)
There are two serious problems with this, as it seems to me. First, couldn't we achieve the benefits -- assuming they are benefits -- without bringing Boundless Existence into our world picture at all? To avoid the dangers, if dangers they are, of both pessimistic and optimistic life-denial, why not simply deny the existence of any dimension of Reality beyond that of interactive existents? One who holds that Reality is exhausted by interactive existents will be under no temptation to look for enlightenment or salvation or satisfaction or happiness beyond this life. Once again we see that the dialectic of Munitz's position tends towards the liquidation of Boundless Existence. There is no need to make Boundless Existence a theme of philosophical reflection to attain the supposed benefits he touts.
The second problem is that a recommendation that we turn away from Existence as a "source of enlightenment or salvation" flatly contradicts the claim made explicitly in Existence and Logic that Existence is "the principal target of religious experience" and the implied claim in Does Life Have a Meaning? that cosmic spirituality has Boundless Existence as its focus.
4. Coda and Diagnosis
Munitz struggles valiantly to provide an affirmative answer to the question whether human life has a meaning and the related question whether there is a form of spirituality that we moderns could take seriously. He fails on both counts and succumbs to nihilism because his conceptual resources are too thin. He succumbs to nihilism in a two-fold sense: he ends up having to deny that there is any one single ultimate normative meaning of human existence, and he, or rather the implicit dialectic of his position, ends up liquidating Boundless Existence. Existence construed as boundless in his sense becomes a mere nothing. I suggest that these unsatisfactory outcomes stem from his Kantian-Wittgensteinian theory of intelligibility.
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