Infinite Desire and God as Being Itself

A reader from Portugal raised a question I hadn't thought of before:  "Can God satisfy our infinite desire if God is a being among beings?"  This question presupposes that our desire is in some sense infinite.  I will explain and defend this presupposition in a moment.  Now if our desire is infinite, then it is arguable that only a truly infinite object could satisfy it, and that such an object cannot be a being among beings, not even a being supreme among beings, but must be an absolute reality, that is, God as Being itself.  To put it another way, the ultimate good for man cannot be a good thing among good things, not even the best of all good things, but must be Goodness itself.  Anything less would be a sort of high-class idol.  So let's start with an analysis of idolatry.

I

What is idolatry? I suggest that the essence of idolatry lies in the illicit absolutizing of the relative. A finite good becomes an idol when it is treated as if it were an infinite good, i.e., one capable of satisfying our infinite desire. But is our desire infinite?

That our desire is infinite is shown by the fact that it is never fully satisfied by any finite object or series of finite objects. Not even an infinite series of finite objects could satisfy it since what we really want is not an endless series of finite satisfactions -- say a different black-eyed virgin every night as in popular Islam's depiction of paradise — but a satisfaction in which one could finally rest. "Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee." (Augustine) What we really want, though we don't know it, is the absolute good which is goodness itself, namely God. This idea is common to Plato, Augustine, Malebranche, and Simone Weil.

For thinkers of this stripe,  all desire is ultimately desire for the Absolute. A desire that understood itself would understand this. But our deluded desire does not understand this.  Our deluded desire is played for a fool by the trinkets and bagatelles of this fleeting world.  It thinks it can find satisfaction in the finite. Therein lies the root of idolatry.

Buddha understood this very well: he saw that desire is infinite in that it desires its own ultimate quenching or extinguishing, its own nibbana, but that finite quenchings are unsatisfactory in that they only exacerbate desire by giving birth to new desires endlessly. No desire is finally sated; each is reborn in a later desire. Thus the enjoyment of virgin A does not put an end to lust; the next night or the next morning you are hot for virgin  B, and so on, back to A or on to C, D, . . . and around and around on the wheel of Samsara. The more you dive into the flesh looking for the ultimate satisfaction, the more frustrated you become. You are looking for Love in all the wrong places.

So Buddha understood the nature of desire as infinite. But since he had convinced himself that there is no Absolute, no Atman, nothing possessing self-nature, he made a drastic move: he preached salvation through the extirpation of desire itself. Desire itself is at the root of suffering, dukkha, not desire for the wrong objects; so the way to salvation is not via redirection of desire upon the right Object, but via an uprooting of desire itself.

In Buddhist terms, we could say that idolatry is the treating of something that is anatta, devoid of self-nature, as if it were atta, possessive of self-nature. Idolatry arises when some finite foreground object, a man or a woman say, is falsely ascribed the power to provide ultimate satisfaction. This sort of delusion is betrayed in practically every love song ever written. Here are some typical lyrics (trivia question: name the song, the singer, the date):

You are my world, you're every move I make
You are my world, you're every breath I take.

There are thousands more lyrics like them, and anyone who has been in love knows that they capture the peculiar madness of the lover, the delectable madness of taking the finite for infinite.

Or will you deny that this is madness, a very deep philosophical and perhaps also religious mistake? I say it is madness whether or not an absolute good exists. Whether or not an absolute good exists, reason suggests that we should love the finite as finite, that our love should be ordered to, and commensurate with, its object. Finite love for finite objects, and for all objects if there is no infinite Object.

II

Suppose you accept what I just wrote about desire being infinite and ultimately unsatisfiable by any finite object.  Would this show that God cannot be a being among beings?  Not obviously!  The supreme being theists could agree that infinite desire is ultimately satisfiable only by an infinite object, but that the omni-qualified supreme being fills the bill.  Furthermore, they could argue, plausibly, that talk of Goodness itself and Being itself, which imply the divine simplicity, is just incoherent to the discursive intellect.  To which one response is: so much the worse for the discursive intellect.  The ultimate goal is attainable only by transcending it.

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Comments

[João Gabriel]

Dr. Vallicella, thank you for the response.

Do you think that the following quotation from Aquinas sheds some light on the relation between Being Itself as infinite and our desire as infinite? “For everything that according to its nature is finite is determined to the nature of some genus. God, however, is not in any genus; His perfection, as was shown above, rather contains the perfections of all the genera. God is, therefore, infinite.” (Summa Contra Gentiles, Book I, Ch. 43, par. 4) Could we argue that the only possible Object that can satisfy our infinite desire is God as Being Itself because it “contains the perfections of all the genera”?

I confess that it is a difficult topic and a profound one. I'm not trained in philosophy, so forgive me if I lack in some clarity and soundness. Once again I thank you for the time and the post and I will wait for some possible comments here.

[Bill Vallicella]

It is a useful quotation. It shows what Aquinas means by God's infinity. God is trans-generically infinite, not infinite within any genus.

It also suggests that 'God is not a being among beings' is equivalent to 'God is not in any genus.' Every being is in some genus or other; God is not in any genus; ergo, God is not a being among beings, but Being itself.

>>Could we argue that the only possible Object that can satisfy our infinite desire is God as Being Itself because it “contains the perfections of all the genera”?<<

Yes.

The topic is intrinsically difficult. At best, "we see through a glass darkly." If it ever becomes clear, it won't be in this life.

[Elliott]

Hello Bill and Mr. Gabriel,

It seems right to bring the concept of desire into the conversation about God and Being. But I think it's important to emphasize Bill's point that "the ultimate good for man cannot be a good thing among good things, not even the best of all good things, but must be Goodness itself. Anything less would be a sort of high-class idol."

Insofar as one desires God, that desire can't be merely a selfish inclination to consume an object or an experience. Rather, the desire must be a pure longing for something other than oneself, something of Absolute Value, not ultimately for the sake of selfish use, but for the sake of the Absolute Value itself. This sort of desire is a yearning to be taken up into the Absolute Value for the final end of the Value.

Now, if this Absolute Value were a being among beings, one that exists in the same way that all other beings exist, then it would depend on its values (e.g., goodness, love, wisdom, beauty). And we, as valuing agents, would be valuing the values above the Supreme Being. We'd be treating the Supreme Being as a means to value the values. We'd be de-absolutizing the absolute.

But if the Absolute Value, the Supreme Being, is Being itself, identical to its values, then it is Goodness itself, Love itself, Wisdom itself, etc. Then we'd be valuing the Supreme Being as Absolute Value, and not as a means to access some value that lies above and beyond.

[Bill Vallicella]

Well said, Elliot.

[João Gabriel]

Hello, Mr. Elliot. Thank you for the comment. As Dr. Vallicella said, it was well said.

[Elliott]

I appreciate the replies, friends. My comments are just follow up thoughts on your rich reflections.

On a related note, it seems that value is necessary for desire. If one desires x, he values x. If he doesn't value x, he doesn't desire x. So the presupposition that human desire is infinite seems linked to another assumption: the human capacity to value is an infinite capacity.

This may be an indication that the human capacity to value is infinite: we recognize that only an objectively real and perfect being, the maximally great being, is worthy of worship. Only a being of absolute, non-finite value merits absolute, non-finite esteem.

Since we recognize that an objectively real and infinitely valuable object is required for infinite esteem, we have the capacity for infinite esteem.

Is the human capacity to value infinite? If so, must God be Value Itself, Infinite Value Itself, in order to meet this infinite capacity?