On Taking Polytheism Seriously

Abstract

In this article I am not so much out to prove anything as to explore in a preliminary way the importance of polytheism for any adequate contemporary philosophical or theological anthropology. This exploration will largely consist in an engagement with the thought of Stephen R. L. Clark, an Anglican philosopher who nonetheless defends a qualified version of polytheistic Neoplatonism. Eventually we will see the benefits of taking polytheism seriously and the danger in taking it too seriously. Human identity is a fragile thing even on a moderate view. Three views of the relationship between temporal relations and human identity can be distinguished. One extreme view suggests that all temporal relations are external. That is, the present self is not internally affected by its past self, nor is it affected by its future self. This drops of experience view (defended by Hume, Russell, and some Buddhists) in effect is a denial of a self enduring though time. At the other extreme is the (Leibnizian) view that all temporal relations are internal. That is, the present self is substantially the same through time in that both past and future phases of itself are explicitly or implicitly contained in it, and this is largely due to an expansive belief in divine omniscience with respect to the future. A moderate view in between these two extreme symmetrical views is the much more plausible asymmetrical view: one is internally affected by one's past but externally related to the future. According to this view, the past provides necessary but not sufficient conditions for the precise character of the present phase of one's self. We are causally affected by our past but we can only anticipate the future through probability estimates; on this view human identity is (accurately, I think) left in a rather fragile state with respect to the future.' Belief in the asymmetrical view of human identity is conducive to a William Jamesian healthy-mindedness in religion in that when melancholia interrupts healthy-mindedness it is possible for a new self, or at least a partially new self (James' twice-born self), to come to be. But this view also alerts us to an important question: how is it that we are not always changing, always trading in our old identity, but in some sense acquiring a stable character? Both the breakdown and the preservation of human identity must be incorporated in any ade