The Meaning of God in Human Experience by William Ernest Hocking
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A Philosophy of Thinking Bigger

Prompted by the recent publication of John Kaag's American Philosophy, I decided to revisit Ernest Hocking after an absence of several decades. He had been an old friend. On re-reading him, however, I find myself in a position similar to that of Mark Twain and his father. It is indeed amazing how much Hocking has learned over the years.

The Meaning of God is not a work of theology. It is a study of religion. The difference is decisive because it means that Hocking's concern is with experience - feelings, and opinions as well as other perceptions - not with theory or rationalisation of religious belief.

Religious experiences don't occur primarily in the confines of ecclesial space or liturgical ritual. They are commonplace and part of daily routine, although often classified as something else, usually to protect ourselves from accusations of religious prejudice. Our secularised society prefers the fiction that religious sentiments are strictly private. They, of course, are not.

One of the most obvious examples of public religion is politics. "The religious loyalties of men have contained the secret of political loyalty as of other death-involving loyalties." This is what Hocking claims. One has only to recall the evangelical fervour of the recent American elections, even among the irreligious, to confirm Hocking's proposition.

Politics, like religion, is at the intersection of feeling and idea. Except through an idea, feeling cannot express itself in a socially productive way. "Few feelings are not improved by public reflection." Mere feeling is mute. Reflection demands a medium for the expression of feelings. This medium is called an idea. Ideas are what we think with, not what we think of.

Making connections among ideas is what we call reasoning. There is a particular kind of reasoning (C. S. Pierce called it 'abduction’ to distinguish it from deduction and induction) that seeks to include more and more feelings and opinions within the ideas being discussed politically.

Ultimately this approach to thought came to be called Systems Theory, which is an important practical as well as epistemological method in many modern disciplines. The essence of this method is: where there is disagreement about actions or priorities to solve a problem, try to formulate an idea of the larger system in which this problem occurs. [cf. Ackoff, Russell Lincoln. 1974. Redesigning the Future: A Systems Approach to Societal Problems. New York ; London: Wiley-Interscience. and Vickers, Geoffrey. 2001. Value Systems and Social Process. London: Routledge.]

There is also a theological implication of this approach to thought. The idea that has traditionally been used for thinking about the most comprehensive system, that includes all other systems and their feelings without residue, is God. As Hocking puts it rather laconically, "Men may lose their gods and still have God left...the displacement of old ideas by new does not imply the essential falsity of the old."

Fancy that, a politics aimed at making everyone right. Quite an achievement. Perhaps the time has come to reconsider Hocking and his religion.

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