THE GUENONIAN “PROOF” OF GOD: THE METAPHYSICAL INFINITY

Okay, hold your horses for a second, let me clarify some things.

Firstly, “Proof” here doesn’t mean anything like “the argument is true, therefore what the argument aims to prove is true”. It is rather the opposite. God is true, God is real, and therefore the argument works. The logic that undergirds Guenon’s and Schuon’s use of “proofs” is not that the proofs are perfect or infallible in themselves, indeed anyone can take apart an argument by its premises. Anyone can believe anything they want, no matter how illogical or contrary to experience it is. The logic of their use of proofs is instead based on “intellection”. They help, in Cutsinger’s words, to “see along” the ray of light they trace up to its source. It requires attention, mindfulness, and a willingness to know. In short, it requires faith. If you are not willing to be convinced, you won’t be, and it is not always immediate even if you want to be. People are different and there are different ways for different people to be convinced.

Secondly, Schuon, Guenon, and Coomaraswamy never used syllogisms or anything similar in their writings, although I don’t know if they used it in private correspondences. They were narrative and “symbolist” metaphysicians through and through. So, what I am doing here is taking their ideas and putting them in another form.

Thirdly, although I called it “Guenonian” here, it is not exclusive to him, and it isn’t an original argument. It is an adaptation from several different arguments, or rather another perspective on them. Schuon uses the same language, so does Coomaraswamy, but I first got the idea from Guenon, who gives a clearer explanation of this particular use of “infinity” in several places [1,2].

Lastly, many classical arguments for God are different perspectives on the same principle of “negation”, they “negate” the world and what is left is God. They are “apophatic”. This argument is also like that. So, with that out of the way, let’s begin.

The argument(s) can be put like this:

1. The infinite is that which has no limits.
2. The infinite can be conceived in the mind.
3. Whatever can be conceived in the mind exists in the mind,
4. The infinite can either exist only in my mind or in reality outside the mind.
5. The infinite, by definition, has no limits, including limits of existence.
6. Therefore, the infinite also exists outside my mind.
7. The infinite is greater than all things with limits.
8. The universe has limits.
9. The infinite is greater than the universe.
10. There is either one infinite or more than one infinite.
11. If there is more than one infinite, they are limited in that they are not one another (i.e they exclude each other).
12. The infinite cannot be limited in any way.
13. Exclusion is a limitation.
14. Therefore, there is only one infinite.
15. There is either something greater in some quality than the infinite or the infinite is the greatest in all qualities.
16. For something to be greater than the infinite, it means the infinite is limited in that respect.
17. The infinite cannot be limited in any respect.
18. Therefore, the infinite is the greatest in all qualities.

I’m stopping here, but you can continue on this line of thought and deduce all the classical attributes of God (And it is God that is this “Infinity”). I personally dislike syllogisms, because of how they’re used and how they aren’t “seamless”, at least to me. Plus I’m not good at them (I may have skipped a step or two, you could check). I’m pretty sure you could re-arrange these 18 lines for me in a better way. I think in narrative, and I better understand arguments put that way, but I’m writing this for those that prefer arrangements like this and would love to pick it apart, or put it together better than I could. I would love to see your ideas on this.

Before you do this however, I want to clarify some things concerning the argument. The idea of infinity presented here (it is not a “definition”, since that would make the infinite “defined” and therefore “limited”) is probably the most fundamental, and any other idea you have has to conform to this one. It is precisely apophatic, because it is a “negation” (The infinite has “no limits”, “no” being the negation of “limits”). By affirming the infinite, we are not affirming just any “thing” as opposed to another “thing”. For example, a chair is not a spoon; and to call something a chair is to say is to say it is not a spoon, as well as not being an unlimited number of other things (human, bird, etc.). The infinite is “unlimited”, meaning in some sense that it “contains” all definitions without being “defined” by them. Some would call this a contradiction, the reason being that, if we can speak of the infinite, it can be defined, as something truly undefined would be “unspeakable” and “unknowable”. My response would be that the infinite is exactly “unspeakable” and “unknowable”, that is the point of the definition. But it is “unspeakable” and “unknowable” for a reason other than un-intelligibility. There are two reasons why something is unknowable:

1. It is absurd, like a square circle, a concept that is no concept at all, as it negates itself into absurdity. It is precisely a “mis-conception” and not a “conception” in the mind. This is what Schuon calls “infra-logic”, or what we call “irrational”.
2. It is “beyond logic”, that is, the other “end” of logic, which can only be its source. This means that logic is “surpassed”, not “negated” into absurdity. In a similar way, logic itself undergirds how the physical world is ordered, yet is “beyond” it in that without “logic”, that is, the fundamental principles that make the world work, the cosmos collapses into absurdity and nothingness. This “beyond logic” Schuon calls “supra-rational”, a higher form of “knowledge”, which some may call “gnosis”, which cannot be exhausted by words or discursive logic.

The infinite is “supra-rational” in that logic itself leads “beyond itself” (not “beneath itself”) into infinity. The idea of infinity having “no limits” is not a “negation” in the sense of combining two contrary concepts (a square and a circle) into one (also limited) concept, it is that which, in Guenon’s words:

“…nothing can be denied, and is therefore what contains everything, that outside of which there is nothing; and this idea of the Infinite, which is thus the most affirmative of all because it comprehends or embraces all particular affirmations whatsoever, can only be expressed in negative terms by reason of its absolute indetermination. In language, any direct affirmation is in fact necessarily a particular and determined affirmation-the affirmation of something particular-whereas total and absolute affirmation is no particular affirn1ation to the exclusion of others since it implies them all equally” [1]

The infinite is not a “combination of all things”, which is “horizontal”, and ultimately absurd. It is the “unity” of all things, which is “vertical”. Therefore, it is safe to say the infinite is not a “concept” at all, at least not in the usual definition. You cannot “imagine” it. It is in the “background” of all imagination, because it is “all”, and of course we can know “about” all yet not know all exhaustively like you’d be able to describe a potato. Cutsinger explains better when describing what Anselm meant by “thought” in his ontological argument, which in truth, if you haven’t figured out already, is another form of this argument (replace “Infinity” with “That than which nothing greater can be thought”):

“…it is possible for us think about something which is not, and cannot, be given to us as a specific object of consciousness-something, in other words, which we can never look at. And this we can do by thinking our way along the trajectory described by the scale of ontological greatness. Kant complained that the existence of God cannot be proven by inserting “being” into a prior thought about God, but he too was thinking in a very different way from our saint. That-than-which-nothing- greater-can-be-thought is not a special datum of thought, but a provocation to thought. Rather than inserting God into the mind, the author of the Proslogion is endeavoring to draw that mind out of itself, teasing it into passing beyond its fancies and beliefs, up and out and along a corridor of genuine insights, upon no one of which it lingers, following instead their invitation to an always keener but never exhaustive vision. It is precisely this drawing, this teasing, this passing, and this following, and hence this indescribable vision, which the ontological proof is designed to make possible.” [3]

I highly recommend his explanation of Anselm’s ontological argument. I think the more popular explanations of this argument don’t do it justice.

There is also the problem of “mathematics”, which you may think has “infinities”, which negates the conclusion that there has to be one infinity. The infinity presented here is the “metaphysical infinity”, which, on close inspection, is the original infinity. All mathematical “infinities”, which are not really “infinite” except in a particular “domain”, derive from the one metaphysical infinity. The indefinitude of natural numbers is in one “domain” only, precisely that of “natural numbers”. It is in an indefinite number of other domains, the most obvious of which is in other number “domains” (irrational, integers, fractions, etc). It is not infinite except in a derived sense. Think about it, the idea of a hierarchy of infinities (see Cantor’s Theorem) is absurd without qualification, the qualification being that they are only “infinite” in the sense that there is no end to a particular explication of a particular property of a sequence. For example, the sequence of natural numbers can be defined by 1, 2, 3, 4 … ∞. By this definition, there are an indefinitude of “numbers” (if we can call them that) not included in this sequence, as fractions are not natural numbers, but an impossible division that is used to represent a “numerical” value for something that is beyond basic quantity (what we call “natural numbers”). They are “natural” for a reason: They satisfy the basic definition fully, that is, they are pure “quantities”; discrete, with absolute, or “quantized” intervals (This is why Wolfgang Smith sees quantum phenomena as matter “tending” to pure quantity, “quantum” and “quantity” coming from the same latin word: quantus, “how much”). Other sequences break this rule in some way. For example, Fractions have varying, or “non-quantized”, intervals, behaving more like quality than pure quantity, hence their applicability in many measures of quality, although not able to exhaustively describe those qualities. An example of phenomena beyond natural number notation is physical extension, which by nature is not discrete like natural numbers. Because of this “qualitative” aspect of nature, natural numbers require “modification”, a kind of “analogical” transposition, to fit the realm that is not pure quantity.

The fact that these “infinities” are limited is the reason Guenon preferred to call them “indefinites”, in order not to confuse those who want to learn the difference. The true infinite needs no “qualification” that renders it finite, the “copycat” infinites are “infinite” only in virtue of analogy with the true infinite. For more on this, check out Guenon’s “ The Metaphysical Principles of Infinitesimal Calculus “.

There is more, but it would be way too long for one post. For now, just take a look at the argument, pick it apart, and put it together. Look along and at it. It’s not perfect, obviously, but I think it is good enough if you eventually realize the infinite being described here. Arguments are keys, your mind is the door. I hope you can open it and glimpse the other side. It’s glorious.

[1] Guenon, R. (2004). The Multiple States of the Being. Sophia Perennis.

[2] Guenon, R. (2004). The Metaphysical Principles of the Infinitesimal Calculus (Collected Works of Rene Guenon) (Vol. 1). Sophia Perennis.

[3] Cutsinger, J. S. (2007). Thinking the Unthinkable: Anselm’s Excitatio Mentis. April 2001.

Originally published at http://theosymmetry.wordpress.com on August 8, 2020.