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Idealism and Religion in the Philosophy of T.L.S. Sprigge
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 September 2010
Abstract
Although T.L.S. Sprigge described idealist philosophy as the stage beyond religion, his pantheistic idealism, while not itself a religion, offers a conception of God that seeks to meet the aspiration of human beings to understand their own place in the universe. While he shared with most mid twentieth century British philosophers a basic assumption of the primacy of experience, Sprigge took this strong empiricist assumption in a Berkeleyian rather than a Humean direction. This enabled him to find a place for the phenomenon of religious consciousness, which he saw as the source of a yearning that can be met by absolute idealism's conception of a ‘Whole’ that encompasses ourselves and all aspects of our world. He describes this recognition as the faltering adumbration of a truth – one that is sometimes encountered in aesthetic experience, and sometimes more directly in the lives of mystics. The metaphysical basis for this form of absolute idealism is provided by a concept of time in which each fleeting ‘now’ has a fixed and permanent place, and by a theory of identity according to which personal individuality is dissolved in a unitary ‘Whole’.
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References
1 Gale, R.M., ‘Timothy Sprigge: the Grinch that stole time’, in Basile, Pierfrancesco and McHenry, Leemon B. (eds.) Consciousness, Reality and Value, (Heusenstamm: Ontos Verlag, 2007), 27–40Google Scholar, 27.
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14 William Sweet, ‘God, Sprigge, and Idealist Philosophy of Religion’ in Basile and McHenry, Op. cit. note 1, 181–210.
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18 Leslie Armour, ‘Idealism and God’ in Basile and McHenry, Op. cit. note 1, 154. Armour argues that the key figure in the progression that brought idealism close to the heart of Christianity was Malebranche, because, while not denying the reality of material objects, he thought they were expressions of ideas in God's mind.
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29 I am grateful to Anthony O'Hear for suggesting this interpretation.
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34 The full version of this much echoed saying of Empedokles of Akragas (fl. 444 B.C.) is as follows: ‘For it cannot be that aught can arise from what in no way is, and it is impossible and unheard of that what is should perish; for it will always be, wherever one may keep putting it.’ R.P. 165 a. in Burnet, J., Early Greek Philosophy (London: Adam & Charles Black, 1952 [1892]Google Scholar). See Lucretius (c.95–c.54 BC), De Rerum Natura, Book I, 162–226, for a description by a later Roman writer of ancient Greek atomism.
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46 The full passage from Hume is this: ‘Where am I, or what? From what causes do I derive my existence, and to what condition shall I return? … I am confounded with all these questions, and begin to fancy myself in the most deplorable condition imaginable, inviron'd with the deepest darkness, and utterly deprive'd of the use of every member and faculty.
Most fortunately it happens, that since reason is incapable of dispelling these clouds, nature herself suffices to that purpose, and cures me of this philosophical melancholy and delirium, either by relaxing this bent of mind, or by some avocation, and lively impression of my senses, which obliterate all these chimeras. I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends; and when, after three or four hours' amusement, I wou'd return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strain'd, and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any farther.
Here, then I find myself absolutely and necessarily determi'd to live, and talk, and act like other people in the common affairs of life.’ Hume, David, A Treatise of Human Nature, Bk. I, 4. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985 [1739–1740]), 316.Google Scholar
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