Metaphysics, Negative Dialectic

·期刊原文
Metaphysics, Negative Dialectic, and the Expression of the Inexpressible
By Frederick J. Streng
Philosophy East & West
V. 25 (1975)
pp. 429-447
Copyright 1975 by University of Hawaii Press
Hawaii, USA

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AUTHOR'S NOTE: I want to express my thanks to the conference participants for their discussion of the issues presented here, and in particular to Dr. David Griffin, Center Process Studies, for his subsequent correspondence regarding Whitehead's use of the term "individual" in relation to the terms "actual entity" and "enduring object."

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Throughout history philosophers have recognized the difficulty in communicating the reality of existence. Words are useful for building partial images; but they also distort by not fully conveying all feelings or by limiting a multi-dimensional experience to a single facet. Conceptual formulations are not only images; they are also evaluations. They are lenses that help select which aspects in the flow of human sensitivities, experiences, and attitudes are to be identified as real. Especially when words are used to express the character of the "human presence" ─ to expose that dimension of existence which can become aware of "being aware" ─ are they recognized to be awkward. The major problem is not simply that specific words are inadequate to the dynamic of self-awareness, but that the processes of becoming self-conscious about human self-consciousness contribute to the resulting awareness of oneself. A person is already in the dynamics of self-awareness when "being aware" becomes an object of one's reflection. Such forces identified by the terms "intention," "evaluation," and "perspective" are already participating in conceptually designating and structuring "the way things are." It is not surprising that some seers have suggested that the most appropriate human response to this sense of participating in inexpressible reality is silence or a song of praise.

Part of the sense of human "presence," however, is that people experience change in their states of awareness. The fact of change represents not only a confrontation with the "new"; implicit in change is the sense of "my" changing or being changed. A changing human presence requires choice. We distinguish between things and feel responsible because we are distinguishing the sensitivities of "our presence." In distinguishing between things, we sense that the distinguishing process represents subjective unity, which is "oneself"; and this "self" automatically contributes, for better or worse, to the experience of value (joy, peace, satisfaction, pleasure). Thus, besides the sensitivity to an inexpressible dimension of human life, there is the recognition that each person is responsible for dealing with his or her experiences as a "self." A central problem in human reflection on existence is that a "self" is reflecting on the "self." The implications of this are (1) that the reflection is both limited by the particularity of the self's perspective while it is also a manifestation of some greater inexpressible context, and (2) that there is a sense of responsibility by the self to choose those forms of self-awareness that most fulfill it. Can a person get beyond his own cosmological construction? What are the processes by which human self-awareness can most fully expose reality?

It is this issue of the procedure for expressing the inexpressible that I want to focus upon here. I have been asked to compare some aspects of the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead with some from the Indian Buddhist seer Naagaarjuna.

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In the context of the growing discussion of the relation between Whitehead's thought and that of Naagaarjuna's among philosophers, I think it is important to raise the question of the functions of the truth claims in the attainment of the reality which these claims express. Such a question refers to some explicit claims about reality, such as the nature of the self, of ultimate reality, causation, and conceptual reality; however, here we will deal with truth claims in the context of their implication for human beings who wish to attain the reality that these express. We are concerned with the instrumental value of holding to one claim or another for "becoming real." We will proceed by examining three areas in the writings of both men. First, we will analyze the way in which Whitehead and Naagaarjuna understand the use of propositions for expressing the nature of existence; second, we will consider how each uses the notions of a "compound self" and of a rejection of an eternal independent reality in their articulations of causation; and, third, we will consider the highest ideals as expressed by each philosopher and relate them to their respective procedures for knowing reality.

I. THE USE OF PROPOSITIONS IN EXPRESSING THE INEXPRESSIBLE
Both Whitehead and Naagaarjuna use statements in the hope of expressing truth. Whitehead's voluminous writings, but especially the systematic treatise Process and Reality [1] (hereafter cited as PR) or an essay like "Mathematics and the Good" [2] (hereafter cited as MG), indicate how important concepts and logical relations are for him. In Naagaarjuna's Muulamadhyamaka-kaarikaas (hereafter cited as MMK) [3] and Vigrahavyaavartanii (hereafter cited as VV) [4] we find the use of logic, many negative statements, and some specific assertions about existence. At the same time, both men recognize the limitations, even the deceptive force, of concepts. Our task in this section is to analyze in what ways each depends on concepts and propositions, and in what ways each uses them differently for expressing truth.

It is significant that Whitehead expressed the nature of existence in a constructive speculative philosophy. He advocates the practice of philosophy in order to arrive at generalizations. Philosophic generalizations, he affirms, seize on those characters of "abiding importance," while dismissing the trivial. [5] More specifically, the purpose of speculative philosophy is "to frame a coherent, logical, necessary system of general ideas in terms of which every element of our experience can be interpreted." [6] While a person should keep his intellectual system open in an awareness of its limitations and the recognition of a "vague 'beyond'," [7] he should recognize that hypotheses in systematic thought help direct thought to learn the nature of things. Both imaginative interpretation and rational thinking are important to gain a "synoptic vision" that has application to a wider scope of experience than that of immediate observation. [8] The procedure of formulating generalizations helps to perceive

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distinctions and relationships with the experienced world; the ideas we use specify and classify our experiences according to "the 'sort' of occurrence" each is. [9] In ideas and generalizations, then, Whitehead sees a means whereby "importance" or "interest" is given to aspects of human experience, which otherwise would dissipate into triviality.

The ultimate criterion of authenticity of any speculative system is, according to Whitehead, "the general consciousness of what in practice we experience." [10] All people have a direct knowledge of the actual world in the sense that human beings cannot escape the matter-of-fact character of existence. [11] This, in effect, gives a person direct access to what is real -- without need for special revelation or superconsciousness. There is a primary mode of conscious experience which fuses "generality with insistent particularity." [12] In PR Whitehead focuses on the importance of sense-perception in the consciousness of being a part of the actual world when he says: "Sense-perception of the contemporary world is accompanied by perception of the 'withness' of the body. It is this withness that makes the body the starting point of our knowledge of the circumambient world." [13] The sense that we are part of the physical world, in its concrete particulars, carries with it the recognition that the sensa, which we say in abstraction makeup the concrete relations of real events, are not the realities of the events in which they appear; rather the sensa and our ideas have a content to which they refer. Propositions, therefore, indicate some nonlinguistic determinate particular; [14] however, the reality referred to is not some sort of self-sustaining entity. It is intrinsically related to other modes of reality which are mutually dependent on each other for their realization.

Conceptual experience, especially as expressed in generalities of speculative systems and mathematics, is a means to focus human awareness, through which human beings can sense significance. Whitehead puts it this way:

Our exact conceptual experience is a mode of emphasis. It vivifies the ideals which invigorate the real happenings. It adds the perception of worth and beauty to the mere transition of sense-experience ... It is the transformation of the real experience into its ideal limit. Our existence is invigorated by conceptual ideals, transforming vague perceptions. [15]

Conceptual formulation is a power for assembling aspects of the flux of Existence into patterns; it is a "mode of emphasis" which vivifies sense-experience through selection (of some past occasions). The ontological character of formulating generalities is that in this vivifying, value-imbuing, integrating experience, the dissipating energy of multiplicity is coordinated into a unity; the many become one. [16] In theory "the vagueness of practice is energized by the clarity of ideal experience." [17] In order to express thought, language is of vital importance. In a context of discussing "Creative Impulse," Whitehead states: "Freedom of thought is made possible by language: we are thereby released from complete bondage to the immediacies of mood and circumstance." [18]

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Of course, not all use of language or, in particular, propositions are equally useful in expressing adequate images of reality. Regarding the nature of the truth of a proposition, Whitehead states that it "lies in its truth-relation to the nexus which is its logical subject. A proposition is true when the nexus does in reality exemplify the pattern which is the predicate of the proposition." [19] When a proposition conforms to reality it can be said to be true; and in such a case there is a connection of the objective contents of two "prehensions" through an identical pattern ─ even though in the temporal sphere it is only a partial pattern. The complete truth is a representation that participates in the divine nature ─ that "nature" of God, which Whitehead calls the "consequent nature." We will discuss this more fully in the third section, but here it is important to see that for Whitehead there are patterns of reality within the matter-of-fact world, which can be partially known, which contribute to the consequent nature of God, but which are not realized fully by any person or by any actual occasion in the temporal realm. The reason any error can be involved in human apprehension is that secondary or indirect "conceptual feelings," (which are partially identical, and partially diverse from the eternal objects for the data), are felt in the subject as if they were physical facts, and thus the intuitive judgment conforms to what is directly felt in the datum. [20] Error, therefore, originates in an expectation (that is, a subjective aim) which is found at an unconscious level, when a secondary conceptual feeling transmutes partial conformations of eternal objects and data into apparently authentic perceptions (perceptive feelings).

The key function of conceptual formulations for Whitehead, then, is to bring into focus persistent patterns of human experience that manifest "interest" or "importance." This activity, in turn, vivifies experience by imbuing some aspects of experience with greater value. There is an assumption that human beings can participate in this exercise through their normal capacities as thinking and feeling persons; and that an authentic grasp of the important features of life is available through an appeal to common experience. In contrast Naagaarjuna, through his negation of claims regarding the reality or nonreality of basic constituents of existence as formulated in the earlier Abhidharmic understanding, emphasizes the delusive character of conceptual formulation. For him this effort is part of the human fabrication of existence, of phenomenal extension (prapa~nca). To try to designate in what way the constituents of reality (dharmas) were real or nonreal, or how they arise or dissipate, is not something which in itself is of the highest value. Thus, he says at the end of an analysis of nirvaa.na and the flux of existence:

Since all dharmas are empty, what is finite? What is infinite?
What is both finite and infinite? What is neither finite nor infinite?

Is there anything which is this or something else, which is permanent or impermanent,

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Which is both permanent and impermanent, or which is neither?
The cessation of all acquisition (upalambha) is a salutary cessation of phenomenal development (prapa~nca);
No dharma anywhere has been taught by the Buddha of anything. [21]

In these verses we see Naagaarjuna's attitude toward the four ontological alternatives prevalent in the Indian philosophical discussion of his day. It is clear from his discussion throughout MMK that his central opposition is to an assumption that life can be perceived in terms of such mutually exclusive concepts as "finite" and "infinite," or "being" and "nonbeing." One might suggest that he should not have been opposed to either the third or fourth alternatives of the tetralemma since the either-or character is eliminated (in different ways) in them. However, the fact that Naagaarjuna did not accept either of the latter alternatives is indicative, I think, of the way he regarded the function of any positive assertions. This assumption is made clear in his own use of positive assertions. The following are taken from Chapter 24 of MMK:

14. When emptiness 'works', then everything in existence 'works'.
If emptiness does not 'work', then all existence does not 'work'.
18. Whatever is originating dependently, that we call 'emptiness';
This apprehension of 'through dependence' is the middle way.
36. You deny all mundane and customary activities
When you deny emptiness [in the sense of] dependent coorigination.
40. He who perceives dependent coorigination
Also understands sorrow, origination, and destruction as well as the path. [22]

Positive assertions are seen to be part of a spiritual process (sadhana). Sometimes they are useful for indicating something, and sometimes they are not. The decision to affirm or deny assertions depends on where the hearer is in the path of liberation. Assertions are seen as catalysts for moving beyond a given point of awareness ─ the goal of awareness being an attitude that is not bound to any concepts or propositions. Thus, any structures of life, indicated by propositions, are only provisional. Naagaarjuna is not concerned about identifying existing structures per se, since the goal of wisdom requires a procedure that does not bifurcate experience into structures that are independently external to the perceiver or into a subjective entity whose reality is more than mutually dependent relationships of what can be abstractly designated as "subjective" and "objective." It is the mode of comprehending that is as important as the specific assertions; and to assume that statements asserting "It is" or "It is not," or "It both is and is not" or "It neither is or is not," can expose the mutually dependent process is, from Naagaarjuna's point of view, a delusion since it accepts social conventions of speech as the basic resource for knowing reality. Unlike Whitehead, who affirms the use of philosophic generalizations to seize those characteristics of "abiding importance" in existence, Naagaarjuna is skeptical that feelings of interest or importance have more ontological value than feelings

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of dis-interest. What has interest is not regarded as real over against what has dis-interest; the reality of dependent coorigination has a balance of what has interest (importance) and what has no interest (importance) ─ or it has neither interest or disinterest as such. Paradoxically, to affirm such a nature of reality requires a strong use of negative assertions. Likewise, when positive assertions are made, they are made in the context of an educational process, which breaks open one's sensitivities rather than one which presents a theory.

In reviewing some of the claims of Whitehead and Naagaarjuna on the use of propositions for expressing reality, we can see that differences in the content of their claims is related to their practice in making claims. One of the key issues in this discussion is the relationship between a philosopher's expectations regarding speculative formulations and the nature of the reality expressed. Both Whitehead and Naagaarjuna are aware that statements regarding "the way things are," which derive from naive projections of subject-predicate relationships, are delusory. They are very eager to avoid dualism and thus emphasize the interrelatedness of experienced entities. Nevertheless, an important issue remains between them: Are the patterns or structures in existence, which are exposed by conceptual analysis (and for Whitehead, especially by mathematics), fundamentally external to, while participating in, any subjective perception; or are they themselves so conditioned in their emergence by the perceiving consciousness that the fundamental task of knowing what they are is a transformation of consciousness itself? Another way of stating this is: Is the character of truth basically exposed by a duplication of an assumed extralinguistic reality in ideas, or is it basically a shift in the mechanism of perception informed by perfect freedom, peace, or joy? This question is related to the question of the nature of existence, since, if the effort to conceptualize a universal aim or ideal is itself an act of the highest value that temporally bound persons can have (as suggested by Whitehead), then Naagaarjuna's rejection of speculative philosophy as a means of expressing the highest truth is faulty. If, however, conventional procedures of perceiving can be honed to a point where they aid in pointing out the limitations of many philosophical assertions, [23] and later are contradicted by a "higher truth," which rejects the common assumption of a one-to-one correlation between concepts and nonlinguistic entities (including "eternal objects"), then the effort to conceptualize ultimate truth will be seen as a task at the beginning of an educational (and therapeutic) process, which will be transcended by the perfect realization of truth. As we will see later, this issue is related to the questions of the importance of individuality and the nature of causation, as well as to the hope and manner of ultimate realization.

II.THE UNDERSTANDING OF CAUSATION AND INDIVIDUALITY
IN TWO ATTEMPTS TO AVOID DUALISM
In their vocabularies both Whitehead and Naagaarjuna emphasize the changing

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and the interdependent character of existence. Both men reject claims that there is one (or more) eternal unchanging absolute as the basic reality; and they reject a notion of causation as a relationship between two separate things or as a relation of simply moving from the past to the present. At the same time they differ in that Whitehead understands causation to be part of the ultimate dynamic process in the cumulative development of real things ("actual entities"), while Naagaarjuna rejects any notion of causation that assumes a formulation of being or nonbeing, and even avoids an explanation of causation in terms of dependent coorigination, for fear of superimposing a false reality on the distinctions that are made in conceptual abstraction and explanation. This difference is an important one, in terms of our concern with the function of expressing the inexpressible here, the key issue is not so much the different claims made, as important as that is. Here, the focus is on the implications of each position for attaining the highest value or the ultimate reality as expressed through either systematic speculative metaphysics or a negative dialectic.

For Whitehead what is of interest is to find a reason within the common experience of actual entities to account for orderly change. [24] "Causal efficacy" is important for him because it explains why a particular entity is that particular entity. [25] The process of becoming cannot be separate from the actual entity. Causal efficacy is not a theory but a direct mode of perceiving dependent relationships. In relating the cause to the effect Whitehead states:

The cause is objectively in the constitution of the effect, in virtue of being the feeler of the feeling reproduced in the effect with partial equivalence of subjective form.... It is a feeling from the cause which acquires the subjectivity of the new effect without loss of its original subjectivity in the cause. [26]

Causality is basically a series of nexuses of simple physical feelings which bind together the actual entities of the matter-of-fact world; however, any given nexus includes an "eternal object" (a term that functions for Whitehead as "a universal" does in other philosophies) which operates in two ways: it partially determines the objective datum, and partially the subjective form. This causality is known directly because of a primary feeling of "being the cause's feeling re-enacted for the effect as subject." [27] In this immediate experience of cause, human beings are confronted with the actual world, a world that cannot be reduced to a mirage or a dream world. The actualities of the world have to be felt as a causal relationship, [28] which is always a positive one, in distinction to eternal objects, which can be rejected (or "negatively prehended").

Earlier, I mentioned "eternal objects" as inhering in actual entities. Whitehead defines eternal objects as "pure potentials for the specific determination of fact." [29] William Christian points out that some equivalent expressions for "eternal objects" in Whitehead's volume Religion in the Making (1926) are: forms, ideal forms, abstract forms, ideal forms of possibility, ideal, possibility. [30] The importance of considering the role of eternal objects in this discussion is

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Whitehead's statement that "prehensions of eternal objects are termed 'conceptual prehensions'," [31] and that eternal objects are seen as infinite potentials which, however, can be realized only in particular entities. The finite entity, therefore, is always situated within a context of infinity. This contextual situation of the finite-in-relation-to-infinite will have its correlate in the relation of personal identity to immortality. However, it is the ingression of eternal objects at all levels or in all dimensions of existence that is the expression of order and stability in the otherwise moment-by-moment flux of experience. Since the nature of existence is interrelatedness, there is no entity which can claim independent self-sufficiency of existence; and it is the essential relatedness of all things that leads Whitehead to insist that "finite entities require the unbounded universe." [32]

It is in the conceptual realm that ideals, value, and universal order are disclosed; and human beings of all the temporal actual entities have special skills and capacities to expose ideal forms or possibilities through conceptual abstractions. Whitehead describes the importance of this form of becoming in his essay "Mathematics and the Good" by saying:

Human intelligence can conceive of a type of things in abstraction from exemplification. The most obvious disclosures of this characteristic of humanity are mathematical concepts and ideals of the Good ─ ideals which stretch beyond any immediate realization. [33]

The meaning and value of life for humanity are found in the relevance of a particular item of experience to its "background which is the unbounded Universe." [34] There is no escape from a relatedness that is also a totality; this relatedness is seen to extend infinitely, and it is thus designated as "timeless" and "immortal." In his essay "Immorality," Whitehead speaks of the "two worlds" of activity and value; the value inherent in the universe is timeless and immortal. At the same time we must keep in mind his claim that these two worlds cannot be understood as existing apart from each other; both are presupposed in every actual entity. While eternal objects have inherent value, they are mere possibilities. Eternal objects, which are devoid of experience, have no intrinsic value, that is, value experienced by the entity itself.

A very important aspect of personal identity is that it is the embodiment of value, according to Whitehead's metaphysics. This is made clear in the essay "Immortality," where he argues that the embodiment of value is most directly experienced in the matter-of-fact world in the sequences of actual occasions united in personal identity. He explains:

Each such personal sequence involves the capacity of its members to sustain identity of Value. In this way, Value-experience introduces into the transitory World of Fact an imitation of its own essential immortality. [35]

The importance of the experience of "emphasis" or "significance" in the arising of an actual entity is indicated when he writes:

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A whole sequence of actual occasions, each with its own present immediacy, is such that each occasion embodies in its own being the antecedent members of that sequence with an emphatic experience of the self-identity of the past in the immediacy of the present. This is the realization of personal identity. [36]

Such personal identity is important for Whitehead, because it introduces stability within a flux of sensations. It is the mechanism whereby the present origination of an actual entity feels itself in terms of derived feelings from the past, but which, at the same time, are felt as "being myself." [37] Any origination of an enduring object is also an evaluation, and every example of personal identity combines the ideal world with the limited but actual, temporal, concrete existence. In a basic way the experienced world could not have value without personality. This is what I understand the implication to be when Whitehead claims that "the World of Change develops Enduring Personal Identity as its effective aspect for the realization of value. Apart from some mode of personality there is trivialization of value." [38] An individual personality is also the basis for any notion of "freedom" and "moral action." It indicates the independence of the individual from the constituent factors that are causally felt in the actual becoming of that individual. The personal identity is embodied in the succession of actual occasions, but is not limited to them; and, therefore, the "personality" can effect new directions in the emergence of subsequent acts of becoming.

In contrast to Whitehead's emphasis on the reality of both cause and a personal identity that is cumulative, and thus something more than a nexus of conditioning factors, Naagaarjuna is reluctant to formulate any such claims and explicitly denies the formulations of "cause" and "individuality," which were available to him. He rejects the notion of cause, understood as the relationship between two independent entities, or the determination of a subsequent entity by a prior one in several chapters in MMK; it is done quite explicitly in chapters 1 (Conditioning Causes), 7 (Conditioned Entities), 8 (Action and One Who Acts), 13 (Mental-Emotional Impulses), 17(Action and Result), 20 (Aggregate of Causes and Conditions), and 21 (Origination and Disappearance). A sample of verses from chapter 17 "Action and Result," will indicate Naagaarjuna's mode of reasoning -- which is done against opponents who do not take dependent coorigination in a radical enough manner to suit Naagaarjuna. He argues that their notions assume that action and the result of action are conceived of as being fundamentally self-sufficient, and, to the extent that any formulation implies self-existence (svabhava) instead of dependent coorigination, it must be rejected:

21. Why does the action not originate? Because it is without self-existence.
Since it does not originate, it does not perish.
22. If an action did exist as a self-existent thing, without a doubt, it would be eternal.

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An action would be an unproduced thing; certainly, there is no eternal thing which is produced.
23. If the action were not produced, then there could be the fear of attaining something from 'something not
produced';
Then the opposite to a saintly discipline would follow as a fallacy
24. Then, undoubtedly, all daily affairs would be precluded.
And even the distinction between saints and sinners is not possible.
25. Then an act whose development had taken place would develop again,
If an act, because it persists, exists through its own nature. [39]

To understand the function of these assertions, I believe we have to understand them in the context of Buddhist history and practice. If it is true that Naagaarjuna depended partially on prior Buddhist efforts to analyze the experience of human suffering as detailed in the Abhidharma literature and also was influenced by the Mahayana concerns, as reflected in the Perfection of Wisdom (Praj~naapaaramitaa) literature, it is clear that Naagaarjuna made his statements with a deep sensitivity to the deceptive character of conceptual formulation. It is also made with the assumption that "causation" is best understood in a context that allows for different ways or levels of being conscious and that does not attempt to generalize a single universal process from conventional experience. To perceive dependent coorigination as an expression of highest truth, people have to become aware that they do not all perceive reality equally or that common conventions of experience are the norm for understanding one's awareness. Rather, it is necessary to perceive the lack of "own-being" by rejecting the conceptual formulations made at a conventional level of awareness -- which formulations tend implicitly to reassert a feeling of "own-beingness" even when this is denied conceptually. In order to distinguish the value between different assertions, Naagaarjuna, together with other Mahaayaana exponents, claimed that there were two levels of truth: conventional (or world-ensconced) truth, and highest truth. He says in chapter 24 of MMK:

8. The dharma-explanation by the Buddhas has recourse to two truths:
The world-ensconced truth and the ultimate truth.
9. Those who do not know the distribution of the two kinds of truth
Do not know the profound reality of the Buddha's teaching.
10. The ultimate truth is not taught apart from conventional practice,
And without having attained the ultimate truth one cannot achieve nirvana. [40]

His claim that there is "no action," "no origination," etc., and that all things are empty is, from his perspective, "highest" or ultimate truth. However, to avoid hypostatizing the notions of "no action" or even "emptiness" into some absolute reality, Naagaarjuna also rejects even these notions as necessary symbols of the true nature of things. We find the following stanzas in MMK:

13.7. If something would be non-empty, something [logically also] would be empty.

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But nothing is non-empty, so how will it be empty?
8. Emptiness is proclaimed by the victorious one as the refutation of all viewpoints;
But those who hold 'emptiness' as a viewpoint -- [the true perceivers] have called those 'incurable.' [41]
22.11. One may not say that he is 'empty,' nor that he is 'non-empty,' Nor both .
But the purpose for saying ['empty'] is to convey knowledge. [42]

Both Naagaarjuna and the composers of the Perfection of Wisdom literature appealed to the two levels of truth and affirmed that, at the highest level of truth, one had to state negatively what was affirmed at the conventional level. Thus, there is "no action," "no arising," "no dissipating," and "no result of action". However, this was not to argue that somehow existence disappears in highest truth; in fact, that claim is explicitly denied as a misunderstanding of "emptiness." Rather, these negative assertions were necessary to avoid giving emotional, psychological, and logical supports or "stationing" (sthiti) to the mental forms. According to the The Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Lines, thinking remains clear or translucent as long as it is nonobstructed. [43] To aid in keeping thought "clear," a person is asked to regard the teaching of the perfection of wisdom as "unproduced," as "nonthought," as "nonapprehension" of all dharmas. In the Diamond Sutra, the Buddha tells his disciple Subhuti that a bodhisattva "should produce an unsupported thought, that is, he should produce a thought which is nowhere supported (prati.s.thitam)." [44] Thus, to avoid the insipient tendency of mental processes to establish ("station," prati.s.thiti) one's consciousness in an abstraction or perception, Naagaarjuna -- like the writers of the Perfection of Wisdom books -- negated at the highest level of truth, the content of statements that were quite useful for everyday affairs.

A similar assessment is made of personality or individual entity in chapter 18 of MMK. A few verses will show the argument:

4. When 'I' and 'mine' have stopped, then also there is neither an outside nor an inner self.
The "acquiring" [of karman] is stopped; on account of that destruction, there is destruction of very
existence.
5. On account of the destruction of the pains of action there is release; for pains of action exist for him who
constructs them.
These pains result from phenomenal extension (prapa~nca), but this phenomenal extension comes to a
stop by emptiness.
6. There is the teaching of "individual self" (aatman) and the teaching of "non-individual self" (anaatman),
But neither "individual self" nor "non-individual self" whatever has been taught by the Buddhas.
7. When the domain of thought has been dissipated, "that which can be stated" is dissipated.
Those things which are unoriginated and not terminated, like nirvaa.na, constitute the Truth (dharmataa).
[45]

The notion of "individuality" that is so important for manifesting value in

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Whitehead's cosmology is seen here to be -- like the notion of "nonindividuality" -- a convention of speech. As such it may be useful for practical distinctions in daily affairs -- as in the sentence: I am going to town. -- but conventions used in a space-time realm should not be used, according to Naagaarjuna, to communicate the nature of things. To put Whitehead's claim regarding "the individual" in the negative dialectic of Naagaarjuna, it would be necessary to say that there is no individual composed of all actual entities plus one, nor not no individual composed of all actual entities plus one. This dialectic also does not reduce the "individual" that we experience, at a conventional level, merely to a sum of the changing constituents that makeup a person's field of experience. Rather, it helps to avoid hypostatizing an "individuality" which tends to happen when a person's attention directed toward "something.

III. THE RELATION OF A FULL REALIZATION OF HIGHEST VALUE TO EXISTENCE
The last topic we want to look at briefly in our concern with the procedure for expressing the inexpressible in Whitehead and Naagaarjuna is their notions of highest value in relation to actualizing that value in the temporal world. The notions of value are closely related to the use of propositions for expressing the inexpressible and the notions of causation and individuality by each of these philosophers. Both are concerned with values that are directly applicable to daily living, though we will see that there are different assumptions and different understandings of the extent to which they can be realized, as well as of the sort of realization available.

As stated earlier, Whitehead's notion of the ideal is related to mental prehensions or feelings, which are creative forces whereby value is infused in shifting sensations. The meaning of life, he says, depends on being aware of the infinite context of every finite entity; and ideas are the means for placing concrete experiences in an ideal context. In Adventure of Ideas he states: "The best service that ideas can render is gradually to lift into the mental poles the ideal of another type of perfection which becomes a program for reform." [46] One of the most powerful forms for revealing the ideal realm is mathematical concepts. They are expressions of types of a thing, which cannot be immediately realized by people. [47] They are expressions of the perfection of pattern. Mathematical universals, as eternal objects, are as real as actual entities. They are especially important in the understanding of pattern in everyday behavior, [48] and it is the enduring identity of pattern that exposes value. Thus, through ideas and mathematics, human beings have access to the realm of potentials. At the same time, already in the analysis of ideal concepts and mathematical universals there is the recognition that in the temporal world these are only approximately actualized.

The reality of the infinite present in the finite and the continuing drive toward actualizing potential is closely connected with the notion of God, who

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in his primordial nature is "the unconditioned actuality of conceptual feeling at the base of things, so that, by reason of this primordial actuality, there is an order in the relevance of eternal objects to the process of creation." [49] The primordial nature of God constitutes both the urge for change and development in the world, and the "fundamental graduation of appetitions which lies at the base of things, and which solves all indeterminations of transition." [50] As primordial, God's feelings are only conceptual; they are not integrated with physical feelings, which means that they are not fully actual. In God's "consequent nature" the unlimited conceptual potential of his primordial nature is objectified in physical experience. In this objectification, his conceptual nature is completed in the "creative advance of the world," so that there is a sharing with actual entities in each new creation. Every new creation that participates in the perfection of God's subjective aim is "woven by rightness of feeling into the harmony of the universal feeling" and thus becomes immortal. [51] Whitehead formulates this differently by saying: "God saves the world as it passes into the immediacy of his own life." [52] God's wisdom "prehends every actuality for what it can be in a perfect system." [53] Even this brief excursion into the complex notion of God in Whitehead's thought suggests that God both is expressed in existence and is, in principle, inexpressible (mysterious). In his "consequent nature," He is an actual entity -- though as nontemporal, a unique one -- and depends on other actual entities. In His primordial nature, He is the eternal principle of order ("the fundamental graduation of appetitions") and the cosmic goal within whose primordial perfection all actualities cohere in "the harmony of the universal feeling."

Whitehead uses several terms to express values which can be concretely realized in the temporal world. They include "truth," "beauty," "adventure," "peace," "effectiveness," and "intensity." [54] Before focusing on two of these notions, we might look at Whitehead's definition of their general opposite: evil. In "Mathematics and the Good," he mentions three kinds of evil in relation to the patterns of individual realization in a context of relationships; these are: (1) the evil of triviality, (2) a situation in which "two patterns eliciting intense experience may thwart each other," and (3) "the intense evil of active deprivation. This type has three forms: a concept may conflict with a reality, or two realities may conflict, or two concepts may conflict." [55] Each of these is to be avoided, according to his discussion of the values "beauty" and "peace." Beauty, he states in Adventures of Ideas, "is the one aim which by its very nature is self-justifying." [56] He defines beauty as "the internal conformation of the various items of experience with each other, for the production of maximum effectiveness." [57] It is the expression of harmonious interrelations of the components of reality, including the relations of appearance to reality. Thus, "the truth-relation remains the simple, direct mode of realizing Harmony." [58] The truth spoken of here is not to be confused with truth conceived of as verbalization; rather it is a summoning of "new resources of feeling." This

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realization of harmony finds its expression in a personal feeling of peace, which Whitehead calls the "Harmony of Harmonies." [59] Rejecting any notion of anaesthesia, he defines peace as follows:

It is a broadening of feeling due to the emergence of some deep metaphysical insight, unverbalized and yet momentous in its coordination of values. Its first effect is the removal of the stress of acquisitive feeling arising from the soul's preoccupation with itself.... It is primarily a trust in the efficacy of Beauty. [60]

In peace there is a surpassing of individualism. The extension beyond the self is still part of the reality known through "worth" or "significance" in life, which is sometimes -- and unfortunately, all too often -- expressed as a "craving to stand conspicuous" within life. This results in egotism and the wish to be famous. Peace does not eliminate this dynamic urge toward individuality, according to Whitehead, since to do so results in anesthesia. The distinction between a wholesome and a perverted "retreat to egoism" is, according to Whitehead, a difficulty for human beings; for he admits: "In this, it is beyond human analysis to detect exactly where the perversion begins to taint the intuition of Peace." [61] Peace is seen as a continuation of the ultimate creative purpose: the achievement of the maximum depth of intensity within the limits of the conditions of "a concrescence."

In the preceding discussion of value in Whitehead, we can see that this approach to value continues the assumptions in the first two sections. One of the assumptions is that there are certain existing structures of life, whose ordering principles are the same despite the novelty that appears in conditioned individual expression. These structures are part of a single, coordinated whole, which combines in itself subjectivity and objectivity. The metaphysical formulations, like mathematical equations, are a type of feeling which have the power to heighten intensity and value -- and which themselves are actualizations of life. By participating in the fullest expression of harmony among the coordinating factors, the individual entity is also participating in infinite relations with other actual entities. However, only one actual entity, God, can actualize perfectly in himself all possible relationships in the ongoing dynamics of change; all other actual entities can realize a depth of actuality that is conditioned by particular temporal-special factors. Where the relationships of the actuality are in harmony with the perfect harmony (of God), they are "remembered" forever. Thus, people in the present world can participate partially in the perfect structures by an intensity of their individual experience; and such intensity can be evoked through conceptually identifying enduring patterns of "abiding importance."

In expressing his understanding of highest value, Naagaarjuna uses several terms that were common in his cultural milieu. He uses such terms as bliss (`saanta, nirvaa.na, buddha, bodhisattva, and tathaagata ("fully completed," literally "thus-come"). However, unlike Whitehead, Naagaarjuna does not try to explain

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their nature; rather, he tries -- through his negative dialectic -- to devoid these notions of an assumed reality to which they are thought to refer in conventional usage. It is not clarity of ideas and of relationships between ideas that constitutes the insight into the nature of things that Naagaarjuna wants; he wants a shift in the expectation of the listener. This shift is away from exact description of supposed patterns or structures of existence to freedom -- a sense of nonattachment to ideas, concepts, or any projected hopes and fears. He says, for example, at the end of chapter 22, on the tathaagata (fully completed being), that an attempt to talk about the tathaagata in terms of "existence" or "nonexistence," or to talk about this sort of reality as "same" or "different (from something else)" is to be caught in process of expectation that precludes the attainment of insight:

14. Concerning that which is empty by its own nature (svabhava), the thoughts do not arise that:
The Buddha 'exists' or 'does not exist' after death.
15. Those who describe in detail the Buddha, who is unchanging and beyond all detailed description─
Those, completely defeated by description, do not perceive the "fully completed being."
16. The self-existence of the "fully completed being" is the self-existence of the world.
The "fully completed being" is without self-existence and [and] the world is without self-existence. [62]

Any description is only a provisional one but not simply because it is conditioned. It is provisionally useful for those people who have not wrestled at a deep level with the mental and emotional impulses that impinge on the individual, when he or she is contributing to the "stationing" of mental-emotional emergies through conceptual formulation. However, for the person who wants to probe deeply the reality of existence, one of the first tasks is to realize that even profound notions and universal generalizations are conducive to self-perpetuating (but only conditionally real) patterns of imaginations and expectations. Whitehead, who also regarded any metaphysical system as provisional, attempted to provide a theoretical construct in Process and Reality on the assumption that locating existing structures deepened the intensity with which an immortal process was actualized. Naagaarjuna, on the other hand, sought to transform what is conventionally called "a person" or "a self-consciousness," -- but which itself is a self-impacting construct -- by leaving him or her without any "mental-emotional supports" in the form of ontological terms. Naagaarjuna implicitly recognized, as a Buddhist adept, that there were various levels of consciousness, and sought to shift from one "mind-set" to another. He did not describe even these levels (as some of his contemporaries did) so that he would not get caught -- and defeated -- by playing imagination-games.

The capacity for human beings to shift from one level of consciousness to

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another -- through long and difficult practice -- makes it possible for Naagaarjuna and other Indian Buddhists to hold that perfection was to be accomplished in present existence. Unlike the cultural assumption with which Whitehead worked (that consciousness is a single type of human experience), Naagaarjuna regarded the human personality as having different kinds of awareness mechanisms, which were related to the arising or dissipating of existence. What is abstractly labeled "subjective forces" is regarded as having a much greater determination of life than has been usually granted in Western science or philosophy during the past century. The assumption of a wide scope of psychic forces gave Naagaarjuna a greater range of expectation for what could be achieved in states of awareness and perfection of values. Perfect wisdom, therefore while exceedingly difficult to attain, was considered a legitimate goal in human life. In the context of these assumptions Naagaarjuna speaks of a "fully completed being" (tathaagata), but does not explain how a person can proceed from beings attached to being free; rather, in rejecting some common ontological assertions about the fully completed being, he tries to suggest a different mode of awareness-actualization by insisting that the content of those assertions is empty:

22:7. There is nothing whatever that is dependent on [the "groups" of personality factors] and there is no
thing whatever on which something does not depend.
There would not exist in any way a "fully completed being" without being dependent on [the "groups"].
8. That [fully completed being] who does not exist by its actual reality or by some other reality according
to the five-fold examination─
How is the "fully completed being" perceived by being dependent?
9. So when there is dependence, self-existence does not exist;
And if there is no self-existence whatever, how is an other-existence possible? [63]

The verses just given certainly do not explain how a "person" realizes "non-person" in the attainment of enlightenment, nor what the nature of the world, or of "emptiness," is. In avoiding such issues, Naagaarjuna was not generalizing about the nature of existence as "nonexisting," nor claiming that conventional experience does not exist. In chapter 24 he explicitly denies the suggestion that to say all existing things are empty is to say that conventional thoughts, perceptions, and objects of perception do not exist; rather, conventional activities can be said to exist -- that is, one can account for change -- only if a person recognizes that there are no eternal entities, even conceptual or feeling patterns. This fact is expressed by Naagaarjuna's claim that all things are empty:

36. You deny all mundane and customary activities When you deny emptiness [in the sense of] dependent
co-origination.
37. If you deny emptiness, there would be action which is unactivated.
There would be nothing whatever acted upon, and a producing action would be something not begun.
[64]

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The negative dialectic and the reassertion of the Buddhist notion of dependent coorigination in terms of "emptiness" indicates another character of value; this is that the perfect realization for Naagaarjuna is a rejection of both "interest" and "disinterest." This is because the nature of reality is not "being" nor "non-being," nor both nor neither. Such is the force of stanzas 17-20 of chapter 25 (on nirvaa.na):

17. It is not expressed if the Glorious One [the Buddha] exists after his death,
Or does not exist, or both or neither.
18. Also, it is not expressed if the Glorious One exists while remaining [in the world],
Or does not exist, or both or neither.
19. There is nothing whatever which differentiates the existence-in-flux (sa^msaara) from nirvaa.na,
And there is nothing whatever which differentiates nirvaa.na from existence-in-flux.
20. The extreme limit of nirvaa.na is also the extreme limit of existence-in-flux.
There is not the slightest bit of difference between these two. [65]

The nature of reality, in which even nirvaa.na is not seen as an independent or an immortal totality, is one which recognizes that being and nonbeing are taken with equal seriousness. Here we might mention that the notion of karman (action) is a notion that assumes a force that is not eternal. A person's "karman" (understood as one's moral and physical legacy) is produced by former actions. Karman is a force that arises in a context of disequilibrium or tension; likewise, it dissipates when no further tension arises or when effort is expended. Thus, if existence arises in emptiness (dependent coorigination) the structures or the order, which are the dominant emphases-in-process, have a balance of being and nonbeing -- or stated in Naagaarjuna's dialectic neither "being-per-se" nor "nonbeing-per-se." There is no cumulative immortality of actual entities in God's perfect harmony; and the highest insight is to perceive that this (among other things) is not needed to assure value -- since value (as understood in the context of not being stationed in "being" or "nonbeing") itself includes "value" and "nonvalue" without attachment to either. The awareness of emptiness releases what, in conventional terms, is called "spiritual energy," to avoid attachment even to the awareness of the highest value or virtue. The discussion of value and such key terms of "nirvaa.na," and "emptiness," and "fully completed one" is a trickery to which one might respond with a laugh or serene silence.

CONCLUSION
This analysis of the expression of the inexpressible in Whitehead and Naagaarjuna has sought to clarify (through distinctions and comparisons) some of the uses of assertions and the relation of the uses to their content. In doing so, I have selected some elements of thought that are considered to be important in their

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respective formulations. At the same time I have tried to expose the function of the assertions in each man's expression, hopeful that another dimension of their meaning will be exposed: the attitudes that embody valuations. In light of the material just examined, I might appropriately conclude with a question: Can this or any other analysis of elements in life that appear to have "importance" expose the patterns that extend to the infinite totality, or do they at best serve as a catalyst for realization of a persons's attitudes at a particular moment in time?

NOTES
1. (New York: The Humanities Press, 1929).

2. In Essays in Science and Philosophy (New York: Philosophical Library, 1948), pp. 75-86.

3. Translated in Kenneth K. Inada, Naagaarjuna (Tokyo: Hokuseido Press, 1970), and Frederick J. Streng, Emptiness -- a Study in Religious Meaning (Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon, 1967), pp. 181-220; hereafter cited as Emptiness.

4. Translated in S. Mookerjee, The Nava-Nalanda-Mahavihara Research Bulletin Vol. I (Nalanda, 1957), pp. 1-175, and F. Streng, Emptiness, pp. 221-227.

5. A. N. Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas (New York: New American Library, 1955), p. 235, 236; hereafter cited as AI.

6. PR, p. 4.

7. A. N. Whitehead, Modes of Thought (New York: Macmillan Co., 1938), p. 8; hereafter cited as MT.

8. PR, pp. 7-8.

9. A. N. Whitehead, "Immortality," in Essay in Science and Philosophy (New York: Philosophical Library, 1948), p. 64; hereafter cited as "Immortality."

10. PR, p. 25.

11. MT, p. 5.

12. MT, p. 5.

13. PR, p. 125.

14. PR, p. 295.

15. MG, p. 81.

16. "Immortality," p. 66.

17. MG, p. 80.

18. MT, pp. 49-50.

19. Al, p. 243; See also PR, p. 414.

20. PR, p. 410.

21. MM K 25: 22-24, see Streng, Emptiness, p. 217; Inada, Naagaarjuna, p. 159.

22. See Streng, Emptiness, pp. 213-215; Inada, Naagaarjuna.

23. See Frederick J. Streng, "The Significance of Pratiityasamutpaada for Understanding the Relationship between Sa^mv.rti- and Paramaartha-satya in Naagaarjuna," in Mervyn Sprung, ed., The Problem of Two Truths in Buddhism and Vedaanta (Dordrecht, Holland: R. Reidel Pub. Co., 1973), pp. 27-39.

24. For a discussion of the reality of causation in Whitehead see William Christian, An Interpretation of Whitehead's Metaphysics (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1959), pp. 126ff; hereafter cited as An Interpretation.

25. PR, p. 363.

26. PR, p. 363.

27. PR, p. 363.

28. PR, p. 366.

29. PR, p. 32.

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30. An Interpretation, p. 195.

31. PR, p. 35.

32. MG, p. 81.

33. MG, p. 80.

34. MG, p. 78.

35. "Immortality," p. 65.

36. "Immortality," p. 65.

37. PR, p. 126.

38. "Immortality," p. 69.

39. Streng, Emptiness, p. 203; see also Inada, Naagaarjuna, pp. 109-110.

40. Streng, Emptiness, p. 213; see also Inada. Naagaarjuna, p. 146.

41. Streng, Emptiness, p. 198; see also Inada, Naagaarjuna, p. 93.

42. See Frederick J. Streng, "The Buddhist Doctrine of Two Truths as Religious Philosophy," in Journal of Indian Philosophy I (1971): 262-271; verse 22:11 quoted on p. 268.

43. See A. K. Warder, Indian Buddhism (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1970), p. 366 and E. Conze, trans., The Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Lines and Its Verse Summary (Bolinas, Ca.: Four Seasons Foundation, 1973), p. 193.

44. E. Conze, trans., Vajracchedikaa Praj~naapaaramitaa (Rome: ISMEO 1957), 73; Sanskrit text, p. 36.

45. Streng, Emptiness, p. 204; see also Inada, Naagaarjuna, pp. 114-115.

46. AI, p. 258.

47. MG, p. 80.

48. MG, p. 84.

49. PR, p. 522.

50. PR, p. 315.

51. PR, p. 525.

52. PR, p. 525.

53. PR, p. 525.

54. See J. D. Weisenbeck, Alfred North Whitehead's Philosophy of Values (Waukesha, Wis.: Mt. St. Paul College, 1969), chapter 3, "General Theory of Value."

55. MG, pp. 84-85.

56. Al, p. 265.

57. Al, p. 264.

58. Al, p. 265.

59. Al, p. 283.

60. Al, p. 283.

61. Al, p. 287.

62. Streng, Emptiness, p. 210; see also Inada, Naagaarjuna, p. 135.

63. Streng, Emptiness, pp. 209-210; see also Inada, Naagaarjuna, pp. 133-134.

64. Streng, Emptiness, p. 215; see also Inada, Naagaarjuna, p. 152.

65. Streng, Emptiness, pp. 216-217; see also Inada, Naagaarjuna, pp. 157-158.