The original tragedy : from One to Many
As a former evangelical Protestant, I distanced myself from the church several years ago and began to explore other, very different traditions on my own, whilst developing a passion for philosophy. I discovered the Gnostic movements about a year ago, and I have read the Nag Hammadi texts avidly, whilst remaining open-minded towards every religious tradition, trying to seek wisdom wherever it may be found. I retain a certain critical spirit and do not wish to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
What, I believe, has nevertheless struck me about the Gnostics is that they are the only ones to have taken the problem of evil seriously. Many traditions treat evil as an event, a fall (preferably of humankind, as the anthropocentric viewpoint dictates), whereas my intuition leads me rather to believe that evil lies in the very structure of the sensible world. The ‘fall’, if there is one, has for me a cosmic significance, as evidenced by the chaos and entropy that preceded humankind: predation, extinctions, competition for resources and survival, the dangerous nature of the world, the fragility of ecosystems, … Apparent harmony is only relative.
This aspect of evil has been inadequately addressed by all attempts at theodicy, when it is not simply ‘mocked’ by modern theologians. The Gnostic solution seemed the most appropriate, since they recognised the tragedy of the fall into matter. Other schools of thought offer interesting alternatives, but these deny the reality of evil or its gravity:
- For example, by regarding it as a necessary property of the system (as in Plotinus, the Corpus Hermeticum, the Tao, Spinoza or Nietzsche), but life remains, overall, a blessing, a stroke of luck or an opportunity
- By assuming that multiplicity is an illusion, which implies that there is no true fall and that the idea of our separation from God is a veil that must be lifted (the Advaita Vedanta solution)
But if we accept that evil is real and pervasive on a cosmic scale, then we must explain it. Introducing a disruptive force is the solution proposed by the Gnostics in the form of the demiurge, but this solution is not entirely satisfactory either. Shifting the blame onto the demiurge or the fall of Sophia is merely a roundabout way of admitting a propensity for division within the very heart of the original unity. And that is precisely my current position. I believe that the Gnostics are still far too optimistic.
In my view, the whole difficulty lies in the very transition from the One to the Many, which gives rise to differentiation, individuality and personal perception, introducing the likelihood of disharmony and thus sooner or later duality, suffering, separation, fragmentation, exile. The sensible world cannot constitute a blessing, for it is, by its very nature, a perpetual increase in entropy. Nor can it be the will of the One, since will and interest, by definition, presuppose a lack to be filled, and thus a rupture in unity. The Many can only be accidental, an epiphenomenon. Yet the Many is not confined to the sensible world. It is already present in the Pleroma, through the many aeons that the One generates in superabundance, and which act autonomously, as its personified attributes. In other words, the worm is in the fruit: separation was already inherent in the generation of the aeons, which may well have endeavoured to work harmoniously together, but which, nevertheless, from being One, were henceforth many. The problem with being ‘many’ is that, however hard we strive for harmony, the fact remains that we are endowed with a personal will and limited perception. Given this fact, it was inevitable that one of the Aeons would eventually fall out of harmony with the others and begin to cause chaos, hence the fall of Sophia.
My conclusion is therefore far more tragic than that of the Gnostics: either unity has never existed, or it once existed but has been lost for good, the possibility of a future restoration of the original unity seeming unlikely when one considers the increase in entropy in our universe and the exponential proliferation of beings destined for destruction since the emergence of life. The ‘fall’ is still ongoing.
What is your view on this matter?