Spiritual Titanism: Indian, Chinese, and Western Perspectives (review)

Comparative philosophers, theologians, and practitioners of Asian intellectual history will surely find much of interest in this provocative, controversial, and undeniably ambitious, titan-like monograph. Simply put, Spiritual Titanism argues that "Jainism, Samkhya, Yoga, and later Hindu texts" endorse what Heinrich Zimmer, in his 1956 study Philosophies of India,¹ characterized as "the heresy of Titanism" or the "preemption of divine prerogatives and confusion of human and divine attributes" (p. 2). Author Nicholas Gier adds that "Titanism " is "a philosophical mistake" (p. 16), "humanism gone berserk; it is anthropocentrism and anthropomorphism taken to their limits." Defining "deity" in culturally biased, distinctly Christian terms as "any being who is omniscient, omnipotent, infinite, and omnipresent," Gier asserts that "humans obviously delude themselves if they believe that they can become divine in the sense of these attributes."

Although the monograph concedes that "Indian Titanism," as it refers to this supposed tendency of Jainism, Sāmkhya, Yoga, and later Hinduism, is "a rather benign form of extreme humanism," its author warns, quite apocalyptically, that "a Titanistic spirit can be said to inspire militarism, environmental pollution and degradation, and the possible misuse of genetic engineering. If left unchecked, Titanism might destroy or radically change life as we know it on earth" (p. 3). Such hyperbole undermines the credibility of Spiritual Titanism, and will likely prompt readers to question whether it should be considered reliable scholarship or an exercise in learned yet partial religio-philosophical polemic. Specialists in Indian philosophy will most probably find the assessments of Jainism, Sāmkhya, and Yoga in Spiritual Titanism, which consume most of the monograph, rather dated, reliant as they are, for example, on the writings of Zimmer and Karl Potter's 1963 study, Presuppositions of India's Philosophies.²

Spiritual Titanism allows that early Buddhism, although humanistic, avoids Titanism, but adds that later Buddhism endorses a Hindu-like version of Titanism, one mitigated only by its premodern search for a return to a "primordial unity and totality." Rather than premodernism, however, the monograph advocates a "postmodern reconstruction of the self " as "relational and social" (p. 15). In this regard, it finds in the Confucian concept of ren "the best Chinese answer to Spiritual Titanism" (p. 16). More generally, the volume lauds Daoism and Xunzi's Confucianism as expressions of perspectives most antithetical to Titanism, emphasizing as they do the impossibility of human beings achieving divine qualities. While interesting, the weakest portion of Spiritual Titanism is its brief, often elementary analyses of Chinese philosophical texts. Readers of the volume cannot help but notice that despite the expanse of material dealt with and the myriad romanized terms from Sanskrit, Pāli, Chinese, and Japanese, there is little that is addressed with the authority of a specialist relying first and foremost on primary sources.

Perhaps most problematic is the extent to which Gier's analyses are driven by his tendency, quite anachronistic, to see all of religio-philosophical history in terms of categories such as premodernism, modernism, and postmodernism. Gier has little use for modernism, which he associates with a set of "dualistic distinctions " including those of "fact and value, subject and object, public and private, science and faith, politics and religion, theory and practice" (p. xiv). Most disturbingly, Gier sees "these modernistic distinctions" as having been, "arguably, the cause of institutionalized racism (a modernist invention), militarism, social disintegration, and environmental degradation" (p. xiv). Recoiling from a return to the premodernist "dissolution into the One," Gier unabashedly sides with the postmodernists—messiah-like theorists in his presentation of Titanism and its alternatives. Gier further divides postmodernism into "constructive postmodernism"—his team—and "deconstructive postmodernism," which, he warns, lands one in an "amorphous dissipation in Derridean différance" (p. xiv).

David Ray Griffin's "Introduction to SUNY Series in Constructive Postmodern Thought" amplifies the apocalyptic outlook informing Gier's analyses. For example, it states:

Whereas the word modern was almost...