Trust: Who or What Might Support Us?

8. Trust in God or the Universe?

109 e i g h t Trust in God or the Universe? We cannot live without trust. Even modern philosophers have recognized that the wisdom of life itself and the trust it implies cannot be put in quarantine while they construct their theories—especially not if they attempt to begin with a tabula rasa or a few, almost empty axioms or definitions. But what or who are the realities in which we trust— and cannot but trust—in order to be capable of living humanly? In chapters 3 to 5, we have rapidly surveyed three constitutive dimensions of the universe in which we perform our existence: nature, the society, and the human self. All three include their own history, and the place where they unite is the earth, although a few individuals have begun to explore other globes in space. But is the universe (“the whole” or “the all” as Parmenides called it) all that must be explored to become familiar with the context in which we perform our destiny? Is the universe the first and ultimate, and the overarching reality that justifies a trust without which we cannot live? Are science or philosophy capable of asking and answering this question? Must religion, or some equivalent like faith, play a role in our exploration? 110 Trust in Philosophy and Religion We need a new start to enter into a dimension that claims to surpass “the all.” Is such a claimed beyond possible at all? education in traditions of basic trust In the first period of our lives, we trusted, and could not but trust, our parentsandearlyeducators.Beforemyawakeningtoself-consciousness or reflection, they disciplined my manners and directed my movements , and this did not stop when I showed the first signs of some will or thought of my own. They were the uncontested authorities of my early years, and as such they continue to play an important role in my present life, even if, in the meantime, I have changed considerably. Because my educators, educated by their educators, represented and supported the communities and the traditions to which they belonged, I likewise incorporate those communities’ traditions, being myself a player in the same—slowly or sometimes quickly changing—history. I am the product of a past that includes the history of my nation, the traditions of various communities into which I have been introduced , the general culture, and the particular subcultures which have shaped me. However, my participation in the surrounding culture has also emancipated me to some degree: I have been influenced by customs and interests that framed my adult life after I integrated them in a style of my own. What now is characteristic of my life—my character—is the result of several traditions and my personal way of obedience or disobedience toward the ethos that has been imposed on me. Maturity certainly presupposes that I have readjusted what I have received, but even if I have sharply criticized or revolted against my education, I have not been able to autonomously invent my own way of life. Through the incorporation of what I owe to my educators— and indirectly to their educators—I continue to rely on a powerful past. I trust that my having become such as I am contains a trustworthy basis for my own living, even if much of my character still needs overhaul, reform, renewal, and transformation. We trust what we have become, at least insofar as this gives us an opportunity to participate in a mode of existence that is practically inescapable and generally Trust in God or the Universe? 111 accepted as normal. (Even madness must adjust to a special kind of normalcy for the mad.) Which fundamental trust does the American culture recommend us to adopt? If we may trust our dollar bills, the answer is clear: “In God we trust.” Whether money should be the first place to look for God is not sure, but if even there we meet with God, the nation that thus proclaims its basic trust must be deeply religious. This cannot be said of all Americans, however. After a period during which most Americans saw themselves as Christian, although several of them might have been practical atheists, our epoch accepts all expressions and theories of atheism with as much equanimity or indifference as it shows with regard to Jewish, Christian, or otherwise religious faiths—as long as they do not...