{41} (cont’d)

III. The structure of religation and its terminus

I was saying above that in religation the fundamentality of the substantive being of man occurs, the actuality of what religatingly makes him to be. This fundamentality has two venues. On the one hand, it is fundament of my personal being, there is no doubt about that. But, in second place, it is a real fundament, not simply a subjective thing.


A) I shall begin with the second point. It is a real fundament. In what measure and in what way is the terminus of religation —reality insofar as ultimate, possibilitating, and impelling— something, which affects reality itself? It would be an error to think that this characteristic of reality —in this problem as well as in others of metaphysics— is an empty abstract concept. Nothing of the kind. The characteristic of reality has an intrinsic respectivity, by virtue of which all things constitute the world. World is the connection of everything real qua real¹. And so, world or reality, not considering that it may formally be cosmos (let us not distinguish between world and cosmos for the moment)², in its triple {42} dimension of ultimateness, possibilitation, and impellence, precisely by keeping us religated in the manner I have just suggested, is something, which dominates us, it is something dominating. And precisely to this dominating characteristic is what I call power.

Power is not a force. Fortunately German has two words: the word Kraft or Ursache (force or cause), and the word Macht (power). It is necessary to rehabilitate in metaphysics the place that power has in the system of conceptiveness of reality. Let us take the idea of an elementary causality: fire burns; or I pull from a rope, and a bell rings. I leave aside whether this is a factual causality: let us assume it is. However, there are two moments in every causality: the moment by which a certain particular effect actually appears; and the moment more or less hidden, but inexorable (and in addition inevitable), by which the cause, inasmuch as it is a cause, predominates over the effect, has a predominance or a prepotency over it. It is possible that power may coincide in its ambit with causality, but this coincidence does not mean a formal identity. Much less, if we leave material realities and consider the realities of the spirit. In the spirit there are many powers, which cannot be reduced purely and simply to the causes, which Greek metaphysics enumerates. It is an authentic Macht, a power.

Consequently, we now ask ourselves, In what measure does this power pertain to reality? Reality, by the mere fact of being real, has a capacity to dominate us in the manner I just described. That is an incontrovertible fact, and not a theory. Hence, at no level is this capacity —by virtue of which a reality (not the reality, but any ordinary reality) makes sense to man— independent of the properties, which reality {43} possesses. Obviously: if I wish to fabricate a door, I cannot make it out of liquid water, which has no capacity to be a door. The capacity, which a real thing has to be constituted into any meaning, is precisely what in this context, not in others, I call condition³ . And thus, reality qua reality comprises that condition, which affects it, and only by virtue of which it can be dominant in the form I have just described. If causality strictly speaking is the functionality of the real qua real, condition is the capacity of the real to have meaning, and consequently belongs to the real thing. Power is the dominating condition of the real qua real, in contradistinction to causality, which is the functionality of the real qua real. And precisely because it pertains and belongs to reality in itself qua real, it is something, which affects not only the attitude of man, but the very structure of things qua real.

And so, to this ultimate, possibilitating, impelling power I give the name deity. Deity is not God⁴. I call it “deity” for two reasons; because it will be the way, which will take us to God, and also because in the end man has always sensed as a power of deity that {44} universal and dominating characteristic that reality qua reality has over him, and over all real things. Deity is not something different from the world, and real things. It is rather that condition, which real things have, by the mere fact of being real, of some of them having dominion over others, and all of them over man, and man over the rest of them: this is reality in its condition as power. This is not a theory, but an incontrovertible fact. An atheist may not use the word “deity”, but it is indifferent to me. Because what I am describing is not a theory about God, or a conceptual fundamentation; it is purely and simply the bare presentation —an incontrovertible fact— that in man there occurs, in this form of power, the power of reality, the deity. It is an undeniable fact.

Nevertheless, this power of deity is not something, which floats by itself above things. It is not one more characteristic. What we call “deity” is inscribed in things, precisely by that which makes them real. And nothing is a reality in the abstract, and in a vacuum, but indeed is a reality while being white, being black, being a man, being a dog, being an oak tree, being a star. Which means that to the characteristic of reality it is not extraneous what real things are, and inversely, what real things are in one form or another, shades and modulates their characteristic of reality. That is why we must distinguish, in the historical unfolding of our problem, two dimensions which, to my way of thinking, have been interpolated without sufficient discernment. On the one hand, the history of the problem of God, insofar as enrichment of deity, of the power of reality. On the other, the history of the problem of God insofar as the discovery of God. As we can see, they are two different dimensions. Because, indeed, although each one of the new insights {45} as to the power of deity (each of the discoveries with which history constantly provides for the enrichment of the presence of deity confronting man) has actually been ascribed to one or several divinities, still, this is accidental to the problem. In the case of polytheism, and a fortiori in the case of monotheism, deity has been ascribed to gods. In the case of polytheism there is even a pantheon of gods. But this is something else, because the “pantheonality” —sit venia verbo— of the gods essentially depends, and is founded upon the complexity of the system, which constitutes deity. That is the reason why the history of religions has not been simply a deviation, or a disturbance, or a turbidity of the idea of deity, but precisely the contrary: it has been the slow and progressive way through which man has been actualizing in his mind those complex dimensions, which deity comprises⁵. Since this dissociation has not been carried out, please allow me to make allusion to gods while leaving aside their consideration; even though I mention gods, I only do so to avoid giving the impression that all this is empty speculation.

1) In the first place, the power of deity appears to man as something transcendent. Not transcendent in the sense of a transcendent entity —that would be God—, but transcendent {46} in the sense that it transcends all singular things, and precisely encompases the totum of reality. Man has been acquiring in an elementary manner this intellection of the power of deity as something transcendent, for example, raising his eyes to heaven. To heaven, not simply to the celestial vault (Uranus) —as R. Pettazzoni (1883-1959) suggests with his “celestialisms”. I do not refer to that, but quite simply that man has expressed in a very elemental strict way the idea of transcendence through the idea of the high. This is the Most High. Deity is like a most high principle, which has been usually ascribed to heaven. That transcendent power is a power not only most high, but in addition, grandiose. It is true that numerous times —the majority of them in polytheism— man has been ascribing that grandiosity to meteors, thunder, or lightning. The details are not important. The grandiosity of the transcendence of the power of deity is an inexorable conquest, unforgettable, of the power of the human mind. And that transcendence is not only something high and something grandiose, but in addition has a certain identity. Almost all the cults of the Sun have chosen it precisely because the Sun always appears to them as identical to himself.

2) The power of deity is not only a transcendent power, but also a power, which in a certain way is alive, at least because it intervenes in a somewhat active way in the life of man. This is the living time in the sense that the power of deity is the one regulating the “chronic” course —temporal in the sense of chrónos, measure of time— in which things are being configured. This is deity itself in the depth of things. That is why it is not by chance that polytheist religions have thought in the divinity of the Moon, which after all is the one, which commands and regulates the cycles of the seasons, physiological cycles, etc. {47} The idea of the eternal return began with this, the cyclic characteristic of time. The power of deity appears to us in a certain way as something cyclic floating over all events, which constitutes the birth and death of things.

3) It is not only transcendent, and chronic measure of reality, but is also the fountain of all things, especially living things. As such, in the power of deity all forms are initially abolished. Only because of the very special interplay of some things with respect to others, forms are being born, and become separated. This led the ancient polytheist religions to think of the divinity of waters, the water where all forms are abolished by dissolution.

4) It is, in addition, a power of solidary fundament of real things. The power of deity is in a certain way ascribed to that from which, by separation, precisely all forms are born, one from another. Ancient religions thought about Mother Earth in this sense.

5) Life, especially with respect to the rest of the universe, is not there just as a mere sum of things, but as an organism, as an organization of things. From this stems, mainly in the case of living reality, that the power of deity is a power, which constitutes the fundament of the organization of the real. The religion of trees, precisely in its plastic form, has expressed this idea of deity.

6) It is the power of success. In the end the power of deity is the power of the future. From this we have the origin of agrarian divinities, who always involve the uncertainty of the harvest.

7) That which we call the power of deity, by virtue of being a power of deity, which affects man personally, {48} appears to him as a power most ours, the most intimate to each one. From this we obtain that in the different conceptions by “each one” the power of deity has been modulating and shaping itself. In ancient civilizations, each one is united to others by blood ties. Then gods have appeared in the relationships of family and tribe. It is a well known fact. If the theophoric names are analyzed in ancient religions, for example in the Semitic religions, this becomes clear: ’Abiyah means “God is my father”; ’Ammiel, “God is my uncle”; ’Ajiyah, “God is my brother”, etc. At other times the power of deity appears as a power of reality in which men find themselves incorporated, not to a family, but to a tribe or clan. The eponyms of the different tribes and clans appear. In Israel the God Yahweh appears precisely as God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, i.e., as a God with a private tribal characteristic. In Phoenicia the ba’als appear, who have this same characteristic more or less. There are also ties of sovereignty. Then the power of deity appears incarnated in a divinity who, as Ba’al in the Phoenician and Canaanite worlds, can be king: ’Elimelek, “my God is king”. At other times it appears as sovereign judge of contracts, like the god Varuña in the Veda. It also appears with a tie to cosmic sovereignty: that is the ’Elohim of the Old Testament. In all these cases, of course, it is never a matter of totemism. But it is also never the case, as some famous historian of the history of Israel says⁶, of that pure sentiment of familiarity, which man feels for God. Yes. It is a question of something resembling the latter, but a sentiment of familiarity, which is structured {49} precisely by the social scheme from which man discovers the structure of the power of deity. The stepping from family to tribe, to clan, and to nation —independently from ethnological, and ethnographic considerations, which do not concern me here directly— has been a progressive enrichment of the power of deity as such.

8) The power of deity is a power, which dominates the two polar facts of every existence, of every reality, and especially of living beings: birth and death. Because of this, confronting birth, which the ancients considered was subject to the vagaries of conception, there has been an invocation to deities like Ištar in Babylon, or Venus in Greece, and the Roman world. On the other hand there is the god of death.

9) The power of the real is the power, which directs the human collective. Not only constitutes it, as I indicated above, but in a certain way directs it. And directs it above all as warrior gods: Indra in the Vedic religion, or even as the “God of hosts”, that vision under a certain aspect, which Israel had of Yahweh as God of war. Also gods of peace. For example, in the religion of Israel, Yahweh, is characterized by the firmness and fidelity of his covenant.

10) The power of deity, the power of reality as such, is the power of destiny. Móira, the Greeks called him; Nabû the Babylonians.

11) The power of deity governs what we call the oneness of the cosmos. Not only a physical oneness, but also moral. Men do belong to this cosmos. And that physical-moral oneness is what the Greeks called Díche, which was called Rta in the Vedas. It has often been translated as “justice” (Sp. justicia), but this appears to me entirely incorrect. It should be translated as “fairness” (Sp. justeza). Because fairness is what comprises {50} all aspects, those of moral justice inasmuch as those of the cosmic or physical adjustment.

12) It is the power, which does everything, and precisely because of this it is sacred. There is nothing more sacred, actually, than the reality and the configuration of the being, which man acquires precisely in the respectivity of the world. That is why in some religions the power of deity as a sacred doing —sacrum facere— has been converted into a subsistent sacrifice. It is, for example, the Brahmanic religion.

13) In the Greco-Roman world, towards its later years, this power of deity absorbed precisely the moral virtues. There appeared the divinities of Fidelity, Strength, Opportunity, etc.

14) The power of deity fills everything. And precisely because it fills everything, somehow in some religions it puts on the characteristic of space, not simply in the sense of physical space, but in a more profound way, of filling everything. Christianity pointedly talks about the immensity of God. The Iranians called it Zwaša, which is precisely “space”. We should remember that, although without this special characteristic I mention here, there are still echoes of this conception in no less than Newton himself, who called space the “divine sensorium”.

15) It is a power, which lasts forever with perfect perenniality. This is indefinite time, substantivated as a divinity in Iran: Zrvan akarana, the ápeiros chrónos, of the Greeks, which of course has its homologue in what the Hebrews called ‘el ‘olam, the eternal God.

In all this history we must dissociate the pure and simple characteristic of deity —that man is painfully discovering throughout history, which he is constantly enriching, and that we are never sure he has exhausted discovering {51} in all its dimensions— from the substantivation of some of those characteristics of deity into the same number of divinities, or the adscription of all of them to a transcendent God. For the moment, what concerns me now is simply to approach history, and to exemplify in it the unfolding of what we call the power of reality as such, i.e., purely and simply deity. The historians of religion have often provided descriptions similar to the ones I have just presented, but keeping themselves in the order of divinity. It was necessary to point out carefully to the structure of deity, which underlies all of them. The power of deity is a transcendent power; it is a power of time as living measure of reality; it is a power of separation of forms; it is a power for the germination of reality; it is a power above all for the organization of life; it is a power of the future of reality, not only material, but also intellective, of man; it is the power of the personal intimacy, which ties all men into families, tribes, and nations; it is the power, which fills everything and embraces all times; it is the power, which extends over life and death; the power, which directs social life; the power called destiny; the power, which rules the fairness, and the cosmic-moral structure of the universe; the sacralizing and moral power; the enduring power⁷.

{52} Thus, deity constitutes a functional whole. And only in the measure in which this functional whole has the characteristic of a complex system, the adscription of each one of its dimensions to the same number of divinities may lead (not necessarily) to the formation of a pantheon. But it is evident that the only thing the pantheon does is to “pantheonally” organize this structure of the complex system of deity qua deity. And does it independently of the different conceptions one may have about the divinity, with which I am not concerned at present. Therefore, the question is purely and simply to actualize before our mind what the power of deity is —the power of reality as such— in its dominating condition, as ultimate, possibilitating, and imposing. And as such, it is not a question of a theory, but of an incontrovertible fact. Regardless of the terms one may use, as such, it is an incontrovertible fact: man finds himself in that situation in reality, and referred to reality. And as such, because that concerns a condition of reality, it is not something merely subjective —an attitude that I take, which would not exist in the universe were I not to take it—, but precisely something, which affects reality as such, independently of the fact that man may find or describe it. This is the object and terminus of religation.


B) Religation in itself as a human attitude is the actualization of the fundamentality of the human being; it is the actualization of the powerfulness of the real qua deity. And since the attitude of religation underlies all the attitudes of man, because under all of them there lies that configuration {53} of the substantive being in which the I consists, one can and must say that every personal act, even the most modest, as inconsequent or trivial as it may seem, in the measure it is configuring more or less fundamentally —but always strictly— the figure of my personal being, in the end, it constitutes the experience of deity. Man does not have experience of deity, but rather is the very experience of deity in his own substantive being⁸.

Religation is the actualization of that which fundamentally and religatingly makes me be: it is the actualization of the powerfulness of the real, i.e., of deity. And since the attitude confronting reality as such underlies every personal act, one must say that in every personal act, even the most insignificant, there underlies precisely that obscure liveliness, hidden, generally unknown, anonymously dead, but real, which is precisely the experience of deity. The personal act of religation is purely and simply the experience of deity. I repeat it once more: here it is not a question of God, but simply of deity. Also, it is not a question of a positive religion. It is, if one desires, religiosity, the religious as such. In this sense religiosity, in the first place, is not something that one may or may not have, but is something that constitutively, and formally belongs to the structure of the very personal reality of the substantive I of man. And in second place, this religation is not a positive religion, but without it there would be no positive religion. It is what constitutes the schematic primordium of every positive religion.

1) The first affirmation may appear shocking. Certainly, confronting the religious dimension of man, even considered {54} in all this amplitude, one will point to the attitude of the atheist, as perfectly sincere as any other. True, but atheism has two degrees or aspects. First, the atheism professed as such. It is still a position of religation. Because for the one who professes atheism, precisely in his profession is the religation to that which he turns to by being an atheist, to be an atheist, and being atheist. But there is another attitude, the one expressed by saying: “I am not an atheist, I neither believe, nor stop believing. I am satisfied with the facticity of living. I have no other life but this one. If I discuss these problems it is because I have been asked. These are problems about which I should be thinking, but they do not arise from inside me. I am merely the pure facticity of living. I have enough living problems”. Can we talk about religation here? Undoubtedly yes, and even more clearly than in the previous atheism. Because the person who has that attitude —perfectly respectable— holds it sincerely in his conscience, and has a conscience, which for example, dictates some duties to him, has a morality —even totally individual— etc. This man listens to the voice of his conscience. Of course, the obligation consists in whatever his conscience tells him. But the fact that the voice of conscience sounds at all, and that he has to abide by it or at least listen to it, is not an obligation, but religation: this is religation to his own conscience. To think that to have a moral conscience is at the same time to make an act of morality, is the same error all German idealists made when they believed that to know oneself is to emit a second judgement on a first judgement, and so on to infinity. The relationship between man and his intellective conscience is not logical, but physical. And so, the connection of that man with his conscience is not a moral obligation; it is a religation. The primary connection of man to his {55} moral conscience is a religation, and for that reason this attitude of apparent pure facticity of life is something different: it is the religation to conscience, perfectly respectable, but strictly speaking a religation.

_________________
¹ The 1965 Madrid seminar added: “It then follows, of course, that this is not the case of a vague philosophical abstraction, but of a oneness founded in a characteristic of reality, which each thing has in its own way, but is essentially respective, and therefore, essentially unitary”.
² This distinction is already established by Zubiri in Sobre la esencia, op. cit., pp. 199--200.
³ Zubiri makes reference to the sense, which the term “condition” receives in Sobre la esencia, op. cit., pp. 196-210.
⁴ In the 1965 Madrid seminar concerning the term “deity” Zubiri stated: “It is somewhat vague if we think about religions, which have gods. But, What if we think of Buddhism? What if we think of Taoism? What if we think about the many pantheist religions in which there are no gods, or what are called gods are things, which have no divine function, but are simply supernatural entities, quite a different thing; religions where the only oneness of the world is its intrinsic cosmic-moral law? What if we think about the Brahman who only sees in the syllable om the expression of the sacrificial characteristic of the entire cosmos? Can we deny to this the characteristic of deity?”.
⁵ In the 1965 Madrid conferences Zubiri said: “In the course of history man has become richer as a human type; which has inexorably allowed the richer actualization of the very power of deity: deity is something more complex than a simple unnamed power. As reality becomes richer before human eyes, and man continues to enrich himself facing reality, or in it, the power of deity appears as an enormous complex power. The history of religions is not simply the history of the depredations, which man has inflicted on religion, but has been an authentic history in which man has acquired progressively growing forms, and never totally erroneous, of what deity is precisely”.
⁶ Zubiri refers to E. Dhorme, L’évolution religieuse d’Israël, vol. I: La religion des hébreux nomades [“The religious evolution of Israel”, vol. I: “The religion of the nomad Hebrews”], Brussels, 1937, pp. 313-332.
⁷ In the 1965 Madrid seminar Zubiri said: “While human life thus enriches itself progressively, man has had actualized before himself the intrinsic complexity of the power of the real. And this complexity must be appreciated as a real and actual achievement in the history of the religions of mankind. Still, this complexity is not merely additive, but rather this increment continues to reveal that each one of the aspects of this power represents a functionality, and that all these powers are functionally united constituting in a certain way the functional organism of deity, the power of deity. All these aspects constitute an organic whole, a functional totality. They form, therefore, the functional complex of what we might call the richness of the power of deity. And this is absolutely independent of the concept men may have developed about the divinities I have been mentioning en passant.
⁸ Here ends section III (B) of the Barcelona seminar. The corresponding section in the 1965 Madrid seminar was longer, and we offer it as follows, given the importance it has for the rest of the book.