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*Philosophy Claudia Renata DAVID

The Idea of God According to Ion Petrovici Abstract The purpose of this research is to show how Petrovici tried to prove the existence of God in his philosophy. In his

philosophical thinking the idea of God can be proven through the reason in an aposteriori way, because he is convinced that the old cosmological argument did not lose its role and if it modified in part becomes a conclusive efficacy for the existence of God. God's existence can be proved also, according to Petrovici, starting from the hierarchical aspect of nature, because nature is presented in degrees of evolution that culminates with the human who imagines degrees beyond you rising up the idea of a perfect existence.

Keywords: God, contingentia mentis, causa sui, cosmological argument, transcendent Petrovici says that the theme about the idea of

God is a philosophical one alive and outdated though it was often considered and solved by many important thinkers. In addressing this issue he does not intend to do just a mere historical exegesis, but he wants to address it in relation with that stage of philosophical way of thinking, examining how the idea that the reason can prove the existence of God, as Descartes argued, is still present. Descartes's argument a contingentia mentis consists of “the belief that the idea of an infinite God present in our spirit can not be conceived by the human mind, essentially limited, so it is necessary to attribute a cause, the infinite God himself, because in the case of a thing must be at least as much reality as is in effect.” (Ion Petrovici, 1937: 313)

But his faith in the power of reason to reach God, did not maintain in the further philosophy, because Hume and Kant, who broke through all the classic arguments have tried to carve the object of religious faith of any rational dialectic, highlighting complex origin and predominantly emotional religious faith and the inability of reason to build satisfactory arguments to prove the existence of divinity. They also proved that not the philosophical speculation discovered the concept of God, but first it was discovered in social life, where was integrated into complex in the individual and the community beliefs.

The last statement is also accepted by Petrovici, but in his opinion this notion even if comes

from society, was produced by the philosophical spirit, which in turn began as theological garb and fancy to some extent and sustains that the notion of God has been foreign to the spiritual needs of knowledge and of explanation of entirely existence. Therefore the idea of God had an explanatory role giving an interpretation of the world, for taking the place of scientific explanation, which submits slowly. Thus philosophical synthesis occupies a middle position between the high speed of theological explanation and the low speed of scientific investigation, although showing great analogies with the theological trend especially when it is about to fix the first cause and last principle; in this situation the metaphysical speculation made often appeal to the notion of God. To reduce the role of reason to the genesis of the idea of God, invoking the inability of rational dialectics to penetrate the transcendent, means according to Petrovici “To forget that at the origin the religion was mainly a fruit of reason, that the religious explanations, as naive as they were, satisfied perfectly the reason (...) Only in time it was noticed the difference between initial attitude and rational explanation, and only then the reason dissatisfied, but which did not deprive the soul of religious comforts, it invented the theory of symbols, it designated to the religion other sources of soul, it took skill to push religious life in affective-volunteer group.” (Ion Petrovici, 1937: 313) Petrovici claims, without denying the diversity of spiritual sources, which feeds the faith

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in god, the idea that without intellectual element it could not create nor maintain the idea of God, because it overlooks the fact that reason has chaired both at the birth of the idea of God and its maintaining over the centuries: “Without the intellectual it could not get the concept of God which includes in all religions the determining content of an existence outside and above the nature, of a beyond, not even to keep it.” (Ion Petrovici, 1937: 314) Therefore he finds that what gives consistency to the faith in God and maintains the belief in the existence of the Divine is actually the participation of the intellectual element. Thus in the human soul is the desire for God to exist and therefore the intellect is forced to combine favorable arguments without the use of methodological judgment only to reach the expected conclusion. A proof of this is that one of the classic arguments demonstrates the need for the existence of God based on the imperfections of the surrounding world, which proves that there is not enough in itself, and the other, on the contrary, is based on the perfection and harmony of the world, which suggests a bright and intelligent author.

The Romanian philosopher defenses the cosmological argument which they consider it wrong by Kantian and after criticism. Being a posteriori argument, the cosmological argument is built by the reason: “The existence known to us, it is not necessary, but it has in fact a contingent character. Its base can not be found in itself, where the causality chain never ends, but outside it, in a superior principle, which embraces in itself its own reason of being. With this we reached to the divine source of God's existence the ultimate reality, transcendent, perfect and eternal.” (Ion Petrovici, 1937: 315)

Objections to the Cosmological Argument The cosmological argument it has been made

several objections by some thinkers. The first objection was that the argument does not prove the existence of a personal God. At this Petrovici replied that no requirement of a scholarly theology demands that God must be personal, but such a claim reduces its divine dignity. Another objection is that although the argument establishes a transcendental cause, he can not demonstrate its perfection, because in his opinion when it is about of divine perfection the cosmological argument it is overcome and enters the ontological argument, which begins in a priori way from the idea of perfection deducing dialectical the existence of perfect being. Therefore, Petrovici notes that in the ontological argument the existence is deduced from the idea of perfection while at cosmological the perfection is assigned to a complete existence a posteriori and conceived by human reason as self-sufficient for itself.

The third objection is that it would be absurd that the enigma of existence to be doubled, assigning

the origin of the world to a mysterious God, rather than to admit that the world is actually native unintelligible. The problem here, says Petrovici is that “Not any reality can be its own cause and not to any category of causality can compel silence. The sensible world can not be in any case its own authority only when it is given a totally different substrate from the appearance of known phenomena.” (Ion Petrovici, 1937: 316) Therefore, from this point of view, God is nothing else but the schematic notion of a reality that has its base in itself, creating the concept of the supernatural as opposed to the natural.

To the objection brought to the French philosopher Le Roy, who believes that the sensible world is only indefinitely divisible and not infinity divided, Petrovici replied that a split reality can not contain its own reason because the reason can ask to the reality a total intelligibility and this way it will overcome the reality.

From the part of idealistic philosophy is another objection which distinguishes between the world as it is and the world as it appears. Some philosophers have argued, on the basis of this distinction that the cosmological argument is based on a notional basis as the reality contingency is not objective, but subjective, due to the limits of human knowledge. Therefore phenomena of nature that are explained by themselves may be necessary, and thus would not be necessary a transcendent principle to explain their occurrence. Petrovici argues that while the origin of contingency phenomena is in the limits of human knowledge, because assumed, it can not enter to the last conditions for the existence of phenomena, and to get the idea of God, where it is that combines the creative freedom and the necessity of existence.

Another objection to the cosmological argument of Kant, is that the causality principle should be applied only to the sensible world and not to go beyond it. Petrovici make two observations to that objection. The first relates to the phenomenal causality “does not go on a dimension, but two, and maintaining to the surface and going down.” (Ion Petrovici, 1937: 317) This duality refers to the old distinction between the occasional cause and the efficient cause, both of them turning the first becoming the cause which explains the phenomenal reality itself, and the second cause deeps down going beyond the nature plan in an inaccessible area. The second observation made by Petrovici is that by accepting the idea of God as the primary cause of the existence does not extend the causality beyond the sensible world, but the causal chain is interrupted. It seems that thus is removed the unlimited application of human intellectual categories, although all terms and categories relativistic expressions must be used when it is about to anchorite in the absolute.

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Following these comments Petrovici expresses his own views regarding the idea of God. Therefore he notes that religious experience is a direct finding of the existence of God and there is no need for other demonstrations, though, according to him, except the mystics who have a communion with God through a supernatural experience, any believer feels the presence of God after some interior effects, which represents a normal religious experience. Thus he is sure that the old cosmological argument has not lost its role and that changed in part, is conclusive efficacy for the existence of God.

He says that God's existence can be proved through the empirical issues. The first is the hierarchical aspect of nature, because the nature is presented as degrees of evolution, which culminate in human being. The human spirit does not stop to the referral of existing steps, but imagine steps which exceed and rise above till the idea of a perfect existence. “Due a brighter consciousness, the human being, tormented by the desire to exceed himself, charges the vital elan not only strictly on the portion from its side, but it feels coming from the valley and trying to move on and higher. Hence the oscillation of human being between demon and angel, hence the feeling of a hierarchy that human being restricts it with the mind beyond the step on which it is. God would be the concentrated and abbreviated expression of next steps and that of latent potencies that make possible this ascension.” (Ion Petrovici, 1937: 318)

Petrovici argues that we must not conceive God as a perfection who is in progress, but as perfection made from the beginning and forever. In the sustaining of this idea he resorts to the idealistic theory of time that absolute is over instability above empirical becoming so God always appears as the world support, without which it would collapse. He wanted to show the world show leads to a solid assumption of a transcendent foundation, to God.

The conclusion of Petrovici is not a certain one, but in his opinion "an intellectual argument, even with the probable results, is more satisfied than a pure faith, subjective and emotional." (Ion Petrovici, 1937: 318) Speaking from the speculative metaphysics point of view, he gave his conclusions a probability value, considering that are enough for practice.

This "probabilistic" aspect of Petrovici’s conclusions was not agreed by the theologian Leon Venthey who considers theistic claims almost of the same kind as mathematical truths and rejected the idea of the Romanian philosopher regarding the fact that metaphysical speculation on the existence of God can not work with certainty of mathematical truth.

Petrovici sustains his idea discussing the position of Nicolai Hartmann, that the postulation of a transcendent reality as the basis of our world and also causa sui, is tackled by the dialectical arguments.

Hartmann argues that "God as an absolutely necessary being, it is rather an absolutely contingent existence." (Ion Petrovici, 1937: 319) He starts from the idea that the empirical existence does not have a necessary nature and does not contain within itself its own reason, hence appears the human need to rise to an ultimate fundament to be self-sufficient and to be able to explain the existence. Petrovici, however, is convinced that contingency is not an ontic position but one of relative knowledge that can not forward in a concrete way beyond a certain existential datum. He claims that the marginal contingency, about which Hartmann speaks, belongs to the limited human knowledge, the place of a need for "another order" which would close the existing building. Therefore he is convinced that a terminal fundament is a postulate of human reason which keeps a part of structure for a higher world. If this ultimate fundament would be contingent, the human spirit would not move to a higher world but it would remain in the world of sense, as long as we hit the irrational contingency. However there is an external need for knower spirit which is supposed to be a substitute of internal needs which exceed us and which would embrace the entire being leaving nothing to the discretion of hazard and of the irrational mystery. Thus Petrovici said that the notion of God expresses the belief of human reason that someone could enter the absolute without to hit any mystery. “With this claim comes the concept of God, to the opposite notion of a final rule that would be contingent and mysterious, not only for our heads, but even for the broadest spirit and able to handle all mysteries – able of explanation.” (Ion Petrovici, 1940: 579)

According to his conception, Petrovici argues that our spirit in his explanatory need, it can not rest only in transcendent and the dialectical descent from God to the world is more difficult than the lift from the world to its transcendent and divine fundament. Although he believes that the certitude can not be achieved either on the raising way or the lowering way from God, which would result in an attempt to the explanation of the cosmic genesis and the aspects of existence. The first try begins from the sensible world towards vague outlines, and the second try the known is build beginning from an absolute that man must merge for relieving by all the limits, because the mystery of the appropriate forms it could not be revealed. Therefore he gets the idea that “The glimpse of a sense of existence - and so of creation - it can not be done only in the intelligible senses for the human, just as any cosmological interpretation can not be free from the idea of finality, the dominant idea and supreme in spiritual life of our size.” (Ion Petrovici, 1940: 580)

Thus he shows that the human understanding forms are overlapped to the absolute reality, and our image about the world is a possible vision of truth itself, seen from different angles and special spiritual

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levels. There is some parallelism between these various versions so that a human version is more symbolic, and it is something from the nature of truth itself, but Petrovici tried to justify only the hope to capture "something" in the absolute reality even within the human limited categories.

Concepts of Cosmological Problem of the

Genesis There have been philosophers who tried to

glimpse something of the mystery of the creation and to characterize the relationship between God and his work having a conscious belief in human possibility to address the problem of cosmological genesis. Petrovici will give a brief overview of the problem of cosmological concepts of genesis. He first mentions Plato's conception that God is not the author of the whole world, but only the architect who wanted to shape pre-existing and coeternal material with him. Also Plato sought to thin the preexisting material identifying it with indefinite or even vacuum, with nonbeing. The modern philosopher Stuart Mill has the same belief that God is infinitely good and infinitely wise, but not infinitely powerful because his strength should be seen as limited by the nature of the material which he modeled. This interpretation wrests to the idea of God one of the its main utilities, that of being an endpoint of thought, suppressing cosmic contingency, but by maintaining to the coeternal material the terminal contingency it is at least half, so the idea of divinity no longer meets one of the essential roles which it plays in philosophical thinking.

The second idea raised by Petrovici is that the world would be an exclusive product of God without the cooperation of a foreign element. He distinguishes here two explanations: 1. the pantheistic interpretation 2. the theistic interpretation. According to pantheistic interpretation the world is not separate from its author, but form a unity, God is a reality and not perfection made from the beginning. In this view appeared at ancient Stoics, Giordano Bruno and Spinoza, the world is God's body, showing its exterior expression and natural phenomena occurring in itself and not outside. The accusation brought to this concept is that it makes God adept at all the world imperfections, an incomplete God, who needs the world needs for completing itself and could not be anymore causa sui.

According to the theistic interpretation God is an accomplished perfection, separate from the world. In this context, arise questions regarding the cause of creation, because the idea that God created from necessity was not accepted by this idea demonstrating that God was not perfect. The proposed explanations had the purpose to abolish the idea of creation by necessity. An explanation in this way would be the neoplatonic idea of creation from abundance; the

Christian doctrine gives another explanation that God created from kindness and generosity, the third explanation comes from the part of Ravaisson that God creates from the pleasure of self-sacrifice tearing pieces from his own substance; the most obscure explanation belongs to Schelling where the genesis the world from absolute would not start from his initiative, but it results from the separation of finite from divinity.

Another question which arose was whether God does not consume by creation of the world a part of its own substance. The explanation of Plotinus is that the creation of the world would be a process of emanation, God remains above the world, not consumes by that emanation anything from his own essence. But Christianity adopted the theory of creation from nothingness, giving to the divinity the most impressive power so that it could not be about the decrease of the divine substance.

The third conception at which stops Petrovici is that of Lucian Blaga, that there would be any impossibility from the part of "Great Anonymous" (confused with the Divinity) to reproduce indefinitely without any loss in strength and perfection. It would be enough to contemplate itself, and any act of self reflex would be the base of its self reproduction [...] for the fear of possible usurpation, he fixes alone the creative forces, and only by allowing degraded and minimized reproductions.” (Ion Petrovici, 1940: 581)

Regarding Blaga’s concept Petrovici says he does not agree with the theory that all creator’s activity to be controlled by the fear of losing the power because in this situation the human desire for perfection would be in vain, and the love of God would lost any support.

Petrovici presents his own conception, elaborating firm starting points regarding the ordinary experiences. The first starting point is the “limited nature of the human being, ” (Ion Petrovici, 1940: 584) he emphasizes the human inability to conceive the whole because the part can not cover the whole therefore we are limited creatures, and our knowledge is imperfect, so “in relation to the cosmos the human remains limited.” (Ştefan Munteanu, 2007: 85)

The second starting point is that “the space is becoming dynamism” (Ion Petrovici, 1940: 585) and human intelligence needs of stable elements for acting, of substances and of substrates which at the beginning evaded from setting in concrete form.

Thus appears the conflict between the pure dynamism and the idea of substance which the human spirit wanted as a reality. The conciliatory tendency expressed by some philosophers would be that the dynamism characterizes the sensible world and the immutable substance is in the transcendental perfections part. But this formula which conceives one purely static and the other purely dynamic would break the connections between the transcendent and immanent

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world, so it was accepted a kind of dynamism in transcendent and a kind of static in the sensible world, as “in transcendent prevails the immutable, related to the incorruptible perfection and the dynamic prevails in the sensible world, linked to a perfectibility that never comes to an end.” (Ion Petrovici, 1940: 586)

Thus we can say that in the created world is a dynamic which involves the time offering infinite perspectives dynamism to which is added the idea of evolution, thus giving to the becoming an upward sense According to Petrovici the evolution means the dynamic development toward a real training is a perfect unity in variety at which the whole is a conductor of complex particulars. In opposition with the transcendent perfection where the whole dominates all the parts in immanence the parts explain the whole, so it was the assertion that the world follows a reversed order from divine eternity. Petrovici’s explanation is the appearance of complex units, the whole explaining the function of its own components so the world began to acquire some characteristics of perfection. Therefore upward trend is the desire of self overcome and the cosmic dynamism is the pressure of this exceeding that it is to the more evolved beings and which holds a reserve of virtuality.

He says that “God is present in everything” (Ion Petrovici, 1940: 587) based on the assumption that the bits taken from the absolute are not the smallness limits on all dimensions and the merging with other limited size make that the infinite size to update gradually, but never completely, but continuing forward and to lift as high until to self overcome.

For many thinkers, concerned with the study of cosmogony, appears the question “why the perfect God was content to create an imperfect world?” (Ion Petrovici, 1940: 587) From all the explanations Petrovici prefers that of Leibniz, stating that “two things absolutely identical with nothing differential do not form two, but only one. The world can not be perfect, because it disappeared in God, perfection of different degrees can not be admitted, the gradation belonging only to the imperfection or to the perfectibility”. (Ion Petrovici, 1940: 587) Based on Leibniz's conception, Petrovici believes that the world can exist as reality it had to differentiate itself from God, but also to have a link. In this regard he distinguishes three types of differentiation: the first one in which the elements detached from each other to be independent but to remain united in the divine perfection, the second by the intimate essence of the separated little parts becomes virtual in the created world, the third way is that the elements due to their movement of evolution creates unitary complexes, advancing from the part to whole it is created a reverse direction from the divine order.

Thus Petrovici concludes that act of genesis remains a mystery, because there can be no creation or emanation, or multiplying or dividing, as if it is

something from each and more than all together, but the creative period, with all the limits involved, it would be most appropriate. Consequently, he believes that God created a world with many imperfections which strives to attain the ideal of perfection in creator.

Another question is: why did God create the world? Petrovici is convinced that the world was created by the initiation and with the agreement of divinity. He believes that the perfection has a reverse and does not include the effort of autonomous parts to become whole and to penetrate the mystery, so “to the perfection is lacked in a fatal way the values which are the results of hard striving work that can not be only hovering benevolently at a level of imperfection” being convinced that this is true aspect of pantheism, which conceive a virtual God that is updated in the world. But the created world is not outside of God, but it is the dynamic aspect of divinity, therefore all limited beings in their target for ideal can be considered as missionaries of divinity. Therefore God can be a performer-spectator in the process that constitutes the world.

After these explanations remains the question how far can cosmic evolution reach upward? Petrovici believes that the cosmic process has not to end, but can continue indefinitely without ever reaching the perfection, because if the world would reach the perfection it would melt in God's identity. Thus the highest form of purpose for human is the ethical commandments which are the light and the difficult way toward perfectibility.

Petrovici believes that between natural mysticism, which aims sudden merging with God, and Christian mysticism, where the union with God leads to the increasing of spiritual power, it is the divine lies a kind of asleep virtuality and immersion in it leads to destruction. The evolutionist idea of a gradual participation at the divine would be accepted and should not oppose either the most positive spirit.

Conclusions In order to admit the idea of the existence of a

superior being who created the universe or took part to the ordering of phenomena from nature, researchers tried to find arguments in science and especially in physics. The order in the phenomena world makes the Romanian philosopher to think of the existence of a superior being. Petrovici concludes that the effective participation of the intellectual element gives consistent to the faith in God and maintains the belief in the existence of the Divine. According to him the world does not exist in a necessary way but in contingent one and therefore the principle of its existence should not be searched and can not be found in itself but outside in a superior principle, in an ultimate reality, absolute, perfect and eternal, in God. Therefore we must not conceive God as a perfection who is in progress, but as perfection made from the beginning and forever.

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Bibliography

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Resources Development 2007-2013, co-financed by the European Social Fund, under the project number POSDRU/107/1.5/S/76841 with the title „Modern Doctoral Studies: Internationalization and Interdisciplinarity”.

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