2.2.4. The Christic: the fulfillment of all
In Book 4 of The Phenomenon of Man Teilhard de Chardin
turns away from the past, fixes his gaze on the future. In this discussion of
the future, as Robert SPEAIGHT
I Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Op. cit., p.
225.
2 Ibid., p. 23I. Teilhard de Chardin makes
a note here stating: 'There is no such a thing as the 'energy of despair'
in spite of what is sometimes said. What those words really mean is a paroxysm
of hope against hope. All conscious energy is, like love (and because it is
love), founded on hope'. We shall consider this optimistic vision of
Teilhard de Chardin in the second part of our work.
tells us, Teilhard de Chardin's originality is most profound and
his passion most pronounced. "The future, he says, is more beautiful than
all the pasts."'
In order to treat the future with the same dignity he has
given the past, Teilhard de Chardin must continue to treat it scientifically.
But how does one arrive scientifically at a view of the future? For Teilhard de
Chardin, the answer is simple: applying the same logic an astronomer uses to
predict, say, planetary alignment or a solar eclipse, Teilhard de Chardin looks
at the principles and direction of evolution in the past and from them
extrapolates evolution's destination in the future.
Before proceeding it is necessary to review the story thus
far. From the very beginning a process of cosmic evolution was underway. Even
inanimate matter was caught up into this stream propelled ever forward in
increasing complexity-consciousness. Eventually the pull of radial energy, the
energy of union and transcendence that can also be called love, resulted in the
first faltering steps of life. Life spread like a fire over the geosphere and
the biosphere was born. Evolution continued as the biotic force ramified,
flowering ever new peduncles on the tree of life. Relatively recently, a new
critical point was reached as one shoot on this tree began to reflect upon
itself: the birth of thought, the advent of humanity.
Each stage in this grand story saw the progressive liberation
of increasing amounts of consciousness, radial energy freeing itself more and
more from the strictures of the tangential. At the last critical threshold,
Hominisation, this radial liberation resulted in a sudden and unexpected change
in the mechanism of evolution. With the advent of Homo sapiens the
process of ramification was finally abandoned. Evolution switched from a
primarily divergent direction to an overwhelmingly convergent one.2
As a result, humanity became engaged in the grand project of Noo genesis, the
heart of which was a move towards planetisation and reaching its high point in
love. From this point, Teilhard extrapolates.
I Robert Speaight, The Life of Teilhard de
Chardin., New York, I967, p. II0. 2 See appendix II.
As far as Teilhard de Chardin is concerned, humanity is a work
in progress, at present no more than an embryo of what it shall one day become.
Marvelous as they might be, the emergence of humanity and the concomitant
noosphere do not mark the end of evolution. Their significance is not the
termination of evolution but a change of venue: humanity has become the field
upon which evolution is now at play. In this sense, Teilhard de Chardin agrees
with NIETZSCHE that man is made to be surpassed. However, Teilhard de Chardin
does not anticipate some Nietzschean ubermensch emerging in the
future, but instead sees a vision of super-humanity. He says:
The outcome of the world, the gates of the future, the
entry into the super-human--these are not thrown open to a few of the
privileged nor to one chosen people to the exclusion of all others. They will
open only to an advance of all together, in a direction in which all together
can join and find completion in a spiritual renovation of the earth, a
renovation whose physical degree of reality we must now consider and whose
outline we must make clearer.1
Teilhard de Chardin arrives at this vision of the all-together
ascent of humankind through an extrapolation of his former logic. We recall his
formula:
Evolution = Rise of consciousness,
Rise of consciousness = Effect of
union'
From these two postulates Teilhard de Chardin deduces a third:
namely, that this increase in consciousness and movement towards union must
result in a centre, a point of utmost consciousness. Teilhard de Chardin calls
this point of ultimate consciousness, the terminus of evolution wherein
humanity transcends itself, the Omega Point3.
1 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of
Man, New York, 1959, p. 244.
2 Id., p. 243.
3 See appendix I and appendix II.
There is a tendency to assume that any collective
transcendence of humanity must be impersonal, but Teilhard de Chardin will have
none of this. Persons after all, are de facto what evolution labored
so long to create; that the personal should be lost then is
inconceivable.I Far from disappearing, the personal will actually
increase as it rushes headlong towards the universal. Teilhard de Chardin calls
this state of excited-personality the Hyper-Personal. He states
flatly,
It is therefore a mistake to look for the extension of our
being or of the Noosphere in the Impersonal. The Future-Universal could not be
anything else but the Hyper-Personal - at the Omega Point.2
It is one thing to postulate a
hyper-personal-collective-future but another thing entirely to make this
concept intelligible. In an effort to do so Teilhard de Chardin introduces one
of his most characteristic axioms: union differentiates a phrase as
connected with Teilhard de Chardin as the cogito is with Descartes.
True union differentiates, believes Teilhard de Chardin, and so Omega is not a
great ocean swallowing and eradicating the grains of consciousness that flow
into it, but is rather a distinct Center radiating at the core of a system
of centers.3 The hyper-personal doesn't just transcend but
includes and intensifies the personal. Omega is more personal than we, not
less.
Teilhard de Chardin maintains that there is a difference
between personality and individuality. The egoist tries to separate himself as
much as possible from others in order to individualize, but in doing so drags
the world backwards towards a retrograde plurality. In contrast, Teilhard de
Chardin says that "the goal of ourselves, the acme of our originality, is
not our individuality but our person.' We don't become persons through
isolation but through communion, through relationships. Thus, "the true
ego
I "[...] a Universe in process of psychic
concentration [such as ours] is identical with a Universe that is
acquiring a personality." The Future of Man, p. 79. See also The
Phenomenon of Man, pp. 258-264.
2 Ibid., p. 260.
3 Ibid., p. 262.
4 Ibid., p. 263.
57 grows in inverse proportion to
egoism."' Teilhard de Chardin suggests that this seemingly
paradoxical statement proves itself in everyday life. When we love with
abandon, losing ourselves in the beloved, don't we at the same time become more
truly ourselves? We find ourselves, so to speak, in the other. Union doesn't
just differentiate, it centrifies, it personalizes; ultimate union with Omega
personifies ultimately.
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