Teilhard de Chardin and Senghor on the civilization of the universal

INTRODUCTION

As a palaeontologist, a geologist, a theologian and a philosopher, Teilhard de Chardin proves to be a man of science. His great scientific spirit which accepted the complexity of our world and the complexity of human relationships, enabled him to foresee that all human races, all cultures, all civilizations, were coming up together through convergence. His scientific investigations lead him, though he had not received a great philosophical formation, to consider some philosophical problems and to stand out as a great philosopher of the future. This is what Paul-Bernard GRENET asserts when he says:

Un grand esprit qui ne voulait faire que de la science fut contraint, par l'universalité même de cette science, de poser des problèmes qui étaient philosophiques, de parler un langage philosophique. Comme sa connaissance de la technique philosophique était sommaire, il passa aux yeux de plusieurs, qui étaient ses juges par fonction, ou qui usèrent des droits de tout lecteur à porter un jugement pour un maître de mauvaise philosophie. Comme son information scientifique était immense, ses dons de coeur inépuisables, le lyrisme de son expression prestigieux, il passa aux yeux de plusieurs autres pour le seul maître de la philosophie de l'avenir. ^2(*)

In effect, Teilhard de Chardin affirmed that the general movement of civilizations was drawing them towards a panhuman convergence. In his writings, he presents how civilizations are called to come together in synthesis in order to unite in the Omega Point, the centre of all civilizations. Throughout his metaphysical considerations, he maintains the idea of totality, defending the complementarity and mutual duty of human races in the process of collectivisation of mankind. In this chapter, we are going to present the notion of the Civilization of the Universal as Teilhard de Chardin conceives it.

I.1. TOTALITY IN TEILHARDIAN METAPHYSICS

Teilhard de Chardin's metaphysics is essentially metaphysics of convergence and totality. According to him, at first sight, beings and their destinies might seem to us to be scattered chaotically over the face of the earth; but the more one reflects, with the help of all that science, philosophy and religion can teach us, each in its own field, the more one comes to realize that the world should be likened not to a bundle of elements artificially held together, but rather to some organic system animated by a broad movement of development which is proper to itself. As centuries go by, it seems that a comprehensive plan is indeed being slowly carried out around us:

Il y a une affaire en train dans l'univers, un résultat en jeu, que nous ne saurions mieux comparer qu'à une gestation et à une naissance...Laborieusement, à travers et à la faveur de l'activité humaine, se rassemble, se dégage et s'épure la Terre nouvelle. Non, nous ne sommes pas comparables aux éléments d'un bouquet, mais aux feuilles et aux fleurs d'un grand arbre, sur lequel tout apparaît en son temps et à sa place, à la mesure et à la demande du Tout.^3(*)

There is in effect a situation that is taking place in the universe, a phenomenon that can be likened to pregnancy and to the giving-birth process. Arduously, through human activity, the new Earth is gathering itself. We are not to be likened to the items of a flower pot, which are gathered haphazardly; but to the leaves and flowers of a great tree, on which everything appears at the right time and at the right place, according to the measure and request of all the others. For Teilhard de Chardin therefore, there is a dynamic structural character of things and a temporal dimension of totality.

The universe is thus a totum in which each element is positively weaved with all the others. Man does not live in a world already arranged, but in a world which is in transformation, in progress. Commenting Teilhard de Chardin, Claude CUENOT says that this vision of the world is what is considered as Cosmogenesis:

L'évènement le plus considérable qui se soit déroulé à la surface de la terre, c'est que nous prenons graduellement conscience du fait que le monde est en mouvement. Dans l'ensemble, l'homme avait vécu avec l'idée qu'il appartenait à un système déjà tout arrangé où il se trouvait placé. Or, c'est ce système là qui est en train de se mettre en mouvement dans un sens d'organisation. Ce passage d'un monde conçu comme arrangé à un monde conçu comme en voie d'arrangement, c'est le passage d'une vision en cosmos à une vision en cosmogénèse.^4(*)

Gradually, we are becoming conscious of the fact that the world is in progress. For so long, man has lived with the idea that he was part of a system already arranged and where he just happened to find himself. In fact, this system is in movement in an orderly manner. The passage from the conception that the world is already arranged to the conception that the world is in progress leads us to Cosmogenesis.

For Teilhard de Chardin, the process of convergence in totality is one which occurs naturally, according to the pattern of the evolutionary process itself. Nevertheless, reflective man is capable of choosing whether to cooperate in the process or to oppose to it. He is optimistic enough to suppose that mankind will be neither foolish enough nor wicked enough to defeat this totalisation.

In fact, the world is evolving, the elements are gathering up together in order to become one. Teilhard de Chardin would then consider the problem of the one and the manifold, plurality and unity, and he will insist on the fact that civilizations, cultures, human races, men and women are able to unite despite their differences in order to build up the Civilization of the Universal.

I.1.1. The problem of the One and the Many

If we seek to discover what Teilhard de Chardin regarded as a central and fundamental problem, we have some indications that the starting point of his philosophical thought was the same as that treated by Plato in the Parmenides: the relation between the One and the Many. Thus, Cuénot affirms in the following words:

In his Sketch of a Personal Universe, he wrote: «Plurality and unity: the one problem to which in the end all physics, all philosophy, and all religion, come back.»^5(*)

The problem of the One and the Many had been grappled with throughout the history of philosophy and it lies at the basis of Teilhard de Chardin metaphysics. The Civilization of the Universal, «creative union», is the theory that accepts the conciliation of the One and the Multiple as Wolfgang SMITH puts it:

In the present evolutionary phase of the cosmos (the only phase known to us), everything happens as though the One were formed by successive unifications of the Multiple. [...] This does not mean that the One is compose of the Multiple i.e., that it is born from the fusion in itself of the elements it associates [...] The One appears in the wake of the Multiple, dominating the Multiple since its essential and formal act is to unite^6(*).

Teilhard de Chardin saw that convergence brought together the One and the Many, the One being born from the concentration of the Many. Within a universe which is structurally convergent, the only possible way for one element to draw closer to the other neighbouring elements is by driving towards the point of universal convergence. He calls it the Omega Point. According to him, everything begins in multiplicity and converges towards an ever greater unity. And yet, it is clear that even the most elementary observations disclose just the opposite. The fertilized ovum for example, which looks like a sphere or tiny globule, divides and subdivides, creating a spherical immensity of cells. Then the cells begin to divide themselves, giving rise to a multiplicity of layers, tissues, and organs. The entire movement appears to be in the direction of increasing multiplicity. But Teilhard de Chardin seems to be convinced that things invariably move in the opposite direction: first multiplicity, then unity. For him, not only do all things begin in multiplicity, but it is multiplicity that unites them.

The notion of creative union is central to Teilhard de Chardin's entire system of thought. In effect, here lies the basis of his consideration of the Civilization of the Universal. Creative union is the theory that leads us to such a collectivisation of humankind, what he calls Hominisation as he says:

Coalescence des éléments et coalescence des rameaux. Sphéricité géométrique de la Terre et courbure psychique de l'Esprit s'harmonisant pour contrebalancer dans le Monde les forces individuelles et collectives de Dispersion et leur substituer l'Unification : tout le ressort, le secret, finalement, de l'Hominisation.^7(*)

Individual forces and even collective forces of dispersal are being harmonised through the gathering of the elements of the earth in order to bring forth unification which is finally the work of Hominisation.

From such a metaphysical framework, Teilhard de Chardin laid the foundation of the Civilization of the Universal, where the problem of the One and the Many was considered in terms of real men and women. As he says:

I find that the one great problem of the one and the manifold is rapidly beginning to emerge from the over-metaphysical context in which I used to state it and look for its solutions. I can now see more clearly that its urgency and its difficulties must be expressed in terms of real men and women.^8(*)

The Civilization of the Universal is a convergence that synthesizes the One and the Many. More than this, in Teilhardian metaphysics, however, love in unifying, ultra-personalizes. Thus Teilhard de Chardin's Cosmo-mysticism falls in line with the demands of established Christian mysticism and this was the core of his own spiritual life.

* ² Paul-Bernard Grenet, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin ou le philosophe malgré lui, Paris, 1960, p.5.

* ³ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Hymne de l'univers, Paris, 1961, p. 151.

* ⁴ Claude Cuénot, Teilhard de Chardin, écrivain de toujours, Paris, 1938, p. 71.

* ⁵ Claude Cuénot, Teilhard de Chardin, London, 1965, p. 377.

* ⁶ Wolfgang Smith, Teilhardism and the New Religion, USA, 1988, p. 66.

* ⁷ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Le phénomène humain, Paris, 1955, p.270.

* ⁸ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in Cuénot, C., Teilhard de Chardin, London, 1965, p. 377.