Tractus Outline

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Jean-Marc Lepain's
Tractatus
Philosophical Aphorisms of the Baha'i Theology

1. The nature of man is spiritual.
2. Man has no direct access to his nature which is revealed to him progressively during the process of his own inner development.
3. The understanding of spiritual values is what reveals to man his own nature.
4. The world of spiritual values is a transcendent world which exists of its own right independently of individuals.
5. The progressive discovery of the spiritual values is the aim of civilization and human progress.
6. The nature of man is made of potentialities which are eternal and universal.
7. However, the inscription of man in a specific nature (naturalization process) is "historial", i.e. dependent on a specific paradigm which is contingent on a period of the human history of humanity.
8. Each divine Revelation defines a paradigm, i.e. a new "tradition", which gives man access to a new understanding of the transcendent world of spiritual values.
9. This new understanding allows man to inscribe himself in a new nature (process of renaturalisation) which gives him access to a new dimension of his interiority.
10. The purpose of civilization is the progressive development of the spiritual, intellectual and social potentialities of all individuals.
11. The spiritual evolution of man is contained in a global process which can be called "the spiritualization process". 12. The finality of the individual life, as well as the finality of social life and civilization, is the spiritualization of the individual and of the whole human race.
13. The spiritualization process of man implies his individuation, i.e. the conquest of his autonomy.
14. The formation of the identity,
the acquisition of an independent will,
of a sense of individual responsibility,
of inner discipline,
of psychological self-sufficiency,
the exercise of free will,
the taking on of one's own social life and future,
the expression of a free consciousness of oneself
by the recognition of one's own characteristics
and the sovereignty exercised over one's life
and body
are not only the requisites of the individuation process,
but also must be fully recognized
as the aim and purpose of the spiritual life,
and therefore are an integral part
of the spiritualization process of the individual
and of the entire human race.

15. The unification of the inner being
is conducive to the development of a unified vision
which allows the individual to see the underlying unity
of the reality of things.

16. Then he can see the unity
of the inside and of the outside,
of the exoteric and the esoteric,
of the form and the content,
of the means and the ends.
17. It is through this inner unification that the universal teleology and the meaning of the universe become perceivable.
18. The inner unification of the human being cannot be achieved without the participation of the self in the transcendence of things through which the self is linked to the physical and spiritual cosmos.
19. For this reason, the development of "the spiritual vision" reveals to man a hidden order of the universe.
20. However, this hidden order is relative to the individual and his spiritual understanding and should not be regarded as existing per se.
21. The Baha'i Faith, through the spiritualization process, represents the emergence of a new subjectivity.
22. The subject is the social being involved in the transformation of the world.
23. The process of spiritualization embraces the social being as well as the inner being and must crown the spiritualization of the subject to which the human being cannot be reduced.
24. The transformation of the subject and the advent of a new subjectivity are conditioned by the transformation of the inner being of man and its unification.
25. The process of subjectivisation is an absolutely necessary step toward the spiritualization of mankind.
26. Subjectivisation represents for man a new way to understand himself socially and to understand his relationship with society.
27. In the Baha'i Faith, the spiritualization of the individual goes along with a social and collective dimension which represents a commitment toward humanity to make of every human being a servant of the human race.
28. Spiritualization of man and transformation of the inner being is one process which makes the interiority of man to communicate with the world of the transcendental values in order to enable him to discover his own nature.
29. Spirituality includes the knowledge and understanding of the mechanisms and practices which rules the transformation of the inner being of man.
30. The spiritual development of man is through stages. With each stage there is associated a "state" and a "rank", i.e. a new understanding of himself and of the spiritual order of things and of his relationship with it.
31. However, all states and ranks pertain to the individual and himself alone and not to any external reality.
32. Rationality, being one of the means that the individual must use in the conquest of his autonomy, must be regarded as one of the major elements of spiritual life as well as an essential quality of the human soul.
33. True rationality should be distinguished from the reduction process (processus reducteur) that man uses in logical thinking, for true rationality also embraces the understanding of the world of spiritual values.
34. Man cannot understand himself in his totality because he is a creature who has been endowed with an infinite potential of evolution.
35. Total understanding of man by himself would be tantamount to the understanding God ("He has known God him who has known himself").
36. God has put in man a "Divine Deposit" which is the medium by which man can communicate with the world of spiritual values.
37. But in the depth of man's inner being, which exists well beyond the "divine deposit", God has also put his "Sign" which is an unfathomable mystery.
38. The "Sign of God" in man is the part of the human essence which will remain for ever out of reach of man.
39. It is because of this "Sign of God" in him that man has an infinite potential of evolution and that he can infinitely come closer to God.
40. However, in many regards, the spiritual evolution which brings man closer to God is nothing but an evolution toward the "Sign of God" which is in him, for it is only by this "Sign" which is in him that man can know God.
41. Because man cannot fully and totally understand himself there is no foundation to knowledge.
42. The quest for a foundation of knowledge is tantamount to the quest of a global understanding of the universe.
43. The ultimate foundation of all knowledge is God himself.
44. God is beyond the range of human rational understanding.
45. Man can have access to God only through an intuitive experience, the character of which is only partial and limited.
46. Man cannot know the creation in its entirety, but he can have an intuitive perception of it.
47. It is on this intuition of the world that lay the ultimate foundation of all knowledge.
48. The essence of this intuition is spiritual and has its origin in the spiritual nature of man.
49. A total knowledge of the universe in its entirety would have a meaning only if man could know himself in his totality.
50. This total knowledge represents an ideal for which man should strive to make constant progress but which is ultimately inaccessible and will remain so for ever.
51. Man can only acquire a limited intelligibility of the universe.
52. This intelligibility is linked and depends on rationality and on the ontological situs of man which limits his horizon of understanding.
53. The First Philosophy (metaphysics) is not a philosophy of the Being but a philosophy of the values which are progressively revealed to man.
54. Its object springs from the study of the human nature and constitutes the only means by which man can apprehend these values.
55. What philosophers call "Being" is in reality only a modality of intelligibility.
56. To each modality of being corresponds a modality of understanding of the universe.
57. The being of man is what comes to define and to limit his understanding of himself and of the world in which he is living.
58. The "world of existence" which embraces everything besides God constitutes only one unique world.
59. In the Baha'i philosophy there is no antinomy between the spiritual world and the material world.
60. The material world is totally contained in the spiritual world.
61. Materiality and spirituality are just two special modalities of the same world.
62. The physical world is made of objects or entities having their own individuality (nominalism) and which all have an independent existence (realism).
63. However, the physical reality in its globality is the manifestation of a more fundamental reality, the nature of which is purely spiritual.
64. The realism and nominalism of the Baha'i philosophy is both transcendent and limited as it does not exclude certain aspects of creation which are idealist.
65. Whatever exists is contingent.
66. Man does not know any form of existence which is not contingent as contingency is the characteristic of existence itself.
67. God, not being contingent, is beyond existence.
68. He "is" without being the Being in a manner which is absolutely inaccessible to human understanding.
69. Innate ideas do not exist.
70. The only innate idea which can be said to exist is the intuitive knowledge that man has of his own existence.
71. However man by the knowledge of himself
and the knowledge of his nature
can have access to a world of knowledge
in which knowledge is not based on sense data
and empirical evidences
depending on sensorial verification
or scientific validation.

72. It is by entering his own interiority that man can have access to the spiritual reality of the things and of the world.
73. What man sees and understands of the world
depends on his interiority
and not on the independent reality of the world.

74. This can be called
the phenomenological principle of Baha'u'llah.

75. The differences that man perceives
between the different ontological levels
of the phenomenological experience
come from man himself
and not from the reality of such ontological levels.

76. The meaning of the world
is found in man himself,
not in the world.

77. The existence of man is more fundamental to himself
than the existence of the universe.

78. The existence of man is more fundamental to the creation
than the physical reality of the universe.

79. The human consciousness
is both consciousness of one's self
and consciousness of the world,
because a consciousness without object cannot exist.

80. However, man's understanding of himself
can be developed only through
the understanding of the world
both in its physical
and spiritual aspects.
81. The world perceived by consciousness
is not only an empirical reality, but also a world of values.

82. The experience by man of the world
as a world of spiritual values
contributes to the development of rationality.

83. This explains why the immanent aspects of the world
cannot be separated from its transcendent aspects.

84. It is not possible to define man
through his relation to the world,
i.e. on the basis of a philosophy of conscience
staging the subject
(une philosophie de la conscience
mettant en scene le sujet).

85. Man is defined only by his relationship to himself
and to the "divine deposit" in him.

86. The relation to God and to the world
must be understood from the vantage point
of his relationship to himself
and not from the point of a conscience problematic.

87. The finality of human existence is to know and to love God.
88. By this knowledge and this love,
man learns to know himself
and to know the world.

89. This knowledge and this love
have the power to bring man
to the realization of his spiritual potentialities.

90. Knowledge and love represent two aspects of an inseparable reality.
91. Although in empiric experience they appear as two different things,
they are each dependent of the other
and should be ultimately reunified
to allow man to understand the hidden order
in the reality of things.

92. The balance between
knowledge and love,
thinking and feeling,
reason and emotion is essential
to the social,
psychological
and spiritual
development of man.

93. The purpose of all human society
is to carry on an ever progressing civilization.

94. The purpose of civilization
is to help man in developing his psychological,
social and spiritual potentialities,
according to the time requirements.

95. Rational understanding
is part of a much larger noetic process
and is completely included in spiritual understanding.

96. Truth is defined in a period of history
by the way man apprehends
the world of spiritual values.

97. Hence truth is an historial concept.
98. True liberty is for man to achieve his own spiritual nature.
End of the Tractatus

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