#6: On Worship and the Great Chain of Being

Whether or not there could be a religion lacking the concept or the act of worship, the fact is that the religions we do have, do essentially involve worship. But worship is a concept that tacitly but essentially involves a metaphysical presumption that has been abandoned in all other modern arenas of thought, the presumption of gradations of perfection among existing things. Arthur Lovejoy famously called this the doctrine of "the Great Chain of Being."

We are quite comfortable today with the idea that one thing may be better than another from the point of view of function. A steak knife is better than a butter knife for cutting steak. This is "betterness" with respect to a purpose of some kind. But for a very long time it was believed that there are also degrees of goodness that independent of any purpose, that are attached to things in their very nature. The obvious example is that of God, who is better than any other thing, and, perhaps, Satan, who is worse than any other thing. But in addition, there are such things as angels, who are better than men, but worse than God. And, so goes the theory, everything is located somewhere on the Great Chain of Being. Things have their location irrespective of what they do, they have their location because of what they are.

There is an interesting instance of the Great Chain being presumed in the racial anti-Semitism of the late 19th century in Germany. Prior to that time, the objective of anti-Semitism had been conversion. The converted Jew was, officially at least, less objectionable or not objectionable at all: the problem had been a property that was not inherent or intrinsic to the Jew in question -- he could abandon or remove it. Once racial anti-Semitism was adopted, this option ceased to exist for the Jew. The problem, as the anti-Semite would have phrased it, is not what you do, it is what you are. You can change what you do, but you cannot change what you are. On this doctrine, Jews were simply inferior as entities, lower on the Great Chain than regular human beings. It was this view that was adopted during the Third Reich.

When we worship, what we are acknowledging is the superiority of the thing we worship. Presumably, it is a superiority over everything else that exists, but certainly a superiority over us. And it is clear that this is not a superiority of any natural kind, e.g. being simply stronger, or bigger, or smarter; it is rather a superiority associated with the way in which the thing exists. We have difficulty with this notion today. We have difficulty understanding how "existing" can be done better or worse. But there was a time when this was believed, and the words used to describe the "quality" that varied were "nobility" and "perfection." God was the most "perfect" and the "noblest." Of course, the most perfect being will also be the stronger, bigger, smarter, etc.., but these qualities follow being absolutely perfect, they do not entail being absolutely perfect.

And so, what is puzzling and interesting is that while we generally reject the Great Chain of Being as a metaphysical premise, we nonetheless retain the concept of worship, since it is essential to retaining religion.

I don't mention this as a reason for rejecting religion, something I suspect we don't in any case have the option of doing, but only as social/psychological/historical anomaly.