0 Religious Disputes Analysis (existentialism theroy)

from Tolstoy's view on Religious Dispute

ANALYSIS
Chapter four presents the analysis of the data to answer the research problems. There will be discussion about the results of various religions in The Coffee House of Surat and Tolstoy’s suggestion to overcome the religious disputes as the impact of various religions.
4.1. The Results of Various Religions in The Coffee House of Surat
By the fact that there are various religions in society, people become aware to find out the truth. They will wonder if their religion is the one that is true. This condition challenges them to prove and pursue the truth. But sometimes it also causes problems like disputes, instability and skeptical. However, eventually people will try to find the way out of such situation. It commonly results in tolerance among people. Therefore at least there are three results of various religions. They are the awareness and consciousness to find out the truth, disputes, and tolerance.
4.1.1 Awareness and Consciousness to Find Out the Truth
The consciousness to find out the truth is initiated by personal intention. This proves that individual cannot represent others. Every individual is responsible for his or her own conduct. Generalization will never serve objective measuring of analysis. Therefore in the short story the characters represent their selves as individual. By defining this, the analysis is more toward the people rather than their religion. For example another Jew may act differently toward the same situation in the story as well as another people. So when I mention a Turk for example, it doesn't mean another Turk or all Turk.
Each people have different respond toward the existence of various religions in society. The respond is individually and should be analyze as individual case. In the story, it is mentioned that a Persian Theologian becomes perplex in his pursue of God that eventually he lost his wits, he becomes confused and ceases even to believe in the existence of a God. It is mentioned in the citation below.
After having argued all his life about the first cause, this unfortunate theologian had ended by quite perplexing himself and instead of understanding that he had lost his reason, he began to think that there was no higher Reason controlling the universe. (Paragraph 3)
From the passages above, I can conclude that he is a kind of people who pursue truth but then ‘perplex himself’ (in Tolstoy’s expression) like many philosophers such as Nietzsche and Sartre. For Nietzsche existence is found in the reverberations of the phrase “God is dead,” in the challenge of nihilism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_is_dead). For Sartre, Sartre's slogan—“existence precedes essence” indicates that existence is “self-making-in-a-situation” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/existentialism). It means that the fundamental contribution of existential thought lies in the idea that one's identity is constituted neither by nature nor by culture, since to “exist” is precisely to constitute such an identity. What has happened to the Persian Theologian basically is the struggle to think the presence of God. Therefore to be an atheist is his own choice to exist. What makes he who he is—is not fixed by his type but by what he makes of himself, who he becomes. The rest of the story is to answer toward the perplexed philosopher who doubted the existence of God.
In the story Tolstoy mentions several characters to answer the question whether there is a God or not. They are an African slave, a Brahmin, a Jewish, an Italian missionary, a protestant minister, a Turk, and a student of Confucius. Each of them agrees that there is a God but at the same time they argue about the nature of God and how people should worship God. One argument is refuted by all others and no one can convince others. Then the student of Confucius speaks his opinion for he is asked by many people. He explains the nature of God by a story about the nature of sun. This story succeeded to influence others to overcome the dispute.
From the story 'The Coffee House of Surat, the character of Persian theologian is a man who regard that logical thinking is the most important. I can compare his opinion with Nietzsche or Sartre since both do not believe in God. People like them believe that God is a product of thinking because of fear and uncertain.
The story itself then is an answer toward people like Persian theologian who disbelief in God. It is more as a philosophical dialogue between a Persian theologian (atheist) and the student of Confucius (believer).
Kierkegaard developed the problem of existence in the context of his radical approach to Christian faith; Nietzsche did so in light of his thesis of the death of God. Subsequent existential thought reflects this difference: while some writers—such as Sartre and Beauvoir,—were resolutely atheist in outlook, others variously explored the implications of the concept “authentic existence” for religious consciousness. Though neither Nietzsche's nor Kierkegaard's thought can be reduced to a single strand, both took an interest in what Kierkegaard termed “the single individual.” Both were convinced that this singularity, what is most my own, “me,” could be meaningfully reflected upon while yet, precisely because of its singularity, remaining invisible to traditional philosophy, with its emphasis either on what follows unerring objective laws of nature or else conforms to the universal standards of moral reason. A focus on existence thus led, in both, to unique textual strategies quite alien to the philosophy of their time—and ours. Below is passages excerpted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/existentialism about Kierkegaard concept of”the single individual”. This long qoutation is meant to describe the motive of religious conduct of individual and how meaning is judged and understood as the value in society.
In Kierkegaard, the singularity of existence comes to light at the moment of conflict between ethics and religious faith. Suppose it is my sense of doing God's will that makes my life meaningful. How does philosophy conceive this meaning? Drawing here on Hegel as emblematic of the entire tradition, Kierkegaard, in his book Fear and Trembling, argues that for philosophy my life becomes meaningful when I “raise myself to the universal” by bringing my immediate (natural) desires and inclinations under the moral law, which represents what I ought to be. In doing so I lose my individuality (since the law holds for all) but my actions become meaningful in the sense of understandable, governed by a norm. Now a person whose sense of doing God's will is what gives her life meaning will be intelligible just to the extent that her action conforms to the universal dictates of ethics. But what if, as in case of Abraham's sacrifice of his son, the action contradicts what ethics demands? Kierkegaard believes both that Abraham's life is supremely meaningful (it is not simply a matter of some immediate desire or meaningless tic that overcomes Abraham's ethical consciousness; on the contrary, doing the moral thing is itself in this case his tempting inclination) and that philosophy cannot understand it, thus condemning it in the name of ethics. God's command here cannot be seen as a law that would pertain to all; it addresses Abraham in his singularity. If Abraham's life is meaningful, it represents, from a philosophical point of view, the “paradox” that through faith the “single individual is higher than the universal.” Existence as a philosophical problem appears at this point: if there is a dimension to my being that is both meaningful and yet not governed by the rational standard of morality, by what standard is it governed? For unless there is some standard it is idle to speak of “meaning.”
To solve this problem there must be a norm inherent in singularity itself, and, in his Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Kierkegaard tries to express such a norm in his claim that “subjectivity is the truth,” an idea that prefigures the existential concept of authenticity. Abraham has no objective reason to think that the command he hears comes from God; indeed, based on the content of the command he has every reason, as Kant pointed out in Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, to think that it cannot come from God. His sole justification is what Kierkegaard calls the passion of faith. Such faith is, rationally speaking, absurd, a “leap,” so if there is to be any talk of truth here it is a standard that measures not the content of Abraham's act, but the way in which he accomplishes it. To perform the movement of faith “subjectively” is to embrace the paradox as normative for me in spite of its absurdity, rather than to seek an escape from it by means of objective textual exegesis, historical criticism, or some other strategy for translating the singularity of my situation into the universal. Because my reason cannot help here, the normative appropriation is a function of my “inwardness” or passion. In this way I “truly” become what I nominally already am. To say that subjectivity is the truth is to highlight a way of being, then, and not a mode of knowing; truth measures the attitude (“passion”) with which I appropriate, or make my own, an “objective uncertainty” (the voice of God) in a “process of highest inwardness.”
In contrast to the singularity of this movement, for Kierkegaard, stands the crowd: “the crowd is untruth.” The crowd is, roughly, public opinion in the widest sense and what condemns it to “untruth” in Kierkegaard's eyes is the way that it insinuates itself into an individual's own sense of who she is, relieving her of the burden of being herself: if everyone is a Christian there is no need for me to “become” one. Since it is a measure not of knowing but of being, one can see how Kierkegaard answers those who object that his concept of subjectivity as truth is based on an equivocation: the objective truths of science and history, however well-established, are in themselves matters of indifference; they belong to the crowd. It is not insofar as truth can be established objectively that it takes on meaning, but rather insofar as it is appropriated “passionately” in its very uncertainty. To “exist” is always to be confronted with this question of meaning. The truths that matter to who one is cannot, be something to be attained only when objective science has completed its task.
From the long quotation above I can conclude that religious value and truth is subjective and much depends on individual consciousness. However, people always have different opinion about this issue how to judge and define value and truth. Individual is the part of society and cannot be separated from the society, therefore value and meaning usually are also much more depend on society. McDowel and Bob Hostetler in their book The New Tolerance wrote that:
Truth is created by specific culture and exists only in that culture. Therefore, any system or statement that tries to communicate truth is a power play, an effort to dominate other culture. (http://en.wikipedia.org/the new tolerance)
In the quotation above, McDowel and Bob Hostetler emphasizes that society rather than individual as the measure of value and truth. It is different with Kierkegaard with his conception that “the crowd is untruth.” This proves that one conduct cannot be judged by only one point of view. For example is the case of Ibrahim in history and Learn Persian Theologian in the short story. It is not easy to make an objective judgment, but individual is always the subject who has consciousness to make a judgment no matter it is right or wrong. It is much more like Kierkegaard expression “subjectivity is the truth”.
4.1.2 Disputes
In the past, most people do not realize the important of tolerance. I see that most problems then lead to war and fighting. History recorded disputes among religions worshippers in the world (see chapter 2). Usually dispute and war is initiated by personal disagreement among people. When the person involved in the dispute has power toward many people then war happened. No one willingly involve in such war. They involved in the war or dispute because they have to rather than they want to. When the dispute is in the name of religion or country, people seems to have duty to involve. The personal issue has become religion or national issue. It is an example of people who has no authority toward his or her own live. They seem have no choice, but actually every people has choices to decide and determine his own live. Such people always place themselves in a week position and let other people or situation to dictate and control their live. It happened to most people no matters their background. It is because people want to be admitted in society and be regarded as important part of society. When everyone involved in a war, if anyone avoided it, he may be regarded as a coward and society will undervalued him. This is irony but happened in everyday live. However after understanding the motives of the disputes, it seemed that people have no power to say no toward the called of war. From this point I can say that they have failed to learn from history. But nowadays more and more people have realized such caution and they tend to become more individualistic and independent in deciding something especially when it related with religion issue.
More people have become pragmatist in which they won't do anything harm or disadvantage themselves as individual. They are more independent and think more critical. The disputes primarily at this time are no more physical contact or violence since most people try to avoid it for their own good. They understand that violence could not overcome the problem, instead it causes more problems. It also has anything to do with the advance of science and knowledge. People tend to be positive from time to time. Many people no more regard religious as important issue in his or her live. They are more interested in economy or politic issues then religious. I believe that this condition will continue in the future, so that the effect of various religions are less and less toward society. In the short story, it seems that people argue to convince other that his own religion that is right. Everyone have the same feeling. It’s the reason for someone to choose a faith because he believes that it’s the true among others. When we talk about choices, people are free to choose their own decision. Everyone is responsible toward his own live and not toward others. Therefore from this point of view, people should mind his own business. Even so, when an individual live in society he has to socialize with other in which the differences usually can initiate disagreement and disputes. In the society nowadays, people cannot avoid the existence of other party or other people with various religions and characteristics. Facing this fact he should understand that undervalue other or criticize other will cause disagreement in the society and finally it can disturb himself as individual and also others.
In the story it’s clear that individual emerge and its attitude cannot be characterized as the representative of general attitude of other religious faith, therefore it should be measured and regarded as individual conduct and individual only. Regarding such characteristic as general characteristic will lead to over simplified of religious community. Every individual can have different attitude toward the same issue. That’s why sometimes there are also disputes among people in the same religion.
4.1.3 Tolerance
When I analyze the short story closer it seems that Tolstoy present the disputes and the existence of religious member as merely tools to serve the main problem that is faced by learned Persian theologian and it is then answered by the student of confusions. The intelligent reader will recognize it immediately that the main course is not the disputes but the problem of lean Persian theologian. The problem that makes his live miserable, the question that make him absurd and frustrate him till he finally determine that there is no God. Both learned Persian theologian and Confucius student are philosophers while the rest are common people who never think deeply about their action. They argue what they do not really understand. They argue merely to fulfill their desire to feel important and exist. For the learned Persian theologian, they are fool people who do not know the nature of God and such thing. They are only blind follower of their religion. The function of Persian theologian here therefore is to remind them that they actually have the same problem with him, if they do not such problem they do not need to dispute. They should think about God and religions, to be skeptical to understand the truth while the student of Confucius has function to give them lesson to respect and tolerate each other and to make them understand the concept of God as the core of differences that generally lead to disputes. Therefore the message of this story is that people should think of his own condition whether he has real faith or merely a blind follower who knows nothing of his own faith. After that, he should also able to tolerate others people as the fellow being and as the same member of the same society.
From the whole story, the student of Confucius seems to suggest tolerance to other faiths and that to respect others is the answer of religious dispute. It is shown in the story by the two paragraphs before the last paragraph below.
"The higher a man's conception of God, the better will he know Him. And the better he knows God, the nearer will he draw to Him, imitating His goodness, His mercy, and His love of man.

"Therefore, let him who sees the sun's whole light filling the world, refrain from blaming or despising the superstitious man, who in his own idol sees one ray of that same light. Let him not despise even the unbeliever who is blind and cannot see the sun at all."

The passages above also tells us that Tolstoy seems to believe everyone has his or her own concept of the nature of God. Whether two people have precisely the same concept it is doubted since people think differently one to another. For example two painters when they paint the same object before them, they likely will create different painting according to their own perception, ability, experience, or personal point of view.
4.2 Tolstoy’s Suggestion to Overcome the Religious Disputes as the Impact of Various Religions
In the short story The Coffee House of Surat, at glance we'll find that Tolstoy is presenting the problem of religious dispute that is caused by the different point of views among religious faiths. From the short story we find that almost people regarded himself true and regarded others wrong. Tolstoy views this different as the matter of egotism of the people. There are several reasons if we look deeper in the short story for Tolstoy regards that it is the man who caused the dispute rather than the religions themselves:
1) A man cannot rely merely on his logical thinking even it is the only tool to recognize the world. One should find experience as much as possible so that he can gain broader view and true knowledge,
2) No one can possibly knows what the truly true is, especially dealing with God and religions,
3) Life as reality is merely a mirror of human thinking; none is entirely objective. People think differently in accordance with their knowledge, environments, cultures, etc., therefore, diversity in all aspects of life includes religions is normal and should be responded wisely.
From the point of view we recognize Tolstoy's view about religious dispute. He favors knowledge but at the same time he realizes that he cannot depend on it entirely; therefore he acts carefully. He doesn't suggest and agree that a man to be fully in positive stage where he depends only on his logical thinking. One should also consider that human are complex and all this time experience proves that the truth of logical thinking is always temporary. Trough this short story, Tolstoy reminds us that man’s ability is limited, especially when it refers to reasons, but anyhow one should find out his own truth. Therefore everyone should not accept a conception without trying to study it deeper. The problem in the coffee house of Surat is a kind of philosophical problem and should be answered by philosophical view.