True Unity within the Diversity of Humanity From Wittgenstein and Kant to the Earth Constitution Glen T. Martin Ludwig Wittgenstein was one of the great thinkers of the 20th century. His philosophical genius was focused on language. Specifically, he asked, what is language and how does it reveal or conceal the world that human beings have encountered throughout history? The importance of this task was immense for him. He declared that “human beings are entangled all unknowing in the net of language.” Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Grammar. Trans. Anthony Kenny. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978, p. 462. And this entanglement, this lack of ability to discern the limits and nature of language has resulted in a 20th century global culture that he saw as very “dark times,” a time of ignorance, endless wars, global conflicts, and pervasive violence. He personally had been a combatant during World War I. Wittgenstein’s first book, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921) attempted an in-depth analysis of language, endeavoring to show the ways in which language revealed (pictured) the world. The book concluded with a section on “the mystical,” pointing to what is “beyond language” and cannot be said. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Trans. D.F. Pears & B.F McGuinness. New York: Humanities Press, 1974, sections 6.45 to 6.53. In his Preface, Wittgenstein wrote that his book can be summed up in the following words: “what can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence.” Ibid., p. 3. However, what we must pass over in silence is not some insignificant dimension of life that need not be of concern. It is just the opposite of this. The “silence” embracing human life that he calls “the mystical” is precisely the whole point. Encountering this unsayable dimension opens us to awareness of the deeper ethical meanings and demands of life. In a letter describing the Tractatus, Wittgenstein wrote that his book was “divided into two parts,” what he wrote and what he has “not written,” and it is that second part that is the important one, for “the Ethical is delimited from within” and “can only be delimited in this way.” C.G. Luckhardt, ed. Wittgenstein: Sources and Perspectives. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1979, pp. 94-95. Some scholars have pointed out that Wittgenstein’s work in this respect is very much in the tradition of Immanuel Kant, the 18th century German thinker who showed the limits of human knowledge in order to reveal the space for “faith” and for the ethical. For Kant, ultimate reality (or God) is absolutely unknowable. We are fundamentally connected to this reality not through our knowledge but through the force of the ethical imperative that breaks into human life in the form of a “categorical imperative” to “always treat every person as an end in themselves, never merely as a means.” Immanuel Kant, Groundwork to the Metaphysics of Morals. Trans. H.J. Paton. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1964, pp. 95-98. This formula, Kant maintained, reveals that “persons” have infinite dignity (incalculable value) as opposed to “things” that have only a “price” that can be traded for other limited things and used as a means to further human existence. There is a dynamic here somewhat parallel to Wittgenstein’s idea that the unsayable dimension is the source of ultimate ethical value. What we cannot speak directly about (perhaps only symbolically) is precisely what is most important in human life. As a lecturer at Cambridge University, Wittgenstein gave a talk to a student group in 1929 that today is known as “Wittgenstein’s Lecture on Ethics.” In the lecture he maintains that “nothing we could ever think or say” could really reveal what we mean by the ethical. He tries to indicate this with a “metaphor”: “if a man could write a book on Ethics which was really a book on Ethics, this book would, with an explosion, destroy all the other books in the world.” Ludwig Wittgenstein, “Lecture on Ethics,” in Philosophical Review (January 1965), p. 7. With this statement, Wittgenstein is pointing to something utterly fundamental to our human situation. The entire meaning and purpose of life exists in the unsayable silence that embraces all languages and anything we can say or do. The diversity of meanings, purposes, distinctions, and utilities that language articulates and that regulate our daily lives is embraced by a “unity” that is utterly unsayable, inconceivable, and incommensurable with these distinctions. The holistic unity, the “integral integrity of the whole” (to use the language of today’s “evolutionary spirituality”) cannot be expressed by language. See Steve McIntosh, The Presence of the Infinite: The Spiritual Experience of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 2015. It can be “symbolized” in open-ended symbols that allow our participation in the ineffable mystery encompassing human life, as 20th century thinkers such as Karl Jaspers, Paul Tillich, and Raimon Panikkar have elaborated, but the Mystery must remain. Karl Jaspers, Truth and Symbol. Trans. Wilde, Kluback and Kimmel. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1959. Paul Tillich, Dynamics of Faith. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1957. Raimon Panikkar, The Rhythm of Being: The Unbroken Trinity. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2010. All the world’s great religions draw on this symbolic dimension. Nevertheless, all language is embraced by this Absolute Mystery, this silence. We cannot say what God, Buddha Nature, Brahman, or the Tao might be. “The Tao that can be named is not the true Tao…. The nameless is the beginning of the ten thousand things.” Lao-Tzu, Te-Tao Ching. Trans. Robert G. Henricks. New York: Macmillan, 1989. Kant declared that the ultimate mystery (which he called the “Noumenon”) flows into human life in the recognition of our infinite dignity, that each person is an “end in themselves” and can never be used “merely as a means.” Wittgenstein’s Lecture on Ethics links this explosive ethical imperative with astonishment that the world exists. The so-called “Being” of things is utterly inexpressible. The proper response is astonishment; as he puts it: “wonder at the existence of the world.” Wittgenstein, “Lecture on Ethics,” op. cit., p. 8. Here is a response not emphasized in the works of Kant, although Kant does point to a certain awareness of this. In his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant points out that concepts cannot encompass the being of things. He states that “a hundred real thalers [dollars] do not contain the least coin more than a hundred possible thalers.” Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. Norman Kemp Smith. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1965, sections A599=B628. The conceptual difference between a hundred “real” dollars and a hundred possible dollars is zero. Both are conceptually identical. Existence is not a concept; “being” cannot be thought. Philosopher Martin Heidegger states that humankind is a “shepherd of Being,” but a shepherd is not a possessor. Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. Trans. William Levitt. New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1977, p. 42. Being cannot be manipulated by any concepts. Wittgenstein makes this mystery explicit: the difference between being (existence) and non-being is nothing at all. The proper response is astonishment, direct awareness of the Absolute Mystery of existence. But the very fact that we exist and feel the overwhelming force of the Ethical opens to us the meaning of human life that can only be lived in the face of this Mystery: to really write a book on Ethics would, with an explosion, destroy all the books by which human beings have tried to understand the world. Because Ethics is connected with “Being,” and with being human. And both being and being human manifest the Absolute Mystery beyond any and all conceptualizations. As Jaspers declares: “This mystery is essential; in it Being itself speaks.” Karl Jaspers, Truth and Symbol. Trans. Wilde, Kluback & Kimmel. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1959, p. 37. Our conceptualizations give us the diversity of the world, and to be caught within those conceptualizations gives us the chaos of human existence on Earth: “Human beings are entangled all unknowing in the net of language.” We divide the world into nation-states, races, religions, ethnicities, and political ideologies. We ignorantly take these divisions as ultimates worthy of fighting and killing for. We believe we are only a part within the world’s divisions and discriminations, a part opposed to and incommensurable with other parts and divisions. The unity of the whole (and with it the ethical dimension) escapes us because that unity is not some “substance” that involves simply the joining together of all the parts. The unity of the whole is the Absolute Mystery of existence encompassing all and dissolving the incommensurability of the parts into unique expressions of the Mystery, all relative to one another, interdependent, and integral aspects of the mysterious whole. The unity in diversity of our world engenders the ethical command to “love your neighbor as yourself” or to “treat every person as an end in themselves never merely as a means.” Every person is a unique expression of this whole. See Glen T. Martin, Human Dignity and World Order: Holistic Foundations of Global Democracy. Lanham, MD: Hamilton Books, 2024, Chapter 3. If we really understood these commands, deriving from the Absolute Mystery encompassing our lives (to the extent of being able to “explode all the books in the world”) then war could not exist, violent crime could not exist, hatred and division could not exist. The Constitution for the Federation of Earth brings this understanding into the practical affairs of human life. It states that “the principle of unity in diversity is the basis for a new age when war shall be outlawed and peace prevail; when the earth’s total resources shall be equitably used for human welfare; and when basic rights and responsibilities shall be shared by all without discrimination.” Glen T. Martin, ed. Constitution for the Federation of Earth. Appomattox, VA: Institute for Economic Democracy Press, 2016, Preamble, p. 70. Online at www.earthconstitution.world. This Earth Constitution is founded on the principle of human dignity and on our collective rights to planetary peace and a healthy environment. Our present world system is founded on the divisions and discriminations put in place long before Kant showed the incoherence of these divisions and called for a democratic earth federation. Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace and Other Essays. Trans. Ted Humphrey. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1983. The present system had been in place nearly four centuries before Wittgenstein pointed to the unsayable whole embracing human life with an ethical dimension deriving from its depths that gives meaning and purpose to our lives. It is time to update our self-understanding to genuine unity in diversity. The Earth Constitution designs a world system premised on this dignity and integrated with multiple checks and balances to preserve the centrality of dignity and the quest for human fulfillment for the entire Earth Federation government. See Martin, Human Dignity and World Order, op. cit., Chapters 7, 12, and 13. The Constitution, of course, is not a philosophical document discoursing on the limits of language or any other philosophical investigations. It is a blueprint on how we can organize ourselves so that “the earth’s total resources shall be equitably used for human welfare,” which is only possible when “war shall be outlawed and peace prevail.” The “principle of unity in diversity that is the basis for a new age” is not fully encountered in the idea that we are all one species of homo sapiens. It is not encountered in the fact that we are all language-speaking creatures and that all languages are translatable into one another. It is not encountered in the fact that we all have the same basic human needs for food, clothing, shelter, health care, safety, and community. Nor is it encountered in the fact that we are fast becoming one, planetary civilization. All of these features are relevant, of course, but do not give us the true unity that transcends and relativizes all diversity by illuminating our common infinite dignity in which each individual reflects and embodies the whole. The Earth Constitution does not elucidate the meaning of this phrase beyond what I have quoted, but it builds the Earth Federation government on this principle which shines through all the agencies and organs of the Earth Federation. It is high time that we human beings awaken to the true unity that embraces and relativizes all diversity. This unity comes to us through astonishment, through awakening to the unsayable mystery of existence that permeates every minute of our lives and calls us to an illumination of its absolute ethical demand. This absolute ethical demand is only one demand: “love your neighbor as yourself;” “always treat every person as an end in themselves, never merely as a means.” Earth federation and the absolute demands of ethics arising through the principle of unity in diversity give us the possibility of a truly redeemed and flourishing world. We must simply awaken to the unsayable “being” that confronts us everywhere and nowhere. This unity breaks open our hardened incommensurable diversities and gives us the freedom to love one another. The Earth Constitution is the best blueprint for this fundamental transformation. We have never been closer to a truly new renaissance for civilization and the human spirit. Let’s make it happen. Endnotes 7