What does it mean “to be”? Sartre's existential phenomenology appeals to certain kinds of experience such as nausea and joy to articulate the “transphenomenal” character of being. Pace Kant, “being” does not denote a realm behind the phenomena that the descriptive method analyzes. Neither is it the object of an “eidetic” reduction (the phenomenological method that would grasp it as an essence). Rather, being accompanies all phenomena as their existential dimension. But this dimension is revealed by certain experiences such as that of the utter contingency which Roquentin felt. This is scarcely rationalism, but neither is it mysticism. — SEP
We can (among so many other options) envision God as the totality that is just radically there and Christ as a conceptually elaborated "primordial image" that allows us to feel at home in this otherwise alien God ('who' includes children with cancer, genocide,rape, our deaths, etc.).It took my breath away. Never, up until these last few days, had I suspected the meaning of "existence." I was like the others, like the ones walking along the seashore, wearing their spring clothes. I said, like them, "The sea is green; that white speck up there is a seagull," but I didn't feel that it existed or that the seagull was an "existing seagull"; usually existence conceals itself. It is there, around us, in us, it is us, you can't say two words without mentioning it, but you can never touch it. When I believed I was thinking about it, I was thinking nothing, my head was empty, or there was just one word in my head, the word "being." Or else I was thinking — how can I put it? I was thinking of properties. I was telling myself that the sea belonged to the class of green objects, or that green was one of the qualities of the sea. Even when I looked at things, I was miles from dreaming that they existed: they looked like scenery to me. I picked them up in my hands, they served me as tools, I foresaw their resistance. But that all happened on the surface. If anyone had asked me what existence was, I would have answered in good faith, that it was nothing, simply an empty form added to things from the outside, without changing any thing in their nature. And then all at once, there it was, clear as day: existence had suddenly unveiled itself. It had lost the harmless look of an abstract category: it was the dough out of which things were made, this root was kneaded into existence. Or rather the root, the park gates, the bench, the patches of grass, all that had vanished: the diversity of things, their indi viduality, were only an appearance, a veneer. This veneer had melted, leaving soft, monstrous lumps, in disorder — naked, with a frightful and obscene nakedness. — Sartre
Perhaps because explanation deals with finite essences in a system, and this "existence" precedes or is other than essence. But this precedence of existence to essence is also understood in another way when it comes to the natureless nature of man, a "hole" in being. Bad faith touches closely upon idolatry. The self wants to fix its identity in a solid object, to flee from its nothingness and freedom. Beautiful stuff.But I wanted to fix the absolute character of this absurdity. A movement, an event in the tiny colored world of men is only relatively absurd — in relation to the accompanying circumstances. A madman's ravings, for example, are absurd in relation to the situation in which he is, but not in relation to his own delirium. But a little while ago I made an experiment with the absolute or the absurd. This root — there was nothing in relation to which it was absurd. How can I pin it down with words? Absurd: in relation to the stones, the tufts of yellow grass, the dry mud, the tree, the sky, the green benches. Absurd, irreducible; nothing — not even a profound, secret delirium of nature could explain it. Obviously I did not know everything, I had not seen the seeds sprout, or the tree grow. But faced with this great wrinkled paw, neither ignorance nor knowledge was important: the world of explanations and reasons is not the world of existence. A circle is not absurd, it is clearly explained by the rotation of the segment of a straight line around one of its extremities. But neither does a circle exist. This root, in contrast, existed in such a way that I could not explain it. Knotty, inert, nameless, it fascinated me, filled my eyes, brought me back unceasingly to its own existence. In vain I repeated, "This is a root" — it didn't take hold any more. I saw clearly that you could not pass from its function as a root, as a suction pump, to that, to that hard and thick skin of a sea lion, to this oily, callous; stubborn look. The function explained nothing: it allowed you to understand in general what a root was, but not at all that one there. That root with its color, shape, its congealed movement, was beneath all explanation. — Sartre
Yes, we each take what we find around us in terms of concept, to weave into our "coat of many colours".But this is just some guy's interpretation and synthesis of his favorite texts in the largely emotional and sensual context of his experience
This veneer had melted, leaving soft, monstrous lumps, in disorder — naked, with a frightful and obscene nakedness. — Sartre
I use this stance in contemplation of divine geometry such as squircles( giggle) transcendent states and techniques, along with a kind of personal subjective preening, or sorting and refining of conceptual architecture in the self. There is also a clear division, or membrane between side A and B, here, although the activity bridges this divide and there is also a process of conceptual refraction across the membrane enabling more subtle conceptual sculpting. — Punshhh
Abjection is a methodological conversion, like Cartesian doubt and Husserlian epoche: it establishes the world as a closed system which consciousness regards from without, in the manner of divine understanding.
The world is sacred because it gives an inkling of a meaning that escapes us.
In doing Good, I lose myself in Being, I abandon my particularity, I become a universal subject.
One is still what one is going to cease to be and already what one is going to become. One lives one’s death, one dies one’s life. — Sartre
Yes A and B are different brain states, there may be some difference other than the fact that one is internally directed and the other externally, but the science hasn't been developed into being yet and I expect it is some way off. But I fully expect to find that there is an organ in the brain which uncannily enables transcendence. You are free to sculpt yourself, to have two sides to your coin. Even to embrace spuircles(surely a romantic would do that?). You are free to develop the conceptual tooling to take you to where you want to be. Now there's a question.It sounds like you've got something good going on. I can't help but interpret this "A" and "B" as names for different mental states. I don't believe in squircles, but I love the word. I do of course know some beautiful math. The real numbers are a black and seamless sea, and also an "uncountable" infinity. Unlike the rational numbers, we can't print them out one by one or line them up. It's beautiful to me that such psychedelic and "drippy" numbers get called the "reals." The rationals are shiny and crystalline. The reals are like wet, black smoke
why bother defending this word? Is the word itself sacred? — Hoo
Highly unlikely. He did not dismiss the Summa as wrong - but as completely incapable of describing the extent of reality, being equivalent to a small corner of a large puzzle.Maybe he would have come to see God as an absolute immanence, and thus to have come to think that his writings about the transcendence of God were "as straw". It's not really a point worth arguing about, in any case, since what he thought can only be speculated about. — John
"In Him we move and have our being". Wayfarer is right, Eckhart never claimed one becomes God - rather that it is possible to achieve union with the divine - in Christian terms this would happen when one's will is entirely aligned with the Will of God. This is not immanence, because the divine always exceeds. One merely has their being in the divine - it isn't the whole of the divine.I am not familiar enough with the writings of the other two to comment; but Eckhart speaks extensively about becoming God, so he might be seen as a thinker of the immanence of God. He expressed a kind of panthentheistic vision of God, and was charged with heresy for that. — John
They are objects in consciousness (for the most part - some of those experiences like love can and sometimes to point to the transcendent, and in-so-far as they do that, they too are transcendent). The experience of the transcendent is precisely that which you experience, but you never fully surround with your consciousness. There is always something missing in that experience. Rudolf Otto's The Idea of the Holy or Mircea Eliade's The Sacred and Profane are good reads on these themes.For me this is an extremely facile point, There are many things which can be "experienced and encountered" for example, love, truth, beauty, hope, faith, etc., in that sense known, which cannot become objects. — John
Becoming God = becoming Being itself. Becoming one with God = "in him we move and have our being". The two are radically different. Theosis - divine union - is also different. According to Eastern Orthodox Christianity, which has this view (and I know as I am an Eastern Orthodox), all of us achieve theosis after death - we are all united with God. Those who hate God perceive God's love as hell - those who love God perceive it as Heaven. Furthermore, it is possible for people like monks to achieve the experience in this life also. Theosis is when the sinful human being becomes divine - like God - BUT NOT IDENTICAL TO GOD. No being can achieve ontological oneness with God.I can't see a difference that makes a difference between the idea of becoming God and becoming one with God. — John
A sure warrant for looking forward with hope to deification of human nature is provided by the Incarnation of God, which makes man God to the same degree as God Himself became man ... Let us become the image of the one whole God, bearing nothing earthly in ourselves, so that we may consort with God and become gods, receiving from God our existence as gods. For it is clear that He Who became man without sin will divinize human nature without changing it into the Divine Nature, and will raise it up for His Own sake to the same degree as He lowered Himself for man's sake. This is what St. Paul teaches mystically when he says, "that in the ages to come he might display the overflowing richness of His grace" — St. Maximus the Confessor
And I haven't said anything about knowing or experiencing the transcendent, because both notions are incoherent. There is no transcendent apart from the immanent, and that is precisely Hegel's point
The mystics of many centuries, independently, yet in perfect harmony with each other (somewhat like the particles in an ideal gas) have described, each of them, the unique experience of his or her life in terms that can be condensed in the phrase: DEUS FACTUS SUM (I have become God).
To Western ideology, the thought has remained a stranger... in spite of those true lovers who, as they look into each other's eyes, become aware that their thought and their joy are numerically one, not merely similar or identical...
I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
Highly unlikely. He did not dismiss the Summa as wrong - but as completely incapable of describing the extent of reality, being equivalent to a small corner of a large puzzle. — Agustino
"In Him we move and have our being". Wayfarer is right, Eckhart never claimed one becomes God - rather that it is possible to achieve union with the divine - in Christian terms this would happen when one's will is entirely aligned with the Will of God. This is not immanence, because the divine always exceeds. One merely has their being in the divine - it isn't the whole of the divine. — Agustino
They are objects in consciousness (for the most part - some of those experiences like love can and sometimes to point to the transcendent, and in-so-far as they do that, they too are transcendent). — Agustino
Well said. Philosophy (if it's loyal to Socrates at all) is going to try to give a "reasonable" account, as reasonable as possible.What philosophy is (or should be) about is finding the way to speak about these experiences which is most logical and in accordance with human experience generally. — John
This. Yes. Though I like Agustino, I think he's missing out on a notion of something that surpasses politics.What you are really valorizing is the enforcement of order by earthly authorities that arrogate to themselves the mandate of a divine authority. This idea is truly repugnant to any free spirit. — John
A great master says that his breaking-through is nobler than his flowing out, and this is true. When I flowed forth from God all creatures declared: "There is a God"; but this cannot make me blessed, for with this did I acknowledge myself as a creature. but in my breaking-through, where I stand free of my own will, of God's will, of all his works, and of God himself, then I am above all creatures and am neither God nor creature, but I am that which I was and shall remain for evermore. there I shall receive an imprint that will raise me above all the angels. By this imprint I shall gain such wealth that I shall not be content with God inasmuch as he is God, or with all his divine works; for this breaking through guarantees to me that I and God are one — E
Now, as this rose is a true rose to begin with, this nightingale always a true nightingale, so I am not for the first time a true man when I fulfil my calling, live up to my destiny, but I am a “true man” from the start. My first babble is the token of the life of a “true man,” the struggles of my life are the outpourings of his force, my last breath is the last exhalation of the force of the “man.”
The true man does not lie in the future, an object of longing, but lies, existent and real, in the present. Whatever and whoever I may be, joyous or suffering, a child or a graybeard, in confidence or doubt, in sleep or in waking, I am it, I am the true man.
Still far from myself, I separate myself into two halves, of which one, the one unattained and to be fulfilled, is the true one. The one, the untrue, must be brought as a sacrifice; to wit, the unspiritual one. The other, the true, is to be the whole man; to wit, the spirit. Then it is said, “The spirit is man’s proper essence,” or, “man exists as man only spiritually.” Now, there is a greedy rush to catch the spirit, as if one would then have bagged himself; and so, in chasing after himself, one loses sight of himself, whom he is.
...
It is different if you do not chase after an ideal as your “destiny,” but dissolve yourself as time dissolves everything. The dissolution is not your “destiny,” because it is present time. — Stirner
Well it certainly is much more likely as an explanation. Aquinas certainly did not renounce any of his writings as wrong. Only insignificant in relation to the full truth - like straw. Nor did he renounce the importance of the Catholic Church for that matter. So the presumptuous interpretation is clearly not mine. You are making a series of blatant assumptions about him, which are simply not warranted given his entire life. Not that they are impossible - they are certainly possible. Only that very unlikely.I think it is far more likely that he came to think that it was not an accurate description of the reality of God, as that was revealed to him by his mystical experience. "As straw". But, you are entitled to your alternative interpretation; as I already said it's not something that is susceptible to determination by argument.. — John
No those "doctrinal" differences have practical significance. Becoming God can very easily be associated with anything being permitted for you. Like Osho Rajneesh having promiscuous sex with his disciples. Or poisoning a community. Or Krishnamurti having sex with one of his friend's wife behind his back, and having her have an abortion. These are very practical consequences of believing you become God. Furthermore it is also a practical consequence that some people will be deceived and think you are justified to break moral laws because "you are God". So how can I adopt a position which will put you beyond any possible criticism or restraint - because now you are God? That is nonsense. That clearly cannot be a principle of order. "You shall know them by their fruits"For one; there are only the usual dogmatic or doctrinal differences between 'becoming one with God" and "becoming God" that stand in the way of my alternative interpretation; and I have already made a point of not accepting the logical validity of those theological orthodoxies; so there doesn't seem to be much point to throwing them back at me again. — John
I just did. I may add that becoming one with God implies sharing in his holiness, and gives a different attitude. Furthermore, it allows verification and rational criticism. Others can look at you and determine objectively if you have become one with God by comparing you with Christ.I have asked you to explain clearly what necessary logical or experiential differences there are between becoming God and becoming one with God. — John
From where do you get this assumption? Experiences of the transcendent can be quite varying. That's why it's a personal relationship with the transcendent. No two people's experience will be the same, or even necessarily alike.I mean presumably all mystics are speaking about basically one kind of experience — John
Yes - and also to promote order, exactly as Plato said.What philosophy is (or should be) about is finding the way to speak about these experiences which is most logical and in accordance with human experience generally. — John
Funny that the person who says some things cannot be argued is then the one to suggest that fundamentalists can never be convinced by arguments. Well neither can you! That's why you claim some things cannot be argued. I make no such claim. I think everything should be open to disagreement and rational exploration. But you refuse to explain or provide any justification for your claims that could be argued or debated. You play the line "not everyone has the experience - thus not everyone gets it" as a run-away tactic. There's nothing I or anyone can say to disprove you. We cannot deny your experience. You place yourself beyond rational criticism. I don't. I explain how my beliefs are necessary for order, and how order is necessary for the flourishing of society and the happiness of man, including the achievement of mysticism.I disagree with the rest of what you say because it is nothing more than a determinately one-sided expression of orthodox theology; a kind of fundamentalism. But there is no point arguing about it, because fundamentalists are never convinced by arguments. — John
Unless a part of us, the part Eckhart is talking about, is also transcendent :)You speak about maintaining order in the name of transcendence, but this is a vacuous notion since anything genuinely transcendent could not be known at all, and would be nothing to us. — John
We are beings of flesh as well as spirit. Fulfilment of our nature requires divinization of the flesh, not its repudiation. You seem to ignore that we live in the world, and not in mystical flights of fancy - this is what typically happens when someone approaches mysticism on their own, not guided by the wisdom of tradition. So yes - order is necessary, without order there is no stability, and without stability nothing great can be achieved.What you are really valorizing is the enforcement of order by earthly authorities that arrogate to themselves the mandate of a divine authority. This idea is truly repugnant to any free spirit. — John
I see that Sartre is anything but most folk's notion of a mystic. — Hoo
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