if we are immanent material beings and nothing but immanent material beings, the kind of (libertarian) freedom in the sense that I understand to be necessary for moral responsibility could be thought to be possible. — John

Eh, that kind of 'radical libertarian freedom' is a myth on par with a loving God for me, and a concept far more mystical and occult than anything a so-called postmodernist has ever subscribed to. If anything, such notions perpetuate suffering by mystifying the real sources of freedom which are only ever to be found in the here and now. Again, check out Ravven's book, where she utterly demolishes any notion of 'free will', showing it to be a theological remnant that has set back our thinking on freedom and responsibility by an order of centuries.

t's true that the universe can be made sense of; insofar as rational, discursive accounts and explanations can be given of it. But there remain aspects of human life, many of which are the most important to us, which cannot be explained in this way. The notion that some things must remain mysterious does not offend me or make we want to reject them in accordance with a demand that all must be explainable. On the contrary I feel happy on account of that. — John

I'd prefer to emphasize not that the universe can be made sense of, so much as it can be made sense of; that is, sense-making is a process, one that occurs in - or even as the universe itself. Immanence is not a thesis of absolute transparency, it is an affirmation of a praxis in or of being that includes history, material composition, political climate, cultural affordances, and so on. I will never know the sense of the world as the bee knows it, but this is not for 'transcendent' reasons, but immanent ones. Of the many definitions of immanence that Deleuze offered, the Spinozist one is the most apt: immanence means that one will never know what a body can do - not, at least, until that body is put into 'practice.'

If anything, the insistence on immanence means that the universe can indeed be made sense of; that sense is engendered within the universe, and we don't have to gape like dead fish out of the water after the unnamable, the unknowable, and the inconceivable.

In mysticism the contemplation of the transcendent is not a gaping at the unreachable. This is a perversion of religion, actually it is a contemplation practice used to focus the mind on a constant, an ideal. The intellection involved in mysticism regarding the transcendent (including the unnamable, the unknowable and the inconceivable etc) is likewise a practice of contemplation on an ideal, which one shapes oneself conceptually, for the purposes of the process of the transfiguration of the self.

I can't speak for the transcendent in philosophy much, as I am not a philosopher, but it appears to be a caricature of the transcendent handed down to us by religion.

You say that the universe can be made sense of, but its ground remains veiled from us(by the nature of our evolutionary inheritance, our bodies). How would we peek beyond that veil, from here?

What exactly is a "big question?" — TheWillowOfDarkness

If you're at all familiar with philosophical discourse in an analytic context, you should be familiar with the "big question" phrase. And after all, there have been scads of books, and even a series, with "big questions" as part of the title/subtitle. See for example these search results:

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Philosophy+big+questions

In truth, the very idea of a practice of contemplation strikes me as an oxymoron. But I'd rather simply not talk about mysticism. I honestly have nothing good to say about it, and I'd prefer to be a bit more positive if I can. And the language of 'ground' and 'veils' is, I'm afraid, a bit too murky for me, I'm not sure how to go about answering without being too imprecise.

Again, you're only arguing against the religious caricature of the transcendent, as it was used to exploit people.

To address it as it was originally conceived and the way it is is lived you would be required to study its use in mysticism. As it was only the initiated in the religions who actually contemplated it and saw past the caricature.

I suppose what I'm saying is that in such areas of philosophy, philosophers are trying to figure out things about our being and nature and coming up with these philosophies, which are aping what has been explored and practiced for a long time by Mystics who may be well versed, but in a different metaphorical language.

That the authentic understanding and use of the transcendent is in a personal enquiry within oneself, as was pointed out by Metaphysician undercover a few posts back. So it is a fallacy to regard the transcendent as anything other than immanent, as something external, or not of this world.

Eh, that phrase might as well read that it's a fallacy to regard circles as anything other than squares. In any case, the conceptual issue would turn upon what notion of the 'self' is under consideration here. What kind of self could be 'conceptually shaped' and 'transfigured' by a 'practice of contemplation on an ideal'? If there's no mechanism and no theory of this transformation, then this is just another just-so story with no philosophical import.

I'm askig you this because you know far more about the philosophers in question than I do:

Do any continental and/or postmodernist etc. philosophers employ transcendence/immanence in a non-religious or non-spiritual way, or are they all referring to religious or spiritual ideas?

If anyone is using it in a non-religious/non-spiritual way, what are they referring to?

It's difficult for me to be very interested in it if they're talking about religious/spiritual ideas, but if they're not, I haven't the faintest idea what they'd be talking about.

Do any continental and/or postmodernist etc. philosophers employ transcendence/immanence in a non-religious or non-spiritual way, or are they all referring to religious or spiritual ideas? — Terrapin Station

Nah, it's not an explicitly spiritual idea at all. In phenomenology, for example, transcendence generally refers to a certain structure of subjectivity which is meant to distinguish subject from object. Deleuze and Guattari give a short and extremely condensed history of immanence in What Is Philosophy?, where they track it's evolution from Plato, on down to the Christian philosophers (they mention Nicholas of Cusa, Eckhart, and Bruno), before turning to modern philosophy. The distinction saturates the entirety of the history of philosophy. Anyway, here are some of the later passages:

"Beginning with Descartes, and then with Kant and Husserl, the cogito makes it possible to treat the plane of immanence as a field of consciousness. Immanence is supposed to be immanent to a pure consciousness, to a thinking subject. Kant will call this subject transcendental rather than transcendent, precisely because it is the subject of the field of immanence of all possible experience from which nothing, the external as well as the internal, escapes. Kant objects to any transcendent use of the synthesis, but he ascribes immanence to the subject of the synthesis as new, subjective unity. He may even allow himself the luxury of denouncing transcendent Ideas, so as to make them the "horizon" of the field immanent to the subject. But, in so doing, Kant discovers the modern way of saving transcendence: this is no longer the transcendence of a Something, or of a One higher than everything (contemplation), but that of a Subject to which the field of immanence is only attributed by belonging to a self that necessarily represents such a subject to itself (reflection).

Yet one more step: when immanence becomes immanent "to" a transcendental subjectivity, it is at the heart of its own field that the hallmark or figure of a transcendence must appear as action now referring to another self, to an-other consciousness (communication). This is what happens in Husserl and many of his successors who discover in the Other or in the Flesh, the mole of the transcendent within immanence itself. Husserl conceives of immanence as that of the flux lived by subjectivity. But since all this pure and even untamed lived does not belong completely to the self that represents it to itself, something transcendent is reestablished on the horizon, in the regions of non belonging ... In this modern moment we are no longer satisfied with thinking immanence as immanent to a transcendent; we want to think transcendence within the immanent, and it is from immanence that a breach is expected."

They go on a little to speak about Sartre, before circling back to Spinoza: "Spinoza was the philosopher who knew full well that immanence was only immanent to itself and therefore that it was a plane traversed by movements of the infinite, filled with intensive ordinates. He is therefore the prince of philosophers. Perhaps he is the only philosopher never to have compromised with transcendence and to have hunted it down everywhere. In the last book of the Ethics he produced the movement of the infinite and gave infinite speeds to thought in the third kind of knowledge. ... He discovered that freedom exists only within immanence. He fulfilled philosophy because he satisfied its prephilosophical presupposition. ... Spinoza is the vertigo of immanence from which so many philosophers try in vain to escape."

Thanks for the answer, although reading through all of that, I still have no idea what immanence and trascendence are supposed to be outside of a religious or spiritual idea.

"a certain structure of subjectivity which is meant to distinguish subject from object"--I have no idea what that would amount to, for example, but a lot of notions of a subjective/objective distinction outside of my own make little sense to me.

"to treat the plane of immanence as a field of consciousness. Immanence is supposed to be immanent to a pure consciousness"

I'm lost re just what "immanence" is referring to there, though. I also have no idea what a "pure consciousness" would be. What is pure consciousness versus impure consciousness? Maybe some of that is referring to specific passages in Kant or whatever that I should remember, but I haven't read through the Critique of Pure Reason, for example, since probably the late 80s, when I was in my mid/late 20s, so I've forgotten a lot of it.

Do Deleuze and Guattari give anything that would amount to a definition of how they're using the terms?

They develop it in lots of places, and as I said, the history that I quoted is extremely condensed. Understanding the ideas require a pretty good grasp on that history though, because they aren't static notions, but precisely ones that change depending on their use. One way I like to think about it is in terms of the principle of sufficient reason. For everything there is, there is a reason it is so and not otherwise. Transcendence will answer this question 'vertically' - it will link reason to reason in a rising chain until you reach some sort of primordial source or end-point beyond which one can no longer go (or it will deny the question and just say that some shit just is). Immanence will attempt to answer horizontally - it will disseminate reasons along a horizontal axis which at it's limit point, encompasses everything in the universe, without going beyond it. In scientific terms, one speaks of a universe that self-organizes. But these are rough approximations, and the PoSR is itself a very complex topic unto itself (everyone tends to forget, for example, the rider "and not otherwise", which completely changes the nature of the question).

Hmm . . . well, I don't really buy the principle of sufficient reason. But I suppose that's not important for the distinction you're making.

However, I'm not sure the distinction of "vertical" versus "horizontal" there makes a lot of sense. You can just turn the vertical chain on its side and it's the same thing, but now oriented horizontally instead.

Of course, the distinction could be a web rather than a single chain, but I don't know if anyone thinks that it's really just a single chain anyway (and if that metaphor really makes any sense anyway--it might only come to fruition in the metaphor).

Web, network, ecology - yeah, those are apt phrases. Immanence doesn't 'stop', the reasons 'keep going', this is the 'vertigo of immanence' that Deleuze refers to with respect to Spinoza. But like you said, this is all very imprecise and florid, and without developing - as Deleuze does - the metaphysics of difference which underpins this, it's hard to be clear about.

Perhaps there are parallels which can be drawn between mysticism and PM, to square the circle so to speak.

He is therefore the prince of philosophers. Perhaps he is the only philosopher never to have compromised with transcendence and to have hunted it down everywhere"

StreetlightX

You see this is a mistaken quest, the transcendent is the immanent in the eye of the mystic. Wherever one approaches or suspects the transcendent, or the transcendental one is mistaken and yet that same approach and suspicion is to and is of oneself, (oneself needn't have gone out to look in the first place, for the gaol, the aim was already here and know).The mystic squares the circle by realising that his/her mind only sees/knows that which leads/looks away from the immanent, the transcendent is mistakenly thought to be out there and one might see it and know it, or never attain it or understand it. But it and the immanent are one in one, in the self and not in the purview of the mind, but the whole self.

I can understand how this might be problematic in philosophy.

Anyway going back to your question, a notion of self is a mental construct, the self which concerns the mystic is the being in which we have our being, in which we have our mind and it's contents. It is understood that the mind cannot access this being, as the mind only looks out from it. Instead the mind is stilled, bypassed, schooled in receiving inspiration through contemplation and living practice. Methodology for this practice is well documented in various religious and mystical traditions. The goal is to develop a synthesis between body spirit and mind, resulting in the transmutation, or in ocassion transfiguration of the self.

I don't know if this can be parsed philosophically(logically), I would have to ask a philosopher?

You see this is a mistaken quest, the transcendent is the immanent in the eye of the mystic. Wherever one approaches or suspects the transcendent, or the transcendental one is mistaken and yet that same approach and suspicion is to and is of oneself, (oneself needn't have gone out to look in the first place, for the gaol, the aim was already here and know).The mystic squares the circle by realising that his/her mind only sees/knows that which leads/looks away from the immanent, the transcendent is mistakenly thought to be out there and one might see it and know it, or never attain it or understand it. But it and the immanent are one in one, in the self and not in the purview of the mind, but the whole self.

I can understand how this might be problematic in philosophy.

Anyway going back to your question, a notion of self is a mental construct, the self which concerns the mystic is the being in which we have our being, in which we have our mind and it's contents. It is understood that the mind cannot access this being, as the mind only looks out from it. Instead the mind is stilled, bypassed, schooled in receiving inspiration through contemplation and living practice. Methodology for this practice is well documented in various religious and mystical traditions. The goal is to develop a synthesis between body spirit and mind, resulting in the transmutation, or in ocassion transfiguration of the self.

I don't know if this can be parsed philosophically(logically), I would have to ask a philosopher? — Punshhh

I dunno man, this just literally sounds like nonsense to me. Not trying to put you down, but there's no-sense I can make of it. It's just standard woo talk.

That's ok, it is like a different language I expect.

In a knutshell I was saying that thinking about it doesn't give us an answer, the thoughts just chase their own tails and that mysticism has been grappling with this issue and developing answers independently of western thought for millennia. Perhaps a crossover would yeald a more rounded solution.

I can't communicate in the language of the post moderns, if I can find time perhaps I will read a bit, it looks interesting.

It's true that the universe can be made sense of; insofar as rational, discursive accounts and explanations can be given of it. But there remain aspects of human life, many of which are the most important to us, which cannot be explained in this way. The notion that some things must remain mysterious does not offend me or make we want to reject them in accordance with a demand that all must be explainable. On the contrary I feel happy on account of that.

I agree, but it seems to me that the basis or ground of our existence(the universe) here and now is beyond us at this time, due to our limitations(confined within this particular evolution we find ourselves in), or because it is somehow hidden, disguised, or veiled. It might be easy to understand, even to manipulate, but we are none the wiser, it's like we are the blind leading the blind.

An alien, or higher being could come along and tell us the answer and we might say well I never, it's so simple, but we just didnt see it, why were we so blind?

Football is spiritually a low expression; it is an expression of tribalism and aggression; it is a force which divides, not an expression of love. — John

Sometimes, yes, but surely not always? What think you of the legendary football (soccer) game reputedly played between the British and German troops in No Mans Land on Christmas Day in the Great War?

Well, that would certainly be a different matter, I would say. It is not the sheer physical nature of the activity itself that determines spiritual value, but the culture surrounding it and the spirit in which the activity is entered into. So, to say that football (and I was actually, being an Australian, thinking of Rugby) is not a higher manifestation of culture is very much a generalization from which exceptions could certainly be found.

Thanks Wayfarer, I'll check that out.

I mean what's the point of God if it's only a tradition I follow, a set of rules I follow and doesn't make me necessarily more wise than anyone else?). — TheWillowOfDarkness

No point at all. I think it's better not to think of following God as following a tradition or a dogma at all, but as following the spirit. A dogma or a tradition is useless unless it speaks to you. It is always a personal matter.

I agree with this, the only variance I have with it is that I would add to this:

Postmodernism argues spirit and freedom are immanent — TheWillowOfDarkness

does not think they immanent "within the person".

I think PM sees spirit and freedom as factors emerging within culture, immanent within culture, and embedded within it, just as the person is, and as such, being, just as the person is, culturally determined. I think this is mistaken; a culture may support or undermine spirit and freedom (or at least appear to for a time) however, spirit and freedom never find their origin in culture, but in persons.

Eh, that kind of 'radical libertarian freedom' is a myth on par with a loving God for me, and a concept far more mystical and occult than anything a so-called postmodernist has ever subscribed to. — StreetlightX

And that's it in a nutshell, right there, for me . No self-respecting post-modernist would ever subscribe to anything so unfashionable as that.

Again, check out Ravven's book, where she utterly demolishes any notion of 'free will', showing it to be a theological remnant that has set back our thinking on freedom and responsibility by an order of centuries. — StreetlightX

To me it is just bizzarely funny that anyone would think that the reality of freedom could ever be refuted (or established) by an argument. There is no "our thinking" on freedom and responsibility (other than in a legalistic sense). "Our thinking" is itself a denial of freedom and responsibility.

I don't know, Punshhh; I think the universe is an incredibly complex objectivication that will never be completely understood. But what I was referring to as mysteries were things like beauty, truth, spirit, freedom and love. We can understand (discursively) only what we can objectify. And those things can never be objectified; and any attempt to do so makes them seem to disappear from our lives.

You see this is a mistaken quest, the transcendent is the immanent in the eye of the mystic. Wherever one approaches or suspects the transcendent, or the transcendental one is mistaken and yet that same approach and suspicion is to and is of oneself, (oneself needn't have gone out to look in the first place, for the goal, the aim was already here and know).The mystic squares the circle by realising that his/her mind only sees/knows that which leads/looks away from the immanent, the transcendent is mistakenly thought to be out there and one might see it and know it, or never attain it or understand it. But it and the immanent are one in one, in the self and not in the purview of the mind, but the whole self.
...
I don't know if this can be parsed philosophically(logically), I would have to ask a philosopher? — Punshh

Let's see if I can assist.

For example, one of the standard texts that is often quoted as an expression of 'seeing the transcendent in the immanent' is a passage from Blake's Auguries of Innocence

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour

Another romantic poet, Wordsworth, expresses something similar in I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud

So the theme here is that 'the finite' in some sense encapsulates the infinite; that seen properly, the ephemeral beauty of a flower conveys the imperishable. Blake, again, said 'If the doors of perception were cleansed, then everything would appear as it is: infinite'. Which Huxley took as the title for his essay on his experience with mescaline, of which he wrote:

I continued to look at the flowers, and in their living light I seemed to detect the qualitative equivalent of breathing--but of a breathing without returns to a starting point, with no recurrent ebbs but only a repeated flow from beauty to heightened beauty, from deeper to ever deeper meaning. Words like "grace" and "transfiguration" came to my mind, and this, of course, was what, among other things, they stood for. My eyes traveled from the rose to the carnation, and from that feathery incandescence to the smooth scrolls of sentient amethyst which were the iris. The Beatific Vision, Sat Chit Ananda, Being-Awareness-Bliss - for the first time I understood, not on the verbal level, not by inchoate hints or at a distance, but precisely and completely what those prodigious syllables referred to.

From Zen master Dogen, paraphrasing the Diamond Sutra:

“Your body is like a dew-drop on the morning grass, your life is as brief as a flash of lightning. Momentary and vain, it is lost in a moment."

But so too is the 'moon is reflected in every dew-drop'. So, at once, each dew-drop is perishing, but also reflecting the eternal.

I think those quotes capture something of the elusive nature of that strain of mysticism.

I know I'm talking too much (in the dying stages of a contract) but there's another line of approach which I think can accommodate both post-modernist perspectivism and spirituality. Long passage coming up:

There are a number of fundamental differences between the new systems theory of evolution and the classical neo-Darwinian theory. The classical theory sees evolution as moving toward an equilibrium state, with organisms adapting themselves ever more perfectly to their environment. According to the systems view, evolution operates far from equilibrium and unfolds through an interplay of adaption and creation. Moreover, the systems theory takes into account that the environment is, itself, a living system capable of adaption and evolution. Thus the focus shifts from the evolution of an organism to the co-evolution of organism plus environment. The consideration of such mutual adaption and co-evolution was neglected in the classical view, which has tended to concentrate on linear, sequential processes and to ignore transaction phenomena that are mutually conditioning and going on simultaneously.

Jacques Monod saw evolution as a strict sequence of chance and necessity, the chance of random mutations and the necessity of survival. Chance and necessity are also aspects of the new theory, but their roles are quite different. The internal reinforcement of fluctuations and the way the system reaches a critical point may occur at random and are unpredictable, but once such a critical point has been reached the system is forced to evolve into a new structure. Thus chance and necessity come into play simultaneously and act as complementary principles. Moreover, the unpredictabilty of the whole process is not limited to the origin of the instability. When a system becomes unstable, there are always at least two new possible structures into which it can evolve. The further the system has moved from equilibrium, the more options will be available. Which of these options is chosen is impossible to predict; there is true freedom of choice. As the system approaches the critical point, it "decided" itself which way to go, and this decision will determine its evolution. The totality of possible evolutionary pathways must be imagined as a multi-forked graph with free decisions at each branching point.

The picture shows that the evolution is basically open and indeterminate. There is no gaol in it, or purpose, and yet there is a recognisable pattern of development. The details of this pattern are unpredictable because of the autonomy living systems possess in their evolution as in other aspects of their organisation. In the systems view the process of evolution is not dominated by "blind chance" but represents an unfolding of order and complexity that can be seen as a kind of learning process, involving autonomy and freedom of choice.

Since the days of Darwin, scientific and religious views about evolution have often been in opposition, the latter assuming that there was some general blueprint designed by a divine creator, the former reducing evolution to a cosmic game of dice. The new systems theory accepts neither of these views. Although it does not deny spirituality and can even be used to formulate the concept of a deity, as we shall see below, it does not allow for a pre-established evolutionary plan. Evolution is an ongoing and open adventure that continually creates its own purpose in a process whose detailed outcome is inherently unpredictable. Nevertheless, the general pattern of evolution can be recognised and is quite comprehensible. Its characteristics include the progressive increase of complexity, coordination, and interdependence; the integration of individuals into multileveled systems; and the continual refinement of certain functions and patterns of behaviour. As Ervin Laszlo sums it up, "There is a progression from multiplicity and chaos to oneness and order."

Excerpt from Frithjof Capra, The Turning Point.

From my PoV, all you need to add to that picture, is the idea that when life evolves to a certain point, it is able to see into the order that gave rise to it: that provides for a kind of 'naturalistic spirituality' in which 'enlightenment' is understood as a culminatory phase of evolution, not because it was 'planned that way' by deity, but because it just panned out that way.

Yes agreed, I was addressing you rather than StreetlightX because there doesn't appear to be any point in addressing him personally. Claims that imply that the world, the universe, reality, or existence can now be made sense of simply through Chitta Chatta of the mind in isolation suggest a naivety, which I would point out. It must be comfortable in that cloister.

The reference to Rugby gives away more than your Australianness. It tells us that you are either from NSW, ACT or Qld, or an exile from one of those. In the other states football means only one thing (and as we know, it's not soccer).

I think an interesting argument can be made, and a good discussion had, about the potential of team sports to help us towards higher attainments in communality, spirituality and love - even if that potential is so often betrayed by the corporate interests that commercialise sport, and (more in the UK than in Australia) the thuggish elements that use it as a platform for tribal warfare and hatred. Certainly the Ancient Greeks saw a strong symbiotic connection between the physical, the intellectual and the spiritual.

But that is probably a subject for another thread.

@Wayfarer, as another compatriot, what say you about the potential for various footy codes to enhance, or hamper, the search for cultural and spiritual growth and eudaimonia more generally?

Thankyou, I will repeat the quote of Master Dogen for it's crystal clear insight, which is apt for this juncture. It is one of my favourite proverbs.

“Your body is like a dew-drop on the morning grass, your life is as brief as a flash of lightning. Momentary and vain, it is lost in a moment."

Like the appearance of a precise reflection of the moon in a dewdrop, indeed many millions of them on a dewy hillside and the evocation of walking through that light, in that still quiet night, with a clear mind.
Such things happen every moment in nature, while we lumbering apes(by contrast) labour over how we as a group condition each other's thoughts and nature, I ask you!

Anyway I would point out to philosophers that they can't presume many things about nature which they do every day, unthinkingly. For even if they can come up with systems which describe accurately how things in the world operate, it is only in the world of appearances. Appearances which are likely only a tiny fraction or slither of what is going in the here and now. Developing an insight into what we do not know and cannot presume to be the case is a powerful tool in allowing subtle insights in wisdom to reflect on that dew drop and flicker through that still still mind.