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John Dunn
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John Dunn home page
Self expereienced
No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us. (1 John 4:12)
This comes close to trumping God, or the originating Substance. Rather than being subsumed in God à la Spinoza, each one of us can choose to have God dwelling inside him. The tables are turned on God in this manner. But then this would be to fall into the Spinozist trap of polarity, recognised by Coleridge in his critique of the German idealists. However, and this is the breakthrough, John rescues us from the circularity of the argument.
And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. (1 John 4:16)
Whatever love is, it is dialectical. It is upon love that the mystery turns, i.e. upon the fact that there are no criteria by which love can be defined. This is the wonderful mystery of Love and God.
'God is love' (1 John 4:8, 16)
From these words it becomes evident that to have a 'lived experience' of the love of God is to manifest His love in the individual’s own life. Without manifesting God's love in his own life, such a person cannot know God or ever have known the love of God or experience His presence.
But much, much more than this, it is in the dialectic of Love that the individual experiences something else - the experience of self.
© John Dunn.
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Summoning and synthesis
It is only through the chance encounter with a fully human being that the slave will realise that he is being subjected to an injustice by a third party, otherwise he thinks the present state of affairs is the natural order of being.
John Dunn
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Quote every hour:
The real trouble with war (modern war) is that it gives no one a chance to kill the right people. Ezra Pound
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Coleridge - On the Constitution of the State and Church.
Through a combination of leadership and educing (Fichte’s terminology was translated as summoning, but had similar connotations), the ‘latent man’ would emerge from his former bestial and sub-human state.
John Dunn
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