John Dunn

No purposive power

Friday, 18 October 2024 at 21:59

E. V. Ilyenkov

No purposive power

This is not to say that consciousness is to be understood as an adjunct to cosmic evolution per se, i.e. mankind at ONE with the Logos in carrying out the work of the latter. This is where we left Steiner. This is wherethe theories of Ilyenkov and Vernadsky ended up, with man as central to the evolutionary stage of the Noosphere. These were all Spinozist theories in the end - Ilyenkov’s openly so - arguing that man exists to serve some purpose greater than himself, repeatedly introducing a passivity into man’s existence. This is all wrong. Man’s power is not purposive, it is unconditional. If consciousness and conscience define what it means to be human, then man is the chooser of his own purpose.

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.

Eternal other

Thursday, 17 October 2024 at 21:04

Eternal other

Woman, Demeter, Earth-mother, nature, the external other in the chance encounter, Eve you lead us to temptation and Fall. ‘A chance encounter between two people can have implications for eternity.’ Love, transgression, happy fall, these things awaken consciousness and in consciousness the magic lies. To be conscious is to be human. To be more human is to be more divine, because consciousness cannot exist in harmony with the world, it is in the world, but ‘not of the world’. By its very nature it must live in confrontation with the world and change it - with ‘implications for eternity’.

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.

Transgressor

Wednesday, 16 October 2024 at 22:19

Transgressor

Dante had invoked the felix culpa, happy fall once more. Man not only has the power to breach the cosmic order, but in so doing can re-order the cosmos. He is restating the freedom of the crowned and mitred one. And it was Beatrice who led him to this realisation, to be a transgressor, a disrupter of the cosmic equilibrium, rather than being absorbed into its perpetual and Spinozist harmony.

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.

Human beings: the odd ones

Monday, 14 October 2024 at 22:13

Human beings: the odd ones

The theme of wilful disobedience is examined in Beatrice’s Paradise I exposition of the Cosmos. ‘All things observe a mutual order among themselves,’ said Beatrice, ‘and this is the structure that makes the universe resemble God’. This too is the premise of Dante's cosmos, in which all natures have their bent, their given instincts. Just as a flame always rises when lit, a stone always falls when dropped. This is the natural order. The question should already be rising in the reader’s mind - are we like that? Think of that child, who turns spontaneously without necessity to what delights it. The answer to the question is, most emphatically, no. Beatrice explains by expanding upon the theme of creativity with a metaphor from art. ‘Just as form is sometimes inadequate to the artist’s intention, because the material fails to answer, so the creature, that has power, so impelled, to swerve towards some other place, sometimes deserts the track.’ In other words, within the description of the order of the cosmos, Beatrice emphasises that human beings are the odd ones out, with the power to deviate from the cosmic order.

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.

redland2

Sunday, 13 October 2024 at 22:02

Dante

Crowned and mitred

Virgil urges Dante to explore the Earthly Paradise until he meets Beatrice. Before sending him off, Virgil blesses him with these words: ‘there I crown and mitre you over yourself.’ This is an expression of explosive political significance. Dante had attained the power of mind over which no secular or clerical authority can rule. He takes both crown and mitre upon himself. Dante’s decision to go beyond the garden shows it is not just a point of arrival, but the necessary pre-condition for moral life.Under his own self-mastery, his choice becomes a positive act of defiance that resonates with felix culpa, the happy fall. Dante was determined to explore beyond that which we see. Political, religious and psychological freedom coalesced and it was all down to a passing encounter.

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.

Life-changing encounter

Saturday, 12 October 2024 at 22:01

Dante meets Beatrice by Henry Holiday

Life-changing encounter

The love of Dante for Beatrice is the exemplar of all life-changing encounters. He met her briefly, she greeted him and walked on, and yet through the encounter his life was changed forever. Why? This was the metaphysical question and the answer was to be found inside of him. Without that chance encounter he would never have left the Hell of unknowing. Eros led him. Lust encouraged him. Loss destroyed him. Rejection and humiliation led him to the wall of fire. It was only Virgil’s promise that he would be reunited with Beatrice that led him through.

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.

Coleridge and Asra

Friday, 11 October 2024 at 22:16

Asra

Coleridge and Asra

The encounter which swept away the last vestiges of Spinozism from Coleridge’s worldview was his extramarital encounter with Sara Hutchinson, or Asra as he refashioned her name. Coleridge’s encounters with German idealism and Sara Hutchinson came in quick succession, the first in 1798, the second in 1799. It was the combination of philosophical idealism and extra-marital love that was incendiary, not the former in isolation, which Coleridge ultimately deemed to be inadequate because of its Spinozist polarity. Fichte came close, with his invitation to imagine the first encounter of two human beings, the summoning to a mutuality of experience, a ‘reciprocal interaction’. However, the result of encounter for Fichte was synthesis, a reduction of two to one, rather than the feminine principle of reflection, resulting in not one, or even two, but the three of fecund creativity.

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.