Divine Love and Wisdom [4]

~Emanuel Swedenborg

Still, we can grasp this with our earthly thinking if only we let in a little spiritual light. This requires that I first say something about spiritual concepts and the spiritual thinking that arises from them. Spiritual concepts have nothing to do with space. 

They have to do solely with state, state being an attribute of love, life, wisdom, desires, and the delights they provide—in general, an attribute of what is good and true. A truly spiritual concept of these realities has nothing in common with space. It is higher and looks down on spatial concepts the way heaven looks down on earth. 

However, since angels and spirits see with their eyes the way we do on earth, and since objects can be seen only in space, there does seem to be space in the spiritual world where angels and spirits are, space like ours on earth. Still, it is not space but an appearance of space. It is not fixed and invariant like ours. 

The Star of Redemption [4]

~Franz Rosenzweig

With that “sole” presupposition that it presupposes nothing, wasn’t philosophy already itself full of presuppositions, indeed presupposition through and through? And yet, thinking has again and again run down the slope of the same question: What is the world? And again and again all sorts of other more problematic realities were linked up with this question; and finally, again and again the answer to the question was sought in thinking. 

It is as if this presupposition, imposing in itself, of the thinkable All were throwing a shadow over the entire sphere of other possible questions. Materialism and idealism, both—not just the former— “as old as philosophy,” have an equal share in this presupposition. That which, in the face of it, claimed independence was either reduced to silence or paid no attention. It was reduced to silence, the voice that claimed to possess through a Revelation the source of divine knowledge, springing up beyond thinking. 

From ‘Heidegger to Suhrawardi’ / Part 3

Heidegger’s Hermeneutic Phenomenology 

~Samir Mahmoud 

“To the things themselves” is Husserl’s well-known maxim for a phenomenological approach to reality that gains access to the pre-reflective given-ness of things and avoids the subjectivism of modern thought. However, in contrast to Husserl who bracketed the ontological and reduced phenomena to consciousness, Heidegger proposed a phenomenology that was more essential and basic. His aim was to uncover, through an analysis of Dasein, those hidden meanings of existence that were prior to reflection and thought itself. To understand Heidegger’s hermeneutic phenomenology, we must first understand what he means by phenomenology and hermeneutics. 

In Being and Time, Heidegger provides a lucid exposition of what he means by phenomenology. First, the very concept of ‘phenomenon’ is to be understood in its Greek sense of phainomenon, which is derived from the verb phainesthai “show itself”, “come to light.” Thus, phenomenon signifies “to show it self.” In Heidegger’s own words, “the expression ‘phenomenon’ signifies that which shows itself in itself, the manifest.” The phenomenon does not show itself through anything other than itself and in this sense, Heidegger’s ‘phenomenon’ is to be distinguished from the ‘phenomenon’ of Kant who uses it in the sense of an appearance as opposed to the thing itself, the ‘noumenon.’54