Article Information
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Author:
Cornel W. du Toit1
Affiliation:
1Research Institute for Theology and Religion, University of South Africa, South Africa
Correspondence to:
Cornel du Toit
Email:
dtoitcw@unisa.ac.za
Postal address:
PO Box 392, Unisa 003, South Africa
Dates:
Received: 17 Aug. 2010
Accepted: 30 Oct. 2010
Published: 12 July 2011
How to cite this article:
Du Toit, C.W., 2011, ‘Self-transcendence and Eros: The human condition between desire and the infinite’, HTS Teologiese
Studies/Theological Studies 67(3), Art. #944, 12 pages.
doi:10.4102/hts.v67i3.944
Copyright Notice:
© 2011. The Authors. Licensee: AOSIS OpenJournals. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License.
ISSN: 0259-9422 (print)
ISSN: 2072-8050 (online)
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Self-transcendence and Eros: The human condition between desire and the infinite
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In This Original Research...
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Open Access
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• Abstract
• Introduction
• Transcendence and post-transcendence
• Emerson: Transcendence via the unconscious, affect, Eros and nature
• Human incompleteness between desire and the infinite
• Christianity’s relative disregard of desire and infinitude as essential to the human self
• Desire, distance, infinity and the other
• The ‘self’ in self-transcendence
• Role of affectivity in objectivity
• Self-transcendence in the mode of a secularised consumer culture
• Conclusion
• References
• Footnotes
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This article treats self-transcendence – like all transcendence – as a fact of human life. Inter alia this means that the human
mind perforce operates in terms of binary concepts such as finitude–infinity, inner world–outside world, self–other, desire–fulfilment,
separation–union and the like. We find these concepts in most myths of origin. The concept of desire (Eros), combining unfulfilment and the infinite,
particularly epitomises self-transcendence. Ralph Waldo Emerson is cited as a precursor of the mid-19th century transcendentalists, whose ideas are
resurfacing in present-day secular spirituality. In this article, we examined desire in the Christian conception of the Fall as envisioned by the
Jewish philosopher Martin Buber and by Hegel, who integrates mind and nature in his philosophy of Spirit. The works of Emmanuel Levinas and Paul Ricoeur are
used as points of reference to help us understand self and other in a framework of self-transcendence. The impact of these ideas on a postmetaphysical
epistemology was also explored. Affectivity is a neglected area in Western thought and displays the same infinitude as rationality. The article concluded
with present-day strategies of self-construction in a techno-scientific consumer culture.
Transcendence and post-transcendence
Ours is a post-transcendent era. Human dogma has unravelled God, metaphysics has unravelled existence and science has unravelled the cosmos. People have
become transparent to each other and no longer relate. The world around us has become explicable and we are left disillusioned in a disenchanted environment.
The postmodern mind mourns the loss of mystery, the challenge of the unknown, the desirable and enticing, and the loss of an enchanted world. When we speak
of the death of God, the end of metaphysics, the end of subjectivity and the technological transformation of nature, we are actually speaking of a loss of
transcendent experience. We do not merely mourn the loss but are continually looking for new experiences of transcendence. Yet does a statement like
‘the death of God’ not rule out any experience of radical transcendence?1
We need to redefine transcendence for those who no longer believe that our world is governed by such unknown forces. Metaphysical constructs that were
once used to describe supernatural forces (good or evil) have lost their plausibility. Our world is subject to laws of nature and these laws, rather than
miracles or supernatural forces, rule our destiny. The role of transcendent forces in people’s personal lives, too, is questioned. We should not look
for divine or impersonal agents to explain misfortunes that befall us. Evil, suffering and injustice are part of life, of our particular society, or simply
coincidence. Does that mean that human life has become one-dimensionally immanent, or is it merely a new phase in our mental evolution? The transcendent
(unknown forces and influences) has not vanished from human life, but is at most regarded as an immanent factor residing mainly in the self. Transcendence,
in the sense of unpredictable, unfathomable but also exciting and innovative forces, is to be found in the unconscious, the imagination, dreams, conscience,
desire and fantasy. These are things that constitute our daily lives, a protean driving force. They can be called infinite, for they appear to be inexhaustible
and manifest differently in every phase of life. To many, the cardinal form of transcendence remains the God of their religion, to whom they relate. To others
it is the interior space of the self, whose unfathomable depths they must plumb. This is done via a mystical ‘journey’ into the self, culminating
in a transcendent experience, in which the self encounters God or astonishing ideas.2 The contemporary reinterpretation of transcendence and
self-transcendence evident in secular spirituality and aspects of the New Age movement has its antecedents in the transcendentalist and Romantic movements
in mid-19th century America, in which Ralph Waldo Emerson was a leading figure.
My thesis, in a nutshell, is as follows. Transcendence is innately human and manifests itself in desire, which is open and infinite. Christianity attributes
transcendence exclusively to the ‘totally other’ dimension of God. It disregards the fact that the human mind is wired for transcendence. Humans
– including their openness to the future (desire) – are reduced to sinfulness. The sole, remotely positive characterisation of humans is that they
are created in God’s image – and that quality they have lost. In the Old Testament they await the Messiah to bring deliverance; in the New Testament
they gain it purely in their attributed (Pauline) status of being ‘in Christ’. The closest it gets to acknowledging openness and desire, which is
what I propose doing here, is the dictum: ‘Become what you are.’ But even this dictum is hamstrung by the Christian ethos of that age. In our
present context of immanent transcendence this fixated anthropology is incongruous. My basic premise, to be developed below, is that we are wired for desire
in its open, infinite, future-oriented dimension. Transcendence is integrally human; hence religion, imagination, inventiveness, fantasy and constant flux are
permanent features of our history. Immanent transcendence is an anthropological datum. It is not confined to Europe and Western culture. Desire in the sense
proposed here is common to all cultures: African, Eastern and Western alike.
I begin my argument by outlining the transcendental tradition that started with Emerson. I then examine human incompleteness between desire and the infinite
with reference to the Greek legacy, before looking at Christianity’s relative disregard for desire and infinitude as essential to the human self, with
specific reference to the biblical myth of the Fall and some responses to it. The next sections describe the infinitude of the self in relation to that of
others and the role of affect as an essential corrective to religious and scientific rationalism, which allows little room for openness. Finally, I offer a
critique of the infinite dimension of the self in a consumer culture.
Emerson: Transcendence via the unconscious, affect, Eros and nature
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Emerson’s thinking is an essential background to understand the pertinence of immanent transcendence in our day and age. He was a forerunner of
the accent on transcendence as part and parcel of the human self. He not only acted as a counterweight to the rationalism of his time, but paved the
way for present-day secular spirituality.
Emerson described his time (the mid-19th century) as bogged down in conventional traditions, dogmas and practices, partly as a result of the tyranny
of rationalism (experienced at Harvard Divinity School where he studied and in the Unitarian Church where he ministered). The affective side of human
nature was suppressed, so the people of his day were cut off from their emotional roots:
The primary deficiency of the age was ... its inability to connect with the primal, erotic, instinctive, and intuitional element within, the affective
side of humanity that connects us with divinity itself and also binds us to one another. (Gougeon 2007:4)
Emerson’s transcendental philosophy3 propounded the dignity, rights and divinity of all human beings. It contributed greatly to the
emancipation of slaves and the establishment of women’s rights. Today, human rights are the very core of social ethics. Emerson’s transcendental
vision was one of personal harmony and primordial union with nature, God, the unconscious, affect and intuition. Alienation is the result of losing
contact with our matrix. In the beginning the gods divided a solitary Human (Man) into many people, just as the hand ramifies into fingers in order
to be more efficient. That lost unity can be regained. ‘For Emerson the source of this original unity is still with us. It is the power of Eros,
the Over-Soul, the “divine Reason”’ (Gougeon 2007:6). Our overrated rationality needs to be complemented with all other aspects of existence
to restore wholeness:
The balanced unity of mind and body, conscious and unconscious, self and nature, is an essential element in reaching transcendence which, for them, was the
firsthand experience of divinity. (Gougeon 2007:49)
To Emerson’s mind we can overcome our dissatisfaction with overrated rationality4 by means of a transcendental descent into the depths of
our nature, which brings fulfilment not attainable in a one-dimensionally rational5 existence. In contrast to the Christianity of his day, which
he considered oppressive, he did not seek fulfilment in a spiritualised reality. Instead of a transcendental encounter via Holy Scriptures or proclamation,
or via a spiritualised ‘beyond’ or ‘above’, he proposed a movement, via human corporeality, first inwards, then outwards (see Gill 1989).
Human nature, or more specifically the unconscious, affect, intuition, eroticism, the imagination and experience, is the primary route to meaning, a sense of
unity, authenticity and one’s ‘true’ self. Emerson contributed greatly to belief in the self and its powers, so typical of the New World and
the great American Dream. Faith in yourself leads to discovery of the infinite, nature, Eros, the Over-Soul, the imagination, God within you. Only faith
in yourself makes the difference that enables you to change the world around you. Hence the transcendent movement was prerequisite for changing the society of
Emerson’s day: ‘sympathy, emotion, imagination, dream, and other life-sustaining functions of the unconscious, could provide the libido ballast to
revitalize and redeem his society ...’ (Gougeon 2007:109).
Emerson laid the foundation for a mentality that, with growing affluence and technological advances, culminated in the present (mainly Western) self-image,
which has made self-construction through technological artefacts a practical reality. Today there is renewed interest in a sense of holistic union with nature,
a transcendental inward journey (meditative practices), a reappraisal of the corporeal and affective dimensions of life, an accent on imagination and inner
creativity, and the like.
Human incompleteness between desire and the infinite
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Transcendence is a mental movement, a thought process: it entails moving from familiar sameness to the new and the unknown; it represents mystery
in the mode of strangeness and infinity. Human beings exist in this transcendent mode. Self-transcendence is a tautology because the self exists
only in transcendent mode.6 Humans experience themselves as individuals, persons, subjects and see themselves as distinct from other
people and things. That accounts for binary contrasts such as inner world and outside world, subject and object, self and other, consciousness and
self-consciousness. The distinctions are not absolute, because the ‘autonomous self’ is in fact shaped by people and things outside
itself.7 Hence self-transcendence does not happen exclusively within the person, between the constructs of ‘I’ and
‘me’.8 The way we engage continually in new interactions and see things differently changes our identity. As my insight
into people and things changes – a constant ‘self-correction’ – I also change, for I am my insights and beliefs.
Without the other self and self-transcendence make no sense.9 Emmanuel Levinas realised this and worked it out in his philosophy of
‘the face of the other’, to which we return below.
It would be reductive to regard descriptions and experiences of transcendence in a particular theological or religious phase of human culture as
paradigmatic for our day and age. Transcendence manifests itself spontaneously in a form permitted by a particular culture and worldview. The
specific manifestations of transcendence and self-transcendence vary from age to age, but their underlying biological constant is desire.
Aristophanes’s myth about the origin of human nature in Plato’s dialogue Symposium (189c–190c) associates the experience of
human incompleteness with our origin. In broad outline the picture is as follows.10 Originally we were very different from what we are today.
We were ‘dual’ beings with two heads, four arms, four legs and round bodies that enabled us to roll on the ground at great speed. There were
three ‘genders’: a dual female, a dual male, and a man-woman combination. This original state was superior to our present one – we
were stronger in the sense of being more complete. By contrast our present situation represents a ‘fall’. The sole problem was human hubris.
‘We desired, in what may be called the pagan version of Original Sin, to overthrow the gods’ (Hyland 1995:113). To punish us Zeus split us
into two beings, knotting the skin at the navel so when we look down it will remind us of our former glory and move us to humility. Of course, at the
same time Zeus doubled the number of human beings, thus increasing the supply of offerings to the gods. The god Eros was also born to this divided
fallen state. He has three ‘elements’. The ‘ontological’ element is the imperfect, incomplete human condition. People are
erotic but incomplete. The second element of Eros is recognition of the incompleteness, and the third the striving to surmount it by reverting to the
original state of fulfilment (completeness). That explains our comical attempts to unite sexually with our other half:
We take all those funny positions and get so passionately excited because we want to overcome our physical incompleteness and become whole again ...
In principle, all the myriad ways in which we are incomplete, experience that incompleteness, and strive to overcome it, are manifestations of our
erotic natures. (Hyland 1995:115)
Plato’s Symposium tells Socrates’s story of his experience with Diotima to explain the nature of love (Eros). Eros cannot be divine,
because he is composed of opposing entities. His father, Poros, the God of plenty, was seduced by Penia (poverty). Because of his parentage he is alternately
poor and rich, oscillating between affluence and penury, wisdom and folly. Here Eros symbolises desire, which always oscillates between fulfilment and
unfulfilment. This is typical of human beings, who not only oscillate between want and abundance, but remain unsatisfied even in times of plenty and,
like Eros, constantly strive for fulfilment, as evidenced by the history of eroticism in human life (see Du Toit 2010:65–67). Thus humans were
destined for eroticism, for incompleteness from the outset, and they are aware of it. They are not responsible for their sense of incompleteness and
unfulfilment, nor can they control it – it is a result of the ‘original sin’ of their ancestors. Secondly, they cannot but try to
surmount their incompleteness; and thirdly, they are doomed to failure (Hyland 1995:118). Aristophanes sees the manifestations of Eros as polysemous:
the creation of laws, artistic creativity, philosophy, all the noblest human aspirations. In this sense Eros also offers comfort (Hyland 1995:121, 123).
Thus self-transcendence may be seen as erotically driven, for it suggests:
that behind action lies dissatisfaction with what one has, desire to have something else; behind going lies not wanting to be
here, wanting to be there. From the standpoint of the agent ‘there’ is better, ‘here’ is worse.
(Barabas 1977:178)11
Even though the driving force of self-transcendence is desire, we cannot conceive of life without it. Without desire the world is tedious. An example is
Ulysses’s rejection of Calypso’s offer of immortality: he prefers the excitement of being human to the boring perfection of the gods. ‘Here
deathlessness and agelessness don’t mean divinity but the never-endingness of hell’ (Barabas 1977:182). Voltaire’s Candide is equally bored
in the perfect Eldorado, where nothing is lacking except the thrill of desire (Du Toit 2007:269).12
In the final analysis, the paradisiacal harmony described in myths of origin is as unending as desire.13 The Old Testament story of the
Fall presupposes a paradisiacal state, but who really knows what that was? The notion of paradisiacal bliss, like the notion of infinity, can only be
understood in terms of human experience of need and desire. Poros’s abundance is as infinite as Penia’s want. Perfect harmony in its infinitude
is unknowable. Plato connects Eros with the idea of creation and, as Paul Riceour (1986:13) states, creation entails a dual infinitude: ‘All things
emerge from nothingness and are borne toward the infinite’. The same applies to any science that grows from the nihil of genesis. This mixture
of finitude and infinity, of fulfilment and unfulfilment characterises the development of thought from mythos to logos. Logos does not mean
unadulterated, unequivocal truth. It is never free of myth. That is why it resorts to metaphors, models and analogies, all strategies indicating that we
do not fully know.
Sin reinterpreted in the foregoing way is crucial for our notion of transcendence as expounded here; it is vital if religion is to retain its allure.
The next section probes this aspect, explaining why human beings must be viewed as open and unfulfilled. The situation is indeed one of non posse
non peccare.
Christianity’s relative disregard of desire and infinitude as essential to the human self
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The same elements of desire, separation, sin, an original state of harmony and nostalgia for it, and infinitude (immortality) feature in the
Christian doctrine of the Fall. Desire underlies the fall. Eve finds the tree of knowledge of good and evil desirable (Gn 3:6). The result is
separation (from paradise, God, eternal life, humans’ true self as the image of God). Martin Buber (1939:229) puts it aptly: ‘Through
the Fall the unity of being and destiny, or of the “I” and the “Self” has been lost. Hence sinful man is forced continually
to seek his Self or himself.’ Buber considers humans to be self-contradictory (the original title of his book was Der Mensch im Widerspruch).
They rebel against God, against their divine destiny (Buber 1939:169, 171). They cannot return to their perfect origin and each day brings a fresh fall.
Human conflict is enacted in the stress-field between our human sinfulness and the image of God in us (Buber 1939:172, 174). Transcendence is intrinsic
to humanness:
Man contrasts the imperfect world of actual experience, as he knows it, with a perfect existence, a heightened, intensified, ideal existence, freed from
the contingent and accidental, the sight of which gives him a satisfaction which is wholly different from that of the experience of any reality in this
world as it is. (Buber 1939:175)
That is the ‘infinite’ in human beings (given with consciousness) and that is why nature or finitude fails to satisfy us. ‘We long for
simplicity, for that which is wholly natural. But is seems as though man, and man alone, were condemned never to find the simple and natural’
(Buber 1939:183). Buber rejects recognition of the natural, biological dimensions of humanness as materialism, which he defines as follows:
Essentially man is an animal, his instincts as well as his physico-psychical organism are the same; the only difference is that through the special
development of his brain and of the central nervous system the life-process gains new possibilities of differentiation. It is from such differentiation
that ‘culture’ is to be understood, as superstructure – biologically necessary – of the vital functions. The spiritual element
serves to regulate the life of this highly developed animal, and to keep its course as even as possible; owing to the special character of this animal,
it needs these special measures to protect it. (Buber 1939:189)
In Buber’s view the Platonic myth of the Fall is caused by our sensory nature. He repudiates the notion that human conflict is the result of
that nature rather than of the human spirit:
The spirit is victim of the delusion of the senses. Thus this view is not dealing with an actual contradiction, defiance, rebellion of man against the Creator,
but with an unfortunate combination of the elements of which human nature is composed. (Buber 1939:193)
In this, Buber (1939:198) acknowledges that humans are Eros, which he associates with reason and spirit, but traces it all to the classic conception of the Fall.
Here Hegel’s argument remains the most plausible, because unlike Buber (and most theologians of his time), he does not denigrate natural explanations.
Hegel (1985:92ff) deals with the Fall under the heading of ‘”Alienation”: Natural humanity’. He accommodates human biological nature
in the functioning of the human spirit (mind). Human nature is not evil in itself – that would be a Manichaean dualism:
Rather it is when human being constitutes its existence, establishes the criteria for its life, according to the immediacy, particularity, and externality
of the physical nature it shares with all created things, that ‘cleavage’ occurs and evil arises. (Hegel 1985:92, n.90)
The notion of the Fall and sin is a consequence of human nature as possibility (‘original state’) and the movement to immediate circumstances,
of human self-consciousness which is not what it should be (Hegel 1985:95–96). We have the potential (for development, insight, understanding) but
Spirit has not yet developed sufficiently to realise that potential fully. The notion of an original state is the representation of humans as the image of
God (Hegel 1985:96). Philosophically it is:
a condition of the highest spiritual perfection, of a human being in unity with nature, hence as an untroubled intelligence, which does not turn away from
nature into itself by means of reflection, an intelligence that penetrates nature as its spiritual centre, yet not by standing over against it or separating
from it, but as an intelligence that exists as a pure and highest knowledge. (Hegel 1985:97)
This primal state is based on affect, instinct and intuition and is not yet governed by reason (Hegel 1985:98). It is thought that gives rise to the host of
ideas and thus to the multiplicity and separation with which we live.
Evil, then, has to do with our contingent circumstances (with the accent on individual aspects such as personal need, want, desire) and what emerges from
our mental processes (cognition, representation, volition):
Both good and evil are before the human being; it has a choice between them, and its will is evil. Hence evil is its fault [Schuld]. This evil is
self-seeking: its goals relate only to its singularity insofar as it is opposed to the universal, i.e. insofar as it is natural ... In a purely abstract
natural condition, humanity is neither good nor evil; this means however, that it is not yet actually human ... Thus evil, the will of self-seeking,
exists only through consciousness and cognition, and constitutes the first form of will. (Hegel 1985:102–103)
Hegel uses this background to put the biblical Fall in a new perspective. He points out the contradictions in the story. Humans are forbidden to eat the
fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, yet this knowledge is what distinguishes the human mind from that of animals. The snake promises that
eating this fruit will make humans like God (sicut Deus), yet even before they tasted the fruit God had said that they ‘had become like one of
us’ (Gn 3:22). God himself acknowledges that the divine in human nature is a product of knowledge (both generally and knowledge of
good and evil) (Hegel 1985:104–105). Hegel links this with his basic model:
For the speculative content is precisely the comprehension of the concept of the thing – which involves the concept’s development –
and hence the comprehension of the inner antithesis that the concept contains and through which it moves. (Hegel 1985:105)
Thought is not possible without a negative, a contrast, and myths of origin are no exception. That is why they are always marked by separation,
opposition and the infinite. The question of good and evil is unavoidably part of our thinking and any contradictions must be resolved by that same
rationality. Thought both wounds and heals itself! ‘[It] is not that it [sin, evil] ought not to occur: it has occurred because human being is
consciousness’ (Hegel 1985:106). Humans are banished from paradise because of knowledge (leaving animals better off!). Originally they were immortal,
so why eat the fruit to gain immortality? But the myth is meant to explain mortality as a result of human finitude (Hegel 1985:107). Hence the human mind
comprehends the idea of finitude and infinity, of divinity and humanity as part of its substance:
This infinite possibility is its subjectivity. In this consciousness humanity knows the divine idea, the universal, and knows itself to be determined
for the universal, i.e. elevated above all locality, nationality, condition, life-situation etc. (Hegel 1985:109)
If we apply this to encounter with God, the radically transcendent, we cannot bypass ordinary thought processes. Revelation does not present a Deus
nudus but a mental turning point.14 By the same token, the search for a ‘true’ self via self-transcendence can be experienced
as intensely meaningful. The act of self-transcendence is our attempt to understand ourselves at a given moment by seeing ourselves ‘in terms
of…’, ‘in relation to…’ or ‘as responding to…’ – but also by experiencing ourselves as ‘more
than…’15 ‘The I is not a being that always remains the same, but is the being whose existing consists in identifying itself,
in recovering its identity throughout all that happens to it’ (Levinas 1979:36). The self, like God, is infinite and all other aspects of self-experience
are part of our mental processes. We speak about the self emerging in language, ideas and experience without abolishing its ‘alterity’ (otherness).
Through self-transcendence I attain enlightenment and understanding without fully ‘clarifying’ myself.16 The finite cannot know the
infinite, yet we ‘know’ ourselves and believers intuitively ‘know’ God. Desire is insatiable, but that does not prevent ongoing
interaction with the object of desire. It is a possible impossibility, a transcendent experience, a paradox of consciousness, a perpetual self evaluation.
The nature of the human mind and its concomitant thought processes (which entail concepts like infinity, unknowability of the Ding an sich) cannot but
impose a perennial character on the sciences, from philosophy, epistemology and psychology to physics.17 The Kantian transcendental subject, via
transcendental imagination, produces syntheses and mental constructs that are not empirically observable. We experience these as consciousness of knowledge.
But ‘synthesis’ comes at a price: ‘As soon as reflection comes on the scene it sunders man, for reflection is essentially dividing,
sundering’ (Ricoeur 1986:19, 1992:339). The synthesis seeks to connect my inner mental world with the outside world; hence, rationality is marked by
the same separation as Aristophanes’s myth of origin. The diverse rational models are no less comical than the postures Aristophanes ascribes to our
attempts at achieving perfect union. The separation between subject and object, self and other occurs via human corporeality in the mode of receptiveness.
Openness to the outside world is prerequisite for knowing anything and any knowledge I have is always from my particular perspective: ‘Primal finitude
consists in perspective or point of view. It affects my primary relation to the world, which is to “receive” objects and not to
create them’ (Ricoeur 1986:24). Perspective is simply the angle from which I observe things. Our finitude is determined by our slant on reality. There
are many possible perspectives, of which mine is but one. No person or agency can accommodate all possible points of view. My outlook is always finite. The
totality of possible perspectives is endless, for there can always be new ones. Our finitude is also emphasised by the fact that we cannot fully express our
meaning in language. Moving from myth to logos does not imply that logos represents ultimate or authentic truth. Thus Ricoeur (1986:30), referring to Hegel,
writes: ‘We do not actually and absolutely say what in this sense-certainty we really mean.’ Reason is doomed to perpetual transcendence.
To Ricoeur (1986:43) the distinction between sensory experience of things that manifest themselves and an attempt to grasp and articulate them intellectually
is not solved by a philosophy of finitude, even of self-transcending finitude. It needs a synthesis that links finitude with rationality (including universality
and infinity):
If man is a mean between being and nothingness, it is primarily because he brings about ‘mediations’ in things; his intermediate place is primarily
his function as a mediator of the infinite and the finite in things. (Ricoeur 1986:46)
It is via transcendental imagination (the third term) that humans are able to link understanding and sensibility (Ricoeur 1986:73). Transcendental
imagination is the hidden synthesis that constitutes the form (understanding) of things (Ricoeur 1986:79ff).
Desire, distance, infinity and the other
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This section highlights the positive aspect of desire and infinitude. The force driving me towards the future can obviously be either negative or positive,
but it is certainly not exclusively negative as Christianity would have it. I also look critically at rationalism and unitary (totalitarian) thinking, which
leaves no scope for transcendence. At best it separates transcendence dualistically from rational immanent reality. I also focus on Levinas’s location
(Platz) of transcendence in the face of the other, which inevitably introduces an ethical dimension. Unfortunately he fails to point out that seeing
transcendence in the face of the other cannot be taken for granted, any more than the experience of transcendence within the self or in events around us.
In the foregoing model, desire, separation and the infinite are metaphysically interconnected; hence, the ‘object’ that arouses my desire is
necessarily marked by infinitude. Levinas (1979:50, 62) sees desire as ‘the Desire for the Infinite which the desirable arouses rather than satisfies’.
To him the difference between desire and need is that desire is aroused by the other (her face), whereas need centres in the subject (Levinas 1979:62). We can
satisfy a need, but not a desire. His view of desire is positive. It is insatiable for the very reason that it is not a matter of need satisfaction but of the
infinite, the other: ‘Immortality is not the objective of the first movement of Desire, but the other, the Stranger. It is absolutely nonegoist; its name
is justice’ (Levinas 1979:63).
To Levinas (1979) the hallmark of metaphysical unitary thought is that separation is unacceptable and must be seen as a fall, privation or temporary rupture
of unity – separation is regarded as need:
Need indicates void and lack in the needy one, its dependence on the exterior, the insufficiency of the needy being precisely in that it does not entirely
possess its being and consequently is not strictly speaking separate. (Levinas 1979:102)
What makes Levinas’s work remarkable is his criticism of the Western ontology of power and his replacement of egocentric substantialist thought with the
dependence of relationality (relationship with the other). This is achieved by shifting the emphasis from totality (unity) to infinity (separation), which
makes everyone dependent on infinite desire for the other; hence enabling them to elude the stranglehold of knowledge.
Thought is governed by finitude and infinity.18 To Levinas infinity19 is inherent in humanness: it is what inheres in my self ‘as
a positing in me’. ‘The distance between me and God, radical and necessary, is produced in being itself’ (Levinas 1979:26, 48).
Levinas is opposed to Western unitary thought20 and replaces unity or totality
with infinity, as reflected in the title of his Totality and infinity. Infinity manifests itself in alterity, which human beings desire: ‘It is
understood as the alterity of the Other and of the Most-High’ (Levinas 1979:34). He refers to a transcendent metaphysical movement, ‘and transcendence,
like desire and inadequatio, is necessarily a transascendence (Levinas 1979:35). The notion of an ascending movement has to do with the infinite that
manifests itself in me and makes me move beyond myself towards the other. This movement towards the other is not like a mental movement when I approach some
object. The other is not an object. That is why Levinas (1979:49) makes a clear distinction between transcendence and objectivity and criticises Western
ontological thought, which he regards as a philosophy of power that dominates the other (Levinas 1979:45–46).21
Although human finitude may be experienced negatively, Levinas does not see the experience of finitude and negativity as the driving force behind human
transcendence. ‘The idea of the perfect and of infinity is not reducible to the negation of the imperfect; negativity is incapable of transcendence’
(Levinas 1979:41). The notion of infinitude includes separation, symbolised by distance. Infinity always lies ahead of me; I do not coincide with it,
which implies separation of finite humans from infinity. We find that separation within ourselves, in our unconscious, creating distance between me and my
self,22 but also between me and others.23 Separation is a product of thought. Infinity is inconceivable if I do not exist separately
from others (Levinas 1979:54, 79). Because humans are separated from others outside themselves they can elevate themselves to an absolute point of reference.
Levinas (1979) sees absolute separation as nonrelationship, introversion into the self and hence atheism:
One can call atheism this separation so complete that the separated being maintains itself in existence all by itself, without participating in the Being from
which it is separated ... The soul, the dimension of the psychic, being an accomplishment of separation, is naturally atheist. By atheism we thus understand a
position prior to both the negation and the affirmation of the divine, the breaking with participation by which the I posits itself as the same and I. (Levinas 1979:58)
That is symbolised by desire. Whereas desire is occupied with the other, the search for happiness is occupied with self. That is why he compares happiness with
politics (the search for power) and desire with religion, for:
religion is Desire and not struggle for recognition. It is the surplus possible in a society of equals, that of glorious humility, responsibility, and
sacrifice, which are the condition for equality itself. (Levinas 1979:64)
Normally we are unaware of our own transcendent orientation and the transcendent (unknown) dimension in other people, things and events is overlooked and
disregarded, because we reduce them to our fixed ideas.24 We ascribe identity, characteristics and attributes to people and gods to give us
control over them. We want to know whom we are dealing with and what to expect from them. We want to secure ourselves. We want rules to regulate our
interaction with people and things. They are necessary for a structured society, so we pin people down to perceptions. To facilitate the process we classify
them according to race, gender, class, culture, literacy, characteristics, and the like. For ourselves we claim the luxury of ‘openness’,
self-transcendence, the desire to realise some ideal without being pinned down to particular words or actions. But encountering the other in her infinitude
makes this impossible: ‘The face resists possession, resists my powers. In its epiphany, expression, the sensible, still graspable, turns into total
resistance to the grasp’ (Levinas 1979:197).
Hearing the divine word is not the same as knowing it as an object. It is more like opening up to something different, achieving an encounter, initiating
events. Levinas hears God’s voice in encounter with the other:
The dimension of the divine opens forth from the human face. A relation with the Transcendent free from all captivation by the Transcendent is a social
relation. It is here that the Transcendent, infinitely other, solicits us and appeals to us. The proximity of the Other, the proximity of the neighbor, is
in being an ineluctable moment of the revelation of an absolute presence. (Levinas 1979:77–78)
Not that God is incarnated in the other, ‘but precisely by his face, in which he is disincarnate, is the manifestation of the height [read infinity]
in which God is revealed’ (Levinas 1979:79). And: ‘If I can no longer have power over him it is because he overflows absolutely every idea
I can have of him’ (Levinas 1979:87).
The other’s infinitude makes relationship possible (Levinas 1979:196). The face and the affects it expresses are always complemented by appropriate
dialogue25:
The idea of infinity is produced in the opposition of conversation,26 in sociality. The relation with the face, with the other absolutely other
which I cannot contain, the other in this sense infinite, is nonetheless my Idea, a commerce ... the face speaks to me and thereby invites me to a relation
incommensurable with a power exercised, be it enjoyment or knowledge. (Levinas 1979:197, 198)
The other enhances my freedom, for instance by evoking my goodness: ‘The face opens the primordial discourse whose first word is obligation, which no
‘interiority’ permits avoiding.’ It is the infinitude of the other which generates ethics (Levinas 1979:201, 204).
Desire is tied up with the other. It also includes the other’s desire.27 My self does not coincide with the self of the other. It is desire
that the other will recognise me as the desire I am, as the infinite self-becoming that I am (Nancy 2002:62). The self is desire. Nancy (2002) describes it thus:
Desire is the necessity of consciousness: it is the necessity that the unity of consciousness come and become for consciousness itself. Desire is therefore
less the tension of lack, and the projection of a satisfaction that would annul it, than it is the tension of the coming of the other as the becoming of the
self ... Desire is neither aspiration nor demand, nor is it lust or voracity. It demands nothing but the other, and is satisfied with nothing other: but the
other as such, the veritable other of the self, is not an object one could demand, an object with which one could take satisfaction. (Nancy 2002:61)
The ‘self’ in self-transcendence
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Augustine, pioneer researcher of the inner world of human thought and conscience, distinguishes between se cogitare (to think about oneself) and
se nosse (to know oneself) (Dalferth 2007:45). Knowing oneself is knowledge of ‘movements’ of the self rather than of a fixed core.
The pursuit of self-knowledge often leads to self-conflict. Levinas (1979:37) puts it thus: ‘The I that repels the self, lived as repugnance, the
I riveted to itself, lived as ennui, are modes of self-consciousness and rest on the unrendable identity of I and the self.’ Hence I am a stranger,
an other to myself (see Levinas 1979:39).
What is the mental world of the divided subject like? It is characterised by the unknown (transcendent) nature of the other and oneself. It is, in effect,
the dimension of infinity that we attribute to self-knowledge and knowledge of the other. Because we can never know completely, the process of knowing is
itself a never ending, ever unaccomplished labour. To the extent that it is successful, my self-knowledge does not imply transparent self-knowledge on the
part of the other to whom I am relating. But neither am I transparent to myself and the ego I ‘actually’ am remains an enigma to me.28
There simply is no single ‘core’ I or transcendent I behind my thinking, language and behaviour, who rules the dream world of the unconscious
like a demiurge and then surfaces at the conscious level.29 To understand myself in my self-transcendent mode I have to realise that I am never
fully accessible to myself (Dalferth 2007:46, 48).
The concept of a transcendent self refers to the mysterious, even unfathomable and inexplicable aspects of self. It refers to the enigma of the unconscious,
the unknown, Lacan’s objêt petit a,30 the transcendental imagination that is only known when it happens, desire that always
exceeds the desire for demonstrable objects, one’s alter ego, the unexpected voice of conscience, et cetera. Neither does the transcendent I have an
‘identity’, for then it can be known, be pinned down. The transcendent I manifests itself (an epiphenomenon like consciousness) in what happens.
The same applies to the question of which self is transcended in self-transcendence. After all, the self is not a fixed entity that remains the same
(idem). In the mode of self-transcendence, self (ipse) does not coincide with the self that I or others construe. Hence it is not self
in the idem sense of the word.31 If I as a self is characterised by transcendence, we can assume that the other selves (my Gegenüber)
that make up my world are similarly structured. The other’s transcendent nature makes knowledge of the other no less complicated than self-knowledge. It
is primarily the way the O/other features in our consciousness that creates awareness of transcendence, because my self never coincides with hers
(Ryle 1949:16–17).
But clarifying the self does not necessarily affect our experience of ourselves. For example, we do not experience ourselves differently after studying
brain scientists’ explanation of self-experience.32 One may surmise that advances in the cognitive and brain sciences will afford greater
insight into the biologically structured background to humans as ‘open’, hence self-transcending beings. But even such insight into our biological
functioning, especially that of consciousness, does not alter the fact that we cannot live outside our bodies, our consciousness or our brain structures. That
is because thought always rises above physicality, even though it is wholly dependent on it. My thoughts emerge from the diverse operations of my brain, yet
what I think is not determined by the physicality of my brain but is, at most, made possible by it. That has to do with the distinction
between the brain and the mind, an epiphenomenon of brain, which is completely dependent on it but at the same time ‘exceeds’ it. I am my own
understanding (Dalferth 2007:48). ‘Being reasonable is trying to overcome our first-person perspective by being neutral, not partial, and open-minded.
Reason must govern reflection, and reflection overcomes first-person perspectives’ (Dalferth 2007:49).
The human self is never neutral but is always preoccupied. As a rule, the self is seen in terms of a relation to some ideal, problem, need or lack and one’s
identity at a given moment is determined by that interaction. But our self-consciousness ‘integrates’ all aspects of existence and thus effects a
holistic, ‘unified’ sense of self.33 That sense of unity creates the impression of an ‘isolated’ core identity, in terms of
which contingently changing self-perceptions should be interpreted. The self is an ongoing construction determined by our contingent being-in-the-world
(Dasein). At a given moment, we do not have an array of diverse self-experiences before us, like childhood photographs that we can compare to determine
differences and similarities. We only remember highlights and mentally associate changes of identity with these.
Hence self-transcendence does not entail a complete blueprint, a self approaching the outside world as a fixed identity. Self-perceptions are always from a
particular perspective. So what the ‘self’ in self-transcendence actually consists of complicates the issue.34 It is not immutable,
exactly defined or fixed.35 The ‘self’ that is transcended is, at most, a particular facet of our self-experience at a given
moment.36 Humans are designs-in-process to the day of their death. Human identity is continually changing, because it emerges every day in a
particular challenging context in a unique manner. Self-transcendence merely reflects our intentional structure: we are schemers, forever moving from some
state of incompleteness or unfulfilment towards change and a remedy for that state – be it physical (illness, poverty), epistemological (ignorance,
error), social (poor human relations), political (oppression, unfreedom), religious (sin), ethical (absence of goodness) or psychological (some kind of
‘pathology’). It is expressed by the narrative self.37
The focus on the interior world, like metaphysical onto-theology, is biased. One has to link the quest for the transcendentally mysterious interior world
with the reality of the outside world.38 However unique or enigmatic the inner world, it can never be divorced from the external world.
Self-understanding is not a purely private business but a public enterprise. Consciousness itself is densely populated by the actors and plots that make
up the theatre of the mind. Although contingent reality is forever changing, it remains my frame of reference for every self-evaluation.
Role of affectivity in objectivity
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The subject enters the outside world (with intentionality, will and desire), but also receives it (as a gift, an appeal, enigma and challenge).
The way we perceive the outside world depends on the mental lens we are using at that point in time. The lens diminishes our expectation and intention.
But reality rarely fits into the lens and we are constantly forcing new focuses into our field of vision. If double vision sets in or our view is out of
focus, conflict arises, which assumes diverse forms. It is given with desire as an existential mode, in which fulfilment continues to elude us.
Naturally, affectivity accompanies every relation with the outside world. ‘Affectivity, an intrinsic dimension of embodiment, is itself intimately
linked to a primordial interest, orientation or motivation, animating movement,
perception and thought. Affectivity always permeates the cognitive stance’ (Parnas 2007:62–63). Affectivity is a neglected aspect of all epistemologies
in our rational, modernistically oriented society. That is because our epistemological models focus on what can be rationally articulated. At most, affectivity
features passively in the framework of logical, rational propositions. Rationality is marked by control; when we rationalise something we are in control. But we
do not control our emotions – they control us. Emotions are not consciousness, but they inform consciousness. In that sense human affect, like consciousness,
has an infinite dimension. Desire evokes affects (jealousy, contempt, happiness, unhappiness). Fear, especially in the form of anxiety, has to do with the unknown.
Longing and nostalgia presuppose distance and separation. Our experience of transcendence may be marked by emotions like surprise, fear, guilt feelings and the like.
Consciousness is always co-determined by emotion, although as a rule it is ‘neutral’. I cannot decide what mood I want to be in and then it happens.
Emotion is the stepchild of the public, rational self. It is the embarrassment of our corporeality, our biology. Yet is emotion not where we are closest to our
bodies? That is why we usually confine it to our private space and do not admit it to the daylight of reason. Emotion is the embarrassing fear, jealousy, contempt,
pride, admiration, nostalgia informing our rational perspective. It is also the dark area where desire, imagination, intuition and creativity lurk – without
which no innovative thought is possible. To us, it is the often irrational and embarrassing limbic system, which nourishes the ‘disembodied’ sphere of
the rational, thinking self that is ‘isolated’ from us.
Affectivity determines every epistemology as well as all self-understanding.39 In a sense, epistemological inquiry into knowledge, the role of
transcendental reflection in knowledge, the relation of subject to object and the like remain formal and abstract. It does not involve affectivity, practicality
(ethos) and the axiological aspect of human knowledge. Feeling and knowing are interdependent. ‘Knowing ... exteriorizes and poses its object in being,
sets up a fundamental cleavage between the object and the subject. It “detaches” the object or “opposes it” to the I’ (Ricoeur 1986:85).
Whereas knowing establishes the duality of subject and object, feeling overcomes it. ‘Feeling is ... the manifestation of a relation to the world that
constantly restores our complicity with it, our inheritance and belonging in it, something more profound than all polarity and duality’ (Ricoeur 1986:85).
When we attribute feelings to objects (it is desirable, repellent) we appear to be dealing with objective qualities. But they are not qualities that confront the
subject like objects – they are rather the intentional expression of a unifying bond with the world. I am affectively present in the world. That is why
Ricoeur calls feeling the colour of soul: ‘It is the landscape which is cheerful, and it is I who am elated’ (Ricoeur 1986:89).40
If paradox, separation and the finitude–infinity conundrum are part of objective knowledge, they are all the more so when we take into account their
affective aspects, where the focus is on the person rather than the thing. Things in themselves have a certain affective value (e.g. they attract, repel or
are neutral). This is what motivates the will and directs human intentionality. Ricoeur (1986:151, n.2) puts it thus: ‘Now, the movement of the self,
in its prereflective naïveté, lies in the intentional moment through which I break through to the world of possibilities, of eventualities, of novel
events.’ The will assumes objects (people and things) extraneous to me in the same way that I perceive objects as extraneous to me. The affective value of
things outside the person arouses desire or revulsion and activates the will. This affirms human finitude in the same way perception does. ‘Accordingly, if
desire is a form of receptivity, analogous to that of perception but different in a way, in what does its infinitude consist?’ (Ricoeur 1986:151, n.2).
His answer read as follows:
It is an experience of lack of ... an impulse toward ... In desire I am outside myself; I am with the desirable in the world. In short, in desire I am open
to all the affective tones of things that attract of repel me. (Ricoeur 1986:52–53)
Ricoeur does not look into the reason why something attracts or repels me, why I desire it or not, why it activates or does not activate my will.41
It is probably the result of several complex factors ranging from a particular need that we have at a given time to certain likes and dislikes that develop over
a long period. The latter are preferences or tastes acquired over time, which Ricoeur (1986:57ff) calls habit, inertia or a form of perseverance. ‘Each of
us has his way of loving and hating, and this love and hate reflect his whole personality’ (Ricoeur 1986:60). Thus affect determines what emerges in our
likes and dislikes, and hence our personality and character. Accordingly, character is not ‘not the result of taking a position’ (Ricoeur 1986:62)
but something I receive and ‘I do not know the meaning of this gift that makes me the heir to my own life’ (Ricoeur 1986:63).
The synthesis of desire and reason (power of obligation that comes from practical reason) is respect (Ricoeur 1986:73). Reason is practical only if it influences
desire:
The important thing is that through this emotion of subdued desire that faculty of desiring is ‘elevated’ to the level of reason, and that in this
way self-esteem is born in the heart of this finitude elevated to reason. (Ricoeur 1986:74)
Self-transcendence in the mode of a secularised consumer culture
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Emerson’s work is the paradigm for secular spirituality that has emerged in recent years. Secular spirituality has the same emphasis on nature,
emotion, the unconscious, freedom, unity and self-construction that we find in Emerson. Does that mean we successfully accommodate affectivity
in self-knowledge and self-construction? It is a tricky question. In one instance, there is greater emphasis on experience (proliferation of charismatic
emotive religions), as well as numerous examples in the field of secular spirituality, with its renewed focus on nature, self, transcendence and the way
we can encounter it in meditation and mystical experience.
The entertainment industry focuses on experience and the emotion it evokes. The media zoom in on the drama of catastrophes wherever they happen on our
planet. We are moved and respond positively. But the media also present a culture of violence and reified sexuality. On the one hand there is greater
recognition of our bodily nature as a means to pleasure. On the other hand our individualised society is marked by a loss of fellowship and collective
emotion, with the possible exception of sporting events. The plethora of courses in self-discovery, self-construction, self-assertion, self-actualisation
and the like certainly promote acknowledgment and a positive image of affectivity.
Transcendent experience and self-transcendence are bound to be different in a disenchanted world. Accounts of natural events cannot but affect our concept
of God. Western ontology, which grew from philosophical and theological interpretations, was overthrown by science. Science was put at the service of
humankind by technology and available technologies became the main factor in the design of new technologies of self that manifest themselves in
present-day consumer society. Transcendence comes via both virtual and real experiences that make up our technological rollercoaster society.
One could argue that transcendence in present-day consumer society differs from all earlier transcendental movements – outwards (nature), upwards (God)
and inwards (thought, metaphysics). Self-transcendence is characterised not by ‘movement towards…’ but by ‘movement with…’
We move in, through and with technology, which has become an extension of self. It is not so much that self-transcendence is effected by the unconscious,
by affectivity or by inner creativity. It rather concerns the way in which self-identity is governed by the technologically extended self42
(self-transcendence is increasingly co-determined by social and technological patterns laid down by the consumer, advertising and IT society in which we live).
Morality and dialogue with others and self play a dwindling role in self-construction (Hankiss 2006:287).
Self-transcendence is the mode in which we experience ourselves. It is characterised by awareness of desire (Eros) in the form of unfulfilment and
incompleteness. Religiously it translates into sin, but it may also be regarded as a natural, inevitable manifestation of consciousness and self-consciousness.
Whereas it was once ascribed to transcendent forces acting on human beings, nowadays people are increasingly harnessing it in their attempts at self-construction.
Self-transcendence cannot be explained in isolation; human biology, affectivity and the unconscious come into the picture as well. One also has to take into
account the contents of consciousness and their influence on people (concepts like separation, infinitude, desire, the O/other). In addition, cultural artefacts
also help us to construct diverse selves. In view of all this, it is apparent that human wiring for transcendence cannot be confined to a particular religious
tradition or theology. In contrast to modernism, people’s relation to the other (God, world, fellow humans, ideas) is no longer regulated exclusively by
concepts such as metaphysical truth, hierarchy, tradition and established value systems, but by self-construction (see Bildung) that assumes a pragmatic,
eclectic style – a worldview reinforced by a human rights culture that endorses freedom (of religion, expression, association, the press, minorities)
and dignity irrespective of race, gender, sexual orientation, culture and the like.43
Perceptions of self and self-transcendence are changing radically. But must we appraise these changes moralistically? Every generation finds transcendence
within the interpretive horizons permitted by their culture, science and worldview. There are biological constants (neocortex, lymphatic system) and mental
constants (desire, infinity, unfulfilment), but they manifest themselves differently in every era. The remarkable feature of our age is that transcendence is
no longer encapsulated in metaphysical ideas, but comes to us via our techno-scientific environment that sweeps us along on its evolutionary current. We cannot
artificially perpetuate the enchantment of a world we have outgrown. And why should we? The Middle Ages would have seen our present-day world as a dream come
true and many people today undeniably find fulfilment in a virtual, consumer and pleasure-centred environment. As disenchanted as it may be, it is certainly not
devoid of transcendence.
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