Time and Eternity have in common that they both are constituted mentally as a kind of conceptual internality; yet as internalities, they differ, not just from spatial externality, but one as a concept pertaining to the external and limited, to science and cause and effect, over and against a concept pertaining to the internal and unlimited or infinite. Yet in this self-reflexivity, in this apperception which is itself a reflection on the self as time, as being-historical, as enduring—there is a kind of inference which takes the temporal and the eternal as erzats options to be opined upon and judged between, as if the facts did not intrude here, in this remote place, so as to prevent some external, objective determination; to wit, a deathless soul enfleshed in time.
Yet it is just in this history of Time and Eternity that we are to locate the emergence of this peculiar, absurdly paradoxical species of religious consciousness, a consciousness that determines deathlessness for itself in the face of death!
To preserve the concept of the Eternal in the face of the Temporal concept of Death is to insist upon the superiority, ontologically speaking, of an internality which cannot be violated or diminished in any ways by the external; a pure internality which affords a pure reasoning. Kant attempted to unfold this situation, and yet we could never say that he was successful in establishing an immortal soul as a fact, insofar as this would arrogate itself to behave like some external determination on this unreachable place, placing the cart before the horse, so to speak.
What is essential and deathless in the conceptualizing framework which is this mental dimension of internality, must be the way in which the self as Time intrudes upon the world for a while and in a particular place. This insistence of the superiority of self over matter, of the I Myself over the whole of the World, of the narrative of self over the facts of life and death, leads to a retreat into the self as a place of repose and continuity in the face of rampant scheduling and never ending worries about yesterday, today, and tomorrow. The world draws us out from our repose and throws us into the fray of everlasting strife, the struggle for existence, the struggle for recognition, the struggle for freedom, the struggle for the good life.
Life gifts goodness in its own time, and we struggle to find safe haven in the ports between sea-going journeys between life-events, between anniversaries and holidays, between celebrations and parties, festivals; sacred moments, cherished and commemorated. Work that is akin to play makes this journey the more endurable; a life at sea, in pilgrimage, as journeymen and travellers, make and map our ways, seek sense in the larger picture, to join the small things in one harmonious and meaningful trip.
The sense of the Eternal endures, perhaps not least because it is endurance as such! Existence washes over us historically, until at last we relinquish our bodies to the grave. Will we then see ourselves in a new light? In any light at all? Yet endurance beyond life is already something external as historical. And as historical it is not immediately the eternal, but only the temporal.
Yet it is just in this history of Time and Eternity that we are to locate the emergence of this peculiar, absurdly paradoxical species of religious consciousness, a consciousness that determines deathlessness for itself in the face of death!
To preserve the concept of the Eternal in the face of the Temporal concept of Death is to insist upon the superiority, ontologically speaking, of an internality which cannot be violated or diminished in any ways by the external; a pure internality which affords a pure reasoning. Kant attempted to unfold this situation, and yet we could never say that he was successful in establishing an immortal soul as a fact, insofar as this would arrogate itself to behave like some external determination on this unreachable place, placing the cart before the horse, so to speak.
What is essential and deathless in the conceptualizing framework which is this mental dimension of internality, must be the way in which the self as Time intrudes upon the world for a while and in a particular place. This insistence of the superiority of self over matter, of the I Myself over the whole of the World, of the narrative of self over the facts of life and death, leads to a retreat into the self as a place of repose and continuity in the face of rampant scheduling and never ending worries about yesterday, today, and tomorrow. The world draws us out from our repose and throws us into the fray of everlasting strife, the struggle for existence, the struggle for recognition, the struggle for freedom, the struggle for the good life.
Life gifts goodness in its own time, and we struggle to find safe haven in the ports between sea-going journeys between life-events, between anniversaries and holidays, between celebrations and parties, festivals; sacred moments, cherished and commemorated. Work that is akin to play makes this journey the more endurable; a life at sea, in pilgrimage, as journeymen and travellers, make and map our ways, seek sense in the larger picture, to join the small things in one harmonious and meaningful trip.
The sense of the Eternal endures, perhaps not least because it is endurance as such! Existence washes over us historically, until at last we relinquish our bodies to the grave. Will we then see ourselves in a new light? In any light at all? Yet endurance beyond life is already something external as historical. And as historical it is not immediately the eternal, but only the temporal.
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