from BARDO

The stars are in our belly; the Milky Way our umbilicus.

Is it a consolation that the stuff of which we’re made

is star-stuff too?


– That wherever you go you can never fully disappear –

dispersal only: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen.


Tree, rain, coal, glow-worm, horse, gnat, rock.


Roselle Angwin

Wednesday 27 April 2011

PS to (Kant) reason & intuition (& take 2)

Postscript next morning: OK this is one of the downsides of winging it and not checking facts. I have got over my hubris from yesterday, as TM pointed out - over morning tea no less - that the reason (no pun intended) that Kant arrived at his conclusions was very different from mine. As many of you will know, and The Man has told me before and I'd forgotten but should know, Kant denied the faculty of intuition in the human; whereas of course it's central to my perception and observations, along with the 'channel' of human imagination.

A little later: leaving home this morning I realised that probably the above is about as clear as a mug of milk. No doubt you have already got there - the 'yes and?' moment in relation to the above (and my hubris has gone into minus figures and is heading towards severe nutritional deficiency now!): what I am trying to say is that Kant considered – I gather! – that reason couldn't go the distance in terms of comprehending the nature of essential reality; but since he thought that humankind doesn't have the faculty of intuition, we by definition can't perceive the metaphysical realm/essential nature at all. I think.

This suggests to me that The Man's views and mine are closer than he sometimes thinks: we both consider that there are ways in which we humans can perceive/experience the metaphysical realm; we simply differ in the detail or labelling of our own experience of and relationship to what is loosely called the spiritual.

*

I think I've exhausted that one for the minute. More of other things soon. Promise.

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