Premium
From Soul to Self
Author(s) -
Theron Stephen
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
new blackfriars
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1741-2005
pISSN - 0028-4289
DOI - 10.1111/j.1741-2005.2007.00188.x
Subject(s) - immanence , soul , philosophy , epistemology , creatures , existence of god , contingency , subject (documents) , relation (database) , transcendence (philosophy) , infinity , natural (archaeology) , theism , mathematics , computer science , mathematical analysis , archaeology , database , library science , history
Abstract The origin of self as subject can be sought neither in astrology, genetics nor in arbitrary divine will. These answers depend upon a realist belief in a world of objects , governed by the sufficient reason principle, as if the divine ideas were a necessary set of the possibles! The alternative is the unity of self and God, i.e. personal contingency is impossible. Otherness, rather, is in any thinkable God (any non‐abstract infinity is differentiated). The world too, as other, is inseparable from God, therefore, willing to be what he then is, though not temporally. Transcendence, as infinite, demands immanence. Why God has no real relation to creatures (Aquinas) is because they are not as God is, or as God transcends such being. Human actuality requires inversion of the common‐sense world. The idea of a privileged access to truth is arbitrary. Truth, rather, must be intrinsically human. We live in God. Only so are we, images, in ourselves. Emergent knowledge is natural to the universe. It constructs it.