Interiority in a time of exteriorities
04
Jul
Modern man has not only projected himself
onto objects (what idealist philosophy calls subjectivity) but there is also an absence of inner asceticism, what projects and builds itself in his soul, are not just values, but a characteristic of being- there (dasein).
This extends more deeply into the disbelief that there is any interiority and then cultivating empathy, altruism, goodwill and sharing the common good is increasingly distant in the face of selfish, narcissistic values and the cultivation of only worldly exteriority.
The Neoplatonists, like Plotinus (205 – 270), believed in monism and in this radiation of light, there is a one or a god (it was not the Christian God) from which emanates a divine source that radiates throughout all creation, in this one light that Augustine of Hippo will rely on this philosophy to deny the Manichaean dualism which he had previously believed and from there he turned to Christianity.
Soul, or anima for the Greeks, is not just an interiority but also what moves it externally, so it is not disconnected from its actions in the world, the distance between the vita activa and the vita contemplativa, was described by many authors, in antiquity Gregory of Nazianzen (329-369), a Christian mystic who is cited by Byung-Chul Han in the Society of Fatigue, and developed more fully in his more recent book Vitta Comtemplativa.
The Jewish festival of the Sabbath (or Shabbat) (photo) is described in Byung-Chul Han’s book as the phatos of the action, which he begins in his book by describing this festival that contemplates God and the Sabbath, for Jewish culture redemption, the immortal (page 107), yesterday time is suspended, that is, the moment of pause in human action for divine action, thus complementing the action.
Exteriority and interiority are related, civilization’s malaise is due to the culture and time we live in, but also interiorities without true asceticism.
In the Bible, when a paralytic (someone with difficulty in acting) approaches Jesus before healing him, he states that his sins are forgiven (Mt 9:5), he gives him full interiority, the Sabbath.
Han, Byung-Chul. (2023) Vita Contemplativa (Contemplative Life). Trans. Lucas Machado, Brazil, RJ: Petropolis.
