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The Experience of Immanent Transcendence

Dorthe Jorgensen

Is it possible to transcend this world while remaining in it? This was one of the main issues of the conference 'Exploring Experiences of lmmanent Transcendence' in Oslo, Norway, in June 2010. Another important issue was the question whether we can think transcendence without negating the materiality of art, of the body or of ? Interesting as they are, it may, however, be useful to consider the relevance of such questions. Why should it not be possible to transcend this world while remaining in it? Why, indeed, should it cause problems to think transcendence without negating the materiality of art, of the body or of nature? Are transcendence and immanence necessarily mutually antagonistic?

The miracle qf ! A couple of years ago, I wrote an article called 'The Miracle of Cognition'. I chose this title even though the article was not about divine events, but about cognition. Miracles are usually seen as an indication that a god or some other supernatural has intervened in the universe, thereby breaking the laws of nature. Today the word 'miracle' is also used with a more profane , simply to denote statistically unlikely but fortunate events. Furthermore, the word 'miracle' is also used to describe something that is not improbable, but still overwhelmingly gratifying. Whether the word 'miracle' is used with a sacral or a profane meaning, it denotes something that is perceived as a wonderful .! However, instead of perceiving miracles as violations of , or as something that might well follow this taw but is to greater joy than the course of nature usually is, one may also understand miracles as sudden experiences of a dimension in the world we are seldom aware of. The word 'miracle' may also denote an unexpected experience of something 'more', a transcendence in the immanence, which differs radically from both our everyday impressions and our scientific . The word 'miracle' may describe the kind of experience studied by writers Philosophical and artists like James Joyce and Walter Benjamin, even though However, this primitive understanding of cognition has been criticized, they called it something else, like for example 'epiphany' or 'aura'.! first by philosophical aesthetics, and later on by philosophical phenom- According to a philosopher like Benjamin, the experience he wrote enology as well. The discipline called 'philosophical aesthetics' was about has cognitive . However, the kind of philosophy that founded by the German philosopher Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten. tries to be scientific in the way natural science is will certainly find fault with that. Modern science, as well as scientific philosophy According to Baumgarten, philosophical aesthetics is about cognitio sensi- and people in general, consider cognition to be a naturalistic tiva, i.e. sensitive cognition.Translated into a more modern idiom, Baum- copying in of something empirical. They ask for in garten considered aesthetic experience to be a kind of true cognition the of correspondence between the empirical and the and he saw aesthetics as the philosophy about this experience. notional. In this area of we only talk about cognition if we Since antiquity, art theory dealing with the form of the art work had deal with knowledge that is true in the sense that it is consistent constituted one , while the of beauty, whose with empirical data. This consistency is only guaranteed if you can was the of the beautiful, had formed another tradition, tn Baumgar- explain the process of cognition so exactly that others can imitate ten, the two were fused into a new and different way of relat- it and reach the same cognition. In other words, the acquisition of ing to 'the aesthetic'. To him, this new way of seeing things constituted true knowledge requires using a method that is clearly defined and an independent philosophical discipline, which he named aesthetica, and can be duplicated by others.! which had neither the form of the art work nor the idea of the beautiful However, much is taken for granted when you rely on this way of as its central object. Here it was, on the contrary, all about aesthetic ex- thinking. Even though it makes enormous demands on transparency, it operates with assumptions that are not subject to perience conceived as a kind of true cognition. discussion.This applies, for example, to the idea of what is real Thus, philosophical aesthetics was starting out as a kind of epistemol- and unreal and hence to the idea of what is or may be subject to ogy. However, thanks to G.W.E Hegel, among others, it changed into cognition.When cognition is regarded as a naturalistic copying in philosophy of art in the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth concepts of something empirical, the it refers to is defined centuries. The consequence is that today there is hardly any philosophi- as that which can be observed empirically and be subject to cal aesthetics to be found. Art theory and art-theoretically founded re- scientific analysis. In other words, cognition of reality is implicitly search on art and literature will be found everywhere, but philosophical identified with cognition rooted in empirical experience, of which aesthetics is something else. Art theory and art-theoretically founded re- scientific knowledge is considered to be the highest. It is taken for search have the work of art, not least its form, as their central object, and granted what it means to recognize reality and what reality is. they approach the object not in a philosophical but in a scientific way. Cognition is identified with observing the world and manipulating They subject works of art and literature to analysis which is - your impressions in a methodical way, and reality is identified with a one-dimensional universe of rationally manageable .! ally methodical in the way it is practised. Philosophical aesthetics, on the Where this way of thinking prevails, neither the empirical data and contrary, is a kind of , because it is the philosophy about ontological status of the methods used nor the ontological extent aesthetic experience conceived as a kind of true cognition and it is a special of empirical experience and scientific knowledge is being theory about cognition, because it deals precisely with aesthetic experi- questioned. Because cognition is identified with empirically ence. anchored scientific cognition, its ability to transcend is only True, today, a lot of people misinterpret Baumgarten's terms sensitiua considered to be its ability to reach out for data that act as a pre- and aesthetica, believing that the aesthetic experience is especially charac- given reality and do not invite to wondering.Where this way of terised by being sensuous. However, the Greek verb from which aisthesis thinking prevails there is no room for Joyce's epiphanies or and, thus, also aesthetica have been derived, does not only mean to per- Benjamin's aura. Sudden appearances of otherwise inaccessible ceive in the sense of registering through the , but also to conceive reality are not considered to have cognitive value. in a wider and more comprehensive sense. This appealed to Baumgarten because in his work on poetry he had become aware that there is not whereas it makes no sense to say the same thing about aesthetic only sense and conceptual cognition. There is also experiences. Although aesthetic experiences are not a product of another kind of experience, albeit only through , sensations conceptual thinking, they are different from impressions by being and presentiments, but which still contains an element of cognition. reflective.! This was the experience he called sensitive cognition, and he did so True, there is no denying the impressions, since as a starting point we to bring out the emotional aspect as well as the cognitive aspect in it.! always relate to ourselves and to the world via impressions, and because To Baumgarten, sensitiva, consequently, did not just mean sensuous, experiences do not only rely on reflectivity, but on impressions, too. But an impression doesn't leave any lasting trace in the person who has it, but rather emotional, and for the same , according to him, apart from the recollection of the mental 'dent' it may have left behind.! aesthetic experience does not distinguish itself so much by The experience, on the contrary, affects the person in such a way" that sensuousness as by sensitivity. This is, precisely, the reason why - he or she is no longer what they were before. So, experiences bring being a rationalistic philosopher - he could argue that there is about changes, and consequently occasion wondering and thus also cognition in this kind of experience. In this way, Baumgarten rejected reflection, although the individual may not be conscious of 'thinking'. in the rationalist, dualistically conditioned prejudice that everything other words, experiences do not only differ from impressions by including aesthetic is also irrational by definition. Thus, he made the aesthetic reflectivity in the sense that they are impressions adapted in reflection.! accessible to philosophical analysis, and thus, by founding They also trigger reflection, they contain a cognitive potential in philosophical aesthetics he also established a new and different kind themselves, and for that very reason they are a source of development, of epistemology. as well.! When aesthetic experience is in truth an aesthetic experience, as distinct from an aesthetic impression - when we are not just dealing with sensuous pleasure, that is - it constitutes an experience of cohesion and Impression or experience proper! meaningfulness, traditionally called an experience of beauty. Today we However, in recent years, the body and sensuality have been focused rely predominantly on understanding, by which we appropriate positive upon to such a degree that they are now cultivated rather thoughtlessly, - knowledge, and which is consequently a must in our practical lives, as also by theorists. Consequently, it is no surprise that today many people well as our sciences. However, understanding is analytical, so from the see aesthetic experience as particularly sensuous and consider it a kind point of view of understanding, the world is incohesive, and for the very of experience which has no connection to truth and is therefore also same reason, it is devoid of meaning. But although this absence of devoid of cognition.This reduction of aesthetic experience arises out of cohesion and meaningfulness is a pragmatic and scientific , it is not an animosity towards anything which may be characterized as absolute. On the contrary, aesthetic experience testifies to some other metaphysical, especially the of truth, as welt as an animosity possibility although this is only momentarily open, and although the towards all cognition which is true in more than just a purely empirical experienced cohesion and meaningfulness is unintelligible and hard to sense.The present-day cult of the body and sensuality is thus connected talk about.! to a way of thinking which collides with what aesthetics originally was, Aesthetic experience allows us to intuit meaning which is more that is, a philosophy about aesthetic experience conceived as a kind of comprehensive than the kind of meaning we are acquainted with in the true cognition.! cognition produced by understanding. Moreover, this different meaning The reduction of aesthetic experience to sense perception is promoted does not constitute a classic, metaphysical truth, yet it is both true and by the fact that far too many people do not distinguish between metaphysical, only in a different way. The cohesion and meaningfullness immediate impression and experience proper, i.e. between 'Erlebnis' and brought about by aesthetic experience is not a fact in the empirical 'Erfahrung'. Much of what is today referred to as aesthetic experience sense, but, on the contrary, only a suggestion. In aesthetic experience and seen as a proof that this kind of thing has no metaphysical qualities you feel something that could be. It is a hypothetical of is actually not aesthetic experience, but, on the contrary, aesthetic what is, placing the already given in an unaccustomed light. Thus, in impression. Aesthetic impressions may very well distinguish themselves aesthetic by being particularly sensuous and by having no special cognitive value, experience we intuit a harmony otherwise inaccessible, while the actual Likewise, I do not use the word 'transcendence' as a synonym for 'the disruptions of the world are not dissolved. The experienced cohesion transcendent' or let it necessarily connote something divine. The and meaningthlness are only symbolic, and so they call for interpretation. concept of transcendence I consider rather to be a concept of Furthermore, the of cohesion and meaningfulness associated experience; transcendence is, indeed, identical to the experience of with the aesthetic experience is not only individual but also common to transcendence. Rather than denoting some kind of 'thing' the concept mankind. It is not just something private, but, on the contrary, something of transcendence thus denotes a kind of movement. This movement of vahdity. True, the personal experience of cohesion and does not lead into the transcendent in the sense of a sphere beyond meaning~lness is manifested individually, as it presents itself at a definite immanence. The movement is rather a 'movement on the spot'- a moment in a definite place, occasioned by something specific. But the movement in the immanence, a disturbance of its opacity.This very feeling of cohesion and meaningfulness experienced by the indi- movement has no subject in the sense of a controlling agent. Behind vidual in the specific situation is not different from the one others have the movement that is the experience of transcendence, there is experienced in other situations. Or, more precisely, -all these people have neither a particular god whose will penetrates into the immanence, nor a human ego that goes beyond the immanence. Experience is, the very experience in common tkat a feeling of cohesion and meaning- however, a fact and it happens in the immanence - in the world that is futness is possible, however different the individual manifestations of the immediately given. Experience is essentially for us, when it happens, feeling they remember may be. that is, it happens in the immanence that subjectivity is.! That is how 1 explain the complex concept of' immanent transcendence'. This concept is not meaningless, as one might Immanence and transcendence! otherwise think if one sees the words 'transcendence' and Philosophical aesthetics and its concept of aesthetic experience may 'immanence' as the expression of two conflicting versions of the help to develop the concept of 'experience of immanent transcendence'. divine: The divine understood as absolutely distant and inaccessible At first sight, the term 'immanent transcendence' does, indeed, appear to human , and the divine understood as present everywhere as a religious term, while aesthetics, on the contrary, is about and immediately accessible to everyone.! something worldly. This contrast, however, only exists if you invest the On the contrary, the concept of 'immanent transcendence' is, indeed, words 'transcendence' and 'immanence' with religious connotations and very meaningful because it refers to a specific experience, and an if you detach the aesthetic from the religious, which is by no means experience that anyone may have, namely when we feel as if the necessary.! world suddenly opens up and allows a surplus of meaning, i.e. It is customary to take the process of transcendence to imply a of intensified meaning, to open up. In other words, the notion of something transcendent and hence to identify the transcendent with 'immanent transcendence' makes good sense in a phenomenological something divine. Furthermore, it is common to perceive the word account of what may happen to us as human beings. 'immanence' as if it necessarily indicates that something divine is manifested in the worldly sphere. Accordingly, immanence is inevitably associated with e.g. incarnation and pantheism. However, I do not use the word 'immanence' to denote the presence of something divine. In my terminology, the word 'immanence' is rather a neutral term for the Subjectivity! As said before, the experience has no subject in the sense of some world that immediately surrounds us and of which we ourselves are a controlling agent, but it happens in the immanence which subjectivity is.! part. We are in immanence. The world we live in is immanence, not The exploration of the concept of 'the experience of immanent only understood as materiality, but as everything - also everything transcendence' thus requires that we distinguish between subject and intangible in which represents the world around us. This is subjectivity. In general, a subject, understood as an agent controlling the consistent with the literal meaning of the Latin term in manere, which process, is expected to be present where there is experience or the word 'immanence' derives from, and which means 'to remain in'. cognition. This, for example, is certainly the case when it comes to understanding in the sense of conceptual cog-nition. Understanding has as its subject the people, as well. We are not only for each other as objects to , and what is recognized has here the nature of being an object subjects, but also with each other - in inter-subjective subjectivity.! to this subject. One may, indeed, question whether true cognition of Being an experience proper, not only an impression, this experience reality ever takes this form. That is one of the questions I am pursuing in of immanent transcendence is, of course, transformative. And it is the my current work, where I am developing an aesthetic philosophy of lack of subject, understood as a controlling agent of the process, experience and science. In this work of mine, I ask whether scientific which makes change possible, not only in the case of the experience cognition is in fact far more akin to aesthetic experience - and the of immanent transcendence but also in the case of sensitive experience of immanent transcendence - than we usually think. cognition or aesthetic experience. In experiences, i.e. in proper Nevertheless, cognition, not least scientific cognition, is generally experiences, the empirical subject - meaning the individual person's considered as described above - that is, as a process in which a subject rational intellect and willing ego - gives way to the subjectivity objectifies something and thereby acquires the opportunity of identifying constituted by feelings, sensations and presentiments. If this did not that something as something specific.! happen, there would be no experience proper, but only sense However, both sensitive cognition, also called aesthetic experience, and perception or conceptual cognition. So, this is the way in which the experience of immanent transcendence are characterized by the fact something happens to the person who experiences: The subject that here there is no subject facing an object. By contrast, there is a which the individual is usually considered to be is transformed by the living subjectivity of feelings, sensations and presentiments, and a no complex subjectivity which the subject has given place to. Similarly, less living materiality of things. Subjectivity and materiality meet in and the object may also be said to be changed by experience:The with each other to form the phenomenon that emerges in the experience comprehension of the object is formed by the living materiality which - that is, the phenomenon by which beauty or immanent transcendence the object has given place to.! is experienced. This experience is subjective in that it is unfolding in Experiences of this kind may, in , happen anytime and subjectivity, but subjectivity is itself an integral part of immanence, to anywhere. However, experiencing this way requires the withdrawal of which materiality belongs as well. In other words, the experience is not the subject just mentioned, which leaves room for subjectivity; a subjective, understood as the opposite of objective.! subjectivity which in itself gives the object an opportunity to give way Subjectivity is, so to say, encountered in another 'place' than the subject.! for materiality. The consequence is that when understanding It exists before the constitution of subject and object, meaning that dominates rigidly or sense perception is all you have, an experience viewed from the subject/object-thinking we inevitably fall into, it is to be of immanent transcendence is, indeed, not possible. Understanding sought between subject and object.This is why the experience is not and sense perception do not allow the field of feelings, sensations, subjective in the everyday sense, but only in the sense that it happens in and presentiments to unfold, and thus keep things locked into their the subjectivity - in the field of feelings, sensations, and presentiments - ordinary status as controlling subjects and dead objects, respectively. that operates in the 'before' and the 'between' just mentioned.! So, if you want to facilitate the experience of immanent Therefore, not only the aesthetic experience but the experience of transcendence you have to facilitate the withdrawal oft he subject in immanent transcendence as well is not private, although it is subjective.! favor of subjectivity.You must give way to contemplation instead of It is necessarily individually formed, but it contains an element of cultivating physical sensuousness or rational understanding. universality. Our experience of immanent transcendence is not just our own. We also share it with other people; it is common to us and them, because the subjectivity it is played out in is an integral part of the immanence and because subjectivity, hence, is fundamentally inter- Sensitivity, living body! subjective. In our feelings, sensations, and presentiments, we are The subjectivity in which experience proper takes place is of a feeling, always, before anything else, m touch with, involved in and infiltrated sensitive, and presentient character - not just a sensual character, it is into not only materiality but other by focusing on this that we can hope to overcome the contrast between sensuality and sensitivity, not only dominant in the eighteenth century at the of the emergence of aesthetics as a philosophical position, but still dominating. If this is combined with the distinction of body' denotes an experience of our nature as something alien, philosophical phenomenology between the physical body and the whereas the concept 'living body' denotes a natural experience in the living body, it cannot only help us to overcome one more sense of self-experience. As physical bodies we are things among contradiction, namely the one between body and , it may also other things, whereas as living bodies we are given to ourselves as offer another contribution to the development of the concept of the ourselves. Böhme, therefore, wants more focus on our being present experience of immanent transcendence'.! as living bodies and on the emotional effects things have on us. He As mentioned before, the senses are today the subject of immense that this is what philosophical aesthetics must act on today, attention, and so is the body. Furthermore, it is the body as a and in analogy with Schmitz's 'new phenomenology' he therefore that is attracting attention just as it is the physical talks about 'new aesthetics', meaning aesthetics which is better senses that are in focus. It is like this everywhere, from the rooted in phenomenological thought than art theory is.! research done in the Humanities to television and women's When I make a distinction between subject and subjectivity, 1 do so magazines. We revel in physicality perceived as something that is in an attempt to identify a field that resembles a little what these palpable. Philosophical aesthetics, however, is more interested in philosophers of a phenomenological orientation designate the living feelings, sensations and presentiments, than in sense perception. body. In saying so, I am also saying that the immnanent character of Similarly, philosophical phenomenology is more preoccupied with the experience of immanent transcendence does not mean that it the living body than with the physical body. By the term 'physical takes place in the physical body. Unlike the Norwegian literary body' I mean what in German is called Körper, the term 'living historian Drude von der Fehr, 1 do not believe that the body can body' is a translation of the German word Leib. The point is that we think, meaning that I do not think that the physical body can think, but do not only have a physical body; we are also living bodies - not we may well agree that the living body can. Like sensitive cognition or only Körper, but Leib, as welt.! aesthetic experience, the experience of immanent transcendence is The German philosopher Hermann Schmitz has introduced not only characteristic as being of a feeling, sensitive and presentient something he calls 'new phenomenology', and this philosophy is, character rather than a sensuous character. It is also characterized precisely, a theory about in which the concept of ‘the by having the living body rather than the physical body as its seat.! living body' takes a key position.With the word 'living body' Schmitz As I said earlier, the experience of immanent transcendence takes does not mean the human or the animal body. According to him, place in subjectivity, as distinct from the subject. Actually, I prefer this the physical body is a thing you can see and touch, and it is terminology - 'subjectivity' rather than 'living body'- because the term spatially enclosed like a container. The living body, on the contrary, 'living body' easily becomes confused with 'body' in the everyday is rather a condition that you feel, and it is spatially extended like usage of this word, and hence with 'physical body'. If this confusion 'noise'.To Schmitz, the living body is the epitome of living happens, the distinction between sensuality and sensitivity is lost, sentiments, such as anxiety, , lust, hunger, thirst, disgust, and so is the element of truth in the experience. The word freedom, fatigue or being emotionally gripped. Similarly, Schmitz 'subjectivity' is also better at letting us articulate the common - the sees emotions as atmospheres poured out in space and hence as inter-subjective - element in experience, and universality is absolutely something that affects the living body and affectively hit the crucial if the experience is to have cognitive value. individual. Emotions are, according to Schmitz, a bit like the Greek gods, i.e. forces outside man which he doesn't control, but is overwhelmed by. Conversely, gods are personified emotions, i.e. atmospheres frozen into mythological figures.! In continuation of Schmitz, another German philosopher, Gernot Böhme, refers to the living body as the nature that we are. He Divinity or immanent transcendence! believes that modern man has forgotten the living body; today, we The term 'experience of immanent transcendence' often appears in my constantly perceive and treat ourselves as physical bodies. Here books, but so does the term 'experience of divinity’. 1 have used the the concept 'physical term 'experience of divinity' to describe what is common to the kind of experiences we call metaphysical, religious and aesthetic experiences.! her home one Saturday evening after Easter, but was it a religious or Originally, I chose this word because it contains a reminder of Homer's an aesthetic phenomenon I saw?! story about the emergence of poetry, and because it was important for Myrna, her family and their fellow believers interpret their impressions me to point to a kind of continuity m which researchers of religiously. When their impressions qualify as experiences - i.e.! had long neglected. However, I do not use the word 'divinity' when they are of a transformative character - these experiences, as a synonym for 'the divine', 'God' or 'gods'. The notion 'experience of therefore, are religious experiences. It is the interpretation that divinity’ is thus not synonymous with . It does not determines the ; the impression itself# neutral.! denote an experience of a 'something' of divine nature.The experienced However, if a Westerner is confronted with Myrna, this person may divinity exists only as a sort of ungraspable and incomprehensible 'more' instead be inclined to interpret the same phenomenon aesthetically. within and common to the sequel of experiences we call by different Not even aesthetically in the philosophical sense of this word, where names such as "metaphysical', 'religious' and 'aesthetic' experiences.! the aesthetic is related to something metaphysical, but aesthetically So, the expression 'experience of divinity' should, indeed, not be in the reduced version of its meaning which is so typical today and confused with the expression 'religious experience'. Religious where the aesthetic only consists of external form and sensuality. In experience has an object in the sense of a god called by name; the this case, it is all about Myrna as a physical body and her experience of divinity does not. If you have a religious experience you appearance; the of her stigmata and the red color of her do think that you know somehow what you are experiencing, namely the blood; the fragrance of the oil, her distorted facial expression; the presence of what you believe to be your god. On the contrary, the plastic footstools in the chapel which her home has been transformed experience of divinity does not have any identifiable god as its object. into. With this type of aesthetic view of Myrna the impression of her is Therefore, the experience of divinity may also simply be referred to as attached to something aesthetic, understood as something the experience of a surplus of meaning, i.e. intensified meaning. sensuous.The impression itself is still neutral; it is the interpretation However, I have also referred to the experience of immanent that determines the matter and the interpretation is here of such a transcendence as an experience of intensifted meaning, so how do kind that the impression does not qualify as an experience proper: divinity and immanent transcendence relate to each other? In an attempt The result is only an aesthetic impression.! to explain this I will now include the phenomenon of Myrna in my However, another person may relate to the phenomenon of Myrna in presentation.! such a way that the result is an experience of beauty. Seated in Myrna Nazzour is a Melkite Catholic who lives in Damascus with her Myrna's home, you might be gripped in such a way that later on you Orthodox husband and two children.Their home has become a place of think that for a moment you experienced cohesion and religious pilgrimage because Myrna has repeatedly experienced meaningfulness which you yourself name beauty. Again it is the stigmata and received prophecies. Furthermore, oil is running from icons interpretation that is decisive, and in this case the interpretation in her home, even from copies of icons. It is especially when the implies that the impression which gripped yon to such a degree that Catholic and the Orthodox Easter coincide that Myrna is experiencing you became significantly involved, and thus changed, qualifies as an stigmata.! experience of beauty. It is not a religious experience, because There was an overlap this year (2010), but this time something else despite Myrna's Christian understanding of what happens, you don't happened: Oil was flowing from Myrna's own hands.This incident was interpret it religiously but aesthetically - here, however, in a far more witnessed by a young Danish anthropologist to whom it caused a genuine meaning of this word than the blank aesthetic version l scientific crisis: He was now involved in the matter, he had lost some of mentioned before.! his scientific distance, what should he do? The impression of the event Whether the experience of Myrna as a phenomenon is interpreted as provoked thinking on the part of the anthropologist thereby qualifying a religious experience of God's presence or an aesthetic experience itself as an experience proper. But was this an experience of divinity, an of beauty, it is all about the experience of divinity, i.e. about an experience of immanent transcendence or was it something other? experience of intensified meaning. This is what these interpretations What do you experience, at all, when you meet Myrna? I attended a share, and because of this kinship we can communicate with each church service in other across the boundaries of different discourses, theology and philosophy, sometimes do see the world open itself up, allowing firmer interpreta- respectively.! tions to collapse; that sometimes we do, indeed, see religion and beauty However, the interpretation of the surplus of meaning may also result in overridden by immanent transcendence. The this brings is an experience of immanent transcendence. Like the metaphysical also needed, not least if we not only want existential ground underfoot religious and aesthetic experiences, the experience of immanent but also want to care for thought. transcendence is an interpretation of the experience of divinity, i.e. this experience also contains intensified meaning, but unlike the other experiences, the experience of immanent transcendence does not point to for example 'God' or 'the beautiful' as the object of the Aesthetic thinking! experience.What is actually being experienced remains completely t am about to finish this article and would like to return to the questions I undetermined. In addition to what I said earlier on about subjectivity and mentioned at the beginning of it. It was the question whether it is the living body, the following, therefore, is also a prerequisite for there possible to transcend this world while remaining in it, and the question being an experience of immanent transcendence: someone must whether we can think transcendence without negating the materiality of experience something of essential existential significance without being art, of the body or of nature. I have presented the concept of in the possession of any 'story' or 'frame' by reference to which he or 'experience of immanent transcendence' as my answer to these she is able to interpret what is happening. An opening-up of the world questions, thus saying that I do find it possible to transcend this world takes place; you change yourself~ this you sense and feel, but without while remaining in it and to think transcendence without negating having any idea about where it comes from or what it results in.! materiality.The simultaneousness of transcendence and immanence is, The anthropologist I mentioned before might say that this is exactly of course, a main feature of the experience of immanent what happened to him at Easter when he saw oil flow from Myrna's transcendence.! hands: That he was deeply touched and completely disoriented. However, I do not think that the experience of immanent transcendence However, I suspect him of being more religious than that, and this is is the only positive answer to be found. In the aesthetic experience, absolutely not a criticism. As mentioned before, modern philosophers understood as sensitive cognition or the experience of beauty, such as Benjamin, or writers such as Joyce have introduced concepts of transcendence is also happening without anyone leaving the experience that may be understood as concepts of the experience of immanence or negating materiality. To explain this commonality I would immanent transcendence. This they have done in an attempt to like to refer to Kant’s Third Critique and the concept called the extended formulate adequate philosophical or literary descriptions of a modern way of thinking, introduced in that book. Kant differentiates between kind of experience.! different ways of thinking, one of which appertains to the aesthetic They have, however, not done so in order to present this kind of judgment and is characterized by being extended, i.e. being marked by interpretation as morally better than other possible interpretations, for . It follows the principle of being able to identify with others and example the religious one.! take many views into consideration, without being subjected to any of In the long run, it is probably not possible at all to live a good life with them. By way of the extended mode of thinking, it is possible to elevate reference only to nothing. Being human beings, we need to understand oneself above particular, singular interests and reconsider the common and to be able to say something about what we experience, especially weal. This extended way of thinking is, according to Kant, a prerequisite when it is momentous and life-changing. As the fundamentally for realizing the principle of reason; without aesthetic judgment it would interpretative creatures we are, we may, therefore, always already be on not be possible to act in a moral way.! our way out of the experience of immanent transcendence and on our Kant draws this moral consequence, without going further, but I way into a religious experience or an experience of beauty, for example. consider the extended way of thinking to be a prerequisite for cognition We may always already be on our way out of the radically open into the of a truly well-informed character as well, and thus for philosophical temporary closure which is needed to feel some ground underfoot. This thinking. As Ernst Cassirer has put it, philosophical thinking aims at the is not in itself any problem. It is only a problem if we forget that, indeed, cognition of unity in diversity. This does not mean that philosophical we thinking will obliterate all the empirical differences to replace them with understanding or physical senses only, but include feelings, a single, common denominator. Philosophical thinking does not aspire sensations, and presentiments, also.! to simplification, but, on the contrary, to finding something which unites.! PhilosophicM aesthetics understands man as a transcending as well When philosophical thinking is truly philosophical it aims at a harmony as an embodied creature, because man is essentially situated as welt between items which are different from one another - and not similar to as self-transcending. Transcendence is happening all the time, since one another.! we cannot help thinking, and not least do we feel a strong need to However, as modern human beings controlled by intellectualism, we reflect on our impressions and experiences. However, this usually think in a non-philosophical way.We are liable to view unity" and transcendence does not make us leave the immanence, or it only variety as contrasts; often we end up in either-or and not both-and. Due does so when we practice and understand our thinking in a to the extended way of thinking, aesthetic judgement may help us to rationalistic way. Saying so, I am, however, not saying that thinking in reflect in a less rigid, i.e. a less theoretical but more philosophical way.! general and the experience of immanent transcendence are identical Then, in our , we may be in several places at the same time, as such. It is the other way round:The experience of immanent thinking what is not otherwise to be reflected upon, for example that transcendence tells us something crucial about man as an embodied immanence and transcendence or materiality and spirituality are and transcending creature. However, the experience of immanent essentially interrelated.! transcendence does not only tell what sensitive cognition or aesthetic Thinking in this aesthetic way, we come closer to an understanding of experience also tell, namely that man is both. The experience of the human beings we are than we do when we cling to the dualistic way immanent transcendence also tells how human beings living of thinking which is so widespread. As pointed out by phenomenological nowadays might interpret the simultaneity experienced and the philosophy, the simultaneousness of immanence and transcendence is surplus of meaning it entails. Being able to transcend mentally is in a sense far more the rule than the exception, because we are both universal to mankind.The experience of immanent transcendence is intellectual and corporeal creatures - at one and the same time. In our what this ability for transcendence turns into when it feels like there is thoughts we are constantly transcending many things - ourselves, the no 'frame' available for the one who tries to get a hold on what is given, the here and now, etc. According to widespread prejudices, happening to him in the transcendence. thinking thereby leaves the material, the immanence, the actual behind, but this is a misunderstanding.You only do so in the case of the conceptual cognition produced by understanding, i.e. the intellect. Or to References! be more precise, you only do so in this conceptual cognition's traditional Baumgarten, Alexander Gottlieb, Aesthetica, Band I-2 (Felix Meiner Verlag, 2007).! rationalistic way of understanding itself, juxtaposing itself, i.e. rational Baumgarten, Alexander Gottlieb, 3/leditationes philosophicae de nonnullis ad poema pertinenti~ bus (Felix MeinerVerlag. 1983).! , to immanent materiality, as t~)r example the body and Benjamin, Walter,'Kleine Geschichte der Photographie', Gesammelte &hr(ften Band its physical senses.! II/1 (Suhrkamp Verlag 1980).! True, this rationalistic way of thinking is the dominant one, and Böhme, Gernot, Atmosphäre: Essays zur neuen Ästhetik (Suhrkamp Verlag, 1995).! according to it, transcendence and immanence or the spiritual and the Böhme, Gernot, Ethik leiblicher Existenz: Über unseren moralischen Umgang mit material are necessarily mutually antagonistic. However, it was exactly der eigenen Natur (Suhrkamp Verlag, 2(108).! Cassirer, Ernst, An Essay on Man (Yale University Press, 1972).! this way of thinking that philosophical aesthetics was introduced to Fehr, Drude yon der. När kroppen tänker [When the Body ThinksI overcome. Furthermore, it is also this rationalistic way of thinking we do (Universitetsforlaget, 2008).! in fact overcome whenever we think in the extended way appertaining Hegel, Georg Withehn friedrich, Vorlesungen fiber die Asthetik I-HI, Werke in to judgment.That is, we do in fact overcome the juxtaposition when we zwanzig B~inden 13-15 (Suhrkamp Verlag, t 981 ).! do not think with the intellect only, or with our physical bodies, but with Joyce, James, Stephen Hero:A Part of the First Draft o[a Portrait o[the Artist as a Young Man (A New Directions Book, 1944).! our living bodies. I mean, when we do not rely on rational Jørgensen. Dorthe, Aglaias dans: På vej mod en æstetisk tænkning [Aglaias' Dance:Towards an Aesthetic Thinking] (Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 2008). 50 DORTHE JORGENSEN

Jorgensen, Dorthe, 'Erkendetsens mirakel', Mirakler [The Miracle of Cognition, Miracles] (Aarhus Universitetstbrtag, 2008). Jorgensen, Dorthe, Skonhedens memmorfose: De a, stetiske id&rs historic [The Metamorphosis The Ordinary Sublime of Beauty:A History of Aesthetic ] (Odense Universitetsfortag, 2001). after Stanley Cavell and Cora Jorgensen, Dorthe, 'Why Do We Need Philosophical Aesthetics?', "Fran.sfiguration: Nordi~ Journal of Religion and the A rts 2009 (Museum Tusculanum Press, 2(310). Diamond , Kritik der Urteilskrqfi, Werke Bd. V, Akademie Textausgabe (Walter de Gruyter, t968). Schnntz, Hermann. Dev unerschOpfliche Gegenstand: Grundzi~ge der Philosophic (Bouvier Verlag, / 990). Schmitz, Hermann, Kurze Eitfiihnmg in die Neue Phiinomenotogie (Vertag Karl Mber, Espen Dahl 2(X)9). This article concerns what I will coin 'the ordinary sublime'. This con- cept aims to capture a particular sort of phenomenon that comes to pass within the ordinary, i.e. the ordinary as derived from ordinary philosophy, widely conceived. To be more specific, my interest is in a certain dynamics of the sublime, between its powerfulness and its weak- ness, which t find reflected in the writing of Stanley Cavell and Cora Diamond. Neither of these philosophers treats the sublime at length or unfolds its implications in the way I purport to do, but I will nonethe- less contend that this sense of the sublime bears upon central themes in their thinking. My intention is to take my cue from their works in or- der to give an account of what the ordinariness of the ordinary sublime consists of. What I call 'the ordinary sublime' sounds like a contradiction in terms, and some of its inner tension should indeed be preserved.The tension in question is not so much a matter of a tension between what is com- pletely outside breaking into an inside otherwise closed in on itself. Or- dinary language philosophy does not regard the sublime as the unpre- sentable, or absolute incommensurable other, as it tends to be in post- modern accountsJ Kather, the ordinary sublime must be regarded as pertaining to, and as a function of, the ordinary itself. Inherent to the ordinary sublime, however, there is a sense of limitation of knowledge

Jean-Frangois LyotaM focuses on the 'unpresentable' and 'the event'; 'What is postmod- ermsm?' in 7he Postmodern Condition:A Report on Knowledge, trans. G. Bennington and B. Massunu (Manchester: Manchester UniversiW Press, 1984), p. 8i .Jacques Dernda under- stands the sublime ms the very dividing line or passage between the limited and the un- limited, the presentable and the unpresentable; The Tnah in Painting, trans. G. Benmngton .and I. McLeod (Chicago: UniversiW of Chicago Press, 1987), pp. 143-44. For a review of their accounts, placed within the conceptual history of the sublime, see Phillip Shaw, 77~e Sublime (London: B.outledge, 2006), ch. 6.