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 nature? 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 cognition! 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 human cognition. Miracles are usually seen as an indication that a god or some other supernatural being has intervened in the universe, thereby breaking the laws of nature. Today the word 'miracle' is also used with a more profane meaning, 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 event.! However, instead of perceiving miracles as violations of natural law, or as something that might well follow this taw but is subject 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 knowledge. The word 'miracle' may describe the kind of experience studied by writers Philosophical aesthetics 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 value. 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 concepts of something empirical. They ask for truth in garten considered aesthetic experience to be a kind of true cognition the sense of correspondence between the empirical and the and he saw aesthetics as the philosophy about this experience. notional. In this area of thought 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 tradition, while the metaphysics of beauty, whose object with empirical data. This consistency is only guaranteed if you can was the idea of the beautiful, had formed another tradition, tn Baumgar- explain the process of cognition so exactly that others can imitate ten, the two traditions 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 reality 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 intention- your impressions in a methodical way, and reality is identified with a one-dimensional universe of rationally manageable facts.! 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 epistemology, 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 senses, 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 perception and conceptual cognition. There is also experiences. Although aesthetic experiences are not a product of another kind of experience, albeit only through feelings, 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 reason, 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.