The Fullness of the Logos of Life, and the Comprehension of the “Sacral Logos” in the Horizon of Life
Carmen Cozma
“Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iași, Romania
e-mail: carmen.cozma@uaic.ro
AGATHOS, Volume 1, Issue 1 (1): 177-180
© www.agathos-international-review.com CC BY NC 2010
Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka. The Fullness of the Logos in the Key of Life. Book I: The Case of God in the New Enlightenment. Analecta Husserliana, Volume C. Dordrecht: Springer, 2009. Pp. xxxv + 258
Coming in one way in rounding her great treatise with a discourse fleuve, the impressive Logos and Life - that has been unfolded in four books: 1.Creative Experience and the Critique of Reason (1988); 2.The Three Movements of the Soul(1988); 3.The Passions of the Soul and the Elements in the Ontopoiesis of Culture. The Life Significance of Literature(1990); 4.Impetus and Equipoise in the Life-Strategies of Reason (2000) -, this new writing of Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka constitutes a testimony for that the North American phenomenologist of life understands to develop her original philosophy; this time, in a new tonality, by accessing the sacred plane of reference.
“Continuing the dialogue” – as she likes to reiterate - on the theme of the “logos of life” arteries in the “ontopoietical design”, the recent Book I of The Fullness of the Logos in the Key of Life has appeared in the prestigious series of Analecta Husserliana, by the careful editing of the devoted Springer publisher Maja de Keijzer.
In the context of the present disarray we have to cope with, this book is a sort of cultural travel and support for our attempts to overcoming a serious moral existential crisis, and to setting off an acute vulnerability of beingness, eventually, by (re)finding the en-lightening power of a veritable human life oriented towards the divine transcendent.
Under a suggestive and well-inspired title, The Fullness of the Logos in the Key of Life. Book I: The Case of God in the New Enlightenment, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka tackles a hot topics of nowadays - we could say, considering the current debates; for example, that proceeded in the framework of a panel presided by Patricia Trutty-Coohill at the International Conference “Towards a Philosophy of Life: Rethinking the Concept of Life in Continental Philosophy of Religion”, Liverpool Hope University, June 26-28, 2009.
The interest generated by this new book of Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka is completely justified, seeing that the main issue about the necessity of refreshing the philosophical thinking in terms of a “New Enlightenment for humankind” comes as response to the spiritual confusion of our days, opening viable opportunities for understanding “the question of life as the radical beginning” (xxxi). This time, the trajectory is one of the “logos of life” – the Tymienieckan “reason of all reasons” – which is followed in its accomplishments on the level of the divine script.
Building the whole scrutiny around the thesis: “In Logos Omnia!”, the phenomenologist of life places the axial point of approaching in the horizon of the divine referential, in which the “Human Creative Condition” has to manifest with the eternal “quest for wisdom”, in the “ontopoietic plane of life”, within the “unity-of-everything-there-is-alive”.
The complexity of the very own discourse of Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka needs to be discovered step by step, by appropriating and comprehending her abundance of original concepts inserted in the philosophical language and by disclosing the fine articulations of a dynamic and integrator vision about individual, social, cultural, and geo-cosmic situation of beingness.
As a dynamic flux, the architectonic of Book 1 of The Fullness of the Logos in the Key of Life is structured in five parts that follow a substantial propaideutic(al) section with the “Preface: The Logos’ Temporalizing of Life through the Life-Transcendental Horizons of the Individualization of Beingness”, with the “Prologue: The New Enlightenment and the Case of God”, and the “Introduction: Before Entering into the Heart of the Matter (Legitimating the Access to Truth)” (pp.xix-xxxv).
In a hermeneutical whole, the content orchestrates the parts “I. The Logos of Life as the Carrier of Beingness” and “II. Ontopoiesis – The Proto-Ontic Self-Individualization of Beingness in Life in the New Critique of Reason”. In these parts we can grasp a synthesis of the novelty brought by Tymienieckan philosophy in the large territory of the post-Husserlian phenomenology. The leitmotifs of “the logos of life” and of the “Ontopoiesis of life” are brought out in the effort of revealing the “case of God”.
Revisiting the transcendentalism, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka aims to re-positioning the “beingness-in-becoming” at the same time on the geo-cosmic, “ontopoietic”, creative, and sacral orbits. Actually, in “Part III. The Life-Positional Horizons of Beingness and their Orbits” (pp.127-177), the author develops her vision upon the centrality of creative manifestion / of the “ontopoietic intentionality of life”. And all is tied to a cosmological and anthropological approach, at the same time; no less, to an onto-ethical and aesthetical perspective upon life, generally.
Thus, the novum in getting a phenomenological theory of “The Human Soul in the Cosmos and the Cosmos in the Human Soul” (Part IV) highlights the manner of a more profound understanding of the web of life and of the human status within it. Especially, the author stresses the importance of that she calls “the moral sense” – one of the three bestowing factors, together with the “intellectual” and the “aesthetical / poetical” senses. According to Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, in the “moral sense” we can decipher the “Human Creative Condition” as a “second birth of being”. As she features: “The emergence of the moral sense and valuation introduces an order of «insight» that radically alters the significance of life hitherto valid for living beings as all the significant strings leading the experiences of the logos of life come together in a specific net for a new vision of existence, the Human Condition” (p.196). And, in its turn, this “Human Condition” activates a “specifically human kairic timing of life”, namely: freedom and accomplishment, elevating towards the catching of the orchestration of “the sacral logos” on the horizon of life.
The basic principle of life, the “logos of life” reveals itself not only as a vital, a “Dionysian” and a “Promethean” one – as we already know from the “triadic” hypostasis acknowledged in Impetus and Equipoise in the Life-Strategies of Reason (Book 4 of Logos and Life). But, it is moved to the “sacral logos”, to the “Divine” one, allowing to interpreting anew the human situation in the given world.
We face an excellent phenomenological hermeneutics that completes a great tradition due to Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur, for example. With her original concepts, by her unique manner of reflection, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka penetrates throughout the most hidden meanders of life, opening new chances to the human interpretion and “self-interpretation” in life.
Once again, the former student of Roman Ingarden - at the Jagiellonian University of Kraków -, who over the years became one of the most reputed phenomenologists of the world, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka offers a well-grounded and challenging work of re-thinking the mystery of life, finally.
The Fullness of the Logos in the Key of Life. Book I carries on the phenomenology of life, focusing on the logoic movement “from the logos of life to the Logo-Theic horizon”. Crowning the entire scrutiny of the “logos of life” in a new key, “Part V. The Sacral Logos on the horizon of Life” (pp.213-255) en-lightens us that by “the sacral quest” we could find – a part, at least, of - the “sacral heavenly sphere of life within the fullness” (p.250) and “the sense of the logos of life accomplished” in a “Great Metamorphosis … rejoining the Fullness” (p.251).
There are “six ways” – writes Tymieniecka – in which “the sacral soul participates in the celestial sphere and that sphere’s participation in the soul in turn”. Merely as a challenge for the reader, we mention these ways: “1. The Fulfillment we seek in and above temporality”; “2. The All-surpassing sphere of Fulfillment”; “3. Accessing the Plenitude: self-denial and dedication to fellow man”; “4. Participating in the Fullness through our felt vision of the All within our human horizon”; “5. The Divine within”, and “6. Awe before the immensity of the Creation in which we partake; Adoration” (pp.252-254).
An authentic celebration of life and of human creative mind and sensitivity within the great plane of life, in accord with the supreme sacral model, with the manifestations of the “divine logos” – that is, eventually, the Book I of The Fullness of the Logos in the Key of Life. The Case of God in the New Enlightenment by the reputed Polish-North American contemporary philosopher Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka.