Is it Happening? or, The Implications of Immanence

Abstract

The most basic idea behind this essay is the reversal of Platonism in which the difference between the real world and this world (of appearance) becomes blurred. The reversal results in time being conceived as without beginning and without end. In other words, the blurred world is equivalent to what Husserl calls temporalization (immanence, life). According to Husserl, the structure of temporalization implies the limit between temporal phases cannot be determined. Therefore, the limit cannot be closed, and the temporal phases necessarily pass into one another and contaminate one another. Since the limit between the phases cannot be closed, the limit is always violated. Temporalization (absolute consciousness, as Husserl would say) therefore involves irreducible violence. The question is: how to react to this fundamental violence? If one reacts by attempting to repress the violence completely (peace), that reaction seems to be worse than the original violence, the worst violence; it would amount to the complete elimination of life. The reaction of letting the violence be, while still violent, seems to be less violent than the complete repression reaction.