Catatan Cosmic Connection

“… the human need for cosmic connection; … one shot through with joy, signifcance, inspiration.”

“Their works bypass the philosophical objections to the belief in cosmic orders but generate in the reader the felt sense of a reality higher and deeper than the everyday world around us.” (Taylor).

(1) Nature was not to be understood mechanistically. It
was more like a living organism.

(2) Then our soul communicates with this whole, with Nature. Nature
resonates in us, and we intensify this through expression, art.

(3) But our whole idea of Nature has undergone a modern shift.

(4) We are striving to discover our true form through creative expression, moving stage by stage.

(5) The two lines of expressive-historical development, of the cosmos
and humans, respectively, are interlinked. Nature or cosmos can’t reach
its final form without our realizing ours.

(6) It also includes, while going beyond, the new understanding of freedom as autonomy, which was both an ethical and political ideal.

(7) The ideal of the perfect reconciling of freedom and unity with nature, within and without.

But

(8) Irony: the road to (7) may never be completed; we may always strive, suffer distance. Ironic expression, however, manifests the gap, and shows what we strive for.

“.. the full realization of Nature requires the conscious expression which only Spirit can give it. Art (or philosophy) and Nature come into unison because they come to fulfillment together.”

“Man only plays when he is in the fullest sense of the word a human being, and he is only fully a human being when he plays.”

“We might say that the right language would satisfy the demands of Plato’s Cratylus: a word would figure what it designates.”

“This parallelism could be taken in two ways: either it invites us to seek the structures of the larger order by delving into our own nature, or it tells us that we can’t fully understand ourselves, our goals, or the meanings which are crucial to us without a grasp of the cosmic order.”

“Recovering the language of insight isn’t just adding to our dispassionate knowledge: it also reconnects us to the cosmos, and this realizes our essential purpose.”

“First, it is defined in terms of the indispensability of mediation: in this,
it partakes of the nature of metaphor, where we cast light on one matter
through invoking another.”

“… the work of art yields … a strong experience of connection, or more
generally, it transforms our relation to the situation it figures for us.’