By John Danvers
Via an research of many various examples, Danvers articulates a brand new mind set approximately mysticism and scepticism, now not as contrary poles of the philosophical spectrum, yet as fields of enquiry with overlapping goals and techniques. caused by way of a deep experience of ask yourself at being alive, many mystics and sceptics, just like the Buddha, perform disciplines of doubt which will develop into freed from attachment to fastened appearances, essences and viewpoints, and in doing so that they locate peace and equanimity. They increase methods of dwelling with impermanence and the unforeseen via letting pass of adherence to dogmatic ideals and through postponing judgement. In universal with many artists and poets they act as brokers of uncertainty, actively hectic the workouts and conduct of day by day proposal and behavior in an effort to exhibit the best way to retain a feeling of stability and spontaneity in the middle of life's problems. subject matters explored comprise: being and self as technique; mysticism and language; scepticism and dogmatism; Buddhism, interdependence and vacancy; Daoism and impermanence; dialectics of doubt in paintings and poetry. Written in a full of life and available type, followed by way of drawings and images by way of the writer, this quantity is geared toward students, artists, lecturers, and someone attracted to philosophy, faith, paintings, poetry and methods of being.
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Additional info for Agents of Uncertainty: Mysticism, Scepticism, Buddhism, Art and Poetry (Consciousness, Literature and the Arts, Volume 31)
Example text
Ibid: 94-95) Elsewhere Eliot, the mystical poet or poetic mystic, mutters to himself: “I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you / Which shall be the darkness of God” (ibid: 73). ] it’s about listening and the art of listening, listening with attention. I don’t just mean with the ear; bringing the quality of attention to the world. The writers I like best are those who attend. (in Scott 2005: 23) 44 Agents of Uncertainty Jamie connects the act of attending, of listening, to the act of praying.
He claims that by a “heavenly gift from the father of light” he was able to “embrace incomprehensibles incomprehensibly in knowing ignorance, by the passing beyond incorruptible truths humanly knowable”. (in Cranz 2000: 3) Cusanus, who was also a mathematician, stretches rational language to its limits in this statement. Edward Cranz argues that Cu- 54 Agents of Uncertainty sanus considered God as the Absolute, to be beyond reason and intellect, and yet what is beyond reason can somehow touch the mind through an incomprehensible embracing of what is incomprehensible.
For Dewey the universe is a relational field, a network of interacting and interdependent processes, constantly changing, constantly evolving. Human beings are agents within this field, weaving narratives and actions into the complex unfolding multi-dimensional tapestry of events. And it is crucial to Dewey’s thinking that things are events. There are no “unchanging entities in the universe”, as Rockefeller puts it, and there are “no unchanging Platonic essences or Aristotelian final causes and there are no immutable substances underlying the process- 32 Agents of Uncertainty es of change”.