Episode #73

[rva_jeremy]

Austin mentions the aspect of being as relating to oneself as an aspect of recognizing beingness.  I'm surprised nobody brought in the concept of the spirit in the trinity of complex components, since spirit is referred to in Confederation communications as closest to the unified Creator and, by extension, perhaps the very substrate of existence that constitutes beingness. In Sickness Unto Death, Kierkegaard seemed to till similar soil when he described spirit:

A human being is spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the self. But what is the self? The self is a relation that relates itself to itself or is the relation's relating itself to itself in the relation; the self is not the relation but is the relation's relating itself to itself. A human being is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, of the temporal and the eternal, of freedom and necessity, in short, a synthesis. A synthesis is a relation between two. Considered in this way a human being is still not a self.... In the relation between two, the relation is the third as a negative unity, and the two relate to the relation and in the relation to the relation; thus under the qualification of the psychical the relation between the psychical and the physical is a relation. If, however, the relation relates itself to itself, this relation is the positive third, and this is the self.

I know that reads as gobbledygook but it's really worth taking part by part. It points at an understanding of beingness and spirit that exists in the negative space outside the kinetic, active world's bounds. It is a profound understanding of why referring to ourselves as a complex is important: so that we have a dialectical foothold into awareness. And what is awareness but the shadow cast by beingness?