A Moment in Time

One may indeed read philosophy as ’the spirit if its time’ for it is some the greatest minds of the age exploring the world and themselves through the concepts, imaginations and limitations imposed on them by their time, place and culture. And yet philosophy seeks always to go beyond itself; beyond its time. It is history but the universal and eternal history, the unhistorical history, of the present moment. To philosophise is then to talk with the past and the future, from the present about the eternal. But philosophy seems always to point away from itself. It never merely preserves the moment. It is ever changing, ever expressing the changes in reality and thought which it helps produce. It is the constant, bringing about change. Perhaps thus it grasps the Truth in which it is involved. In that sense philosophy is always disproving itself. Perhaps therefore philosophy is always accompanied by religion. Which is never simply grasping the moment; but imposing it. It demands of the Truth to remain the same. It seeks to prove the present by perpetuating it. Perhaps the man of faith is the philosopher grown weary of eternal movement. ‘Let us sit and rest’ he says. ‘Let us preserve and build’. Yet thought ever restless, yearns for new frontiers. Change breaks it bonds; for now its moment-in-time gives it freedom to express itself. Yet thus realised it comes to realise its own end. Ever ending, ever giving birth to new beginnings and new moments.

As God unto the World

He wonders. Even worries. Perhaps he is taking too much pleasure in this new found freedom of meaninglessness. Everything broken down, he finds that all that remains is him. Everywhere he turns everything comes back to him-self. All thoughts are his thoughts. All the world becomes his world. All of reality exists only in him. Yet alone with his thoughts, he feels less and less at home in him-self. As thought comes to take the place of action, he becomes aware that while his actions may be his own, he is certainly not the originator of his thoughts. Attempting to grasp himself without himself he finds that he is perhaps no more than mere fleeting desires. Or perhaps something deeper and darker lurks inside. But no matter how hard he looks; he always escapes himself. Unable to give account of even himself he comes to view his thoughts with increasing suspicion. This thus leads him back to action. For even if his thoughts are strangers; his actions, though not of him, makes him. Or rather they make him in the eyes of others. And so rather than remain alone and almighty, he returns from the lofty heights where gods rule, and returns to himself and the world. And with that he realises that every man may be a God. But in a universe no greater than his own mind.