Finding Reality

I think of the search for reality as finding reality through the rational and the intuitional, through reason and through emotional conviction. These two work together something like art and emotion, the emotional subjective parts of the brain connect with the abstract and cerebral parts in art creation. Art philosopher Denis Dutton compared this to an intersection between them that helps us find reality. Looking for reality is usually more of an art than a science, which sounds less mechanical, less controllable, but perhaps it is more accurate.

Reality needs to be our guide, reason and intuition can sometimes mislead us, which I think one of the Founding Fathers said in a different way about developing the U.S. Constitution. We can use anything, even the “direct apprehension” that Schopenhauer talked about, we can use reason, intuition, science, anything to find reality. Why not? Nietzsche talked about reason as not being an independent entity but as a state of relationship between all the various passions and desires, he said every passion possesses its own quantum of reason.

Ultimately I believe we need to apply all of these things in enlisting nature in service to our evolution toward Godhood, the sacred, moral, and natural direction of ethical evolution. To go into the weeds a bit: Being-in-Itself has been sidelined (but not really forsaken) and replaced with Being-in-the-world by Heidegger, which has been transformed here into Itself-in-Being as the most admirable action and actor of history, since Being-in-Itself does not really exist accept in the minds of a few arcane philosophers and theologians. Itself-in-Being, which we are, needs to evolve to the zenith of Itself-in-Being of Godhood in the real world. God, or rather Godhood, is not dead---and the Absolute is not ancient Greek or Eastern religious Nothingness (which is only an inward symbolic experience of God)---when attaining Godhood is understood as evolving from where we are now to material/supermaterial Godhood in nature.