[October 2000 journal entry]
In place of a ‘religious a priori’, I would propose a ‘Geist a priori’. Several years ago, I turned to the German term Geist as a way around the front-loaded baggage that weighs down the term ‘spiritual’. Can we account for ourselves or others ‘from below’ (in the sense of exhausting natural explanations for human experience/s) without a remainder, without sensing there is something ‘more’ to being human? Note that attempting to account for ourselves or others ‘from below’ is itself an exercise of this ‘more’ and demonstrates there is something ‘more’ to being human. I have found very few who say “there is no remainder, nothing more” to being human and then live consistently with the consequences of this judgment. A ‘Geist a priori’ opens for serious consideration, but does not mandate, looking beyond the human ‘Geist’.
In place of a ‘religious a priori’, I would propose a ‘Geist a priori’. Several years ago, I turned to the German term Geist as a way around the front-loaded baggage that weighs down the term ‘spiritual’. Can we account for ourselves or others ‘from below’ (in the sense of exhausting natural explanations for human experience/s) without a remainder, without sensing there is something ‘more’ to being human? Note that attempting to account for ourselves or others ‘from below’ is itself an exercise of this ‘more’ and demonstrates there is something ‘more’ to being human. I have found very few who say “there is no remainder, nothing more” to being human and then live consistently with the consequences of this judgment. A ‘Geist a priori’ opens for serious consideration, but does not mandate, looking beyond the human ‘Geist’.
