Redeeming the Time

Pre-modern thought was burdened by a category mistake that was initiated by Plato but carried forward by his various successors in one form or another: rhetorical constructions were mistaken routinely for ontological (underlying) realities. This error obscured the fact that the beautiful vision of Plotinus is not a given, it is a way of being-in-the-world to be achieved. As in Berger and Luckmann's classic The Social Construction of Reality, the "reality" we experience everyday is something collectively interpreted and individually internalized. If we know this, however, we can become--at least to a limited extent--active participants in this process. We can put our hands to the wheel and build Golgonooza. So let's get to work...

It is only by arousing the passional self and directing its energies into angelic channels that we have any hope of redeeming the time.