ON THE WAY TO EXPERIENCE Cover Image

PATYRIMO LINK
ON THE WAY TO EXPERIENCE

Author(s): Arvydas Šliogeris
Subject(s): Philosophy
Published by: Vilniaus Universiteto Leidykla
Keywords: experience; instrumental relation; horizon; inhumanity

Summary/Abstract: The paper deals with the concept of experience. The hypothesis is put forward that the essence and specifics of experience have not yet been adequately dealt with either in the Western philosophy or in the Eastern wisdom and even in the techno science, because experience has been plainly treated as an instrumental relation of a human with beings or even as the constructing or making of an “object”. We experience what we make – was the basic and unreflected thesis that lay in the foundations of the concept of experience. The thesis grounds the concept that has originated already in the primitive cultures as well as the one that prevails in the modern idea of experience. The prototype of the latter could be found in the laboratories, factories and supermarkets. The same pattern could be observed even in religions. Therefore the church in a sense could be treated as a factory producing God as the exemplar “object” of experience. However, true experience takes place when a concrete, this particular person, predicated by his body and senses, collides with an absolutely inhumane entity. Consequently, experience should be treated as a total opposite of instrumental relation, namely as ‘my’ unutterable relation, or rather collision, with Sensual Transcendence, which emerges as a concrete, this one thing, the absolute mass of inhumane. A thing is experienced as much as it resists instrumental manipulations.

  • Issue Year: 2006
  • Issue No: 70
  • Page Range: 80-95
  • Page Count: 16
  • Language: Lithuanian
Toggle Accessibility Mode