Another Facebook wall-post of mine which I think should be more at home here:
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“Even if, by tomorrow, there will no longer be churches in any city or village, and even if, by the day after tomorrow, the word ‘God’ will have disappeared from the memory of every person, even then one will be able to divide people into those who have the faith [lit. “belief”] and those who live without faith [lit. “in disbelief”]. For even then will there be people who believe that the whole is more than the sum of all parts, and people who believe nothing of all that.
Faith is at bottom nothing else than experiencing as a living connection this never and nowhere perceptible Surplus, and for that reason faith is, for those who have it, more than knowing, for more than the sum of all parts cannot be known.” (Adriaan Roland Holst, “Own Backgrounds”, my translation.)
Philo-sophia is not knowing, not scientia, but love of knowing, be-lief in knowing. (“Believe”, geloven in Dutch, is cognate with “love”, liefde in Dutch. Latin scientia literally means “dividing, discriminating”.)
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“The being¹ of beings² ‘is’ not itself a being².” (Heidegger, Being¹ and Time.)
¹ Gerund.
² Participle.
A gerund is the declined form of the infinitive (in this case, “to be”–and in this case, “being” is the nominative case). An infinitive is called an infinitive because it does not have person or number (e.g., first person plural) and is hence “undefined”.
A participle is called a participle because it partakes of the characteristics of both verbs and nouns (“nouns” in the sense of both substantive and adjective nouns/nominals). But in this context, it makes more sense to interpret it differently:
A being, in the sense of an entity, is something that participates in being, in the sense of essence. The whole that is more than the sum of its parts is the quintessence of all of its (four) parts. (A quaternity is an archetype of wholeness.)
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And yet another Facebook wall-post of mine!
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Druid = true-vid, a seer of the truth–that is, of the Tree (physis, bhusis, being, beam, Baum).
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