CONCLUSION

Implications of the Metaphysics of Feeling

Concl. 40. The Foundational Order of Global Importances

In Part 2, I have described global importances on four levels of complexity, ranging from the simplest (fulfillment-of-happening) to the most complex (the five importances described in the last section). The completion of my descriptions raises certain questions.

One set of questions concerns the exhaustiveness of my explications. Have all the importances on these four levels been described? And are there higher levels of importances besides the four discussed? (See Conci. 40. i.)

Another set of questions concerns the relation of the importances on these levels to the affects they originate. Can each important feature originate only one pure affective response? And can each type of affective response be purely related to only one important feature? (See Concl.40 ii.)

A third set of questions concerns the possibility of other foundational orders besides the one described in Part 2. Are there other foundational orders? If so, how are they related to the one I have explicated? (See Concl.40.iii.)

Concl. 40. i. Global lmportances and Levels of Global Importance Other than the Ones Explicated in Part 2

In Chapters 4 through 6, I explicated eighteen global importances, fulfillment and five importances directly based upon it, closeness and five importances directly based upon it, and supremacy and five importances directly founded upon it. These importances are not the only ones; there are other noncompositional importances and other collective, distributive, and partial compositional importances. I will illustrate these other importances in terms of partial compositional importances, none of which were among the eighteen importances described in Chapters 4 through 6.

A partial compositional importance is a relational feature the world- whole has by virtue of being composed of some part of itself. Some partial compositional importances concern beauty, ugliness, justice, and injustice. The world-whole is partly composed of beautiful things (a feature purely appreciated in global enchantment), and the world-whole is partly com posed of ugly things (the pure appreciation of which is global repugnance or nausea). And the world-whole is partly composed of unjust events (a feature purely appreciated in global indignation), and of just events (global approbation being the pure appreciation of this feature). Nor are these the only partial compositional features. In fact, the world-whole has one such feature for each importance that is a part of itself. This implies there is a plethora of important global features that have not been described in this treatise.

Do all these important features that have not been described belong to one of the four levels of global importances that have been described? The four levels are:

1.      Fulfillment

2.      Closeness, Miraculousness, Emptiness, Immensity, Monotonousness, Harmoniousness, etc.

3.      Supremacy, Glorification, Imminent Loss, Mysteriousness, Uncaring, Equilibrium, etc.

4.      Stunning, Lofty, Stultifying, Ominous, Still, etc.

It is certain that there are more than four levels, but the issue of exactly how many more levels there are requires for its resolution more extensive investigation than can be achieved within the limits of this subsection. I can, however, briefly show that there is at least a fifth level of global importances. This is demonstrated by presenting in outline form a descrip tion of a global importance directly based on one of the importances on the fourth level.

The importance of the global summons is directly based upon global loftiness, the important feature purely appreciated in humility. The im portance of summoning includes the lofty importance and an additional feature of the world-whole. The supreme world-whole that is absolutely more important than myself has the further feature of unconditionally demanding my present and future appreciations. The world-whole as summoning me purely evokes an affect of devotion, which flows forwards and upwards towards the whole that summons me. I feel called to devote myself throughout my existence, to the extent of my capacity, to the immediate and mediate appreciation of the world-whole. This demand is unconditional; it takes precedence over any mundane demand upon my appreciations. Through feeling that the world-whole is more important than any part of itself, I feel this whole to be more worthy of appreciation than any part of itself; and through feeling the world-whole to be absolutely more important than myself, I feel this whole’s demand upon me to outweigh any contrary or selfish desire I may have. It is true that I cannot live without engaging in mundane appreciations, but I feel enjoined from allowing these appreciations to take precedence in my feeling-life over my intuitive, afterglowing and concentrative appreciations of the world-whole.

Certainly much mote could and needs to be said about this summoning importance, but the above explication is sufficient to illustrate briefly the fact that there are global importances on higher levels than the four described in Chapters 4 through 6.

Concl. 40. ii The Relation between Global Importances and Their Pure Appreciations

One of my aims in Part 2 was to show that features of the world- whole and global affects are not arbitrarily related, but that each feature of the world-whole is appropriately responded to in one type of affect and not in others. I demonstrated this by distinguishing between pure and impure appreciations, between these appreciations and incomplete ones, and by applying these distinctions to the eighteen global affects and imporrances discussed in Part 2. I will not repeat these distinctions here, but shall add a few remarks about some of the general principles involved.

Each type of affective response is a pure appreciation of something truly evocatively describable in one way and not in others. That of which awe is the pure appreciation is truly evocatively describable as immense and stupendous, but falsely describable as monotonous, futile, or uncaring.

Each such evocative description is truly applicable to some exactly describable phenomena and not to others. The evocative term “immense” is truly applicable to the world-whole’s feature of being the greatest whole that exists, and to some mundane phenomena, such as an infinite number series or the distance of the earth to the moon as compared with the distances between places on earth. But “immense” does not evoke such exactly describable realities as the world-whole’s feature of happening purposelessly or appearing immediately rather than mediately, or such mundane phenomena as a house of a certain size compared to another house of the same size, or such events as a man stubbing his toe.

These two principles constitute the basis of the connection between global affects and global importances. Each global afffect is a response to something evocatively describable in one way and not in others, and each evocative description is applicable to some exactly describable global features and not to others. If these two principles did not obtain, then any evocative description could be arbitrarily connected to any affect and to any exactly describable global feature. Such descriptions as the following one would be no more or less plausible than the ones presented in the preceding sections:

“The world-whole is immense! It is immense in that it happens processlessly. And that is why I am outraged at it!”

Compare this description with the following one:

“The world-whole is immense! It is immense in that it is the greatest whole that happens. And that is why I am in awe of it!”

The fact that the second description rings true, and the first seems false or even incoherent, illustrates the nonarbitrary character of the connection between affects, evocative explications, and exact explications.

In the above elucidation of the correlation between certain evocative and exact global descriptions, I said that “each evocative description is applicable to some exactly describable global features and not to others.” This implies that more than one exactly describable global feature can be suggested by the same evocative description, and hence that the same type of global affect can be a pure appreciation of more than one exactly de cribable global feature. This is true because a global affect is a pure appreciation of something that can be evocatively described in a certain way (e.g., as “immense”) and not in others; and if more than one exact global feature can be evocatively described in the way in question (as “immense”), then the global affect can be a pure appreciation of more than one exact global feature. Since this implication was not discussed in the preceding sections of Part 2, it is worthwhile to develop it here.

In Chapter 4 global joy was described as a pure appreciation of a global feature evocatively articulable as a “fulfillment-of-happening” and more exactly articulable as a “complex happening composed of briefer happenings, happenings-no-longer, and happenings-not-yet.” The fullness- of-happening I explicated is a noncompositional feature of the world. But the world also has compositional features analogous to this noncompositional feature. It is not only true that the world-whole happens, it is also true that the world-whole is collectively composed of parts all of which are happening, distributively composed of parts each of which is happening, and partially composed of this or that part which is happening. Each of these different features correlates to one of the different but mutually consistent ways of exactly explicating the world-whole’s evocatively describable fullness-of-happening. In chapter 4, I exactly explicated it in terms of a noncompositional feature of the world; the evocative phrase “the world is full-of-happening” was analyzed in terms of a feature of fullness-of-happening inhering in the world-whole itself. “The world is full-of-happening” can also be analyzed as meaning that the world is com posed of parts all of which are full-of-happening (or each of which is full- of-happening, or some which are full-of-happening).

Correlating to each of the different noncompositional and compositional features this same evocative description can suggest, there is a distinct joyous pure appreciation. Each of the different compositional and non compositional modalities of rejoicing-in-the-global-fullness-of-happening has the same feeling-flow (upwardly radiated), but a somewhat different feeling-awareness (a feeling-awareness of the world-whole as full-of- happening, or a feeling-awareness of the world-whole being collectively composed of parts which are full-of-happening, and so on).

This analogy among the noncompositional and compositional features suggested by the description “the world is full-of-happening” does not pertain to each of the global importances. “The world is harmoniously one” suggests the noncompositional feature of being one, a single individual, but there is no corresponding collective compositional feature it could suggest (for it is not the case that the world is collectively composed of parts all of which are one— rather, all the parts of the world are many).

The different compositional and noncompositional ways of precisely explicating such suggestive descriptions as the “the world is full-of-happening” are based on analyses of the “is,” the copula that refers to the inherence of a feature in the world-whole. For example, “The world is full-of-happening” can be precisely analyzed as meaning that a certain collective compositional feature inheres in the world, such that this phrase is understood to mean “The world is-collectively-composed-of-parts-which-are full-of-happening.” Or the “is” can be taken as referring to a noncom- positional feature: “The world is-itself full-of-happening.”

Besides these divergent ways of precisely explicating the “is,” there are various ways of exactly explicating the global predicates, such as “fulfilled,” “empty,” or “harmonious.” In Chapter 4, I explicated “fulfillment” more precisely as a “fulfillment-of-happening” and, more precisely still, as a “complex happening composed of briefer and briefer happenings, happenings-no-longer and happenings-not-yet.” However, “fulfillment” can be made exact in other ways as well. Most, if not all, of these ways concern partial compositional features of the world. Different parts of the world on different occasions can be joyously felt as “fulfillments.” The victory of the best political party, the recovery of the full bloom of health after a long illness, the return of a beloved, and the attainment of success are all events that can be appropriately evocatively described as joyously feelable “fulfillments.” For instance, the return of my beloved “fills up the void of my life” that had been created by her absence and gives me a feeling that my life is once again complete, a plenitude, and no longer empty of her loving presence. The world-whole, through being composed of one of these parts, has the partial compositional feature of being com posed of that fulfilled part. If the “is” in “the world is fulfilled” is explicated as referring to the inherence of a partial compositional feature in the world, and the “fulfilled” is explicated as the return of my beloved, then “the world is fulfilled” can be made explicit as the world’s being partially composed of the return of my beloved.

In the appropriate sense of “global joy,” it can be said that each of these partial compositional features of fulfillment, as well as each of the noncompositional and compositional features of fulfillment-of-happening, is purely appreciated in the same type of global affect, viz., global joy. “Global joy” signifies in this context an affect with an upwardly radiated feeling-flow and a captivated feeling-awareness of the world-whole as possessing a feature of fulfillment. The distinction among different global joys arises when we take into account the different exactly determinate fulfillments the world-whole possesses.

The multifariousness of the ways of exactly explicating the “fulfillment” of the world extends to each of the other global importances as well. This multifariousness consists almost exclusively in the range of partial compositional features the world possesses. Nevertheless, it is not impossible that some noncompositional features and some collective and distributive compositional features, features other than the ones I have discussed, can be evoked by the terms “fulfillment,” “emptiness,” “harmoniousness,” etc.

The recognition that an evocative term used in one evocative sense can suggest more than one exactly describable global feature must not be confused with the idea that an evocative term can be used in different senses and can in this way also suggest different exactly determinable global features. The term “emptiness” used as an evocative description of what is intuitively felt in despair has a different evocative sense than this same term used to suggest what is intuitively felt in tedium. As suggestive of a despairingly felt world, “empty” belongs with such evocative terms as “futile” and “pointless”; as associated with tedium, it is connected with terms like “monotonousness” and “dullness.”

Now the thesis I expounded above that the same evocative description can suggest different exactly describable global features does not claim that the same evocative words can be used in different evocative senses, but that the evocative words used in the same sense can evoke different exactly describable global features. It means, for example, that “emptiness” in the evocative sense associated with despair can suggest the world-whole’s happening purposelessly as well as other exactly describable global features, e. g., the world-whole being partially composed of a human race whose spiritual achievements will be annulled consequent upon this race’s eventual extinction. This eventual annullment does not comprise a “global emptiness” in the sense of a monotonousness and dullness but in the sense of a futility and pointlessness.

This univocity of the evocative terms used in the preceding sections of Part 2 must be kept in mind if the correspondences among the affects and the evocative and exact descriptions I presented are to be correctly understood. It would be a mistake to object to my claim that despair is the pure appreciation of the global emptiness by pointing out that tedium also is a pure feeling of the global emptiness, for they are appreciations of “emptiness” in different senses.

Even if this univocity of the evocative terms is kept in mind, it still may be difficult to determine in some cases the appropriate connection among the affects and the evocative and exact descriptions. Two or more affects may be somewhat similar to each other, and the importances of which they are the pure appreciations may also be somewhat resemblant. In such a case, the evocative descriptions of each importance will not obviously differ from one another and could seem to be wholly or in part interchangeable. This is true for the affects of awe, reverence, and humility, as well as their corresponding importances: immensity, supremacy, and loftiness. At first glance, it seems no less plausible to say (for example) that awe is the pure appreciation of global supremacy or loftiness than to say that it is the pure appreciation of global immensity. Similarities also hold between the affects of peacefulness and equanimity, tedium and apathy, marvelling and stupefaction, as well as among despair, sadness, and desolation. However, these affects and their corresponding importances are not perfectly similar; although the affects’ qualitative-flows may be largely alike, and the evocative descriptions of the importances may be somewhat resemblant, there are detectable nuances among them, however subtle these nuances be. That there are such differences is a fact I have endeavored to establish in my explications of the above-named affects and importances in the preceding sections.

The clarification of the relation between pure affective appreciations and global importances undertaken in this subsection points to a third respect in which my explications in Part 2 are incomplete, in addition to the two respects noted in the last subsection. It is not merely the case that higher levels of importances and importances of different evocative articulations (like global beauty and ugliness) were not described, but also that exactly determinate importances of the same evocative articulations as those I did explicate were not described.

I also endeavored to show in this subsection what will become more apparent in the next subsection, that my explications although incomplete are not of arbitrarily selected connections between importances and affects.

Conci. 40. iii. Foundational Orders Other than the One Explicated in Part Two

The foundational order made explicit in Part 2 has fulfillment-of- happening at its lowest level and the stunning, lofty, stultifying, ominous, and still importances of the world at its uppermost level. Is this order the only possible order of global importances?

There can only be the first two levels I described, but there are also other levels parallel to and compatible with the third and fourth levels. It has already been shown how and why every other importance but fulfillment-of-happening includes fulfillment-of-happening within itself as a constitutive aspect, so I shall concentrate on elucidating the singularity of the second level and the multiplicity of the third and fourth levels.

There can only be one second level of global importances because there is only one importance on the first level, fulfillment-of-happening. An importance belongs on the second level if it includes fulfillment-of- happening within itself, as well as a feature of fulfillment-of-happening or a feature of the world-whole that is full-of-happening. I articulated six such importances (closeness, miraculousness, emptiness, immensity, monotonousness, and harmoniousness). Any other importance that includes fulfillment-of-happening and an additional feature also belongs on this second level, not on some different but parallel second level of importance.

What does it mean, then, to constitute a different but parallel level of importance? This can be seen in relation to the third and fourth levels, which do have different but parallel levels. The importances on the third level (supremacy, glorification, imminent loss, mysteriousness, uncaring, equilibrium, etc.) are directly based on one of the several importances on the second level, the importance of closeness. A different but parallel third level of importances would be comprised of importances directly based on some other second-level importance, for example, the importance of miraculousness or emptiness. These importances would include, say, the importance of miraculousness as well as a feature of miraculousness or a feature of the world-whole that is miraculous. In this way, there is a different third level of importances for each of the importances on the second level. Moreover, if we take into account the importances (like supremacy) based on two or more of the second-level importances, further third levels arise. Similar considerations apply to the fourth and higher levels of importances.

These remarks make it clear why there can only be one second level of importances; since there is only one importance on the first level, fulfillment-of-happening, there is only one importance available for a sec ond level of importances to be based upon.

It should be implicitly apparent from the preceding considerations that the foundational order of importances I have described in Part 2 is valid only insofar as each of the importances is exactly explicated in the way I have explicated it. “Fulfillment” is the fundamental importance only insofar as it is exactly understood as a noncompositional fulfillment-of happening. “Fulfillment” explicated, for example, as the world’s being partially composed of the return of my beloved, is obviously not the most fundamental global importance. The same considerations hold for close ness, supremacy, and the other importances.

The fact that there are other parallel third and fourth levels of importances does not annul or impugn my explications of an order of global importances in Part 2, but shows merely that the order I presented is one of several orders. The explication of any of the orders of global importances must include an exposition of the first and second levels I examined (since there are only one of each of these levels) but need not include the specific third and fourth levels included in my descriptions. It can be said, then, that my descriptions of the first and second levels were necessary, but my descriptions of the third and fourth levels were only exemplifications of some of the third and fourth levels of importances.

A central motive for explicating one of the orders of global importances was expressed in the Introduction. I stated there that one of the tasks of the metaphysics of feeling is to discover “the basic way of being important that underlies every other way.” Through describing the world- whole’s fulfillment-of-happening and showing that the other levels of importances are based upon fulfillment-of-happening, I aimed to establish that to be filled with happening is the ultimate way in which the world-whole is important. Beneath all the global complexities, there lies a simple joyous truth—that a world is existing.

Conci. 41. The Importance of a Metaphysics of Feeling

The importance of a metaphysics of feeling has a dual aspect, one related to humans and the other to the world-whole. The true significations it aims to develop are important to ourselves as an impetus to and aspect of our spiritual or global salvation, and it is importantly related to the world-whole as a response to its unconditional demand to be mediately as well as immediately appreciated. These two intertwined aspects of the importance of a metaphysics of feeling deserve to be elucidated.

Global salvation must be distinguished from mundane salvation. Mundane salvation is worldly happiness; it is comprised of phenomena like a successful career, a harmonious love relationship and family life, the respect and acceptance of other members of society, and material com fort. Through acquiring such things one is saved from a worldly unhappiness: career failure, loneliness, and physical discomfort.

The need for spiritual salvation emerges consequent upon the experience that mundane salvation is by no means sufficient to quell one’s yearning for meaning. Spirituality is the needful quest for a meaning of a wholly different order than that exemplified by career success, harmonious family life, and the like. The meaning for which one yearns is not of this or that part of the world-whole, but of the whole itself. One yearns to be saved through being inwardly related to a meaning of the whole. The spiritual condition in which this yearning is present but unsatisfied is nihilism: the belief that there is no global meaning or no knowable global meaning to which one can be related.

In our present spiritual-historical situation nihilism is the condition that prevails. Our nihilism has the particular form of a belief that there are no knowable reasons that explain why the world exists and has the nature it possesses. Salvation from this nihilism does not lie in knowing the reasons—for there are no knowable reasons—but in recognizing that the needful quest for such reasons is a degenerate form of spirituality. It has been the major aim of the metaphysics of feeling to show that this is the case and to explicate in a positive way the nondegenerate form of spirituality, that of feeling. Salvation from the prevailing nihilism is achieved through spiritual regeneration, through inwardly adopting an appreciative rather than explanative relation to the world-whole. One is saved from the hopelessly frustrated desire to explain the world in terms of rational meanings by immediately and mediately appreciating the world’s felt meanings.

A metaphysics of feeling is important to us in that it makes available an essential ingredient of our salvation—the evocative and exact mediate appreciations of the global importances—and provides an impetus or occasion for the experience of the immediate appreciations, the moody and affective intuitions. A metaphysics of feeling thus is important to us not because it satisfies our “intellectual curiosity” or solves certain “philosophical puzzles ”that may bemuse us, but because it is instrumental to our spiritual salvation. It differs, however, from religious scripture in that it does not present to us a putative global meaning in which we are to have faith, but a real global meaning that we are to evidentially know.

The motive for being spiritually saved is not, however, to be saved, but transcends all considerations of myself and my conditions. This seemingly paradoxical motivation for spiritual salvation is in truth not paradoxical at all, for the experience of being saved is not of doing something for myself, of serving myself by satisfying one of my needs, but is an ego- transcending experience of serving something greater than myself, of something before which my ego pales in importance. To be saved is precisely not to live for myself or for this or that other part of the world, but to live for the whole.

The motive for spiritual salvation is to carry out the global summons, the summons to enhance the importance of the whole by endowing it with the important features it can only acquire through being appreciated. The reference to this summons brings us to the second respect in which a meta physics of feeling is important. Being important to ourselves as an instrument of our salvation is at the same time being important to the whole as a way of increasing its importance. For through being instrumental to our salvation, a metaphysics of feeling is instrumental in providing the world-whole with the important features it can only acquire through be ing appreciated by spiritually saved world-parts.

The global summons is purely appreciated in global devotion, which has been partly described in the last section. It can be more fully explicated here through tracing the following connections. Something is worthy of appreciation if it is “noteworthy” in the sense illustrated in Chapter 2; appreciation worthiness is a feature a thing possesses if it can “demand” to be appreciated, if it is able to attract and hold directed upon itself a feeling-awareness. A feeling-awareness is an awareness of something as an evocatively and exactly describable source of flowing pleasure or pain. Some thing is more worthy of appreciation than something else if it is wholly identical with more possible relational terms of feeling-awarenesies than the other thing, and hence is able to demand more appreciations. The world-whole is more worthy of appreciation than any of its parts in that it is wholly identical with more possible demands for appreciation than is any world-part, and in this sense is more demanding of appreciation than any world-part. The world-whole is absolutely more worthy of appreciation than I am in that it is identical with more possible demands for appreciation than is anything else more important than I am. The world- whole is unconditionally demanding of appreciation: no condition could make the world-whole less demanding of appreciation than anything else.

The global summons is the supremely and absolutely important whole’s unconditional demand to be appreciated. Through being purely captivated by this summons in global devotion, I am inspired to devote my life unreservedly to carrying out the summons.

But this devotional experience is not sufficient to ensure that my life shall be given over to the fulfillment of the global summons. The devoted affect is but one global affect among others, and as such my being devoted to the world-whole is but one among many of my affective responses to the whole. In a different affect, this devoted commitment to the whole will not be experienced. How then can my devotion to the summoning world-whole be anything more than temporary, lasting only as long as the devoted affect lasts?

The devotional commitment can be lasting if it can be reinstituted in a freely repeatable experience that is not one global affect (or mood or striving) among others but is a global feeling of a different kind. Such a feeling interconnects and unifies all my global affects, moods, and strivings. It is a feeling of global resoluteness.

Global resoluteness is not an anxious disclosure of various situational possibilities, but an iron-hard determination to do one thing, to carry out the global summons intuitively revealed to me in global devotion. Resolute ness is a mediate rather than immediate “appearing of” the global summons: it voluntarily induces the reappearance of the summons that had involuntarily and captivatingly appeared in the devoted affect. Resolute ness brings the summons to reappearance, not in order to make it evocatively and exactly explicit (this is properly achieved in the devotional afterglow and concentrative reappreciation), but to freely reinstill in myself the commitment to carry out the summons that had originally been in voluntarily instilled in me by the devotionally captivating world-whole.

The resolute feeling-sensation flows forwards in a powerful, unbend able, and determined manner. Its texture is firm, unyielding, and iron- hard. It is not engendered or “made to flow” forward by the world-whole but is engendered and “made to flow” forward by myself. I induce and sustain in myself an unbreakable and unconditional resolve to carry out the global mission, come what may. No obstacle can deter or weaken my resolve, and no sacrifice is too great. The pure granite strength of my willing is invincible, unshatterable; it is a willing-unto-death, a determination to fulfill the global mission or perish in the attempt.

My spiritual willing is an invisible power I generate that extends out wards to all corners of the globe. My unconditional willing imbues things with a feeling-tonality of being overpowered and rendered incapable of weakening or destroying my resolve. I may be destroyed, but as long as I am alive my resolute determination to carry out the mission shall never be destroyed.

The global mission I am determined to carry out unifies all my global affects, moods, and strivings. It establishes them as realizations of the mission to enhance the world-whole’s importance by enabling it to have the additional important features that accrue to it from being appreciated.

This mission appears in the resolute feeling-awareness to be implicitly articulated into interior and exterior realizations. Interiorly, I resolve to allow my global affects and moody contemplations and their reappreciations to take precedence over my mundane feelings. This involves allowing myself to become more attached to the whole than to any part so as to enable the whole to engender more affective responses in me than any given world-part. I resolve to avoid being completely absorbed in any part of the world, and to remain somewhat interiorly detached from this or that part so as to remain relatively unaffected by these parts and reserve my primary affectively responsive capacity for the captivating appearances of the omnipresent global importances. I do not resolve to attach myself completely to the whole, since it belongs necessarily to my nature as a human world-part to be at least partially mundane and not to be completely spiritual.

The interior commitment also involves determining to realize the potential for global contemplation offered to me in my moods, and to realize the potential for reappreciating the whole in the afterglows of both moods and global affects.

Global feelings that are within my capacity to originate voluntarily at any given time are global strivings. These are the concentrated strivings to make exactly explicit the global importances that have intuitively appeared to me. The concentrative knowledge of these importances is always “on the way,” in respect both of its extension and perfection. I am resolved to continue extending and developing the precise global explications and to reexamine and improve the exact explications already developed. In regard to these latter explications, it is possible that some of them which had previously seemed to be true or complete could, upon further analysis or upon acquisition of further evidence, be discovered to be untrue or in complete and to warrant reformulation or expansion. My unconditional will is not to be overcome by the enormous difficulties and problems inherent in the attempt to make the world precisely appreciated, but to pursue the truth unflaggingly and to the end.

The evocative explications are also subject to extension and improve ment; the latter involves making these explications more and more evocative and more and more appropriate to the global importances they are designed to evoke. These explications not only form a part of metaphysics but are of the essence of global art (linguistically articulated evocations constitute global poetry and literature, and visually and auditorily symbolic evocations constitute global painting, sculpture, and music).

By these means I aim to realize interiorly the global mission. My affective and moody appreciations enhance the whole by endowing it with the important features that inhere in it when it is being immediately appreciated, and my afterglowing and concentrative reappreciations enhance the whole by providing it with the important features that accrue to it when it is being mediately appreciated.

In connection with the evocative and exact explications of the important whole, the exterior realization of the mission is resolved upon. This exterior realization concerns the important features that inhere in the whole through being appreciated by spiritual parts other than myself. This is achieved in personal communication (e.g., in global rather than mundanely motivated conversation or teaching) and in metaphysical treatises and art works.

This exterior realization of the mission involves spiritually saving others, but the motive for this realization is not to save others (which would be doing something for other world-parts and thus would be mundane) but to enhance the importance of the world-whole. The conventional and mundane alternative of doing something for myself (selfishness) or for others (altruism) is here overcome by doing something for the whole in which I, other people and everything else participate (global resoluteness). The capacity to engage in this spiritual mission is not, however, possessed by all appreciative parts of the world and is possessed in different degrees by the parts that do have this capacity.

The central obstacles to this exterior realization of the mission are the complacent mundanity of most human life and culture, and the historically entrenched habits and beliefs of rational spirituality in the spiritual enclaves of culture that resist being reexamined and questioned. The human race is imperfectly spiritual and hence is largely resistant to the global mission.

Global resoluteness is akin to fanaticism in the unconditionality of the determination with which the mission is resolved upon. The resolute one and the fanatic mirror one another in respect of their pure willing-unto-death. They differ in that the basis of the fanatical willing is a faith in the truth of the mission and consequently a closure to all evidential criticism and questioning of the basis and validity of the mission. The globally resolute one, by contrast, resolves upon the basis of evidential knowledge. Furthermore, one of the things the resolute person resolves upon is the perpetual reexamination of the basis and intent of the resoluteness itself. Through resolving to pursue the global truth unconditionally, he resolves to change his resolution if need be in order to accord with the truth.

The global mission upon which I am resolved is a magnetizing importance, in fact the unconditionally magnetizing importance. A magnetizing importance is made exactly explicit as a purpose or end. The unconditionally magnetizing importance is thus a global purpose. But how can it be so if the world-whole is empty-of-purpose, as is purely revealed in global despair? The purposelessness revealed in despair pertains to the existing of the world-whole; the world-whole exists, and continues to exist at each new moment, for the sake of nothing at all. The purpose constitutive of the global mission, however, is a purpose of the appreciative parts of the world. It is not a purpose for which these parts came into existence (they came into existence accidentally and for no purpose), but a purpose they are able to adopt once they do exist. It is a purpose to which the purposelessly existing world-whole unconditionally summons its purposelessly existing appreciative parts to devote themselves to realizing.

This can be elucidated further. The world-whole does not exist and continue to exist in order to be appreciated. And the human race did not come into existence in order to appreciate the world-whole. But the world- whole is the most important importance and as such is that which is most worthy of being appreciated. If the world-whole accidentally happens to include among its parts appreciative parts, they can recognize this and be motivated to commit themselves to this appreciation as their adopted unconditional purpose.

Through this purpose being attained the world-whole is extrinsically affected. It acquires new features through being appreciated by its parts. The acquisition of these features is extrinsical to the world-whole in that these features are accidental; the world-whole could exist without having any of the features that inhere in it through being appreciated.

This is how devotion and resolution are compatible with the apathetic captivation with the world-whole’s stultifying character. I am in apathy because I am purely appreciating intrinsical efficaciousness as a condition for global action; I feel stultified because nothing I can do makes a difference to the world-whole’s existential or necessary importance. Devotion, on the other hand, is a pure appreciation of extrinsical efficaciousness as a condition for action. I feel devotionally inspired because I can do some thing that makes a difference to the world-whole’s nonnecessary importance. Extrinsical efficaciousness is the only motivating condition of global action. It is the only global condition that when purely appreciated summons me to act.

In global resoluteness, I unify apathy and despair with my other responses to the whole by establishing them as realizations of the extrinsical global mission. Apathy and despair realize this global mission in that they are immediate appreciations of the world-whole and as such enhance its extrinsical importance. They enhance the world-whole’s importance through rendering purely appreciated its features of being purposeless and intrinsically unsummoning of global action.

Through taking up within himself this extrinsical global mission, the resolute person endeavors to make the world-whole more adequately responded to both by himself and others. He aspires to elevate humans as much as possible from a mundanely to a globally appreciative existence, and to regenerate the spiritual aspect of human culture from its present epochal condition of rationalistic nihilism to a new spiritual-historical epoch based upon appreciative feeling. By this means he aims to render the world- whole spiritually appreciated not merely by himself but by the successive members and generations of human culture as a whole. But if due to the prevailing mundanity and spiritual degenerateness his mission seems to be failing, at first or even later, he will not falter or succumb. He shall never grow deaf to the global summons but shall keep willing unconditionally and to the end.

In the next section I will discuss the relation of this importance to the importances of stultification and emptiness-of-purpose, which are respectively appreciated in apathy and despair.

Cf. IV. 27. i for the distinction between pure and impure appreciations. An incomplete appreciation is a captivation with some but not all the aspects of a certain global importance. Joy is an incomplete appreciation of closeness in that it is captivated with the feature of happening that constitutes this global importance but not with the other feature that constitutes it, immediate appearance. Cf.V. 28.

Cf. IV.27.vi and V.29. But of course each part of the world is one individual.

Cf. IV.27, V.28, V.33, VI.34, and VI.39.

Supremacy is based on two of the second-level importances, closeness and immensity, but this can be ignored for the moment.

Intro. 4, p. 20.

Concerning the involuntary nature of global affects, see III.19. “In voluntary” does not mean against my willing (which would be “antivoluntary”) but without my willing.