Part Two

The Basic

Felt Meanings

Of the World

The aim of Part 2 is to examine in a relatively comprehensive way the global affects that are parallel in type to our moods, and by this means to uncover the determinate character of the felt meanings of the world. This examination will be relatively but not absolutely comprehensive in that I shall not explicate each and every global affect, but only some of them. Nearly a score of these affects will be discussed, but three in particular will be singled out for the most thorough and exhaustive explications: rejoicing in the world-whole’s fulfillment, loving the world-whole for its closeness, and revering the world-whole for its supremacy. Each of the three chapters of Part 2 is devoted to one of these affects, and the other global affects are described by way of comparing and contrasting them with these affects.

Global rejoicing, loving, and revering are selected as the main subjects for investigation because they are fundamental global affects. Every other affective appreciation to be examined is based on one or more of these three affects. This can be elucidated in a brief and preliminary fashion in the present section; the complete explication and demonstration of this thesis will appear in the following chapters.

Rejoicing in the world-whole’s fulfillment-of-happening is the most fundamental of the metaphysical affects; every other such affect is based on rejoicing, but rejoicing is based on no other global affect. Rejoicing in the happening of the world is absolutely basic in that an affective appreciation of the world’s happening belongs to and is an aspect of the affective appreciation of every other way in which the world is important. Correlatively, fulfillment-of-happening is the absolutely basic global importance in that it is an aspect of every other global importance, whereas no other global importance is an aspect of it.

The other global affects I examine are either directly, indirectly, or doubly indirectly based on global rejoicing. Love, marveling, awe, tedium, and peacefulness are examples of the directly based affects. The indirectly based affects, exemplified by reverence, pride, wonder, and desolation, are directly based on global love; since love is directly based on rejoicing, these affects are indirectly based on rejoicing. The doubly indirectly based affects include dread, humility, and stupefaction; they are directly based upon global reverence, which is itself directly based on global love, which in its turn is directly based on global rejoicing.

Global love and reverence are in this manner fundamental affects like rejoicing; other affects are based upon them. However, unlike rejoicing, they are only relatively fundamental, for love is based on joy, and reverence upon love.

Global love is the affective captivation with the happening world-whole’s apparential closeness to me, its immediate appearance to me. The immediate appearance of the happening world is a second basic feature of the world after happening. Happening is an aspect of the happening world-whole’s apparential closeness, and thus the latter importance is based upon the former. And the happening world-whole’s apparential closeness is itself an aspect of further more complex importances, and these importances accordingly are based upon it. These latter importances are the ones affectively appreciated in global reverence, pride, wonder, desolation, and others.

The global importance appreciated in reverence is supremacy, or more exactly, the independence of the world-whole’s happening from its immediate appearance to me. This supremacy of the world-whole is in its turn an aspect of even more complex importances, those appreciated in global dread, humility, stupefaction, etc.

In Chapter 4 I examine global rejoicing and some of the affects directly based on rejoicing; in Chapters 5 and 6 I describe global loving and revering and some of the affects they directly support.

The import of Part 2 can be summarily stated. We shall find that fulfillment-of-happening is the meaning of the world-whole’s temporal presence and existing, that the happening world-whole’s apparential closeness is the ultimate felt truth, and that global supremacy refers to the human-independent absolute reality.