So I keep running into the idea of immanence in my terribly misguided materialist pop-philosopny project at
In Review but I'm not sure if I've got enough of a grasp of it. I found a basic overview of its mainly premodern usage in an online edition of the 1911 encylopedia:
IMMANENCE (from Lat. in-manere to dwell in, remain), in philosophy and theology a term applied in contradistinction to’ ‘transcendence,” to the fact or condition of being entirely within something. Its most important use is for the theological conception of God as existing in and throughout the created world, as opposed, for example, to Deism (qe.), which conceives Him as separate from and above the universe. This conception has been expressed in a great variety of forms (see THEIsM, PANTHEISM). It should be observed that the immanence doctrine need not preclude the belief in the transcendence of God: thus God may be regarded as above the world (transcendent) and at the same time as present in and pervading it (immanent). The immanence doctrine has arisen from two main causes, the one metaphysical, the other religious. Metaphysical speculation on the relation of matter and mind has naturally led to a conviction of an underlying unity of all existence, and so to a metaphysical identification of God and the universe: when this identification proceeds to the length of expressing the universe as merely a mode or form of deity the result is pantheism (ci. the Eleatics): when it regards the deity as simply the sum of the forces of nature (cf. John Toland) the result is naturalism. In either case, but especially in the former, it frequently becomes pure mysticism (qv.). Religious thinkers are faced by the problem of the Creator and the created, and the necessity for formulating a close relationship between God and man, the Infinite and Perfect with the finite and imperfect. The conception of God as wholly external to man, a purely mechanical theory of the creation, is throughout Christendom regarded as false to the teaching of the New Testament as also to Christian experience. The contrary view has gained ground in some quarters (cf. the so-called “ New Theology “ of Rev. R. J. Campbell) so far as to postulate a divine element in human beings, so definitely bridging over the gap between finite and infinite which was to some extent admitted by the bulk of early Christian teachers. In support of such a view are adduced not only the metaphysical difficulty of postulating any relationship between the infinite and the purely finite, but also the ethical.
But obviousl it's gone through all sorts of permutations since then. So which philosophers, deal with this and how?
― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Wednesday, 16 April 2003 18:40 (twenty-two years ago)
basically it's like if you're socrates only you suddenly realise yr pregnant
― mark s (mark s), Wednesday, 16 April 2003 18:55 (twenty-two years ago)
I'm not impressed with what he postulates, and he doesn't consider himself a philsopher,
but Frithjof Schuon might still be worth checking out (and anyway, it gives me something to add to this thread) in Its discussion of how religions as expressions of the Absolute, will sometimes emphasize his transcendence and sometimes emphasize Its immanence. (I think he says that Islam emphasize's God's transcendence, while Christianity emphasizes His (Its) immanence--notably in the incarnation--and that they are reflections of different aspects of the Absolute, which cannot be fully expressed in any one religion.
*
I don't know much about contemporary philosophy, but I'd be willing to guess that Levinas has used this term.
― Rockist Scientist, Wednesday, 16 April 2003 18:56 (twenty-two years ago)
I thought this was Kant's whole thing, vis-a-vis the conception of immanence that posits the divine in humans. Which led to his famous moral "categorical imperative" - "act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law." Or something. It's been at least a decade since i read him.
― Mr. Diamond (diamond), Wednesday, 16 April 2003 19:03 (twenty-two years ago)
"mainly premodern" is about the only usage i think you're going to find, Sterling. "Immanence" is a good description of how the hott thinkers of the Middle Ages were all seeing cosmic coincidences in things, patterns seemed to hold across difft systems, brute metaphor as a tool for scientific discovery; all matter was subject to a secret spirituality. Foucault covers this alchemical philosophy exhaustively (and exhaustingly) in "The Order of Things". That book helped me understand how prophecies could be taken so seriously back then, how God could reveal himself across difft times ALL AT ONCE.
― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Wednesday, 16 April 2003 19:19 (twenty-two years ago)
thirteen years pass...