PKJ: Ch.1 Basic Concepts
…. We always live and think within a horizon. But the very fact that it is a horizon indicates something further which again surrounds the given horizon. From this situation arises the question about the Encompassing. The Encompassing is not a horizon within which every determinate mode of Being and truth emerges for us, but rather that within which every particular horizon is enclosed as in something absolutely comprehensive which is no longer visible as a horizon at all….. (Reason and Existenz) p.138-140
BW/p.139 Von der Wahrheit p.47-50
As soon as I attempt to illuminate the one Encompassing according to its content, it splits into the modes of the Encompassing…..We arrive at the modes of the Encompassing by taking the following steps in our thinking:
The First Step
We live in the world but do not have the world before us as if we stood outside of it. Everything we can cognize is in the world but never is the world. The world as a whole cannot be an object for us. Kant understood this when he stated: the world is merely an idea. If we attempt to understand the world as a whole, it defies this attempt at knowledge and our thinking becomes entangled in insoluble contradictions ( the Kantian antinomies ). The world is the Encompassing in which and out of which all being-world presents itself to us in the form of particular objectivities. Designating the world as ideas expresses its character as being encompassing.
All cognition of the world (i.e., all being-object) is, for us, conditional upon our cogitative consciousness……all “being-for-us” is an appearance of “being-in-itself” in the form in which it presents itself to our consciousness-as-such.
Thus we have seen the Encompassing appear in two modes: The Encompassing in which Being itself appears is world; the Encompassing which I am and which we are is consciousness-as-such.
The Second Step
The Encompassing which I am is more than consciousness-as-such.
I am also existence which supports my consciousness. We can regard ourselves as actuality only by taking the step from mere consciousness to actual existence. This is the existence that has a beginning and an end, labors and struggles in the world surrounding it, or tires and gives in, enjoys and suffers, experience fear and hope.
As actuality, however, I am not only existence but an actual as spirit; all that is thought by consciousness and all that is actual as existence can be taken up into the spirit’s ideal totalities and become the movement—revolving in itself and penetrating itself—out of which grows the construction of worlds such as those of communities, of works, of the professions.
The Third Step
Altogether, thee modes of the Encompassing constitute what is undoubtedly present. They comprise the immanence of what I am, namely existence, consciousness-as-such, spirit, and of what becomes object for me, namely being-world. One can ask further if such immanence is sufficient unto itself or whether it points to something else. Indeed, men have maintained that there is only immanence, and they believed that they were living lives based on this knowledge. For such an attitude immanence would suffice and beyond it one would see nothingness. But throughout all periods of history there have been men who have taken the leap out of immanence and beyond it. Immanence was not enough for them. They became aware of being lost in it and they came to understand that immanence does not exist out of itself and cannot be comprehended out of itself. Hence they took the transcending leap, all in one: the leap from the world to the deity and from the existence of the conscious spirit to Existenz. Existenz is the self-being that stands in relation to itself and thereby to transcendence; it knows itself as given to itself through, and bases itself on, transcendence.
The Fourth Step
Not only are there several Encompassings but in all the modes of the Encompassing we encounter a multiplicity. A manifold may come apart, contraries seem to destroy or exclude each other.
It is possible to move within a multiplicity, to let its components exist side by side, not to be affected by anything alien, to live unquestionably within mere aggregation. But when I experience aggregation as insufficient, a decisive leap becomes possible for me, and when I have become fully aware of that insufficiency, the leap becomes a necessity: this is the case when I can no longer rest content in the side-by-side, when I can no longer contain my urge to experience everything in relation to everything else, to grasp for unity and to bring it about.
This leap leads me into reason. Reason wills—and is--- the bond between all the modes of the Encompassing and all phenomena within them. Here a silent restlessness, springing from its own origin, lies in readiness. But it is only through living Existenz that this reason in me is set in motion as the Encompassing which, open in all directions, wants to join together everything there is.