Although sometimes the morbid is also the transcendent, the transcendent cannot be reduced to the morbid.
Interpretation
The transcendent aspects of life cannot be diminished by darker, morbid experiences, even if there exists a connection between them.
This quote by Siri Hustvedt suggests that while there are moments in life that may seem bleak or morbid, these experiences can also lead to elevated, transcendent states of being. However, it emphasizes that the profound and uplifting aspects of existence are distinct and cannot be entirely defined or limited by the darker, more somber experiences we encounter. It invites reflection on the complexity of human experience where suffering can coexist with beauty, but they are not one and the same.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion on existential philosophy at a seminar.
Perception plays a vital role in the diagnosis of bipolar illness. Symptoms are perceived through the categories of psychiatric medicine at a given moment in history, categories which are continually shifting and being named or renamed.
Our memory fragments don't have any coherence until they're imagined in words. Time is a property of language, of syntax, and tense.
All human states are organic brain states - happiness, sadness, fear, lust, dreaming, doing math problems and writing novels - and our brains are not static.
I don't want the words to be naked the way they are in faxes or in the computer. I want them to be covered by an envelope that you have to rip open in order to get at. I want there to be a waiting time -a pause between the writing and the reading. I want us to be careful about what we say to each other. I want the miles between us to be real and long. This will be our law -that we write our dailiness and our suffering very, very carefully.
under our love making I felt a bleakness that couldnt be dispelled. The sadness was in both of us, and I think we pitied ourselves that night, as if we were other people looking down on the couple who lay together on the bed
People who grow up with two or more languages understand that each can express certain aspects of reality better than the other.
Having raised humanity above the beastly level of survival struggles, we will now aim to upgrade humans into gods and turn Homo sapiens into Homo deus.
PITY, n. A failing sense of exemption, inspired by contrast.
But jealous souls will not be answered so, They are not ever jealous for the cause, But jealous for they're jealous. 'Tis a monster Begot upon itself, born on itself.
A search for truth seems to me to be full of pitfalls. We all have different understandings of what truth is, and we'll each believe - or we are in danger of each believing - that our truth is the one and only absolute truth, which is why I say it's full of pitfalls.
Israel uses sophisticated attack jets and naval vessels to bomb densely-crowded refugee camps, schools, apartment blocks, mosques, and slums to attack a population that has no air force, no air defense, no navy, no heavy weapons, no artillery units, no mechanized armor, no command in control, no army and calls it a war.
The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioned our characters in the wrong way.
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