Page History

...

Question: What is the logic of the "excusive exclusive particle" in all of its different uses? Could it perhaps be illumined by the logic of the unique relation between whole and part, universal individual and particular individual?

...

Note 1: Perhaps another way of saying this would be simply to make use of Hartshorne's distinction between "dualism" and "duality," understanding the second to be, as it were, a mean between the extremes of monism and pluralism (dualism being, after , all, only a special case of pluralism, even as duality is, as it were, a qualified dualism).

Note 2: Interestingly enough, this whole line of reflection appears to have been anticipated by what I was thinking when I wrote the following: "The genius of the Christian understanding of existence is that it is the true and original 'center' from which the extreme contraries of monism and dualism in all their several forms are equally departures and distortions" (RG: 228). Also 67 f., where, speaking of "the scriptural witness historically represented by Protestant Christianity," I argue that "Protestantism's most distinctive claims all share a certain paradoxical or dialectical character. Beginning with its central doctrine of justification by grace and faith alone, all its main teachings seem either to affirm or to imply what Kierkegaard spoke of as 'the infinite qualitative difference' between God and the world. On the one hand, God is said to be 'wholly other' than the world, and the world by itself utterly secular or profane; on the other hand, the very otherness of God is understood as his being for the world, not against it, so that the world in itself is affirmed to be of ultimate significance .... [I]t is clear, I think, that, if anything is to be called 'the spirit of Protestantism,' it is just this dialectical vision of God and the world and the total style of Christian life to which it gives rise. And equally clear is the reason why Protestants tend to share this vision almost as if by instinct: from the beginning, their chief inspiration has not been the spirit which informs the rich culture of classical antiquity, but the quite different Spirit who moves over the pages of Holy Scripture, witnessing simply that 'God is love.' It is precisely and only eminent love, in the distinctively scriptural sense ofpure of pure personal relationship, that could relate God to his world by such a profound dialectic of difference and identity." And 69, where I speak of "the peculiar paradox of Protestant Christianity -- that God is radically other than the world and never to be confused with it, but that, just for this reason, the world itself has an unconditional worth and significance. ").

...