INGEN PERSON

Förvånande för många är att evangelierna handlar om att ge upp fiktionen om självet och förlora det i Hans kärlek som i den meningen är objektiv, universell - katolsk. En som försökt visa detta är Henry James Sr. Han skriver i sin bok om Swedenborg: "In short, I have shown that while morality endows man with a subjective or phenomenal consciousness, with a quasi or provisional selfhood, adapted to the needs of an immature society among men, there is not the least spiritual or living truth, the least objective reality in this selfhood..." (s 232)

Men vid ungefär samma tid skriver Thomas Gibson Bowles, journalist och tidskriftsredaktör, följande rader i början av sin bok Flotsam and Jetsam (1874), som visar hur fast denna "selfhood" kan vara:

"A REAL man is always alone in the world. Were he not he
would not be a real man, as I understand it — that is to say a
distinct entity, not a copy of all other men, but with the prin-
cipal and important part of him thoroughly belonging to him-
self. How shall such a one find a mate who shall really be
such to him ? Pieces of looking-glass indeed he may find,
which will according to their quality more or less reproduce
the outside of him as they will of any other — they have been
quicksilvered to that one end ; but a duplicate of himself ;
nay, or another at all like himself, he may not hope for in man
or woman. For his especial character is that he is what he
himself and Providence have made him ; that he has set up
in the chaos with infinite labor and good fortune a little plat-
form of his own just broad enough for the sole of his foot.
Another cannot stand there with him, though many be above
and some perhaps below. If he be the real man, that place is
his and his alone : he is a separate being and principle, and as
such he can have no companion."

Det är värt att notera hur denna fiktiva plattform skapas i kaos. Men ännu större kaos följer förstås på denna mentala isolering som hans "selfhood" skapas genom.

Skrivet av ingenperson, 2018-08-26 18:42