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1 results

  • Excursus III - Temporalization and Transcendence of Time through Language

  • from Part II - Philosophical Reflections
  • William Franke, Vanderbilt University, Tennessee
  • Book:
    The Divine Vision of Dante's Paradiso
    Published online:
    26 August 2021
    Print publication:
    19 August 2021, pp 206-226

  • Summary

    Transcendence of time through language is possible because of syntax. Only language can shape time into a whole structure and so image eternity as the indivisible Whole of reality. It is in the achievement of a totality of sense – the meaning of the whole phrase – that the temporality of the phenomenal appearance of its separate parts, the letters, is transcended and an experience of the eternal – God – as an experience essentially of language in its production of meaning is achieved. This experience of the eternal through concrete elements in time is the essence of the Incarnation, which Dante has, in fact, ciphered into the heart of his vision even numerologically, with the thirty-five letters evoking Christ’s life in history up to the acme of the arc of human life and turning thirty-five years old. Christ, as the eternal Word, is the indispensable key to the transcendence of time through language.