Tim Newcomb

"There is no consciousness without discrimination of opposites. This is the paternal principle, the Logos, which eternally struggles to extricate itself from the primal warmth and primal darkness of the maternal womb; in a word, from unconsciousness... Unconsciousness is the primal sin, evil itself, for the Logos... Nothing can exist without its opposite; the two were one in the beginning and will be one again in the end. Consciousness can only exist through continual recognition of the unconscious..."

Once again, in the age-old controversy over universals, the nominalistic standpoint has triumphed over the realistic, and the Idea has evaporated into a mere flatus vocis.... Naturally, the new nominalism promptly claimed universal validity for itself in spite of the fact that it, too, is based on a definite and limited thesis coloured by temperament. This thesis runs as follows: we accept as valid anything that comes from outside and can be verified. The ideal instance is verification by experiment. The antithesis is: we accept as valid anything that comes from inside and cannot be verified. The hopelessness of this position is obvious. Greek natural philosophy with its interest in matter, together with Aristotelian reasoning, has achieved a belated but overwhelming victory over Plato. Yet every victory contains the germ of future defeat. In our own day signs foreshadowing a change of attitude are rapidly increasing.

Significantly enough, it is Kant's doctrine of categories, more than anything else, that destroys in embryo every attempt to revive metaphysics in the old sense of the word, but at the same time paves the way for a rebirth of the Platonic spirit. If it be true that there can be no metaphysics transcending human reason, it is no less than there can be no empirical knowledge that is not already caught and limited by the a priori structure of cognition...

For just as the tremendous advancement of science led at first to a premature dethronement of mind and to an equally ill-considered deification of matter, so it is this same urge for scientific knowledge that is now attempting to bridge the huge gulf that has opened out between the two Weltanschauungen... The approach of natural science will almost certainly be from the other direction: it will see in matter itself the equivalent of spirit, but this "spirit" will appear divested of all, or at any rate most, of its known qualities, just as earthly matter was stripped of its specific characteristics when it staged its entry into heaven. Nevertheless, the way will gradually be cleared for a union of the two.

"In other words, one has to witness, or take part in, some rite of transformation. This rite may be a ceremony such as the Mass, where there is a transformation of substances. Through his presence at the rite the individual participates in divine grace... The only type of self-knowledge that ultimately leads to the knowledge of God happens through traditional mysticism – that is to say: it is only possible if the seeker deeply comprehends that any divine reality he may find within can only exist in reference to a Divine Reality he can only aim to participate in. It is never solely about ourselves, or solely about our Self: if this is the only reality symbols are pointing at, high are the risks that we get trapped in the narcissistic maze of self-delusion... It seems as if it were only through an experience of symbolic reality that man, vainly seeking his own "existence" and making a philosophy out of it, can find his way back to a world in which he is no longer a stranger."

"The bridge from dogma to the inner experience of the individual has broken down. Instead dogma is merely "believed"; it is hypostatized, as the Protestants hypostatize the Bible, illegitimately making it the supreme authority, regardless of its controversial interpretations (as we know, anything can be authorized out of the Bible). Dogma no longer formulates anything, no longer expresses anything; it has become a tenet to be accepted in and for itself, with no basis in any experience that would demonstrate its truth. Indeed, intellectual belief has been conflated with experience."

There is little to choose between this state and that of the man possessed in the New Testament. Now whether you believe in a demon of the air or in a factor in the unconscious that plays diabolical tricks on you is all one to me. The fact that man's imagined unity is menaced by alien powers remains the same in either case.

Therefore a responsum is sought over which two faculties can get into arguments because of their jurisdiction [...], the medical, in their anatomical-physiological, with the philosophical, in its psychological-metaphysical subject, where, as with all attempts at a coalition, between those who want to base everything on empirical principles and those who demand a priori reasons… Anyone who, in the present case, thanks the physician as a physiologist will lose it with the philosopher as a metaphysician; and vice versa, whoever pleases him offends against the physiologist

Even the theologians, who are still only at home when in vanity, have dared to accuse philosophy of its destructive tendency, theologians who no longer possess anything of the substance that could be destroyed... Those who resent philosophy for thinking religion do not know what they are asking... this is the outward appearance of humility, but true humility consists in sinking the mind into truth.

In the Protestant Church, the Bible was the essential basis of the doctrine... it was thought that exegesis, was only to take up the thoughts of the Bible. But in fact, the intellect had established its views, its thoughts, beforehand, and then it was seen how the words of Scripture could be explained according to them... Because this exegesis consults reason, it has come about that a so-called theology of reason has come into being, which is opposed to that doctrinal concept of the church, partly by itself, partly by that which it opposes… the nature of interpretive explanation implies that pre-conceived concepts assert themselves in the process of interpretation... Even in the representation of a philosophical system already developed in itself, e.g. of Plato or Aristotle, it is the case that the representations turn out differently according to the already determined mode of a conception of those who undertake them. From Scripture, therefore, the most opposite opinions have been exegetically proved by theology, and thus this so-called Holy Scripture has been turned into a disguise for heterodoxy. All heresies have invoked the Scriptures.

Accordingly, I maintain that the physico-theological proof can never alone demonstrate the existence of a supreme being, but must at all times leave it to the ontological proof (which it serves only for an introduction) to supplement this deficiency so that the latter still contains the only possible reason for proof (insofar as only a speculative proof takes place everywhere), which no human reason can bypass.

"For the dogmatism of metaphysics, that is, the presumption that it is possible to achieve anything in metaphysics without a preceding critique of pure reason, is the source of all that disbelief which opposes morality and which is always very dogmatic."

"The real attestation of the Divinity of Christ is the witness of one's own Spirit- not Miracles; for only Spirit recognizes Spirit.”