Wolfgang Welsch
Reflecting the Pacific Ocean
"We
must uncenter our minds from ourselves;
We must unhumanize our
views a little, and become confident
As the rock and ocean that
we were made from." [1]
1. Introductory
remarks
1a. Background
At the outset I'd
like to admit that my approach is very personal. I have often
visited the Pacific coast during the last ten years. And it has
always been the Californian coast. I became very involved with the
Pacific Ocean. I used to walk, write, reflect at the coast. The way
of thinking I am trying to develop these days is largely inspired by
experience of the Pacific Ocean. I could even say I owe this new way
of thinking to it. What, then, is my new line of thinking?
I
am working on an epistemological project: a criticism of the modern
stance, dominant for more than 200 years (and established in effect
by Kant). This stance declares that all our cognition is bound by
the human constitution; all we can recognize is--at best--our world,
a man-made world; and we are able to recognize it precisely because
we make it; for the same reason, however, our cognition is
restricted to this human world and to be denied any validity beyond
the human realm.
I have felt at odds with this modern stance
for a long time; to me it appears to be a far too easily accepted
prejudice; I experience it as a prison--whereas modern philosophy
and the humanities praise it as a golden cage. To me it is
suffocating, and I want to breathe again. My aim is to defend the
potential objectivity--and not just cultural or social
constructedness--of at least parts of our knowledge and to find a
conception that can justify this.
One step lies in the
insight that the picture of the human underlying all modern and
current epistemology is in need of criticism--and perhaps of
abolition: Cognition is conceived on the basis of the subject-object
split, with the fiction that through cognition we, the subjects,
connect with objects, and thus first establish a connection with the
world. The human--or the human mind--is assumed to be something
primordially alien to the world that, through cognition, then
creates its contact with the world.
It is here that the
Pacific comes in. It helped me to develop a different picture of
humans' relationship with the world. It suggested a much more
original world-connectedness, one begun long before any cognitive
attempt at hooking onto the world. In the following, I'd like to
make this view plausible to you.
1b. The exceptional
character of the Pacific
But why do I consider the
Pacific Ocean an exceptional source of the experiences I am going to
talk about? Why not the Atlantic or the Indian Ocean, or the
Mediterranean Sea? Aren't they all more or less the same: immense
expanses of water, with their tides, their saltiness and their
dangerous as well as pleasant aspects?
Frankly, for me the
Pacific Ocean is incomparable, and probably for two
reasons:
First of all for its almost unimaginable hugeness.
The Pacific Ocean comprises more than half of the oceanic surface of
this planet (50.1 %). And you know that more than 70% of the earth
(70.8%) is covered by oceans. (It's strange anyway that we call our
planet "the earth"; "the ocean-planet" or something similar would be
much more appropriate.)
The second reason is expressed in the
Pacific's name: despite being so huge, it is astonishingly peaceful.
When Magellan gave it its name, surprised by its calm, he was on to
something that indeed distinguishes the Pacific Ocean. On the whole
the Pacific is amazingly tranquil. It is far less agitated than the
Atlantic--much more sovereign, so to speak. Tidal ranges, for
example, are very small within the Pacific. On Tahiti they are about
one foot, and at Yokohama they seldom exceed five feet.
It is
this combination of hugeness and tranquility that, in my view, makes
the Pacific Ocean so unique.
2. Phenomenology of the
Pacific Ocean
Let me now attempt a closer description--or
phenomenology--of the Pacific Ocean.
But how is this to be
approached? By looking at the ocean from the coastal side: at the
endlessly rolling surges and immeasurable breadth of the horizon Or
by regarding it from a hill or mountain? In each case, the ocean's
aspect is very different. You are faced by the "wall of the
Pacific": projecting high like a blue retaining wall that heads for
the earth and rams itself into it. Or should one set out from
experience on the high sea? But where? The Pacific is so
immeasurably vast and extensive.
2a. Immeasurable
extent
Whichever approach you choose (you might even fly
across the Pacific for hours), the primary and main impression is
immeasurable extent, the sheer unlimited extension, the
insurveyability of the Pacific--its phenomenal infiniteness. There
is perhaps nothing on earth that can so directly, constantly and
convincingly give us the feeling of unboundedness, infinity even.
And it's not an imaginary or an abstract infiniteness, it's a
concrete one.
Yet, when we see the ocean, its extension is
clearly delimited by the horizon: a fine line that often seems
needle sharp. But this line plays its own tricks. For one thing, you
cannot determine how far away it is and how far therefore you are
seeing the expanse of the ocean. Also, whatever limitation it may
introduce, it's in any case the separating line of two infinities:
the ocean and the sky. Finally, the horizon indicates only where our
view ends, whereas the ocean does not end there but continues
stretching beyond. The horizon therefore shows our limitation, not
the ocean's. It even underlines the ocean's extension beyond our
possible reach. Compared to the ocean we are obviously very
shortsighted.
2b. 'Animal'
Another trait is the
Pacific Ocean's mightiness. It's hard to express how superior it is
to us. To me the Pacific Ocean appears like the hugest, most
impressive and unique animal I know, a kind of
hyper-animal.
It never rests, but is permanently active: it
is constantly breathing and pulsating, rocking its surface and
sending waves towards the mainland. It is permanently energetic, and
you cannot determine where singular activity originates from: waves
rise all of a sudden and run in towards the coast.
There is
permanent sound too. You always hear the ocean when you are at the
coast. And the melody it produces is not fancy; rather it's cosmic
power that you get to hear. To me, the Pacific Ocean is a kind of
cosmic animal.
Of course, when I speak of it as an animal,
I'm not using this term in the standard sense. According to the
latter, the ocean is not only not an animal but not even a living
thing on the lowest level, that of plants. It's just something
'inorganic.'
Yet, viewed from a phenomenological standpoint,
it is an animal. It is in permanent motion, and it creates this
motion by itself. Our standard categories of animate and inanimate
being are getting into trouble here.
Animal being, on the
standard definition, requires at least nourishment from elsewhere.
The ocean, however, feeds itself by evaporating water and then, once
it has fallen as rain, having it returned by the rivers. And the
innermost trait of an animal, according to the standard definition,
is that it possesses sensation and perception, that the ocean
obviously lacks completely. But why is this? Only beings that are
dependent and must hence react and adapt to their environment need
perception. The ocean is not such a meager, dependent being. It must
worry about nothing else, and so it has no need of perception. It is
itself the superior power. Is that to be regarded as less than being
dependent and having to find a niche?
The ocean seems to embody a
different dimension than that of what we usually designate
'animals.' The ocean is a creature of endless extent and with a
seemingly unlimited lifetime; yet it requires nothing, strives for
nothing, and is incomparably powerful; it is like a giant life on
earth, originating from another epoch and embodying a cosmic
measure.
One further point: This creature is not an
individual in the usual sense. It doesn't belong to a reproductive
chain, rather it is singular in its kind: there is no second or
third Pacific Ocean, and there never will be. The Pacific Ocean is
obviously an individual--but of a higher type than the accustomed,
reproduction-based individuality of plants, or animals, or us
humans.
What I want to point out here is that one obviously
cannot approach the ocean with the standard meaning of our
categories. According to them the ocean would not be an animal--and
yet it is somehow the most powerful animal. Similarly, its
individuality is not to be grasped with the standard understanding
of individuality, it calls rather for a higher concept of
individuality.
Perhaps the categories 'animal' and
'individual,' as we usually understand them, are undersized
conceptions. But then so too is our concept of the 'animal
rationale' and our pride in human individuality.
2c. The
ocean's relationship towards us
What about the ocean's
relationship towards us?
Phenomenally, the impression that
the ocean concerns us is unavoidable. The waves constantly come in
towards us. The ocean is active in our direction.
But it is
just as clear that the ocean wants nothing from us. If it receives
anything from us, then it throws it back: our cultural waste as well
as our corpses. In this respect the ocean is a relentless
civilizational diagnostician. You only have to go to a beach to see
our calling cards: car tires, plastic bags, pieces of scrap.
Delivery refused; return to sender. Refuse for the refuse society.
The ocean does not allow itself to be polluted.
The ocean is
of an incomparably greater scale than we are. It seems to belong to
a higher order, to stem from such--from a superior order not caring
about us at all.
And yet, as alien as this order seems to us,
it touches us, we feel attracted by it. Confronted with this being
that is greater than humans and the human scale, we feel compelled
to think beyond human limits. The Pacific seems to issue a call:
that perhaps we ought to reconsider the human condition, or at least
our accustomed understanding of it, that we ought to rethink our
concept of ourselves and maybe conceive of ourselves not merely in
human (or humanistic) terms, and, perhaps, that we even ought to
change our lives accordingly.
3. Between two
worlds
Let me be more explicit about this by reflecting
on what we do and what happens to us when we walk along the ocean's
coast.
We move between two different worlds there--strolling
along their borderline, in the zone where they meet and exchange
with one another. [2] There is the finite world that supports us and
in which we dwell on the one side, and an endless world in which we
cannot maintain ourselves and that yet fascinates and attracts us on
the other side.
So why do many of us enjoy walking along the
coast? Because it's beautiful or healthy, or because it makes a
change and is relaxing?
This is certainly also the case. But
there seems to be a deeper fascination too. And even someone who
just wants to take a relaxing stroll may sense something of
this.
Walking on the beach we move along the border between
two worlds, one being our home, the other an alien world. Yet we
feel that in some way the latter concerns us too. At least this
feeling can arise in us when we linger there for a longer period.
Maybe when walking along the beach, we move not only externally on
the border of two worlds, but also along an inner boundary of our
existence.
Aren't we indeed "citizens of two worlds"? And is
it not precisely this that we become aware of here?
There is
a habitable world, our home world to the left, on the land side, and
an uninhabitable, alien and eerie world to the right, on the ocean's
side; a finite world on the one side, and an infinite world on the
other; the accustomed world on the left, and a world that perhaps
awaits us on the right; a world of petty human bustle on the left,
and a world that breathes more deeply and seems of greater veracity
on the right. While walking, we indeed experience those two very
different worlds and participate in both of them.
But in the
evening at the latest we go back to the left, to our accustomed
world, to the land world, the bourgeois and societal world, our
home. This city world then absorbs us--with its pleasures, its
bustle, its tasks. And we tend to forget the other world and to take
our home world to be the true world.
We were in two worlds,
but now we only move still in one. We had gone out, had become
larger--open to an infinite world roused by the ocean. But then we
went back home and constricted ourselves to the city world. Did we,
by returning in such a manner, go astray--did we lose an important
part of ourselves, even our best part?
The ocean had roused
our cosmic side. It let us sense a side within us that is attached
to the infinite. Wasn't this evocation also a promise, one given to
us--and to be kept by us? What would a conception of the human
faithful to this promise be like?
4.
Familiarity
When I walk along the Pacific coast for
hours, my relationship to the sea, the beach, the rocks, the
animals, the clouds changes. I feel more and more as if they were
partners and companions, contemporaries and relatives.
It's
not only the view of these worldly things that is transformed but
the experience of oneself too. One loses the standard sense of time.
One's circulation slows down and one's thoughts become more
connected, less distinct, more symbiotic. As the world one is moving
in is symbiotic: Water, rocks, animals, wind, air and sand no longer
appear as neatly distinct entities, but rather as parts of a common
atmosphere, of a worldly and sensory symbiosis--that you are part of
too. The world is less segregated into single objects and more like
one being with various aspects.
One starts feeling like a
relative of all these phenomena, getting a glimpse--or even
evidence--of the communality of human and worldly things
altogether.
These things share the same time as we do, and
perhaps we all even share the same fate. We are all transient beings
that emerged in the course of the same evolution and largely through
the same conditions, and during those hours on the beach it becomes
obvious how much we humans are part of the same conditions as other
worldly beings.
When experiencing things this way, you will
no longer walk along the coast like a modern, autonomous subject,
dominantly observing beautiful or strange nature; rather, you will
feel like a being very similar to or perhaps the same kind as the
seal looking at you or the rock you are resting on.
Is there
truth in this feeling? I definitely think so.
Seen on an
earth-historical scale, we are entirely products of the evolution on
earth. The earth came into being about 4.5 billion years ago (the
cosmos 14 billion years ago). Life on earth originated almost 4
billion years ago. Mammals became prominent 12 million years ago.
Prehistoric man originated 7 million years ago, and homo sapiens
developed 200 thousand years ago. And the earth and its
atmosphere, the climate and the ocean were strong common
determinants in the emergence of those living things.
From
this perspective, it is perfectly understandable that these beings,
including ourselves, are relatives in a broad sense and have some
overlapping communalities. Awareness of this is just uncustomary,
but from the viewpoint of the sciences (the earth sciences and the
biological sciences) it would be simply natural.
Certainly,
when we are at the ocean nowadays, we go along the coastline and
have the water opposite us--as a realm that is not a potential realm
for human living. But were we not once fish? On some occasions, we
may even regain a sense of this earlier state. "Somewhere within
us", Joseph Brodsky wrote, "lives a dormant fish." [3] And biology
tells us that human embryos still exhibit gill slits and a tail
reflecting our evolution from fish.
There remain other traces
too of our evolutionary commonness with other products of evolution,
like our fabulous capacity to intuitively understand at least parts
of animal behavior (especially mammalian behavior)--a capacity that
seems so strange and incredible to any conception of the human based
on a non-natural distinction of the human (be it rationality or an
exclusive relationship with God), but is so natural on an
evolutionary view.
So the latter view substantiates the claim
that experiencing communality of the human with other worldly beings
is not an illusion: The claim makes good sense
scientifically.
My focus, however, is on this experience of
communality in itself and in its own right. To me, becoming aware of
the deep familiarity with other worldly beings that, as I said,
share the same conditions and, at least on a large scale, a fate
similar to ours, is of utmost importance. We are all occurrences in
this period of the earth's existence; we and those other creatures
are in the same boat. And whereas you could hardly feel this while
pursuing your life in the city and immersed in its practices, it can
become evident to you when you are amidst nature, and to me in
particular when I stroll along the Pacific Ocean.
Many of my
Western colleagues will object to the experiences described and the
view suggested that this is mere illusion and will soon turn out as
such. The work of fantasy disappears once, back at home, one sits
down to dinner or over one's books. The temporary exit from the city
world, from the world of communication between people, and the
isolation and the speechlessness between oneself and those beings
one got involved with while strolling along the coast were
artificial conditions allowing for that unusual view. But as soon as
these conditions are gone, the mirage dissolves and turns out to be
illusion. It gave a distorted, not the proper picture of
things.
To be sure: Experiences and views of the kind
mentioned--sensing the expanse of the ocean swell up within oneself,
intuiting that one is similar in kind to seals, rocks, or waves, and
seeing ourselves as deeply connected with the world, even as parts
of it all the way through--are fairly unaccustomed (at least in
Western thought). They appear 'romantic,' 'excessive' or half-mad
(or however this may be labeled). [4] Assessed from the standard
view--that of citizens, business people and academics--that is
indeed what they are.
But do we have any idea of the extent
to which, through this standard view, we tie ourselves to a certain
perspective on the world--and evaluate everything according to it?
We can get an idea of this when we go outside, and when we do this
persistently and for a long time. Unlike Socrates, however, who when
Phaedrus led him before the city gates in the region of Ilyssos,
where he saw in wonder natural things that he hardly seemed to know,
declared that such things cannot interest us since they don't teach
us anything--at least until we have found out what man is; for only
then would we manage to understand everything else aright. [5] I
consider this a foundational scene for city philosophy: it takes its
gates with it into the open. A later reflection of Socrates'
attitude is to be found in Diderot's typically modern statement that
"man is the unique concept from which we must start and to which we
must refer everything back." [6]
To be sure, one can proceed
in this way, and where this is the custom hardly any objection will
help. But one can also proceed differently. One can go into the open
liberally unencumbered--or with little baggage. And a few hours in
which we pause from the standard view may suffice to make a start
and allow us to drift into a different experiential state, one in
which we gain awareness of a relatedness with other beings and of a
previously undreamt of boundness with the world.
If one still
desires a companion when going into the open in this way, then the
Californian poet Robinson Jeffers might be such - for instance with
his recommendation "to uncenter our minds from ourselves, to
unhumanize our views a little, and to become confident as the rock
and ocean that we were made from." [7] Or, among philosophers, one
might choose Merleau-Ponty who compared himself with a wave: "one
crest among others and all the surrounding sea consisting of a ridge
of foam." [8]
The fact that, seen from the city world view,
the cosmic perspective appears to be mere illusion does not
invalidate it. Otherwise, the city world view could likewise be
declared mere illusion by the cosmic view. The fact that different
conditions stimulate different world-views does not discredit those
views. In many cases conditions just permit awareness of
things--without simply making them up. They have a disclosive
function, allowing us to realize something that would remain
occluded given other modes of access. It is true that the diverging
perspectives arising from different conditions are mostly blind for
each other. But what follows from this is that any fair evaluation
must be based on other grounds.
Completeness would be one
possible criterion. I take the city view to be restrictive. It
refers to just one side of our being, to the side of citizens
constructing a specifically human world, while omitting our cosmic
side and our being shaped by the world. [9] The cosmic view, on the
other hand, is able to include the city one (seeing those human
efforts, and human technology in particular, as our means to secure
human survival on this planet and perhaps beyond it). So while the
city view excludes the cosmic view, the latter includes the former
one. In being more comprehensive it is superior.
Maybe future
generations will develop a paradigm of human existence no longer
aligned to citizenship (an approach that has typified philosophy for
more than 2000 years), but that allows our world-connectedness and
our relatedness with other beings to flourish. I don't speak as a
prophet here; I am not forecasting anything; I am only taking the
liberty of questioning something and advocating something different.
[10]
5. Outlook
I guess you will understand by
now what I am driving at with my reflections on the Pacific Ocean.
Experiences of the kind described can, I think, help us to leave the
accustomed picture of the human condition behind us. At least the
one suggested by Western, and in particular by modern, philosophy:
that of the human as being primordially autonomous and opposed to
the world, not connected with it: res cogitans as opposed to
res extensa. This anthropological assumption--that we are
primordially alien to the world--constitutes the first part of the
Western fiction. And the second, epistemological part follows from
this. It is assumed that we are the ones who then, secondarily,
establish our relationship with the world; that we do so from our
side alone; and that it is--miraculously enough--precisely through
that essentially non-worldly capacity called 'mind' that we are able
hook on to the world.
I take this picture of the human as
originally standing opposed to the world--man against the rest of
the world--to be fundamentally misguided. Even cognition is
misconstrued when it is omitted that all our cognitive and
linguistic reference to objects thrives on a prelinguistic
disclosure and acquaintance with things, one deriving from
primordial world-connectedness, that for its part stems from our
being evolutionary products of the same processes in which the
things we have contact with came into being. Through cognition and
language alone we would never get to objects. It's rather our
primordial world-connectedness that allows for this.
This is
what my exposition on the Pacific Ocean is ultimately all about:
that experiencing the coastal world and the ocean can give us a
strong sense of our deep connectedness with the world.[11] At bottom
we aren't, as modernity claims, autonomous subjects opposed to the
world. No, at bottom we are world-connected beings and we are so, I
guess, even on a very large scale, on a cosmic scale. This is the
lesson the Pacific Ocean has taught me and that my reflections were
meant to gratefully reflect.
Endnotes
1.
Robinson Jeffers, "Carmel Point," in The Collected Poetry of
Robinson Jeffers, ed. Tim Hunt, vol. 3 (1938-1962) (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1991), part III: "Hungerfield" (1948-53),
pp.313-408; ref. on p. 399.
2. Of course, when we walk along
the coast our position seems to lie not exactly between these
worlds, but to be one-sidedly shifted in favor of the land side (we
are, after all, walkers not swimmers). But this strip of land on
which we are walking is shaped by the ocean in an extreme way. In
its formation the ocean had the active part, the earth the passive
one. To some extent one is walking along the temporary line of
compromise drawn by the ocean. The beach is the strip that the ocean
has decisively wrested from the land. And the ocean continues to
show its power over the land. Within a few months changes in shape
can come about that make a beach unrecognizable: it used to be the
most magnificent sandy beach, now you find a stony lunar landscape.
And coastal residents are aware of the constant threat of the
sea--even of the `peaceful' sea, the Pacific: all of a sudden it can
engulf entire cliffs along with the human estates on them. So at the
coast we might well walk on a strip of land, but it is so to speak
oceanic land. So we walk indeed, as far as is possible, at the
border of the two worlds.
3. Joseph Brodsky, "Lullaby of Cape
Cod" (1975), in A Part of Speech (New York: Farrar, Straus,
Giroux, 1980),pp.107-118; ref. on p. 110.
4. In fact, my view
differs from the romantic one. The Romantics were ultimately
humanizing the world and thus cutting it one more time down to human
size.
5. "I'm a lover of learning, and trees and open country
won't teach me anything, whereas men in the town do" (Plato,
Phaedrus, 230 d). "... I can't as yet `know myself,' as the
inscription at Delphi enjoins, and so long as that ignorance remains
it seems to me ridiculous to inquire into extraneous matters"
(ibid., 229 e - 230 a).
6. "Une considération surtout
qu'il ne faut point perdre de vue, c'est que si l'on bannit l'homme
ou l'être pensant & contemplateur de dessus la surface de la
terre, ce spectacle pathétique & sublime de la nature n'est plus
qu'une scène triste & muette. L'univers se tait; le silence
& la nuit s'en emparent. Tout se change en une vaste solitude où
les phénomènes inobservés se passent d'une manière obscure &
sourde. C'est la présence de l'homme qui rend l'existence des êtres
intéressante;...L'homme est le terme unique d'où il faut partir,
& auquel il faut tout ramener" (Denis Diderot, "Encyclopédie"
[1755], in: Diderot, Œuvres complètes, vol. VII:
Encyclopédie III, Paris: Hermann, 1976, pp.174-262; ref. on
p. 212 f.). The only difference from Socrates is that in Diderot's
case the outside is not nature in front of the city gates but the
whole cosmos beyond the earth.
7. Robinson Jeffers, "Carmel
Point" (from "Hungerfield", 1948-53), in The Collected
Poetry of Robinson Jeffers, ed. Tim Hunt, vol. 3 (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1991), p. 399.
8. As reported by
Jean-Paul Sartre in his obituary: "Il se comparaît volontiers à une
vague: une crête parmi d'autres et toute la mer debout tenant dans
un ourlet d'écume" (Jean-Paul Sartre, "Merleau-Ponty Vivant", in:
Les Temps Modernes, numéro special: Merleau-Ponty; 17, no.
184-85, 1961,pp.304-376; ref. on p. 310 f.).
9. I experienced
one of the most revealing surprises while searching for literature
on the Pacific Ocean. I was looking for books that connected myths
and tales, reflection and facts, imagination and photos. Although
there are thousands of titles, nothing of the kind sought was to be
found. Next to purely scientific works, they were mainly
'ecological.' One is concerned about the maintenance of the sea and
its inhabitants or coastal zones. The perspective is unbelievably
'human,’ 'city'-like, not to say small-minded. Concern for the ocean
is a concern for people. The ocean is thus underestimated in every
respect, even in an ecological respect. Time and time again the
damage done by humans and the importance of human salvage measures
are exaggerated. As if the ocean's sovereignty--its power of
self-purification for instance--had not long since taught us better
(remember the blatantly false assessments that followed the Exxon
Valdez tanker accident in 1989). The alarming prognoses are
certainly good for increasing the profile of the eco-sector and for
the creation of corresponding jobs. But the superiority of the sea
manifests itself even in that it must be far less concerned about
the damages done by us humans than we think; it eliminates them far
quicker than we believe and does not require our help to do so. In
brief, the literature I found says a lot about human preoccupations,
but hardly anything about the ocean.
10. Cf. my paper "Art
Transcending the Human Pale--Towards a Transhuman Stance," given at
the International Congress of Aesthetics, "Aesthetics in the 21st
Century," Makuhari (Tokyo), August 27-31, 2001 (International
Yearbook of Aesthetics, vol. 5, 2001, pp. 3-23; The
Aesthetics of Japan, No. 34, 2002, pp. 106-125).
11. In
this, my view is very different from Kant's theory of the
sublime--to which it might appear similar at first glance. Kant's
theory comprises two aspects (both already expressed in the
"Conclusion" of his Critique of Practical Reason that is most
significant for his view of the sublime). According to Kant's
assessment of the sublime, we feel, on the one hand, physically
completely insignificant, a lack of any chance against the power of
nature, while, on the other hand, we have a sense of ourselves as
intellectually elevated to our true nature, to our "intelligible
character," one unable to be entirely affected by the physical world
but completely superior to it. On my view, neither of these aspects
applies: We feel neither physically annihilated by the physical
world nor intellectually superior to it, and the result of the
experiences described is, above all, not a flight from the physical
world into an intellectual one. It's quite the opposite: We are led
to experience our deep connectedness with the world--in a physical
as well as an intellectual respect. According to Kant, the
experience of the sublime takes us beyond the physical world; on my
view experiencing the ocean and the coastal world connects us with
the world.
Prof. Dr. Wolfgang
Welsch
Friedrich-Schiller-Universitaet Jena
Institut fuer
Philosophie
wolfgang.welsch@uni-jena.de
http://www.uni-jena.de/welsch/
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