Those of the first type try to see into eternity by piercing the veil of space and time. They attempt to look beyond this world. The mystics and religious contemplatives are of this type. A second type is content to view the world of space, time, and matter under the aspect of eternity. Not a look beyond the world into eternity, but at it from an eternal point of view. Some philosophers are of this type. One thinks of Spinoza. His amor dei intellectualis is an intellectual love of God or nature, deus sive natura.
The latter is a God's eye view of the world, the former a view of God. The genitive construction is a genitivus objectivus. One naturally thinks of the visio beata of the doctor angelicus.
(There I go alliterating again. A stylistic defect? And peppering one's prose with foreign expressions is considered by some to be stylistically suboptimal, pretentious perhaps.)
Recent Comments