Seizing the Essence: A Value Cosmology for the Modernist

SEIZING THE ESSENCE is about the dynamics of Value that form man´s concept of reality. Human beings don't just passively experience the things and events that represent this journey through life; they construct them intellectually from the sense of value that is intrinsic to cognizant creatures. We don't simply enjoy the finer things in life, we aspire to them; and when awed by the experience of great beauty or magnificence, we want to identify with its source. As the created agents of Essence, we intellectualize its value by experiencing it as differentiated reality. Experiencing Value as representational objects in a relational world affirms the Absolute Value of our uncreated source.

The tragedy of our materialistic age is that we have mistaken our differentiated, space/time existence for ultimate reality, with the result that we have lost much of our innate value-sensibility. The mindset of most people today has been shaped by objectivists who insist that man is totally a product of biological and cultural evolution. Fueled by Darwin's Origin of the Species, the objectivists have thrown the babe out with the bathwater. "Selfness" is today regarded as a myth of dubious origin, and material reality is believed to be primary to one's awareness of it.

SEIZING THE ESSENCE makes the case that all knowledge is proprietary to the self, and that physical reality is an intellectual construct of Value which is the individual´s perspective of Essence. The author bases his cosmology on a principle first postulated by the 15th century logician Nicholas of Cusa which deals with a "not-other" that is the coincidence of all otherness. Cusa´s theory affords the philosopher a dialectic handle by which to relate finite experience to the Oneness of Essence. It leads logically to a cosmology in which physical existence is a virtual reality created largely by man, who is the cognizant agent of his estranged Essence.

Essentialism is an original philosophy that embraces the spirituality of Judeo-Christianity and Eastern mysticism, yet is grounded in a metaphysical cosmology that is non-dogmatic, logically plausible, and far more vital to contemporary man. A central message of this book is that, although values drive mankind, it is man´s free choices that determine the course of history. In addition to chapters describing our "real world mentality" and man's historical search for the "stuff of reality", the author offers "A Modernist´s Guide to Values" complete with a strategy for achieving an "authentic society". Included is an extended glossary of names and special terms that are relevant to the Philosophy of Essence.