An A–Zworld of noumena – the unknown ‘thing in itself’. Kant called
this transcendental idealism, meaning that the noumenal world
can be inferred from reason but is itself another order of being.
By subtle and circuitous routes in his Critiques he sought to
describe exactly what can be said by reason and what cannot.
Ultimately, he saw the identifi cation of the noumenal world as
evidence for the existence of God – because it is unknown.
L – is for love
In the Symposium, Plato records two myths that tell of the
origins of love. They present diametrically opposed conceptions
of desire.
The fi rst is put into the mouth of Aristophanes. At fi rst, he
says, people were whole. They looked like wheels – rounded
and complete. But, being mortals, they were hugely ambitious.
They planned an attempt on the gods, an invasion of heaven.
Needless to say, they did not succeed and Zeus punished them
by cutting them in two, so that they would lose their strength.
As he cut them, Apollo turned their heads around so that they
could see the wound.
Next though, looking at what he had done, Zeus took pity
upon the lost, dismembered halfl ings. So, he moved their geni-
tals around too, placing them beneath their heads, in order
to provide a way for them to reconnect with their lost halves
and see the joy in the other half’s face as it happened. This is
the origin of love: to fi nd the lost half of our original whole, to
make one out of two, and heal the pain of loneliness and alien-
ation. The power of love is nothing less than the desire to be
made complete. The ecstasy of love-making is the annihilation
of the separate self in the other.
This myth captures the irresistible nature of love very well.
It conveys the extraordinary lengths people will go to for love,
the blindness that lovers have to their own faults and the world
around them, and the agony that they go through should they
be separated once more.