In Search of the Transcendent

What is the transcendent? One early sense appears in Augustine, who speaks of self-transcendence: “We came to our own minds, and went beyond them, that we might arrive at that region of unfailing plenty.” Long before Kant, and long before Eliade’s hierophanies, it troubled the first mystics and theologians; it still troubles us today. In the modern age, cinema has often proved the most eloquent instrument, and the most fitting refuge, for those who sought to express the attainment of that “unfailing plenty.” Film became the ideal meeting point of religion and metaphysics. Read more