Abstract

Beginning with Anaximenes, philosophers have adopted spirit-words to identify that which is of commanding significance for understanding and living human life. So again here. To be a spiritual being is to be one for whom the first and final determiner of meaning is the question of how best to live in relationship with other beings, preeminently other intenders. Since parties to relationship transcend comprehension, the spirit-as-mind (nous) tradition rests on a fundamental mistake. Validity structures like rationality and culture function as provisional answers to the essentially open question of relationship and are misunderstood if abstracted from it.