Online research in philosophy

The desert is an experience before it is a figure or a concept. The experience of the desert is prior to any figure or concept, and in itself it is without figure or concept. Yet its emptiness is not therefore abstract but, to the contrary, vital. The emptiness of the desert, like the emptiness of God, coincides with an immeasurable plenitude. The words and actions that we live from presuppose the desert in which they are at once indispensable and unsatisfying.

Considered from a certain distance, the French word jetable—throwable—connotes a susceptibility to movement by greater forces in which we may detect the sign of our vulnerability. This vulnerability is not only a defining feature of our spiritual being but is also felt in our relation to economic and ecological conditions that strike us in our physical being. Since our being is inseparably spiritual and physical, it is necessary to remain vigilant not only against a physicalism that would forget spiritual hunger, (...) but also against a spiritualism that is too little concerned with physical suffering. (shrink)