Arquebus

This is a review, by E.C. Quodlibet, of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's "The Phenomenon of Man", with a special eye towards the question of the Absolute, what Teilhard calls "Omega". Two Perspectives on the Absolute A great spiritual conflict is raging. Whether one takes it to correspond to a real difference of ineffable truths as they are variously experienced by competing traditions or resides in a merely interpretive issue (which itself would be perhaps to fall on one side of the debate), the conflict itself is clearly of great importance. The advocates of eternity tend towards an ineffability through and through, a more or less pure apophantic Absolute, while the partisans of duration decry such an ‘Absolute’ as an otherworldly nihilation of the quite effable facts of world and experience. It is here that Pierre Teilhard de Chardin takes his stand, elaborated in such a visionary manner in The Phenomenon of Man. For this Jesuit, the first and most