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Philip K. Dick's Analysis

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Philip K. Dick’s exegesis, above being a theological exploration, is a philosophical and cosmological investigation into the world and being. Philip K. Dick attempts to understand his own being and his surrounding world by alluding to the existing knowledge of the past while arriving at something new on his own. My Focus on this paper is on an excerpt of his work from pages 606 to 608 that mainly focuses on three themes. These themes that reappear throughout his work include the concept of time and a time outside of time, as we understand it, the distinction of the phenomenal and the noumenal realm of existence and the interaction of the two, and the unitary nature of the world and the divine. My aim in this paper is to carefully comprehend …show more content…

He opens his passage by asserting, “and yet there is a further level of reality disclosed by sacred time and realm governed within that time…a kosmos…[that] is being completed, self-completed, from the flux process visible in mundane time” (Dick 606). As it is evident, Dick has two distinct conceptions of time, namely the ‘mundane time’ and the ‘sacred time’ as he refers to them. This twofold conception of time dates back to the ancient Greece, as they had two different notions of time. Ancient Greeks called these two concepts Kairos and Chronos. In his work, Democracy’s Gift, Canadian Philosopher Mark Kingwell describes Chronos time as “everyday, (ii) profane, (iii) homogeneous, (iv) linear, (v) horizontal, and (vi) egalitarian” (12). It is the time that we measure, understand, and perceive as time. This time is the commonly accepted concept of time that we encounter in everyday life. In a sense, this is what Dick refers to as the ‘mundane time’ in his …show more content…

This argument implicitly denies the freedom of the will of humans, and claims that we as beings are hard-wired to follow along a certain path. Essentially, he does this in several occasions such as claiming that “ each individual human being is programmed uniquely in terms of (1) the signals he can and will encounter during his life, and (2) according to the unique and special purpose set for him by his creator” (71). Dick either has to deny that humans have any freedom of the will and agency as a being, or has to justify his assertion by finding a way around this claim. There is however some improvement upon this argument where Dick claims, “what we are talking about then…is the Tao, which is real but does not exist, yet registers on (mildly shapes) what does exist” (729). This is certainly a departure from the original comment by Dick as he changes his word from ‘programmed’ into ‘mildly shapes’, thus allowing for some type of agency for human beings as

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