Mysterium Tremendum et Fascinans episode artwork

EPISODE · Oct 22, 2025 · 47 MIN

Mysterium Tremendum et Fascinans

from Failure Is Freedom · host https://www.martinessig.com

Rudolph Otto explained that the "numinous" was an experience of something that was not reducible to rational explanation. These uncanny experiences were both terrifying and compelling. For Jacques Lacan the effect of the Real on the Symbolic also produced an uncanny mismatch between what could be known and what resisted semiotic revelation. No signifier could contain all of the meaning of whatever it purported to disclose through language, especially the intention of the Other, which was a reflection of our own failure to represent our intention in a complete way. In the "noetic" experience one intuits something that they can't name. Jean-Luc Marion's "Saturated Phenomena" were noetic because he described them as having "more than enough intuition for the intention." One could not intend all that she intuited when there was too much given for aboutness to contain. The symptom-like attempt to contain the divine by representing its intentions is the job of priests and the pious, but the awful wonder of the numinous and the noetic demand the respect of an open sort of representation design to fail.https://www.martinessig.com I mix the mixtapes that I post here but...,Baddass vibes mixed by James Reeves of Midnight Radio: jamesreeves.co for the intro and outro music of most episodes.

Rudolph Otto explained that the "numinous" was an experience of something that was not reducible to rational explanation. These uncanny experiences were both terrifying and compelling. For Jacques Lacan the effect of the Real on the Symbolic also produced an uncanny mismatch between what could be known and what resisted semiotic revelation. No signifier could contain all of the meaning of whatever it purported to disclose through language, especially the intention of the Other, which was a re...

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Mysterium Tremendum et Fascinans

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Rudolph Otto explained that the "numinous" was an experience of something that was not reducible to rational explanation. These uncanny experiences were both terrifying and compelling. For Jacques Lacan the effect of the Real on the Symbolic also...

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