‘Immediacy’ in Whitehead and Blaga

In Whitehead’s metaphysics there is a concept of ‘immediacy’ which is interesting to interpret in relation to the concept of ‘immediacy’ found in Lucian Blaga’s metaphysics. Immediacy stands in opposition to the wholeness of existence and the complexity of reality in both thinkers. In Whitehead, immediate experience is merely a facet of the constructed series of events and processes fundamental for existence and reality and for connecting our objective, scientific and logical descriptions of the world, and the more everyday world of subjective experience. In Blaga, immediacy is the label for limited (animal-like) existence deprived of the metaphysical dimension. However, in Blaga, man is defined by the metaphysical dimension and thus, in terms closer to Whitehead’s view, always engaged in a crusade to comprehend both ‘physical multiplicity’ (the World) and ‘the infinite ground of all mentality’ (God), which is consonant with Blaga’s concept of man’s defining situation within ‘the horizon of mystery’. Both metaphysics accepted a perspective, or, an interpretation of the idea that God creates the World as well as the World creating God. In our view, the Unmoved Mover image of God remains as a ‘trace’ in the idea of permanent reference for the World. This is comparable with the perspective found in the metaphysics of Lucian Blaga, where the metaphysical center, the ‘Great Anonymous,’ ‘pushes’ backwards the human being, via limitative ‘divine differentials’ occasioning the limiting stylistic matrices for the creative and intrusive ontological and metaphysical drive of man.