Scientific Enlightenment, Div. One Book 2: Human Enlightenment of the First Axial 2.A.1. A Genealogy of Testamental Religions Chapter 1: The Linear Historicity of the First mode of Salvation ACADEMY | previous section | Table of Content | next section | GALLERY

Copyright © 2003, 2004, 2005 by Lawrence C. Chin. All rights reserved. This work may not be copied or translated in part or in whole without the written permission of the author, except for brief excerpts in relation to review or research use and when proper reference is given.

In this book we follow Voegelin in asserting that history (spiritual history that is) is the supra-civilizational, universal drama of progressive approximation to the right order of existence through increasingly differentiated attunement with the order of Being. (This Voegelinian order of existence, whether on the level of community or person, corresponds to -- after the differentiation into salvational forms -- my "minor salvation".) We add further that "attunement" moved into the realm of salvational mode (and enlightenment in the case of philosophy, the second mode) after the classical phase of the cosmological civilizations. Moreover, enlightenment in the end should take the form of scientific enlightenment. The first two statements, however, require commentary.

Firstly, Voegelin clearly has in mind to argue against Oswald Spengler's isolationist viewpoint when he says that "...the differentiation of the experiences of order does not run its course within a concrete society, or within the societies of only one civilization, but extends through a plurality of societies in time and space, in a world-historic process in which the various civilizations participate to their allotted measure." (Israel and Revelation, p. 60) At the same time, the world-historical, supracivilizational process of differentiation of consciousness does not mean a hierarchy in which the lower forms of civilization (e.g. Egypt or China) were mere spring-boards for the higher forms (e.g. the West) or that the lower forms were arrested in development while the higher forms developed to the fullest (c.f. Hegel's philosophy of history or Humboldt's taxonomy of language-types). The reality is somewhere between Spengler's complete incommensurability between disparate civilizations (although all identical in growth cycle) and the strictly evolutionary or hierarchical latter. Some civilizations were indeed arrested in development, such as the Mesopotamian; some differentiated but came to a halt, such as Egypt; some differentiated far but the path of differentiation curved under the critical line of complete breakthrough (change of civilizational form), such as China; while some differentiated progressively in a straightforward linear way to break through the critical line and change civilizational forms altogether, such as the West. The problem is further complicated by the fact that the differentiation of the consciousness of a civilization (its experience of order) does not necessarily match the differentiation in socio-economic organization of the same civilization.

Secondly, the issue is even more complicated by the fact of the divergence of the individual from the social whole in terms of differentiation of consciousness during the first differentiation process occurring in the cosmological civilizations which marked the beginning of human salvation: persons of special talent such as philosophers and prophets differentiated in their consciousness to much greater degree than the rest of population so as to embark on the path toward enlightenment or a deeper, salvational religiousness, while the latter, differentiated or not, still remained within the bound of the traditional civilizational form. This divergence resulted in stratification of a society's general consciousness and broke the homogeneity across the mindset of all society's members that characterized earlier societies. These two issues will be of great importance when considering the rise of testamental religions and philosophies out of the cosmological myth.

Still a third factor: When philosophies and testamental religions differentiated out of the compact cosmological myth as attempts at resolution of the tension that was starting to emerge within the cosmological civilizations, these attempts may be loosely categorized into the two basic types: resolution through work or grace, i.e. the second or the first mode of salvation, as indicated. Resolution through work was work of attunement, and, as seen, this was the most common; philosophies around the world belong here. Resolution through grace characterizes Christianity (or late Yahweh religiousness).

But in this section we are concerned with the testamental religions. To that end we will discuss how differentiation occurred in the cosmological civilizations of Persia and Egypt, the rise of historical order of Israel, and finally the differentiation within the Chinese cosmological order which was the most complex. (The Mesopotamian, on the other hand, is barren of all differentiations.)

1. Incomplete differentiation in the Persian and the Egyptian case (following Eric Voegelin)

Differentiation in the Achaemenian cosmological order occurred with the incorporation of Zoroastrianism, which, however, did not shaken the fundamental cosmological framework. What it did was the polarization of the cosmic order into a field of perpetual struggle between the forces of good and forces of evil. The empire remained a microcosm of such cosmos, so that now the Achaemenian king was the representative of Ahuramazda (the force of good) attempting to spread the god's truth, light and peace (i.e. conquering its neighbors) while the resistance of the neighbors to the king's conquest became representative of Ahriman who was the god of lie, discord and darkness. Voegelin (ibid.) explains that this is essentially a rational, i.e. differentiative extrapolation within the cosmological myth and did not differentiate enough to break the bound of the myth. Otherwise a singularity of divinity (such as the one God of Israel, or the Good of Plato) would be the result and a re-ordering of man's soul (i.e. re-orientation of the person's existence: minor salvation) the correlative of the singularity, as we shall see in Israel and Hellas. The gods or the divine forces remained immanent within the cosmos, no transcendence achieved, although plurality had been considerably reduced through polarization. But differentiation that would break the form would result in singularity, with the consequent (inexplicable) problem of the existence of evil that would cause anxiety in the spiritual person, but which was not an issue for the less differentiated consciousness. There was thus neither a transition of the "state religion" to salvational eschatology nor the appearance of philosophers (Plato, Buddha, Laozi, Zhuangzi) proclaiming a salvational personal life-mode. The maintenance of order in society through the mediated infusion of the divine principle of order (like pumping energy into an ordered system far from equilibrium) remained symbolized by "truth", "light", symbols of order, and did not differentiate into the minor salvation of either the elected community waiting for the end of history (Christian) or the philosopher-monk waiting for death (e.g. "final Nibbana").

Now Egypt, wherein differentiation went a bit farther though without breaking the cosmological form. Differentiation frequently, but not always, occurred in cosmological civilizations during time of institutional breakdowns and social chaos -- not always, because in some instances differentiation occurred in peaceful times. Furthermore, differentiation may break the bounds of the cosmological myth completely to create a new civilizational form, or it may not -- this is where Egypt falls, but it went farther than the Persian -- or it may create mixed forms -- this is China (later). Differentiations occurred in Egypt especially during the two intermediate periods when the pharaonic institutions disintegrated and social chaos followed. Institutional breakdowns tended to incite feelings of despair within sensitive individuals who were easily influenced by the fall from justice and decline of morals happening all around. The experiential background of morals and justice, as said, was the experience of order, here relevantly the order of complex system far from equilibrium, and the social humans in this circumstance of order functioned well like cogs in a machine, producing social order at large and generating among themselves the psychologically comfortable feeling of firstly communal fellowship and secondly attunement with the cosmos and hence the spiritual sense of participation in divine justice which is equilibrium in the most general, undifferentiated sense. The disorder caused by social breakdowns prompted individuals to lose faith in the cosmologically ordered political order and to seek new forms that would better adjust to the state of affairs (eventually, breakthrough to salvational mode). It did not happen immediately, for techniques traditional within the cosmological form would be tried first, with reinforced vigour (such as more intense offerings to the gods or ancestral spirits to appease them; this for example was the most typical means the Shang kings in China used during times of troubles), until proven futile, thence the search for new order. That is, when people's beliefs were falsified by reality, they sought out new models to adjust to newly emergent reality, just as scientists today search for new theoretical model when the traditional one becomes falsified by experimental results. Usually a prophet or savior appeared to expound the new model in place of the cosmological form: differentiation reached the fullest extent so as to break the bounds of the original form. But no prophet or savior appeared during the two intermediate periods or the three thousand years of Egyptian history, although precursors to prophet and savior were plenty. The church of Osiris of the first intermediate period did not blossom into a community under God like in Israel or Christianity. The "Song of the Harper" of the same period made mockery of former kings lying ineffectively in the pyramid, questioned if the souls had ever gone anywhere at all, and suggested material hedonism as the only worthwhile enterprise (concentrate on this life and forget the afterlife). Differentiation of consciousness was well on its way, and faith in the cosmological, pharaonic order virtually evaporated. However, when the pharaonic order was restored, faith continued, and so consciousness retreated within the bounds of the cosmological myth. Voegelin cites another example from the same period, a poem titled "Dispute of a Man, Who Contemplates Suicide, with His Soul" (ibid., p. 98 -101), wherein, because of depression about the moral degeneracy of people all around, the author argues with the soul about committing suicide, which he sees as the only moral solution. For "[i]n the beyond, the man will be a living god who can help in repairing the evils of society by punishing criminals, restoring worship and offerings in the temples, and effectively appealing to the god." (ibid., p. 100) One sees here that the solution and the conceptions in it (be a living god in beyond, restore offerings) were traditional within the cosmological form, no break-out in sight.

Other signs of differentiation within the Egyptian mythic form occurred very early on in the very beginning of Egyptian civilization and attained greater complexity than in the Achaemenian empire, but again remained extrapolation within the bounds of the myth. The most impressive example of this was the Memphite theology of the Old Kingdom. Its purpose was to elevate the god Ptah of Memphis above Atum and other gods in order to legitimate the rule of Memphis. To re-place Ptah in the very beginning of the theogonic process of the progressive begetting of one god by another, the authors faced the problem of creation ex nihilo, which they solved by tending toward understanding the process as spiritual, with the line: "[something]-in-the-form [like eidos, the Platonic form] of Atum became, in the heart, and became, on the tongue [of Ptah]." Despite its philosophic sounding, insofar as the conception of god and the cosmos remained the cosmological forms, the piece was the sort of rationalistic speculation and extrapolation latent in the shamanistic core of the cosmological form, just as was, as said, the so-called monotheism within the so-called polytheistic mythic-shamanism.

Another instance came from the New Kingdom, before Akhenaton; this hymn to Atum describes Atum as shutting Egypt off from the rest of the world as a way of protection; and furthermore, it resolves the immanent struggle between the forces of good and evil, represented by Horus and Set, by appealing to a higher divine being, Atum, and in such manner approaches the Israelite idea of God for a chosen people (now Egyptians) who live in perfect attunement with the transcendent divinity. But it essentially does all this within the compactness of the cosmological experience, for linear historicity is not differentiated as in Israel, but remains folded in compactness (ibid., p. 71; see below for the differentiation of linear historicity).

The sort of monotheistic or transcendent divinity (monotheism/ polytheism being invalid distinction, as said) that crystallized in Israel also occurred, most notably in Akhenaton's Amarna revolution. The god Aton, whom Akhenaton elevated to the highest in rebellion against and at the expense of the Amon priestly order of Thebes, was also described in messianic phraseology, as herdsman driving cattle of his creation, and furthermore as the god of all peoples, not just the Egyptians. By the time of the New Kingdom, Egyptians' cosmological faith had eroded after over a thousand year of breakdowns, restorations, invasions, etc.: "A ruler of the New Kingdom was no longer Menes, who, in the flush of his creative victory, could shuffle the gods to suit his conquest. He was more humbly an instrument of the gods, by their grace chosen to restore and preserve a millennial order not of his making, an order that had more than once been mismanaged by his predecessors. The eclipses of the political regime had diminished the prestige of the pharaoh in relation to the lasting regime of the gods; and correspondingly the prestige of the priesthood of the lasting gods had noticeably increased." (Ibid., 102) Hence the revolt against the Thebean priesthood which dominated the political scene, and hence the renewal of the Pharaonic authority/ divinity through relation with a highest god that no one else had access to. The empire of the New Kingdom that included peoples of Western Asia also meant that other peoples than one's own needed to be taken into account; this, awareness of the need of universalism, was another common motor behind differentiation. But Akhenaton's revolution died with him in one generation, without transforming the Egyptian form in a lasting way.

The cosmological myth in its compactness already contained all the substances to be developed into new forms in the process of differentiation. For example, the different gods worshipped at the cult centers of Egypt, such as Atum of Heliopolis (power of the sun), Ptah of Memphis (of earth), and Amon of Thebes (of wind), corresponded to Ionian philosophers' fire, earth, water, and air as the elements of Being. We see then that the differentiation of the cosmological myth could go on the two paths toward either a transcendental divinity with historicity and the re-ordering of the believers' soul as its immanent correlative, which tendency we have already seen emerging in Egypt and will see blossoming through Israel (and not completely in China), or a speculative metaphysics with the cosmos seen in its mechanistic transparency and devoid of the interpersonal relations among gods and humans, as among the Presocratics and the Daoists in China. That is, the diverging differentiation from the cosmological mythic form in either the first or the second mode. Note that the linear history of differentiation is only valid as a general pattern, as the main trunk with branching-offs at each stage. Furthermore, as Voegelin notes, differentiation "is not an unqualified good." (Ibid., p. 84) Transcendentalism was lost in the Ionian philosophy, for example (but regained by Parmenides and Plato). Historicism appeared only in the first mode but failed to disengage in the second mode in all quarters (Hellas, India, and China) -- not that it was such a good thing. Only rarely was the entire substance of the cosmological myth retained in its differentiated new form, as in Plato. (The further differentiation of philosophy into positivism [science and propositional and "analytic" philosophy] contains the most deplorable consequences, as we shall see later.)

2. The problem of "linear time" engendered by the Israelite historical mode (understanding "linear time" on the phylogenic level by analogy with its constitution on the ontogenic level as illustrated by Heidegger)

Now the rise of the historical order of Israel. Many strands of traditions and cultic legends went into the composition of the Old Testament in the early part of the first Millennium B.C., but the Testament on the whole conveys a process of differentiation from the cosmological milieu to constitute a historical form which will be called here "linear historicity" and which is an important concept in understanding civilizations. Linear historicity is important not because it is opposed to some "circular time" of the cosmological civilizations or primitive tribes (for there is no such thing as circular time; see below) nor because the Old Testament is a unique piece of historical writing: in form it is a typical piece of historiogenesis, as Voegelin names it: a symbolism that traces the origin of a society from its budding in the origin of the cosmos down to the current state, in an effort to make it a permanent part of the unfolding of cosmos (c.f. The Ecumenic Age). Since the first Sumerian King List (ca. 2050 B.C.) every civilization has produced an "old testament" for itself. China had Record of Books (Shujing), Records of Poetry (Shejing), and Su Ma-qien's Grand Historical Records; the Japanese had Kojiki and Nihonshuki; the Persians had Ferdowsi's Shahnameh (Book of Kings); the Scandinavians had Snorri Sturluson's Heimskringla (a record of the lives of the kings of Norway). Israel's historical form has special status because in Israel it was not merely an ordering principle for the collective but eventually differentiated into a medium of salvation and also because it after that continued to differentiate to result in Christianity (eschatology: salvational history) which, after its loss of substance due to the transition to the structural perspective, finally differentiated into the pseudo-salvational evolutionary systems in the West such as Hegelianism or Marxism, Nazism or communism (the "gnosis" of nation-states, in Voegelin's words) and even (cultural) feminism. The meaning of these two points will be better appreciated when we turn to a discussion of the constitution of linear historicity in China, where, once constituted, history did not differentiate further into a vehicle of salvation (first mode) but where, instead, the second mode of salvation emerged on top of, next to, and finally mixed with the constituted historicity (!). Two points more need be made: the tribal peoples are the only ones that can be safely assumed to not possess some degree of linear historicity, probably because of lack of writing; secondly, salvation does not have to be effected through the medium of history; in fact it usually doesn't, as noted. And historicity is not correlative with the adequacy of a mode of salvation: Judaism and Christianity, whose specialness as salvational mode came from their historicity, were according to our criterions here dead-ends (primitive, low level) in the history of human salvation.

Linear historicity does not come from circular time, but rather is differentiated temporality that is differentiated out of un-differentiated temporality. Undifferentiated temporality is linear time but undifferentiatedly so, formed from moments merely juxtaposed together in a chain continuing indefinitely without these moments constituting a coherent, directional whole. This type of temporality produces the annalistic historiography that enumerates the succession of kings or exposes their genealogy and which a people, when first emerging into a cosmological kingdom from tribal existence, usually started producing. Then typically the linearity or totality inherent in such annalistic history would be differentiated out, when a definite direction of the flow of history was seen, from the standpoint of the present, extending into the future, and this directionality re-ordered all past events, again from the standpoint of the present, as meaningful in the manner of a gradual unfolding toward a goal which was the directionality of history. In other words, the juxtaposition of moments was re-constituted as a totality from a "present". The undifferentiated temporality then was the early "stage" of the present when the directionality inherent in temporality was not yet visible, still in a state of murkiness. In the case of Israel, this decisive moment of differentiation of temporality occurred in the Sinai revelation, at least from the perspective of the redactors half a millennium later: through Moses Yahweh was understood (or differentiated) as the transcendent God. (From the compactness of the cosmos the divinity inherent therein was differentiated as the transcendent qualitatively different from and beyond the immanent cosmos.) With the differentiation of the transcendental the present acquired a heightened significance as the vintage point which led to God as the goal and from which the past as whole constituted itself as the gradual fulfillment of the journey toward God. This is what Voegelin means by "history is existence in the present under God"; "[Israel] was a people that moved on the historical scene while living toward a goal beyond history" (ibid., p. 113); or "A society in existence under God is in historical form. From its present falls the ray of meaning over the past of mankind from which it emerged" (ibid., p. 132). In China, whose pre-imperial history parallels the Israelite so closely, such differentiation began with the conquest of Shang by the Zhou and completed itself with the universal empire of Han, as we shall see later.

"Linear historicity" at this phylogenic level can be understood better by analogic understanding of the same type of differentiation on the ontogenic level, whose most succinct exposition can be found in Heidegger's Sein und Zeit. On the ontogenic level, linearity in temporality is manifested in one's directing of one's whole life's resources toward a single point, which results in the constitution of the "totality" of life with the consequent unification of past, present, and future. This Heidegger designates as vorlaufende Entschlossenheit, eigentliche Zeitlichkeit (authentic temporality), or eigentliche Geschichtlichkeit (authentic historicity). The analysis of these is found in part two of Sein und Zeit.

There Heidegger attempts to construct a general structure for Entschlossenheit (decidedness or resoluteness) which all transcendental traditions are at bottom, one way or another, whether Greek philosophy, Judaism or Christianity; but it is to be a general structure without subscribing to any specific instance of it. Entschlossenheit is inherent in the structure of human existence, of Dasein, or in other words in Sorge (Care; which is thus Sein des Dasein, the Being of Dasein). "Inherent" means it is "primordial", or hidden therein, and this means, in my words, that Entschlossenheit as linear historicity remains undifferentiated in the everyday, ordinary, undifferentiated mode of temporality of an ordinary person in his or her ordinary way, the mode of the das Man (the "one" or the "they" in Macquarie & Robinson's translation). Heidegger's "Die unspruengliche Einheit der Sorgestruktur liegt in der Zeitlichkeit" (Sein und Zeit, p. 327; "the primordial unity of the Care-structure lies in Temporality") means: the everyday, undifferentiated experience of time has the potential to differentiate into authentic temporality. The structure of the undifferentiated mode, of Sorge, is its three components: Sich-vorweg (ahead-of-itself), Schoen-sein-in (already-being-in), and Sein-bei (being-along-side). Characterizations of these structural components of the undifferentiated mode can be put in a diagrammatical way:

Terms: Erschlossenheit = disclosedness; Stimmung or Befindlichkeit = mood or state of mind; Verstehen = Understanding; Rede = discourse; Geworfenheit = thrownness; Verfallensein = fallenness.

An everyday Dasein is thus "Sich-vorweg-schoen-sein-in-(einer Welt)-als-Sein-bei (innerweltlich begegnendem Seienden)" (Ahead-of-itself-already-Being-in-(a World)-as-Being-along-side-intraworldily-encountered-beings). For example, a person in the undifferentiated mode is writing a book on cooking (a goal envisioned to be accomplished in the future; envisioning the future = ahead of itself) and so, already in a world where publishing companies, people's reading habit, books, writing, chair, desk, the computer on the desk etc. are entrenched (already being in a pre-disclosed world), goes sit on the chair before the desk and types on the computer keyboard (being along side things/ beings in the world thus encountered). Goals disclose the world (Erschlossenheit or disclosedness), as writing a book exposes the functions of the publishing companies, writing instrument, chairs and tables, etc. One then finds oneself "thrown" into this world, because the companies and instrument are already there (and one's past such as experiences, writing skills, education, etc. are already given) before one has the goal of writing a book (Geworfenheit or thrownness). Normally, one is lost in these things and this world in general, without reflecting whence they came or if they can be any different (Verfallensein or fallenness).

During differentiation of one's experience of temporality effected by one's resoluteness (Entschlossenheit), linearity of time becomes explicit, and past, present, and future, the structural components of linear time, acquire explicit meaning in one's heightened consciousness of them; the three components of care, until now remaining timeless (synchronic), are heightenedly corresponding to the three components of (linear) time/ temporality (Zeitlichkeit): formerly then, disclosedness, thrownness or fallenness are synchronic reflections of the diachronic components of temporality, but after differentiation disclosedness (as goal) becomes explicitated or explicitly recognized as future (Zukunft), thrownness (the world that is already there and one's past that is already given) as past (Gewesen) and fallenness, being-alongside, as the present (Gegenwart).

These three moments of Zeitlichkeit are played out differently in relation to one another in Entschlossenheit (resoluteness) or in Alltaeglichkeit (everydayness or das Man): in resoluteness past, present, and future form an unity and constitute den Modus der eigentlichen Sorge ("the mode of authentic Care"): "Wenn die Entschlossenheit den Modus der eigentlichen Sorge ausmacht, sie selbst aber nur durch die Zeitlichkeit moeglich ist..." (Sein und Zeit, p. 327; "If resoluteness makes up the mode of the authentic care, and if this [care] itself is possible only through temporality..."; translation here usually, but not always, follows Macquarie and Robinson.) The constitution of unity works in the following manner:

This Zukunft (future) as sich auf sich Zukommenlassen (letting itself come towards itself) means Uebernahme der Geworfenheit (taking-over of thrownness):

Such is the meaning of (eigentliche) Zeitlichkeit, "der Sinn der eigentlichen Sorge" (ibid.): "gewesend-gegenwaertigende Zukunft". (Ibid.; "the been-present-ing-future/coming-toward".)

What Heidegger means is this: Certain choices are so distinctive that, once one chooses them as one's goal (resoluteness), the goal will coincide entirely with one's being (or consume entirely one's self-identity or self-interpretation so to speak) and one's going toward this goal in the future is like coming toward or back to oneself: a goal of self-fulfillment, literally. And insofar as the goal consumes one's being entirely, one's past becomes suddenly intelligible, at the present moment of resoluteness, as a path leading one to this goal. In this way one takes over the past, or comes back to it as one is finally coming back to oneself. Past in this way is released from the future (with the goal chosen). This most prominent goal has united future, present and past into an unified whole, as one comes to understand, at the present moment from which the goal is in the future and the past has become intelligible as meaningful for this goal, the goal as the point to which one's whole life has been directed: the directionality of one's life has differentiated out of a former murkiness.

The former murkiness, the undifferentiated mode, the everyday mode, is characterized by Zerstreuung (dispersion) in the moment of the present: "Es [Gegenwaertigen] gegenwaertigt um der Gegenwart willen. So sich in sich selbst verfangend, wird das zerstreute Unverweilen zur Aufenthaltslosigkeit. [Hier] is das Da-sein ueberall und nirgends." (Ibid., p. 347; "This present-ing [existing in the present] present-s [exists as present] for the sake of the present. Entangling itself in itself thusly, this dispersed, not-lingering mode [of existence] becomes not-staying-anywhere. Here is Da-sein everywhere and nowhere.") That is, because one has not chosen any life-consuming or -fulfilling goal, one exists merely from moment to moment, doing this today and that tomorrow, not staying anywhere. One is dispersed among these unconnected moments, past, present and future remaining in murkiness, not explicitated in consciousness, since yesterday is forgotten and tomorrow is nothing especial. (As we have said earlier ["The Consumerization of Art, Culture, and Mind"], this is the "intestinal" or dissipative mode of be-ing.) Only a life-consuming goal will bring past and future into heightened significance for a heightenedly experienced present, and thus uniting all three, constituting a totality: a linearity.

This undifferentiated mode of leaping from moment to moment does not mean that one has no employment; a 9 to 5 job does not get one out of inauthenticity and does not differentiate out a unity of past, present and future. In fact, there are frequent moments of realization of one's inauthenticity, one's potential being forgotten, as when one says to oneself, in the routines of work and home: "Is this it, is this all there is to life?"

As said, Heidegger attempts a pure existential analysis of resoluteness (Entschlossenheit), to expose its structure, without relating it to any specific manifestations of it, so that the fact that Entschlossenheit is derived specifically from the Christian and Judeo experience of temporality is hidden from the readers of Sein und Zeit. In other words Heidegger is "immanentizing" the Judeo-Christian temporally oriented religiousness by stripping from it its religiosity and thus making its structure compatible with any secular version of Entschlossenheit, i.e. a choosing of an end that is not specifically God nor Christ. That is: Entschlossenheit is: to come to itself in such a way as to come back to itself; but what is itself concretely? What would be a life-consuming goal that unites one's whole life? The actual possibility, the actual goal, adopted in resoluteness cannot be given by existential analysis, which concerns only the structure, not actual instances, and therefore is not prejudiced, not biased -- at least this is what Heidegger wants, though in reality -- and this is what Heidegger's attempt to secularize Christianity would make -- this eigentliche Zeitlichkeit (authentic temporality) smacks of a Christian's autobiography of living a meaningless life at first but then being saved by belief in Christ. But in the "pure" analysis of Heidegger, death -- the eigenste Moeglichkeit (ownmost possibility) to which Entschlossenheit vorlauft (resoluteness anticipates) -- seems to define a horizon for these possibilities:

(Note that Heidegger speaks of the differentiated mode (destiny [the life-consuming goal], authentic temporality [linear historicity here], etc.) as being more primordial to the undifferentiated mode (the everyday care of das Man) because it is the differentiated mode which provides the measure by which the murkiness of the undifferentiated mode can be clarified, just as it is the goal which makes the process intelligible, even though the process happens first before the goal is grasped -- life happens first before the meaning of life is grasped. But we take undifferentiated mode to be primary because it is from this substratum that the differentiated mode emerges, and in time sequence too.)

It thus seems that within the limits set by death, only certain possibilities (of coming toward itself in such a way as to come back to itself; of delivering itself to itself) are possible, specifically those which have been explored in the transcendental (i.e. salvational) traditions: directing one's whole life toward philo-sophia or agathon (the Good of Plato); or, in view of the coming immortality of soul after death, the unification with the divine (Neo-Platonism); or toward God, as in Christianity or late (prophetic) Yahwism (both as coming-toward [God as Redeemer] as coming back [to God as originator]: Uebernahme der Geworfenheit). The actual possibility adopted during Entschlossenheit is, according to Heidegger, and has to be taken from the current cultural milieu:

(Macquarrie and Robinson note in their translation that Wiederholung "does not mean either a mechanical repetition or an attempt to reconstitute the past; ... rather an attempt to go back to the past and retrieve former possibilities, which are thus 'explicitly handed down' or 'transmitted'". [Being and Time, p. 437])

Therefore, within the context of the present day Western society, for example, an instance of such resoluteness would be someone who resolutely decides on Jesus Christ and God as his destiny after death and so becomes a Christian. Such resoluteness has disclosed within the Western tradition that possibility of becoming a Christian, which the person of this resoluteness takes over -- repeats it -- explicitly, for he is not being a Christian just because he happens to have grown up in a Christian family, but has chosen it explicitly.

This instance is not chosen here arbitrarily, for, as said, Heidegger's temporality is Christian through and through (Heidegger is trying to "immanentize" Christianity or "being-Christian" into a secular spirituality centered around self-interpretation: existential "self-making" as a substitute for Christianity). It needs to be remarked here only that the differentiation of linearity from murkiness, Zerstreuung or Aufenthaltlosigkeit, need not yet involve, on the phylogenic level (of human history), redemption or salvation (so that the constitution of Israel in historical form does not have to lead to the later prophetism or Christianity, just as China, once constituted in linear historical form definitively by the Han empire, never evolved toward eschatology), and, on the ontogenic level, salvation through something like the acceptance of Christ (obviously, given Heidegger's purpose of immanentization). Those are the result of further differentiation.

So a hitherto ordinary person existing in the undifferentiated mode of das Man can suddenly reconstitute his or her consciousness in the form of Entschlossenheit, thereby transforming his or her life from the pointless, day-to-day passing into an unitary and directional coming-toward: auf-sich-Zukommen als sich-auf-sich Zurueckkommenlassen. This sort of differentiation can curiously be found again on the phylogenic level, this time of the species, in biological evolution, as when, in the evolution of the animal body plan, radial symmetry breaks into bilateral symmetry; i.e. from porifera and cnideria to platyhelminthes. This time in the evolution of animal body plan the rise of directionality or linearity is associated with the evolutionary increase in consumption ability (with more efficient consumption and defecation and speedy movement). That is, it is on the material side of the history/ meaning of life, not the spiritual side. This curious parallel may signal a general "pattern" (not law) with respect to the growth of complexity and differentiation: whether in nature or culture, growth tends to complexify more and differentiate further, to move from radialness to directionality. Historical form and resoluteness would also then signify the complexification of consciousness.