This title is the theme of a conference that I will be working at this weekend, The 7th Triennial Conference of the Kenneth Burke Society, hosted by the fine folks at Villanova. While I am in no way a Burkean scholar (in fact, I rarely understand anything he has written), I find this theme rather applicable to our daily lives.
Quoting Burke's Attitudes Towards History (which I am pulling from our conference program), "We mean by 'transcendence' the adoption of another point of view from which they cease to be opposites" (p. 336). Keeping this in mind, it appears that the transcendental is not some sort of evangelical awakening as identified in medieval thought, but really an understanding of our current world.
Transcendence by perspective is being able to view the world outside of your own mental, racial, ethnic and physical state. This means welcoming other people and their ideologies as well as avoiding what I feel is one of the world's greatest pitfalls: stereotyping.
So I guess if I have a closing call to action for this, it is to try and see the world from someone else's eyes. For it is only when you change your perspective that one can really achieve societal transcendence.
Personally, I'm going to achieve this by hitting up the Philly Italian Market today. For all of you that have ever been there, you understand exactly how transcendence by perspective fits into this. And if you haven't, check it out online: www.phillyitalianmarket.com. I'll try to post some photos later as I am going there to compose a photo essay for my media production class.
UPDATE: I wanted to include the above picture for your viewing pleasure. Part of my work with this conference has been handling all of the design materials for it. This included the conference program (whose cover is seen above) as well as conference badges, promotional posters, memorial displays, etc. This is a rare time that I am proud of my work so I figured I'd include it here.
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