Number and Time: Reflections Leading Toward a Unification of Depth Psychology and Physics

Life changing

Great book. Maria von Franz is a gifted thinker and analyst and with clarity and courage explores the interconnected architecture of life energy flow in physical and non-physical symbolic archetypal domains,with numbers as a uniquely structural feature.

This is a well written text on the arch-typical significance of the ordinal numbers. This is a specialist text which will is only approachable after extensive study of Jung's own works (particularly Aion and Mysterium Coniunctionis. A masterpiece of thinking and writing.

Excellent,a very interesting book. Fundamental to one who want to understand the signifcaincy of Jung concepts. I think that is a key to undestand the simbolism in Jung work.

Love Von Franz! She is an extraordinary woman, writer, thinker and much more! Thank you for this book! Great service!

Although it covers an interesting subject, Number and Time is von Franz's most abstruse work. She conceded that it is a bad book. She only wrote it because Jung requested it. She says that the term 'transcendental' is used only in the relative sense of "transcending consciousness", that is, it doesn't denote an otherworldly transcendence in the absolute sense. Then she goes on to define an absolute transcendental reality in the absolute sense that is "completely transcendental" and "incommensurable" with material reality. She says that it is a "potential reality", which means that it is not real, although it can become real by manifesting in reality. Yet it contains "absolute knowledge" and "luminosity". The "primal forms" possess "self-consciousness", "quasi intelligence", and "active intelligence". But this is not possible if they lack autonomous existence. The 'unus mundus' is a timeless "acausal orderedness", responsible for synchronistic acausal coincidences as acts of creation in time. Yet, all the "empirical phenomena" are also "inherent" to the unus mundus. Thus, the unus mundus is also the birth ground of causality. It may give rise to causal chains, to boot. Synchronicity is defined as the coincidence of inner meaning and outer happenings. But this would imply that synchronistic events could never occur earlier in history, when there were no minds capable of experiencing meaning. So how could the unus mundus manifest before there were minds, thus giving rise to the empirical world? The answer is that synchronistic events may also occur wholly independent of the "inner meaning" of the human mind. That's why von Franz cites Jung as saying that the unus mundus contains "absolute knowledge". Although the significance of a synchronistic event can only be experienced subjectively, "the meaning may also have been originally present in the objective event itself; something rational or similar to meaning may inhere in the event itself." In order for the synchronistic notion to work independently of the human mind, as a world-creating force, Jung must have recourse to "objective meaning". The conclusion is that "objective meaning" is capable of manifesting as synchronistic events wholly independent of a mind predisposed to register meaning. It gainsays the basic definition of synchronicity as "inner" and "outer" facts in meaningful relation. Jung's metaphysical edifice lands in an out-and-out Neo-Platonic system. Jung conceded to an interviewer that he had had seconds thoughts about it, designating his metaphysical edifice as "awkward". I think we must see Jung's metaphysic against the backdrop of the Neo-Platonic philosophers, such as Proclus. Proclus reckoned with the pagan deities and devoted himself to theurgical practices during the day. According to Jung and von Franz, there are entities capable of quasi intelligence. They abide in a transcendental sphere where they occupy themselves with "the primal ordering of existence". They can be invoked by way of mantic procedures: "[T]he use of a divinatory oracle represents an attempt to induce a spontaneous manifestation of the...autonomous spirit". This is close to the Neo-Platonic notion of pagan deities and their invocation for the purpose of attaining unity with them. It coincides with von Franz's alchemical goal of "union of the total man with the unus mundus". Synchronicity also bears resemblance to the Neo-Platonic emanative influx model, which speaks of an inflow in the world of the spiritual force. Arguably, Proclus and others make better sense of the Neo-Platonic model. From an intellectual point of view, it would be more honest to take the full step, remove the contradictions in von Franz's account, and develop Jung's metaphysic as a modern version of Neo-Platonism.

Excelente trabalho de Marie-Louise von Franz sobre as bases arquetípicas dos números

Una lectura muy interesante, un ensayo profundo, documentado, cuestionando la ciencia materialista y la definición de tiempo y espacio. Es un libro genial.