The Remaining Wonder: From Structural Analysis to Religious Imagination
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: This essay examines the form of wonder that remains after a structural account of consciousness has been developed. The preceding inquiry argued that consciousness need not be regarded as an original actuality distributed throughout the universe, nor as something foreign to reality. Rather, it becomes intelligible as the actualization of a possibility grounded in the formal structure of reality itself. This conclusion, however, does not abolish wonder; it relocates it. The deepest question is no longer whether consciousness was secretly present in all things from the beginning, but why reality is structured in such a way that consciousness, meaning, and self-reflection can emerge at all. From this perspective, religious imagination is not reduced to ignorance, fear, or primitive explanation, but understood as a symbolic response to the generative depth of reality. The sacred does not stand against intelligibility; it names the form wonder takes when conscious beings encounter the inexhaustible depth of a reality from which they themselves have emerged.
Author: Rudolph, Hans-Joachim
Language: English
Subfield: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7162552006
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