Immanence

Simply, "immanence" here means that the only world is this world. It goes further, in other words, than asserting just that its interest or focus is on "this world" -- it's used in opposition to any "transcendence" that implies there is an alternative to, or a route out of, this world. It means, even more simply, that there is only the world. And that follows from the idea, first, of the eversion, and then of phenomenal experience as the foundation of the world.

The most obvious or at least most common alternative to this world is of course the religious notion of the "next world", so-called, or the "after-life", and to this, immanence can only fall back on the secular skepticism that comes in the wake of science. But also common, and more interesting, is the notion, since Descartes, that mind is something distinct from matter. This too is rejected within this immanent frame as being incoherent -- since what is called mind influences matter and vice versa, they clearly share a world, and that's this world, or, again, the world.

But immanence in this usage means more than just its oppositions. True, as said, it shuts the door on transcendental escapes, but it's just that re-orientation of focus that brings back the concrete immediacy of sensuous experience and appreciation, from the smell of coffee, say, to the touch of a hand, or the sight of an expert craftsman at work. It gives us back what's often called the surface of the world, in other words, doing for our experience in general what Susan Sontag would have us do for our experience of art (PDF): "What is important now is to recover our senses. We must learn to see more, to hear more, to feel more."

More than that, immanence means a recognition and acceptance of the human as an integral part of the natural -- no longer, even implicitly, even with a wink, can we think of "man" as an intermediate being between beast and angel. It dissolves, in fact, the distinction between the natural and the artificial, or at most making them nested rather than opposed categories. We see nature within artifice in the form of gardens or parks or nature conservatories, but nature in its fuller aspect is the container of the artificial, making human cities, for example, no more than an extension of birds' nests. All of human culture, in this sense, is simply the manifestation of a peculiar feature -- namely, speech or language -- of one animal species among many. And, all the hopes, fears, and anxieties that such a feature gives rise to notwithstanding, we have as much a home in nature/the universe as any other species. 

Jun 8/20